An old dog’s odyssey to learn new digital tricks


Lighting and legalities

I’m learning all sorts of interesting things about the legalities of photography lately.

When I originally started posting my photographs on Flickr (as well as blogging about them here), all the legal knowledge I had to go on was what I’d learned from micro-stock photography sites. More recently, I’ve learned that the law regarding photography (not so much regarding what you photograph, but rather what you can sell and how) is a bit more complex than I’d first thought.

There are a number of books out on the subject; I’ll probably post a review of one or two here as I get around to reading them. Still, here’s a quick summary of what surprised me:

1) If something covered by copyright is in a picture, you can’t sell it for commercial photographic uses (i.e., as stock photography, for ads and commercials, etc.).

2) Given the same subject in the same photograph, you *can* sell it as art (i.e., as a print).

All the standard disclaimers apply here — this shouldn’t be construed as legal advise, blah, blah… But apparently “art” gets the same pass that “journalism” does with respect to photographs containing trademarks and other copyrighted material. So that being the case, here’s an image I thought I’d never be able to make available for sale:

Sideways

Of course, it’s the Eiffel Tower at night. Oddly, while the Eiffel Tower isn’t copyrighted, the design of its lighting is — so if you like this image, you’ll soon be able to buy a print. But you’ll never see it in commercial use (i.e., an ad or a commercial).

Popularity: 5% [?]

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Firepower

If you’ve been reading my posts for very long, you might recall that I’ve been tinkering around with a setup for doing macro and closeup photography at home. I started out by buying a 20″ light tent, but found that the lights it came with were pretty anemic. So I augmented the tent with another purchase on eBay — a couple of light stands with “daylight” compact fluorescent bulbs.

But I thought the light output from these was lacking, too. I’d really rather not have to put my camera on a tripod and use long exposures for this photography. Hand-held would be a much more flexible way to work.

So I finally broke down and bought the brightest “daylight” compact fluorescent lights that I could find — 85 watts each. I discovered a couple of things in this process:

1) They’re not cheap, about $25 each (shipped, when purchased 4 at a time).

2) They’re friggin’ HUGE — about 4 inches in diameter, and 10 inches from tip to tail.

To put things in perspective, I took this shot comparing a 35 watt CFL bulb (that came with the light stands) to an 85 watt CFL bulb, with an old 60 watt incandescent for scale:

Bulbs, compared

The 35 watt CFL supposedly puts out light equivalent to that from a 100 watt incandescent, while the 85 watt CFL is supposed to be equivalent to 300+ watts of incandescent light. Still, even with two 85 watt CFL bulbs shooting through white umbrellas, this rig is good enough for small work — but it’d never do for portraits.

Flashes are expensive, and a bit fidgety — continuous / “hot” lighting from bulbs is a lot easier for an amateur to get adjusted correctly. Still, I can see why the pros go with flash. It’s the only way to get the bright light they need in the right places.

As for me, now I’m thinking about upgrading yet again to silver umbrellas…

Popularity: 15% [?]

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Wheels and trusses — old and new

Since my last post about New Orleans had a less than flattering image, in the spirit of fairness I thought I should follow up with a picture of a nicer scene. Here’s one that captures old and new — both wheels (steam vs. car) and trusses (paddle wheel structure vs. bridge structure):


Trusses

Here the paddle wheel belongs to the Steamboat Natchez, while the trusses are part of the Crescent City Connection bridges over the Mississippi river.

Popularity: 25% [?]

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Paris by moonlight

It’s been a while since I blogged about Paris, so here’s a nighttime picture of the city in the moonlight:

Paris by moonlight

It has its share of grimy areas, but as far as I’m concerned, Paris is one of the most photogenic cities I’ve ever spent time in. For this picture, my camera was clamped to one of the railings on the second level of the Eiffel Tower. The view is roughly to the northwest.

Sadly, the tower shakes a bit as the elevators go up and down, the structure moves in the wind, etc. As a result, there’s a very slight smearing in this image — so it looks wonderful at small sizes, but not so great at full size.

Sigh…

Popularity: 34% [?]

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Concertina and Mardi Gras beads

OK, so I’ve talked about my trip to New Orleans, and posted images from the flight home, it’s about time I started posting some images from my time “on the ground.” I thought I’d start with a picture that summarizes my impression of the place — as a hard-partying and rough-around-the-edges city:

Concertina and Mardi Gras beads

Maybe it’s a “Katrina thing,” maybe not — but I saw barbed wire over essentially all the gateways I ran across in the French Quarter. Most of them were subsequently “decorated” with beads, too. I couldn’t tell you whether the decoration came accidentally during Mardi Gras, or deliberately as an ironic statement.

Popularity: 44% [?]

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Pinhead, redux

OK, I finally figured out my pinhole photography issues (as I suspected, the hole needed to be smaller). Here’s my contribution to “Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day:”

Pinhole Ray

It’s a dramatic image of my neighbor across the street washing his van. Yeah, I know, not the most stunning subject — but the 27th was my daughter’s birthday, and I was a bit pressed for time.

Popularity: 52% [?]

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Above the clouds

Today’s picture is another one I took on my recent flight home from New Orleans:


Above the clouds

As I mentioned in a previous post, I got lucky and had both a good seat and good lighting for about an hour’s worth of flight above a cloud deck. A few times during this hour, I got even luckier and spotted another aircraft out the window.

Here you see the evidence of one such incredibly lucky moment. This image looks little different from what came out of the camera — I just did a little white balance tuning, and cleaned up the after-effects of one scratch on the aircraft’s window.

Popularity: 69% [?]

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Urban reflections

The pup and I wandered downtown last weekend to take in a museum. It was a beautiful, sunny day, with not many people around (probably all out on their mountain bikes). So of course, this meant it was also a great opportunity for a little work with my ‘510:

Urban reflections

I really like the fact that you can see almost the entirety of the red building reflected in its neighbor across the street — makes for a colorful shot, if I do say so myself! If you want details on where I took it, just click on the image to get to its Flickr page — I’ve been pretty good at geotagging the stuff I put on there…

Popularity: 72% [?]

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Attention Deficit Theater

So in case you missed all the shouting, Flickr now does video — although they’re calling the feature “long photos,” since you’re limited to uploading 90 second clips. Whether you call it short video, or long pictures, I think it’s worth tinkering around with — just to see what we can do with the format.

Some other folks have experimented a bit and found that even shorter clips (say, 10 - 15 seconds) are even better, if you’re looking for something that a passer-by can take a quick look at. Maybe this short time is something innate to humans, or maybe the quick “cuts” in modern TV programs have trained us to expect this. At any rate, I thought I’d put up a few 10 second video clips to see how people respond to them.

Since all the clips I’m uploading (at least for now) will be roughly 10 seconds long, I’m calling my collection Attention Deficit Theater. Here’s the first clip I’ve uploaded — of a fountain in the gardens at Schloss Nymphenburg, in Munich:

I can’t say that I agree with the Flickr video detractors — vid… er… long photos likely won’t mess up Flickr any more than the existing crop of junky cellphone snapshots already has. Meanwhile, as some have pointed out, short video could really add to the ways in which photographers connect with their audiences.

Either way, please let me know what you think!

Popularity: 82% [?]

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Islands in the sky

Today’s photo comes courtesy of a recent business trip to New Orleans. I took quite a few pictures while I was in town, but I think some of the pictures I took on the flight home are even better than the city pictures. Here’s one of my favorites:

Islands in the sky

We were fortunate in that there was a very distinct cutoff to the top of the cloud deck on our way home. From our cruising altitude high above, the cloud deck took on the look of a nearly solid surface. Here and there, a break in the clouds (we were nearing sunset, so these were invariably dark breaks in the clouds) looked much like a bay or inlet. With a bit of luck, you could see surface features in the breaks — here, you can see a river, highlighted by reflections of the bottom of the cloud deck.

In an odd coincidence, I was feeling a bit beat down after my trip, so I sprung for the $40 upgrade (this was on United, mind you) to get an exit row seat. I wound up at the window, with the seat next to me vacant. So by virtue of my tired state I wound up with lots of elbow room for messing with my camera, swapping lenses back and forth, etc.

It was the best $40 investment I’ve made in a long time…

Popularity: 87% [?]

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