Using the term "professional" lightly

This comes via Imaging Resource:

"More than a third of UK marketing, PR and publishing professionals (37%) admit to using images illegally from the Internet. A survey of UK creative professionals by Deutsche Telekom's online photo agency, Polylooks.co.uk, found that not only do a great many creative professionals use images from the Web without paying for the rights, but additionally, most do not understand the meaning of the terms 'royalty free' and 'rights managed'."

To be fair, this was based on a survey of only 200 people, but how do you call yourself a professional and not know how to obtain images legally?  That's just pure laziness.

Photo of the Week: Mies Calder Sears

The Flamingo by Alexander Calder, in Federal Plaza, Chicago.  The Sears Tower is framed at the bottom and Mies van der Rohe's Kluczynski Federal Building is to the left.

I'm normally not a very efficient photographer.  I like to linger around my subjects, ponder them.  I'm rarely satisfied.  I'll take a dozen photos of a building or a scene, only to come home and realize that the first one was the best.  Or that they're all terrible.

This particular photo was an exception.  This was a blazing example of photographic efficiency.  I probably spent no more than a minute in Federal Plaza on this day.  I walked up to the Flamingo, knelt on one knee, pointed the camera skyward and fired off two or three photos.  After a quick check of the LCD screen, I was off to meet a friend at my next destination.  Of course, it helped that I had a good idea what I wanted to do here-- that is, to frame the Sears Tower under the Flamingo, and take advantage of the light coming from the west.  It also helped that I've photographed this subject before.  Still, I liked the efficiency.  It felt good for once.

Nikon D90 with 16-85mm lens (19mm for this shot), 1/400sec at f8 and ISO200.

Kevin Spacey has indigestion, also likes the Olympus Pen.

Olympus has introduced a new series of ads for the PEN Cameras, featuring none other than Kevin Spacey waxing poetic about photography.  I've been impressed with Olympus' marketing of the PEN until now, and truth be told, the new ads aren't bad (hey, at least they don't feature Ashton Kutcher!).  But this one is just too much:



That "hurty" thing?  That's called indigestion, Kevin.

You can see another one at DPReview, which I find entertaining for the fact that Kevin Spacey appears to pull a lens out of his back pocket.

Photo of the Week: "Sentry"

As I type this it's about 4 degrees outside, so I don't think I'll be taking any photos today.  I'm dedicated, but not that dedicated.  This shot is from Tuesday morning, after our first significant snow fall of the year.  I titled this "Sentry" because I enjoy anthropomorphizing (which is a really hard word to spell!) inanimate objects, in particular when they have snow on them.

Photo details: Nikon D90 with 60mm Macro lens, 1/640sec at f8 and ISO800.

I also really like this shot:



Photo details: Nikon D90 with 16-85mm lens, 1/250sec at f8 and ISO800.

Camera Sufficiency

"There definitely are types of photographs that gain meaningful artistic power from increasing technical perfection, but many, many, many pictures do not, or at least not much. The things I'm interested in making pictures of fall mostly into the latter category, and I simply don't care about 1 or 2% differences in distortion or 50 line pairs of resolution this way or that."

The quote above comes from Eamon Hickey's excellent review of the Olympus E-P1 over at the Online Photographer.  I think that people on the web (myself included) often forget that in our quest for more, more, more! with our cameras, and it's worth remembering from time to time that more isn't always required.

Eamon also talks about the "advantages" of shooting with an LCD screen instead of a viewfinder, which I suspect many photographers will take issue with.  I personally prefer to hold the camera to my eye-- that's how I've learned to take photos-- but for street photography, I can see the logic in using a small camera and an LCD screen, and Eamon correctly points out that you draw less attention to yourself that way.