The Business of Photography

Setup info for putting together this shot below (composite of 3 photos)

I must admit the business end of photography does seem a bit daunting. Luckily there are tons of resources online to help with that side of things....

Selina Maitreya is holding a free teleseminar called Clarion Call, which takes place February 11th & 12th, 2011 from 9am to 4pm both days. 14 photo industry experts are scheduled to talk about the business of photography ranging from putting a value on your work to social networking tools, such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Vimeo, Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr, etc. It sounds enlightening and the price is definitely right.

Also on Selina's website is a five-day consultation of short videos you can access offering a few immediate tips.

ASMP (The American Society of Media Photographers) has a series of videos, where Chase Jarvis, Paul Elledge, Lou Jones, Steve Grubman, Barbara Bordnick & Paula Lerner discuss marketing, copyright, negotiating, pricing and much more. And that really is just the tip of the iceberg - it really is a great resource with tons more videos on website design, etc, etc, etc....

Also on the the ASMP site are other tools such as property and model release forms. More of their business resources can be found here.

Other useful resources

APA: http://www.apanational.com/
Capic (Canadian): http://www.capic.org/
2 important portals where buyers can pick up your work: 
Agency Access (AA): http://www.agencyaccess.com/
AdBase: http://www.adbase.com/

There is a lot of discussion of whether to sign on with Agency Access or AdBase. There are a couple of Flickr discussion threads with people that seem willing to answer questions based on experience. There is information all over the internet, of course, but you can find an older thread here and a newer one here as a starting point.

And in case you haven't already heard, The Strobist (David Hobby) & Joe McNally are doing a Flash Bus Tour giving workshops across the U.S. (which might mean a trip to Buffalo, N.Y. in my near future).

The Suspended Glowing Light Bulb

Setup-Softbox and black reflector

For anyone who's interested, the photo at the top is a composite of 3 photos. I thought it was only going to be 2, but...I miscalculated. The first thing you need is a black background - material or a black reflector will do.

This picture was for the bottom of the bulb shot
held a couple metres in front of the black reflector
lit with the softbox 45° camera right

I started off using a reflective umbrella, but the reflections looked...like an umbrella, so I switched to the softbox, which worked much better. Keep some distance between the subject and background - this will help underexpose your background to get it to zero black. Then take some pictures!

This picture was for the light on the glass
lit with a softbox 45° behind the bulb
camera right

The shot with the lit bulb really should have been taken with a gel over the flash to balance with the light bulb, but...I didn't think about that until I got the images in the computer. Oops! It still worked out anyway, but you'll notice that the light from the speedlight is quite blue because of it.

Then all you have to do is bring them into photoshop, align them and mask off the areas you want to blend with the other images. More on masking here.

This is the shot for the lit part of the bulb
(also hand held). It's also lit with the softbox,
although it likely could have done without

And that's about it really - have a creative weekend!

Update: ...just found The Strobist's (a.k.a. David Hobby's) more elaborate and perhaps more refined solution to a very similar situation here.

Oops! Have I missed something?! Help share resources by adding them with a short description in the comments section or write me and I'll make sure it gets posted!