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Check this out. I have no idea what sort of camera shoots at that frame rate, but I would love to find out. Like did these guys get a loaner from NASA?

I have been getting emails wanting more specifics on workflow and was about to make an entry on transcoding (changing the CODEC) on the 5DII footage so that FC can read it, but then I saw that Vince Laforet does a very good job of explaining it. The difference is that I use Compressor, rather than StreamClip, for no particular reason other than that is what I have always used. I do use StreamClip when I need to send off a compressed file though. The other great program I use is Squeeze, which is absolutely the best Flash convertor I have ever used. In fact, we just changed the flash player on the main site, and it is playing the FLV files a bit dark and contrasty, so I will be using Squeeze tonight to redo the files.

Stock is dead, well, at least it is not what it used to be. I got a call recently from a photo editor who I have known for years. She worked for several of the stock agencies, including being NY director of one of the biggies. She is out of a job, and was calling me to see if I wanted to contribute to a new agency that she was considering starting up. I said no way, it was not worth my time or the energy of my staff. She was a bit shocked when told her that in my view, stock was dead, it is over, time to move on to the next thing. A bit of background here. I was signed up by Tony Stone himself to contribute to his agency. My editor was his daughter Sarah Stone. Both of them were caring, insightful, sensitive and brilliant people. I was a bit tentative about the idea of stock, it struck me as being in the the sphere as the used car business, but they were good people so I went with it. We started with a handful of pictures and we kept working at it, expanding by a few pictures every month. The initial residuals were $50/month, but is grew steadily so that after a 3 years I was pulling in low 5 figures every month. Then Tony sold to Getty, and things changed a bit, but not so bad. I still worked with Sarah, and then a succession of other editors. They would take 1 picture out of a thousand, so that the collection was tight, and they did all the captioning and key wording.

For me to do stock there are cost involved. Models must be paid, model releases must be organized and filed, all images that stock agencies have must be kept track of, copyright must be filled, insurance must be maintained against lawsuits, payment and sales records must be kept, and all this does not include the expense of the actual shoot cost.

Over the years things evolved, and I won’t bore you with the minutia. The state of affairs now is that my stock sales on a good month are 10% of what they were 5 years ago. The selection process is not what it used to be, to say the least. I am not only a Getty “artist” but I have had occasion to be a user, so I get their sales emails. ” Special discount, 30% off before the end of the month”, which is not an exact quote, but I get those sort of emails. Yesterday I got an email from someone at Getty who says they saw my work on Flickr and thought I would be a good fit for them. This sums up the issue. The guy who sent it had no idea who I was, that I had been one of their heavy hitters. Just that they are trolling FlickR for images says something. The business model now seems to be sell quantity and keep to an absolute minimum the involvement on the part of the agency. Sort of the throw the spaghetti to the wall approach. So for them, the more images the better. Photographs as commodity.

As a photographer, I think one can still make money in stock, but it seems like the way to do it would be to do a tight cost/benefit analysis of all your shoots, and spread sheet all the shoots, and see what sells for how much at what profit margin. It seems that one could then project out that say “photo of girl with lolipop” which sold well in Europe last year, may sell well if redone with new talent, in China next year. Or something like that. I don’t want to say that stock is not possible, because I think it is, but to do it profitably, my gut instinct is that it needs to be done as a commodity business. Now that is going to generate some hate mail, oh geez.

I have read from my friend Selina Maitreya on Aphotoeditor.com that the biggest part of the photo market is the pro-summer segment. Stock works great for pro-summers, and I encourage them to participate. If you are a pro-summer, and you get $25 for a photo that you did, that is wonderful, free money. If you are starting out and have some good images, it is also a great vehicle. But to someone like myself, it is not worth it.

I think that this is indicative of what something larger. It used to be that to make a stock quality photograph one needed a certain amount of technical skill. Transparency film is not a forgiving medium. It required equipment, training and a good eye. Now, with digital cameras, RAW files, auto-focus, most anyone can turn out a reasonable looking shot. This is not the same as being able to pull off a six figure ad layout with a a crew of 50. No way. But for the type of photos that stock is used for, it is fine. The most important thing anyone ever told me about stock was ” Stock is the trailing edge of the image market”. This was told to me by the director of the Image Bank, and he was right on, now more than ever. For an ad agency, for an art director, there is no satisfaction in doing something that has already been done. What’s the point? The good ones are interested in making something new, giving their brand a special place, a special look. They have no interest what so ever in buying something that has already been done. Maybe they troll the web on something like Stumble Upon, and find something great, which is cool. I know I am going to get some flak about what I am saying, because obviously the downward pressure on budgets has made the need of stock a reality for smaller projects. All I am saying is that I am not willing to participate in it on a stock agency basis. Once a business, any business, becomes a massive price competitive commodity business, it is time to get out.

Thanks to my buddy Joshua Davis, for send me this.
http://www.vimeo.com/7199178

When shooting stills, at least in the current RAW world, the optical nature of the lens is not as critical as it once was. Back in the day of color trans film, back when one needed to really know how to work a light meter and a color meter, we used to pull 3 lenses of the same make and focal length and then test them for the best lens. Guess what, there was considerable variance. Pretty much everyone I knew then did the same, only the dumb dumbs were not testing before buying. That was before Photoshop and RAW, when lenses became a comodity. Thank god too, all those sleepless nights of waiting to see the clips from the lab and then hoping that the processing run was correctly judged, screw that. Gimme the RAW and let me sleep at night.

But now we have motion, which in terms of accuracy of exposure, color rendition and sharpness, it is rather similar to the old days of tranny film. Glass rules again. I saw Shane Halburt project 5DII footage on a 60ft screen that looked amazing, but it had PV glass on it. A whole other world. Those Canon lenses were never intended for this use. They are soft, flat although the colors really pop, and were designed to have the images imported into CS and massaged there. With stills, I want maximum information, which means a low contrast image. For motion, I want snap and detail, unless of course I don’t, then I want a choice.

For some excellent discussion of this, I recommend Shane’s blog. Also, Philip Bloom has some good information. But the mac daddy of lens reviews is Diglloyd. Yes, I paid up the $50, yes I am a nerd. If you really want to learn about lens bokeh ( that is the out of focus pattern of circles on a wide open lens) and other trivia, pay the man and learn. I found it fascinating. Excellent comparisons of the Zeiss, Canon and Nikon lenses for DSLRs. Fantastic pictorial examples and tons of data.

I have been getting requests from some of you for detailed information of exactly how we do certain things around here. Since tomorrow is a travel day, I will have lots of time to write up a post. I am thinking portfolio production would be a good first “how to do it” post. If anyone has any special request, drop me a note, and I will try to comply. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to read this.

What are you doing right now? Are you doing the thing that you most need to do? I found myself a couple of days ago with pads of lists, setting up jobs in 3 time zones, coordinating with all the various suppliers, crew and location folks that entails. Then I found this scheduling software called Omni Focus. Super nerdy. But I love it. Synchs with my iPhone. Lots of online videos feature mondo nerd types explaining its merits and how to get the most out of it. But it works, or I should say it gets me to work. Now when I have moment somewhere, I can look up Context:Phone and start making calls off the list, no time like the present. I am not sure if having this sort of thing leads to wearing a belt holster for my phone, but who cares, I now have more time to do what I really like to do, and even better, the nagging worry the resides in the back of my head about, “what should I be doing, right now?” has gone away. Check it, you’ll love it.