I know … my website sucks … BIG TIME. It made it in an hour or two in iWeb just to put something online. It’s buggy, ugly, very outdated and doesn’t even work properly in some browsers. I really want to do something about it and I want to do it as soon as possible. I’d love to have your input on things.

I’m very tempted to use something like Bluedomain or Bigfolio. Their sites look pretty cool and easy to use. But most of their templates are flash-only. I hear it’s not great for your ranking in Google and it can’t be displayed on an Iphone.

Livebooks and  a photo folio seem to have solutions for it but Livebooks looks a bit too expensive and I’m not crazy about the designs of A Photo Folio.

A custom made website might be the best solution, but will it still be affordable? Or maybe have a WordPress site designed. I’m familiar with the interface and the blog is the most important part of my site anyway. If I go for a custom build site, I want a local company so we can sit together in person.

Here’s what I absolutely want:
- fast loading portfolio site with huge images
- a couple of info-pages
- integration of my blog
- easy content management
- password protected client proofing

Optional:
- online ordering module

Do you have any experiences, comments, … Please let me know.

The flu nor a very painful overstretched muscle between my ribs could stop up. www.squeezethelime.com is online. Go check it out!

David Hobby aka Strobist wrote a blog post about working for for free and asked for other opinions on that topic. Chase Jarvis, David Tejada, Moose Petterson and Vincent Laforet shared their opinions too. I subscribe to most of their views and disagree with some. I admire every single one of these guys. They are big names in photography but I thought it could be interesting to share the point of view of a photographer who hasn’t reach that level yet … me.

The topic of working for free is a difficult one that provokes lots of strong opinions. Check out the comments on the blogs I mentioned above and also take a peek at the discussion in the Strobist Flickr group.  John Harrington devoted 3 articles that make it clear that this is a dangerous topic when it’s not interpreted as it is supposed to be. I know that lots of young photographers feel like they are not in a position to have those strong opinions. I still feel that way from time to time. Working for free has certainly played a big part in my evolution as a photographer but there’s lots of pitfalls too. Here’s what I learned:

IT’S ALL OR NOTHING:

I don’t have insane rates. My prices are calculated based upon my costs (and I don’t drive an expensive car or anything), a decent but not extravagant income, the amount of time I can make money and the time I spend on a job. If a client thinks the price is too high, I’m willing to discuss ways to lower the price by changing the job description. For example: get by with less pictures and limit the shooting time or shooting something in Belgium instead of abroad. But I’m not negotiating my rates on their own. I know they are based upon very reasonable parameters and if I should cut in them, my business plan becomes a bad joke. That would cause me going out of business over time. So for me there’s no point in lowering my rates considerably.

On the other hand there’s working for free. I did and still do this from time to time. Doesn’t that conflict with the policy I described above? It certainly would if the time I can make money would be equal to the time I can shoot. From the moment I started, I decided that my business plan should include some time to shoot without having to make money. I call it my ‘play time’.
Does that mean that my clients are paying for the stuff I do for free? No, they are paying for a photographer that stays on top of current trends and continuously improves his skills, techniques and experience. I think that’s a fair deal but only when this ‘play time’ applies to certain rules.

TECHNIQUE AND GEAR

The most practical reason to do some work for free is to try out new techniques and gear. I don’t want to be waisting a clients time and money on trying out a new lighting technique or risk getting nothing but fuzzy shots with a new lens. In my play time I’m mastering techniques and getting to know my equipment in and out. This will benefit my skills and therefore the paying clients.

ETHICS

If I would work for free for a client who makes money from my pictures, it would be unfair to the clients who pay for the same kind of assignment. So I avoid doing just that. I don’t like to loose a job that I could have had if it wasn’t for someone who offered doing it for free. So I try hard not to be that someone either.

I only work for free for people and organizations who really can’t afford to pay a professional while their cause could benefit from my work.

CREATIVITY

An important reason to work for free is creative freedom. I won’t do a free assignment if they don’t want to give me complete creative freedom. They can give me some pointers, but I will run the show or there will be no show at all. A creative person like myself need to express himself and that isn’t always possible on a commercial shoot. And even if there’s a good degree of freedom, I often still feel I could have made it better if I had been completely in charge.

THE LUXUORY OF FAILURE

It’s a good feeling that you can go flat on your face without risking anything but a bruised ego. It has never happened to me that I came home from a free shoot without any usable pictures. But the idea that you can do this is so powerful that I tend to experiment much more on those shoots. If I shoot for free for someone I make it absolutely clear that I’m going to experiment without any guarantees. But to be honest, if I should see that things aren’t working, I might snap a few quick safe shots.

PORTFOLIO

This is the tricky one. Sometimes you get the chance to make some shots you would kill for to make even if you’re not getting payed for it. I admit that for me too, it’s hard to resist the opportunity to make a fantastic but free portfolio shot even if you believe they should pay you for it. There’s no right or wrong here. My ethical braincells will tell me to turn that job down but the artist and the marketeer in me scream to do it. I guess it’s a matter of judging each case individually. Think about what that image can mean to you but also think very carefully about what it means to the industry too. My long term commitment to make the industry better almost always wins the battle.

PERSONAL WORK vs FREE WORK

Personal work is often free work but not all free work is personal work. I try to shoot at least one day a month on a personal project. To me personal projects are the oil that keeps my machine running smoothly.
But I also see it as my duty to give something back to those who aren’t as lucky as I am and I prefer to do so with pictures.

PITFALLS 

In theory my way of working sounds like a pretty solid strategy to me but in reality things aren’t always that easy or clear. When a big company is approaching me to shoot their CEO for free, I have a laugh (although it may be a bitter one) but what about charity? How can you resist shooting for a good cause? But wait a minute … do the people who work there, work for free? Did they get their computers, building, coffee machine, … for free? The answer is probably NO. So why should a photographer work for free? I’m not saying that you shouldn’t shoot that for free, but think long and hard about it before you do.
I once agreed to shoot some portraits for free for a brochure for a charity that I extremely sympathized with. After the shoot, when I asked where I should send the image to, I was given the contact details of one of the world’s top 5 advertising agencies who would be doing the campaign. I’m pretty sure they weren’t working for free so I felt pretty screwed, lesson learned.

Shooting for friends and family can become a disaster if you aren’t clear from the beginning. I draw a distinct line between Bert-the-photographer and Just-Bert. I often have a camera around when I go to the playground with the kids and friends, I may take some pics of my friends at a party, … And if those friends like the pictures I took, they can have them … for free. After all, they will give me any pictures they took of my kids too. Mine may (or may not) be a bit better but since it was Just-Bert who took them, I don’t see why I should charge for the pics. But my relatives and friends know damned well that they shouldn’t expect Just-Bert to bring his camera every time and shoot from the first minute till the last. They know there’s no point in asking me to do a full family shoot just because I have a camera with me. I used to have this friend who had a restaurant. We never had to pay a cent when we were invited for dinner at his house. But we always payed the usual price when we had dinner in his restaurant.

MY CONCLUSION

Use your common sense. It’s not wrong to do something for free if it will benefit your hobby, grows your business or sustains your family in the long run. But also consider your fellow photographers and the industry. Even an egoistic asshole  should think about the industry because if you harm it, you’ll harm yourself.

Doing something for credit can give you a warm feeling but it can turn into a filthy taste in your mouth when you start realizing you are being screwed. Been there, done that. But if you choose your free work wisely it will make you a better photographer and a better person.

A while ago, I was contacted by a man named Jay Mallin who asked me if he could interview me for an article in Photo District News. I was really honoured and to be honest, I googled Jay’s name to see if this wasn’t a bad joke.

I had never before had the chance to lay my hands on a copy of Photo District News (PDN) but it’s probably the biggest magazine for professional photographers. Pretty cool to get your name in it, I guess.

During a long but cool phone call, Jay told me he was working on an article about new strategies photographers use to show their work around. My Youtube video’s catched his eye and he asked me how they help me from a marketing perspective. I made these video just because I believe in sharing but I do realise their marketing potential. I had some opportunities that I wouldn’t have had without the movies. Below is a small piece of the article, but there was much more usefull info from creative fellow photographers.

Jay sent me a copy of PDN and that convinced me to subscribe. Most articles aren’t suited for a fast easy read. And that’s not a caused by bad writing (on the contrary) but rather because you have to keep your attention to it. And that makes PDN a magazine that does what most magazines fail to do (to me): provide interesting content that’s at least for a big part new to me.

I’m certainly proud to be featured in the prestigious magazine. And I’m ready that Jay himself got something out of the video’s (check Jay’s blog). Thanks Jay for the great article and thanks Mariano for the kind words.

Last week the members of the Belgian Association of Professional Photographers had the unique opportunity to have a look into Adobe’s crystal ball. It wasn’t the usual demonstration/promo talk about the newest version of Photoshop or Lightroom. Instead we were given a presentation about the future of Digital Imaging by Dave Story, who’s leading the R&D department

Nobody can predict the exact future of digital imaging but the people at Adobe certainly have a better view on it than you or me do. And because Adobe is such a major player on the digital imaging market they can make part of the future. We saw some applications that could become reality in the next Photoshop, but we also saw ideas that could take another 10 years to become possible.

The most important things I noticed are:

- Just like many of you, I believe the megapixelrace has become unimportant. Sure there’s a need for more pixels for some applications but for 99% of my work I have plenty of pixels. Adobe thinks that the megapixel race will probably continue so they decided to turn the thinking around and started looking for applications that would benefit from these Gigapixels.

- Dave showed us some 3-4 gigapixel images. One of them was a Boston cityscape that could be zoomed in to reveal small details. This gave me a bit of an uncomfortable Big Brother feeling and those huge files aren’t that impressive anyway since they were stitched. What striked me the most is the incredible speed at which Dave was able to scroll and zoom the image. This could change the way we look at images or at least add another way of looking at images.

- By far the most impressive application for future gigapixel camera’s was a kind of 3D-lens. This lens was made out of around 20 small lenses that allowed to take a picture from 20 slightly different angles in one time. It’s actually like making 20 pictures in one file. With some clever processing power you can turn that images into a 3D-picture. We were shown how you could change the angle after the picture was made. Very impressive, but after thinking about it for a while it seems to have limited practical use. Only with a wide angle lens with a pretty large diameter near the subject, you will be able to change the angle considerably. At larger distances it seems impossible to me to build a lens that is still practically.
More impressive about this 3D technique is that you also can use 20 different focus points in one image. By combining the 20 images you can achieve a much larger depth of field. Adobe developed a focus brush that allows you to paint in which parts you want to be in focus.

- We also learned that Adobe doesn’t forget about the small, less glamorous improvements. They know that making selections is still to hard amongst other things. Apparently they have a shelf full of algorithms that work perfectly but require to much processing time for current computers. A lot of these are implemented when computers get powerful enough.

- They also showed us an application to detect manipulated images. Think about all those manipulated press pictures we have seen lately.

I was under the impression that these potentially spectacular evolutions worried some fellow photographers. And I can understand that, because some of these evolutions will allow every uncle Bob to do things that these days can only be done by skilled photographers.

On the other hand, I also saw a lot of photographers who realized immediately that all this new technology will offer new opportunities to us pro’s, as long as we keep learning all this new stuff.

Recentely I was asked to speak on an information session for aspiring professional photographers. The event was organised by the Belgian association of professional photographers. I was a bit surprised they asked me because I made to jump to full time pro only recentely. But then again, to someone who wants to start now it doesn’t make much sense to hear how somebody became professional 30 years ago. The industry has changed and the market too. On that session I talked a lot about how creativity, giving back and web 2.0 have a great impact on my business.

This morning I discovered a great video on Strobist. It’s a presentation by Chase Jarvis on a Photoshelter event. It’s nice that so many of my ideas and practices are confirmed by a photographer I admire a lot.

You can see the almost one hour video here.

Chase’s blog is also a great resource and a fun read.