Archive | February, 2009

Interview Mania.

By on February 27, 2009

I wanted to share with you three interviews I’ve recently given… This stuff normally lives on the press page where it can be a touch more shameless, but I’ve been buried all week and was looking for some low hanging fruit. Plus, I wanted to call these out because you should consider visiting the sites of each of these interviewers. They’re all utter gentlemen who are putting out lots of great content for the photography community.

1) a video interview I gave a few weeks ago for the recently-launched Photoshow, hosted by bay area photographer and business guru, Marc Silber. This is the third episode. First: Annie Leibovitz. Second: Ansel Adams’ son, Michael, about Ansel’s work. What a thug like me is doing in the third slot?…

[youtube=http://youtu.be/-ZhMBEHj9rQ]

2)Then there’s this interview from a couple weeks ago with Ron Dawson for his longstanding podcast, F-Stop Beyond. Very atypical questions. He drilled me on art, commerce, hanging out of helicopters, and of course Nietzsche, why I’m an only child, and why Jean Michel Basquiat is relevant to photography. There are about 70 other interviews on his site.

3) Last week at photoshop guru, David Cross’ blog, I was asked to “finish the sentence.” I like David’s style of short and punchy interviews. You can check it out here. His site is normally steeped in photoshop stuff, and there are a lot of these interviews intermingled.

Thank you to these fine fellows. Please pay them a visit if you’ve got the time as there’s great content there and many more interviews from people more interesting than yours truly.

Happy weekend.

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Zack Arias Nails It: Transform

By on February 20, 2009

Zack Arias, you nailed it man. Way to lay it out there.

From all of us creatives who have sparked, flailed, and gotten back up, sparked, flailed again, dusted ourselves off, and flailed yet again: thank you. Wonderful piece.

(thx for the tip, Sarah.)

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Facebook Retracts “New” Terms of Service

By on February 18, 2009

Thanks to public outcry, Facebook today retracted their “new” terms of service–which generated an appropriately huge outcry–and reverted to their previous terms.

This is of interest to me, seeing that I’ve got a good bit of content on my Facebook page.

Their previous terms were pretty aggressive in their own right, claiming:

“You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.”

But there was a reasonable “out”. And that out was this term, which appeared just below the above in their TOS:

“You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.”

Basically stating that you could terminate any of their uses immediately by removing the content that was in question.

This uproar really started, by my understanding, when they… [click the 'continue reading' link below]
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removed the lines above highlighting the “out”.

The long and short of it is that IMHO they’ve sufficiently addressed the concern for the time being. Do I wish that the TOC were perfect for photographers or anyone interested in posting content? Of course. But the legal nightmare of trying to protect and share at the same time are cumbersome, crappy, and messy at best. As such I believe, if we’re to read CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s statement literally (and I think we can), that the terms will continue to improve, or at least walk the line carefully in an attempt to be reasonable in that balance of sharing and protection.

I don’t think they want to take aim at using your photos for profit – they’ve got a maching that’s already strong at generating dollars. I think they’re more concerned about other legal snares regarding the passing of content. This bit of information posted from a Facebook representative in response to inquiry by The Industry Standard helps me believe this:

“We are not claiming and have never claimed ownership of material that users upload. The new Terms were clarified to be more consistent with the behavior of the site. That is, if you send a message to another user (or post to their wall, etc…), that content might not be removed by Facebook if you delete your account (but can be deleted by your friend). Furthermore, it is important to note that this license is made subject to the user’s privacy settings. So any limitations that a user puts on display of the relevant content (e.g. To specific friends) are respected by Facebook. Also, the license only allows us to use the info “in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.” Users generally expect and understand this behavior as it has been a common practice for web services since the advent of webmail. For example, if you send a message to a friend on a webmail service, that service will not delete that message from your friend’s inbox if you delete your account.”

Zuckerberg goes on to state quite clearly in his response that it’s not Facebook’s intent to generate revenue overtly from your images or video, but that they’re challenged with the legal requirements of what a social networking site like Facebook must claim in order to share content across networks. Most importantly, whether you take him at his written word (good for legal defense for us content creator, in any case of wrongdoing) or not, it is your own business how to handle this situation. If there’s content that you absolutely wouldn’t want a chance of being misused, keep it private. Ultimately your selection of what to post and what not to post, combined with your Facebook privacy settings, governs what’s in any sort of risk–however moderated–and what is not.

Speaking of Facebook – I do post original content there, words, pictures, and videos, that do not appear here. If you’re interested in visiting me at my Facebook page, please do. I’m also on twitter, via @chasejarvis.

For deeper reading, I found the Consumerist coverage to be pretty solid here. New Facebook TOS is here. Old TOS is here.

LiveBooks is Live and Fake Chuck Is Dead.

By on February 16, 2009

Lots of blogs come and go, but of note this week are two… One coming, the other, well, we’re not sure.

First, liveBooks–known globally for their custom photography websites–humbly but proudly joined the online discussion last Tuesday by launching a new blog titled RESOLVE. (I’ve been a liveBooks fan for some time, having switched over to their smooth setup late in 2007 after being impressed by their ability to serve up big photos, and fast.) Their blog kicked off this week after snatching up editor Miki Johnson from American Photo magazine to run the thing. Good moves. Her stated goal is to create “A collaborative online community that brings together photographers and photo industry professionals of every kind” with the goal of “keeping photography relevant, respected, and profitable.” I’ll raise a glass to that. They’re nice folks over there, and I’ll venture they’ll have something to say in the coming weeks and months. Rumor has it, there will be lots of guest posts from a variety of photo industry perspectives. Pay Miki a visit and say hello as she settles in…

Second, you’re familiar with the old Fake Steve Jobs blog that died this past summer? Blogger Dan Lyons once rambled on as the satirical alter ego of Apple’s beloved CEO, the real Steve Jobs. Sometimes humorous, other times painful, that blog had its day and it’s now done – Dan has moved on. On the heels of that, however, enter stage right another little fake blog that started up over at fake Canon. Introducing Fake Chuck Westfall, the alter ego of the long time Media and Customer Relation boss at Canon USA.

Simultaneously loving and hating, praising and chastising Canon, it seems that the satirical Fake Chuck (who made me LMAO when he once labeled yours truly as “on crack” and put me in the cast of Wedding Crashers in the same post) has officially been ordered to close up shop. Canon’s law firm, Loeb and Loeb, came a knocking. And since you’re not new to the ol’ internets, you know what sort of an effect that had…the news spread like wildfire and Fake Chuck’s site went from an average of 200 pageviews per day to 20,000 overnight. Ain’t the internet grand?

So is FCW closed up or not? We’ll have to wait and see. Jury is still out.
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PocketWizard Lights It Up

By on February 16, 2009

They’ve been hinting at it for some time now, butPocketWizard radio slaves just one minute ago announced a completely refreshed product offering aimed at continuing to dominate the photographic airwaves radiowaves. And they’ve spoiled us. Check out the Mini TT1 transmitter and the Flex TT5 transceiver pictured above.

It’s no secret that I’ve been using their stuff religiously as long as I’ve been using remote flashes and cameras. Hell, I just spun through some of my behind the scenes videos and spotted them in Chase Jarvis RAW: Ninjas, Chase Jarvis RAW: Photoshoot in 180 seconds, Chase Jarvis RAW: KungFu, Chase Jarvis TECH: POV Photography, Chase Jarvis TECH: High Speed Photography, before I got tired of watching. Anyway, you get the point. They’re an important part of my arsenal.

Here’s a peek at what they’ve promised us. From their announcement:

- “Slide and shoot” simplicity.
- Full TTL operation.
- High speed sync up to 1/8000 at up to 8 fps.
- More reliable radio signal.
- 32 channels.
- Work with all earlier model PocketWizards.
- Will trigger remote strobes and cameras.
- Upgradable firmware via USB.

So aside from their press release, and all the specs and details available on other sites, here’s my brief confessional: I got to play with these wicked little buggers a short while back. Not in any hardcore sense out in the field where I’ve got pictures to prove it (couldn’t just put gaffers tape over the logo and be clandestine with these puppies…), but rather locked in a conference room under NDA. My very first impression?

Badass. Super badass.

Why? Well…

[My quick thoughts (+ UPDATE: a video from PW) after the jump...Click the 'continue reading' link below.]

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In all honesty, since about 99% of the shooting I do is on manual, it’s not really the fancy TTL technology that wowed me. Sure it was nice being able to make a slick picture in that conference room in about 3 seconds, but I mostly use studio strobes and shoot custom stuff without TTL metering. So it’s not that… And yes, I like they made them workable with older models (my wallet thanks them), and sure I dig the sync speeds and the burlier signal, but those aren’t not the real kickers for me either.

The real kicker is this iteration is the simple redesign.

I’ve always loved the functionality of PocketWizards, but in truth, that’s what I expected from really smart engineers who have brains the size of a watermelons and sweat it out on the test bench for years. Stuff that worked. Having said that, prior to now it was not the function, but the form that I struggled with. I’ve poked more eyes out and picked my nose (scratched my brain?) with that big ol’ rubbery antenna on the older models more often than I care to admit. I’ve longed put an on camera flash on my camera at the same time as the old wizards before. Not possible. I’ve wanted string those little wrist straps from the older models together and hang myself with them rather than hang them on a c-stand (awkward). And I’ve often wondered why they didn’t have a nice little mount for the flash and/or a tripod screw on the bottom since day one.

Now? All that’s fixed.

Hell, these even stack together when not in use. Dope. And from my perspective out in the field, all that little stuff beyond “mere” functionality actually matters. It’s slick. And it matters for miles and miles. The technology has (almost) always been there, but this new era gets the rest of the equation correct as well.

Criticisms? Only one that comes to mind off the cuff is that all us Nikon and Hasselblad yahoos and everybody else have to wait till next quarter to get ‘em for our rigs, while the Canon peeps can buy ‘em right away. Doh!

It’s ok. I’m happy willing to wait.

Rumor has it they’re posting a link this morning with all the goodies, pdf’s and such. I’ll pop that in here as soon as it goes live this morning. If you guys catch it before I do, please ping me in the comments section. The link is now live and can be found here. And they also just posted a video (basically just a video brochure) that give you further details…


surviving your own photography career: Doug Menuez

By on February 11, 2009

Not too long ago I had a creative/personal breakthrough with my work. In short, it amounted to my snapping into clarity about what I wanted from my creativity, my profession, and ultimately, my life. A path to this subsequently emerged, and I’ve revealed the thrust of these epiphanies–without eloquence–on this blog over time.

In a wave or recent email and Facebook inquiries on this sort of stuff, I was tempted put together a summary post on the topic, but two things quickly crossed my mind:

1. My personal journey through these ideas is already sprinkled throughout this blog as best I can muster for now. An hour or two spent perusing will reveal what I’ve written.
2. A peer of mine, the talented and seasoned Doug Menuez, has recently summarized all these points better’n I could ever say it in one post anyway. From his eloquent essay for Editorial Photographers last fall:

…If you create a book [portfolio] that you think will get you work based on your perception of what sells, or on the advice of anyone who steers you away from your core, you have a complex problem ahead. Yes, you may find some work that way, which is really tempting short term, while you tell yourself you’ll do the real stuff on the side or in the future. “Show the work you want to get” is a lasting truism and if you have chosen to show work other than the purist version of your creative vision then whatever jobs do come in will be based on that work. There are many shooters who do this exact thing and end up with a middling level of success, stuck on a financial and creative plateau, slowly starting to run out of gas. After a few years they hate their their work and life in general. They are getting divorced or leaving the business or pursuing whatever diversion eases the pain. They are not living the dream. They are not challenging themselves creatively because they did not give themselves permission to be who they are as photographers in the first place. This is the road to being a burned out, bitter hack. Boring. But by defining what you show based on what you truly are and what you want to do, you create a self-selection process: you are not for everyone. You are different. Be courageous enough to show that you see in a way no one else does…


[Click the 'continue reading' link below.]
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To read the entirety of Doug’s inspirational post, read it here.

Chase Jarvis SHORTS: 08/09 Holiday Mailer Unboxed

By on February 4, 2009

In full disclosure, I’m probably not the best person to pay attention to for stellar direct mail promo pieces. We did score a PDN Self-Promo award back in 2006 with this piece, but outside of that, I haven’t historically had a cohesive plan about this sort of stuff. And so it continues here today. But that’s not stopping me from wanting to share them. Actually, I’m proud to say that this is my second year in a row doing a holiday/new year mailer – I guess I’m on relative roll…which is what compelled me to roll out this latest Chase Jarvis SHORTS.

Postcards? Nope. Blurb book? Nope. 8×10 Glossy? Nope.

Coasters.

What the…who…huh? Coasters? Yep, coasters. They’re useful and different.

Again, I’m not necessarily advocating this to everyone as a means of marketing photography, especially seeing that this here item doesn’t show any real “work” – photographs or directors reel – but I thought it was interesting from an outside-the-box sort of an angle. And that counts for something. Plus, this being as much a unique gift as it is a promo piece, I felt good about sending it out.

Things I liked about the mailer: unique. useful. cool custom stamp. some personality. the packaging. atypical. the line art (our crew looks more like the Reservoir Dogs than a photo studio staff, and I dig it.)

Things I didn’t like: no actual work featured. cost (not cheap).

A closer look at the finished product, a step by step process of how we created these little suckers, and a call to action after the jump. Click ‘continue reading’ below.
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Step by step, how we made these things:

1. Shot group portraits on white backdrop. Since there was 7 of us, we shot in two groups.
2. Composited the group together in Photoshop.
3. Used the stamp filter and threshold adjustment to reduce the image to its basics.
4. Exported a .psd to Illustrator.
5. Using live trace, converted to vector art.
6. Saved Illustrator file according to specs our printer provided.
7. FTP’d file to printer. (We used Girlie Press here in Seattle.)
8. The printer created a die for our agreed graphic.
9. They sent us a sample, run through the actual letter press on paper stock we’d already selected.
10. We approved the sample and then they went to town and printed a couple thousand.
11. We ordered stamps featuring an image of mine at stamps.com.
12. We ordered boxes and red sticker dots from uline.com
13. We ordered tissue from Paperzone.com
14. We ordered Avery labels from OfficeMax.com
15. We assembled them ourselves over a couple bottles of cheap red wine.
16. We mailed them out with glee.

Here’s a jpg closeup of the coaster.

We had a great time with it and feedback has been great.

If anyone feels like posting links to other creative promos–yours or someone else’s–I just might track you down and mail you some coasters… Love to hear from any lurking ADs, CDs, ABs, or PEs, of course.

[Like these short little videos featuring strange things? Check out Chase Jarvis SHORTS: Pimped Photography Van]

RSS and email subscribers can see the video here.

Scott’s Guest Blog: Creative Post Production and Why I Have a Hard Time Caring About Stock Photography.

By on February 3, 2009

[Note: I'm excited today to announce a new element to this here blog: monthly guest posts from my badass staff. Since each of them are experts in their own right, I figured you'd be interested in hearing some different perspectives. Today, Scott takes the reins and raps about our push for visual impact over "perfection" and how stock photography gives him the willies. Round of applause, please...take it away Scotty...]

We keep a lot of irons in the fire around here. In order to keep tabs on everything, we have a daily morning meeting. One by one, we touch base briefly about each of the projects we’re working on. Photo shoots, video projects, websites, fine art, etc. One of the project headings that comes up for discussion is stock photography. We’ve got quite a large collection of images represented by large stock agencies that we’ve built over the years by filtering older commercial work into the stock machine, but lately, this part of the business model has fallen completely off our grid. It’s normally my job to manage our out-of-house stock collection, so I’ve had to ask myself the important question: Why don’t I get excited to get images delivered to the stock agencies?

The cause has a lot to do with the fact that we’re incredibly busy doing interesting projects with new art and new media. But I also can’t ignore the fact that we just don’t feel inspired by the business of stock photography, at all. Any thrill that was once there from being able to shoot what you want and “get paid” is gone. Here’s why its gone for me… [Click the 'continue reading' link below.]
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If you’ve ever worked with a major stock agency, you’ve learned that their editing and technical guidelines have grown more and more refined (read stringent). The goal has been to build a system of rules, protocols, editors and technicians that will help to create a product that appeals to the largest number of buyers and moves images across the market as quickly as possible. These systems completely retooled the business of licensing existing photography. Now the technically good image with perfectly even exposure values, textbook sharpening, and the subject’s eyes balanced appropriately in the right upper third of the image is worth tens or hundreds of dollars instead of thousands. The thousand dollar sales haven’t come to an end, but they’re reduced. And the stock agencies have built countless collections at various price points with uniqueness that increased commensurately with the price. Images now need to be on brand, fit a certain collection or aesthetic, have popular keywordability, be technically perfect. Buyers have to go elsewhere to find images unencumbered by bureaucratic limitations.

As the post production lead here at our studio, I’ll use post as a microcosm for the shift in the stock industry. I learned post production skills out of necessity, and the initial response that I had to the immense power of post production was to make the most technically perfect images that I could. Detail in every pixel. Perfect transitions between light and color values. Smooth, pleasing skin tones. Enhanced eyes and teeth. Erased blemishes. Grey cards, noise reduction plugins, hell, I wrote an article on the minutia of edge specific sharpening. You get the drift. I was a dream come true to stock agencies. Every image that went across my desk was PERFECT.

But creativity requires change. In this instance for me it was embracing the “imperfect”. If you look at Chase’s images that I’ve been working on lately, you won’t find detail in every pixel. More likely you’ll find that the highlights and shadows are gone, the colors have shifted due to a heavy hand with the contrast and saturation controls, the transition areas might be a bit harsh. To help me build this point, I’m going to take a spin through the online portfolio right now, I encourage you to do the same. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

8 of 32. 25%. That’s the number of images in Chase Jarvis’ portfolio that I would let through the system if I were a technical editor at a major stock agency. Not too “good” for someone who is regarded as an world-class professional. Despite, or perhaps due to, these technical “flaws” we continue to get great feedback from creative directors/art buyers and the photographic community. We have embraced a marked shift from technical perfection to *raw visual impact*, and it’s paying off.

So what’s our shift in post production aesthetic got to do with the stock photography market? This change that has happened in balancing of technical perfection with visual interest is not limited to us at Chase Jarvis Inc. It’s sweeping the world. Art buyers and general public alike are ready to see what comes _post_ technical perfection. The rigid control of the industry that allowed Getty, Corbis, and a host of others to dominate the market in the first half of this decade is now the driving force in their regression. While art buyers have limited patience for sifting through images, not one will think twice about investing the time to surf the web longer and further to find the the visual voice that they need to help tell their story. They have turned away from the big, traditional players because they have a constant need to find fearless photography. Post production and all.

God Save the Queen

By on February 1, 2009

Just wanted to break up the pace today and share a couple of links that I recently plucked from my inbox. Where it used to be just still images and portfolios that were sent my way by readers, it’s now often personal projects that engage a mixture of stills, moving images, and audio/music. And everyone knows I’m an advocate of personal projects… Without my intending, it seems that each of the three I posted below are from the Commonwealth – a Brit and a couple Canadians. God save the Queen.

This first piece is from a photo journalist mate o’ mine, Edmond Terakopian. Like so many great shorts films/videos these days, Edmond shot “Muse” with a video dSLR, in this case the Canon 5d. A moody piece about the solitude of London or any big city.

http://cdn.smugmug.com/ria/ShizVidz-2008120101.swf

Two other projects–one epitomizing late summer nights as a young adult and the other about skateboarding–after the jump. Hit the ‘continue reading’ link below…
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Multimedia from a project called We Are Sleeping Giants, by Brooks Reynolds. Reminds me of warm summer nights in high school and college.

And from skateboard photographer, Ryan Allan, this short-but-dreamy-vid likely conjures up warm fuzzy feelings in any photographer, regardless of genre, of a shoot gone well.

Thanks again for sending in your projects. Great to see photographers from all walks and all genres out shooting curious and interesting stuff, mixing media without pretense, and sharing it with the world.

[RSS and email subscribers may need to go here to see embedded movies.]

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