An advance copy of James Tabor's new book Blind Descent arrived in the mail yesterday. It chronicles 2 great achievements of exploration the exploration of the Cheve cave system in Mexico and the 2+ kilometer deep Krubera cave in Abkhazia.
Tabor explains the exploration by looking at the two men who pioneered the work. Bill Stone (above) and
Alexander Klimchouk couldn't be any more different and as the book explains, their expeditions were polar opposites. Stone's were fraught with personal infighting, death and intrigue. Klimchouck's hummed along like a machine.
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There are lots of reasons to walk away from an assignment or a stock sale. Bob Krist outlines a stock deal to stay away from (Frommer's) here. Personally I just walked away from an assignment that I really wanted to do because the Director of Photography wouldn't sign and return my estimate but still wanted me to front the travel expenses. Something else came up so I took the other job.
But how does a photographer know when to turn something down?
Continue reading "Business for Photographers 2 of 2: When to walk away" »
I've shied away from talking about the business of photography on this blog. There are plenty of people around the web who talk about the business of photography with more authority than me. But I spent Wednesday at Kilpatrick Stockton's office in Atlanta. They are one of the Intellectual Property powerhouses in the legal world.
I was showing them pictures during a partner's lunch, they were giving me advice on protecting my business. So here is a little free legal advice.
The single most important thing you can do to protect yourself as a photographer is register your copyright with the US Copyright Office.
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A prayer vigil in La Compeurta, Guatemala.
Yesterday I was just talking with another photographer about the pitfalls of confusing the feeling of a place with what it actually looks like. Often it is hard to separate the experience of making a photo with the photo itself. It is one of the great traps of editing. It is also why many photographers are so bad at editing their own work. We tend to like pictures that we liked making or photographs that we worked hard to make often ignoring whether the picture is strong or not.
The picture above is a perfect example, it took me years to separate making it from the image itself.
I mean I loved making this photograph in La Compuerta. I worked incredibly hard to get the community to trust me and let me photograph this ceremony. The vigil is to ask permission to enter the Maya pilgrimage cave Naj Tunich.
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