PHOTO PRO TIPS

Welcome to Photo Pro Tips. This is an outlet for pro photographers to share, learn, and contribute. I am the owner of this site and also a professional photographer based in Oregon. I got into blogging with my business website and quickly realized I had more to say than just what clients I shoot for.

For example, the list below is something I’ve wanted to share, but didn’t feel it was the right place for it on my business website.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy my little blog and please feel free to post your comments.

44 Totally Random Photo Tips for Every Pro Photographer

1. Get it in camera whenever you can. Photoshop time is expensive and can cause a drain on your resources.
2. Digital is way more forgiving in color balance than film. It can also screw you up if you don’t have a grey card shot to judge from.
3. Ctrl-Alt-~ will select your ¼ tones in Photoshop.
4. Use a sturdy tripod with a head capable of supporting twice you camera’s weight.
5. Join ASMP

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I don’t mean to brag, but Oregon is probably the best place to do a location photo shoot. I would say even better than California, unless you’re shooting models in bikinis and board shorts (the beaches are a little chilly here). I originally moved here for personal reasons; mostly looking a change of pace from the East Coast. But after living here for a couple years, I realized how fortunate I was to find a photographer’s dreamland.

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About 5 years ago, my trusty Sony Triniton 19″ CRT bit the dust. The thing was huge piece of plastic and glass and totally worthless. At the time, I didn’t know what to do with it. So, I put it in my basement and forgot about it. When I moved out a year later, it had to go. I called around to all the computer stores and no one was taking eWaste. There was one group about an two hours from town that would take it, but you had to pay. So I asked the the computer store people what to do and they suggested I bring it to the landfill. I felt so guilty about it, but there wasn’t much else I could do.

Today it’s so much easier to recycle electronics. I’ve found this website that helps you locate eWaster recycling centers in your state: http://www.eiae.org/

There’s also a great site http://www.earth911.org/ that has loads of recycling and reusing information for businesses and individuals.

I was walking through my local camera shop today and saw the new Hahnemühle Bamboo 290 paper line sitting on the display rack. This is a great product for the Green Shooter. The paper is made of 90% bamboo fibers and 10% cotton. Bamboo is fast growing renewable wood resource product that is already used in a millions different products from cutting boards to snowboards. Bamboo has been used to make paper by the Chinese for centuries and now it;s made into beautiful digital fine art inkjet paper. I wish I had found this before I made my last portfolio!

With a natural warm tone to the paper and a smooth matte surface, it’s ideal for your warmer colored images or if you want that warm black & white look. It’s been coated to work well with all inkjet printers.

I’ve found ICC profiles for the following printers on Hahnemühle’s website (I’m sure more are on the way soon):

• Epson Stylus Pro 3800
• Epson Stylus Pro 7800/9800
• Canon PIXMA Pro9500
• Hewlett-Packard (HP) Photosmart Pro B9180

The Bamboo 290 line comes is 20 and 50 sheet boxes in sizes 8.5″x11″ up to 17″x22″. It also comes in 3″ core rolls 24″, 36″, and 44″ wide by 39′. Prices start at $26.95 for 20 Sheets of 8.5″x11″.

If you’ve used Bamboo 290, please let us know by making comments here.

Step One in becoming a green shooter is to carbon offset your vehicle. Most photographers generally drive small vehicles, lightweight trucks, or vans. Bigger shoots sometimes require bigger vehicles like RVs and grip trucks. If an average shoot consists of an assistant, a client, and a subject; you could easily triple your normal carbon output on every job. Since the average small vehicle puts about 10,000 lbs of carbon dioxide into the air per year, a single day of shooting could cause roughly 750 lbs of pollution.

There are a couple easy and inexpensive things you can do to carbon offset your ride.
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UPDATED: So, as Johnny Danger pointed out in the comments below, I didn’t upsample the 5D to match the native resolution of H3Dii in the original test article. I have added two new slides to illustrate this and it really shows how much better the H3Dii is compared to the Canon 5D. I’m still amazed that this little blog post gets about 100 unique visitors a day and is the #3 link when you do a Google search for h3dii.

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As you may have followed in my Daily Photoblog, I’ve been testing out the new Hasselblad H3Dii 39.1MP Back. The camera is just awesome and really fun to shoot with after being in 35mm format DSLR for the past 4 years. And the files I pulled off it were amazing. The image quality, sharpness, and dynamic range just blew my mind. But is it worth $30,000? Better yet, is it worth a $500/day rental versus a $150/day rental for Canon 5D?
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One of the most challenging parts of being a commercial photographer is the estimate. It such an essential skill that has taken me years to get figured out (and I still make improvements every time I do one). One of my biggest stumbling blocks was the Usage Language. Usage is how you assign your creative fee. The more usage, the more it costs. But there are so many ways to describe the same types of usage. And so many different photographers and reps use different variations of Usage Language that I imagine it’s it’s hard for a buyer/client to compare one estimate from another. I think I’ve lost a couple jobs because of this discrepancy.

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Lately, there’s been a lot of blog chatter about the finer points of selling microstock and how it’s a good idea. Well I, for one, want to start some chatter about how much of a bad idea it is.

Here’s a quote from a recent post at Photoprenuer.com.

“Take a Little Extra with Microstock
If the idea of spending your spare time drinking Champagne and eating salmon or chicken doesn’t thrill, then microstock could be a good alternative.

We talk about microstock a lot here because it’s an easy way to make your first image sale. Remember though that to get the multiple downloads and permanent customer base that top microstock photographers rely on, you need to shoot commercial images that sell, not offer your top artistic shots and hope someone will buy them because they’re nice.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that you can shoot microstock whenever you want. While top-earning microstock photographers shoot full-time, you can generate some useful extra income by shooting at the weekends and editing and uploading in the evenings.”

The whole mentality that you should sell your photos for less than a fair value simply because your a part time shooter is seriously flawed. Microstock is an awful business model. By selling your photos on sites like this, not only are you devaluing photography prices in general, but you are losing money every time you sell a photograph for way under what it cost you to make it.

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