benhasacat.com
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Photography blog

Links I love: Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Two really cool articles via PetaPixel today.

One is about a lawyer who rewrote Instagram’s terms and conditions into language children (and adults like me) could understand. It’s a great read that clearly lets you know what you are in for when you sign up with Instagram.

Check it here.

The second tackles that mythical beast for many of us … How much DPI (dots per inch) is enough? It’s by Thomas Kuoh, and it’s a no-nonsense practical video that should hopefully have you breathing a sigh of relief at the end of it.

Hope you enjoy and learn from these links.

Ben

VideoMark JesserComment
Links I love: Monday, January 9, 2017

These articles really resonated with me today. First was a video from Todd Wolfe (@iamtoddwolf), who you’ll know as the video guy from Fro Knows Photo. He talks emphatically about how creators should focus more on knowing the story they want to tell, instead of being preocupied by the gear. It’s about making video, but purely stills photographers can learn a lot from it, too. I really believe that new photographers will need to learn how to shoot video, in some capacity.

Next up was a post featured on ISO 1200 which compared natural light portraits to off-camera strobe portraits. It’s a nice comparison by South Texas portrait photographer Francisco Hernandez, allowing you to see natural vs strobe in the same scenario with the same pose. (Note: High-Speed-Sync flash does play a role in maintaining the quality of the background blur.)

A photo posted by Francisco Hernandez (@fjhphoto) on Nov 3, 2016 at 8:59am PDT

You can read the article and watch the video

here

.

Otherwise – that’s all I have for you today. One video on the PURPOSE, another on the TECHNICAL. Talk tomorrow, Ben

VideoMark JesserComment
Winter

WINTER is hard season to endure if you are a photographer.
My theory is that it’s all to do with a lack of light. The days are shorter, weather is poorer and it all amounts to less light.
Photographers love light. Without it, we can’t function, can’t see, can’t earn, can’t CREATE.
Wherever there is light, there’s a chance to make great pictures. We know that in our bones and it’s comforting.
So Winter naturally feels like a bit of a dark time for us. Chances are, what can go wrong, will go wrong during winter.
We see it as photography teachers. Class attendance takes a dive, assessment submissions slow down – our job becomes one-quarter photo teacher, one-quarter motivational speaker, and the other half of our job is being there to listen to aspiring photographers and try and help whenever we can.
We’re constantly amazed by the struggles many photographers go through just to simply make it to class. There’s so many things that can knock someone down – health, mental health, illness, sadness, family, raising kids, juggling jobs and finances – if you struggle to define what “fighting spirit” is, come to TAFE and spend some time with the photographers that come to our classes.
They’re fighters, alright.
The good news is, everything starts to change at this time of year. The days are getting longer, there’s more light – we can feel the season changing.
We see it as a photography teachers. Class attendance is improving, and the assessments are flying in.
I love September. It’s when photographers find that extra bit of strength that helps them rise above it and see better, shoot better, edit better, study better – just be better photographers.
Photographers, even if 2016 hasn’t been your year, September can be your month.
Those 30 days in September can set you up for life. Trust us, we see it happen every year.

(Thanks to WhatFunk for the music.)

Campus
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Meanwhile at school … there’s a new kid on campus. This little creature was a welcome distraction from a hectic day. Quietly sitting metres away from my staffroom computer.

Distractions can be welcome! #LessonLearned.

(Black-and-white version over on Instagram. Which do you like better?)

Tania Martini
Getting a coffee with a friend is always fun … but it’s extra special when that friend is Tania Martini, one of the most intriguing and fun-to-be-around photographers I know. I’m super lucky in the job I’m in, I’m always in contact with some …

Getting a coffee with a friend is always fun … but it’s extra special when that friend is Tania Martini, one of the most intriguing and fun-to-be-around photographers I know. I’m super lucky in the job I’m in, I’m always in contact with some of today’s best image makers. TANIA. IS. THE. BOMB. Hope you enjoy this pic, but I hope you enjoy her work even more. (black-and-white version on Instagram @benhasacat)

2015: A photographer’s survival guide

What a day for the region. Thank the lord for the rain, its pretty much under control now. #news #bushfire @bordermail

A photo posted by Jimmy Wiltshire (@jimmy_wilt) on


2015 was going to crush the photography industry.

It was going to steamroll photojournalism especially, as Fairfax Media cut the vast majority of its photographic work force.
It wasn’t just photography. All the departments were cut heavily. But as I’d spent the majority of my time at Fairfax making news pictures, that’s where the cut personally stung deepest for me. I’d covered news for 10 years and made friends with hundreds of other photographers, in person and online — and sometime in 2014-15 the hammer was going to drop.
Some would survive but the vast majority would be out.
There was no money in pictures, according to Fairfax.
Speculation was that News Corp would follow, and as cameras got smarter, demand for pro photographers would dwindle, and that negativity would spread throughout the industry leaving brides to photograph marriages with selfie sticks and GoPros.
Some of us, myself included, gambled and left early. Others, maybe the toughest of us, stayed until the grim announcements hit newsrooms everywhere.

In March, the local Border Mail newspaper announced it would cut its eight full time photographers to two-and-a-half.
(Don’t ask me “which half?” I don’t know.)
None of those eight ended up staying with Fairfax, although a couple were given the chance to keep working.

It was a hellish time that rippled fear through the whole imaging industry, and I wasn’t even directly threatened.
Every lunch or evening seemed to bring a troubled photographer to a couch near Laura and I for a hopefully comforting chat or FaceTime. Seasoned photographers and newbies were worried. We had no answers, only tea and biscuits.
“Bet you’re glad you’re out,” was something I heard a lot.
I never knew how to answer that. Sure, teaching is THE BEST. The classroom is a rush, and you get paid, too, which is nice.
Alternately there’s the whole thing of having to build a part-time 12-month teaching gig and social photo jobs into something more substantial and sustainable versus working full-time for a century-old institution. Then there’s that seat-of-your-pants newspaper action and us-against-the-deadline camaraderie you don’t get in a 9-to-5. If you aren’t working news, it’s hard to hang out with the crew because they’re always on the job.
All in all, yes, I was thrilled to be teaching, but, the hustle was very real for us.
And that ended up being the main aim of 2015 for most photographers I knew — hustling.

Except this week. Local photojournalism didn’t hustle this week. It wasn’t crushed — it absolutely thrived.
The Border Mail’s coverage of nearby bushfires was exceptional.

New photographers Elenor Tedenborg, James Wiltshire and Mark Jesser, along with the rest of the editorial staff, produced brilliant, comprehensive coverage. People were informed, moved, inspired, and safer thanks to those involved.
That wasn’t a newspaper with its heart cut out, that was an all-star crew that, on that day, couldn’t be bested by any past or future staff line-up.

Don’t believe me? That’s fine. But you can’t ignore this guy:

The future isn’t perfect for news organisations, but it’s bright for these photojournalists and journalists.

As for the rest of the industry? Well, enrolments in our photography courses are going great and I’m hearing reports everyday that our graduates are indeed working hard and getting paid. My buddies shooting weddings have already mostly filled their 2016 work calendars, the camera store gang seem happy, the camera clubs are full and the demand for images is up on last year. I even heard instances of News Corp and Fairfax hiring photographers.

The trick to surviving 2015 appears to be keep moving.


Ben


PS — as for our personal hustle? Well, for me, it’s been a hard but incredibly rewarding 2014-15, and it’s totally paid off. Thank you and merry Christmas to everyone, especially those who were a part of that. I’m really grateful. And lots of love to Laura, whose patience for photography far outweighs her passion.

PPS — Did I mention that Mr Jesser and Mr Wiltshire are Wodonga TAFE alumni? We’re damn proud of them.

#DigitalShow
Tonight at #TAFE. Representing with some damn fine photographers at the #DigitalShow. The future of photography is bright. 

Love these photographers.  (at Southbank, Melbourne Vic)

Tonight at #TAFE. Representing with some damn fine photographers at the #DigitalShow. The future of photography is bright.

Love these photographers. (at Southbank, Melbourne Vic)

Food Photography with Geoffrey Michael Pâtissier
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Cakes in TAFE: Food Photography with Geoffrey Michael Pâtissier

Had the chance to bring some Diploma photographers in to shoot some of the finest sweets I’ve ever seen. It was part of the Trilogy of Food @ Wodonga TAFE, Victoria, where the finest cooking/hospitity students join forces with the finest cooks. Of course, we needed to have the finest photography students there to capture the action. I’ll follow this post soon with some action (cooking) shots, and a breakdown of how I made my images. I’m so excited to see the shots the Diploma photographers come up with. They worked so hard on the day. More soon, Ben

Light and Shadow
@saxbysays playing with #light and #shadow. 


There’s something special about working in an office full of creatives. 

Obviously, it’s colourful and rarely dull. But, what I really enjoy is the different perspectives shared and observe…

@saxbysays playing with #light and #shadow.

There’s something special about working in an office full of creatives. Obviously, it’s colourful and rarely dull. But, what I really enjoy is the different perspectives shared and observed. For example, I spent the past two years looking at these windows, and today, at that culmination of light and shade, they look fresher than ever.

Husband of the Year
Husband of the YearI got lucky and won an award for the second time at work recently — TheBorder Mail‘s Best News Photo. It was a shared win with my good friend Mark Jesser (who’s work you can see here).Lucky for a few reasons — firstly, all the pho…

Husband of the Year

I got lucky and won an award for the second time at work recently — TheBorder Mail‘s Best News Photo. It was a shared win with my good friend Mark Jesser (who’s work you can see here).

Lucky for a few reasons — firstly, all the photographers at the Border Mail are exceptional, Tara Goonan is the 2013 Photographer of the Year, and you can see all our favourite shots for 2013 here.

Tough competition, huh!

I’m also lucky the job sheet for my winning photograph fell into my hands … there’s so many variables that come between photographers and the jobs they’d like to shoot, and very rarely do all the planets align and we get a chance to shoot what we’re passionate about.
(It’s an old unwritten newspaper rule that nobody gets to pick what they shoot … sometimes you may be able to volunteer yourself to something, but, for better or worse, photographers aren’t allowed regular rounds or beats like reporters are.)

I love people stories. So when I heard there was a really sweet story about a man’s appeal for a lost wedding ring, I crossed my fingers and hoped I’d get the job.

I wanted to help him get his ring back, because I reckoned he was probably the greatest husband ever. He’d lost his wedding ring. The greatest physical link to his late wife. And he was inconsolable.

What a legend. That’s the kind of husband I hope I’ll be.

Making the picture was simple. As he sat in his chair I noticed his lamp was on. I angled it quickly to light his face, the sat cross-legged on his living room floor. Turned the ISO up on my camera to 6400 (maybe higher), set a shutter speed of about 1/200th and spun the aperture dial until the exposure looked right on the LCD. Set my camera’s drive to SILENT so it’s clicking wouldn’t interrupt the interview with the reporter and waited.

These interviews are always tough to be a part of. Tough especially on the subjects, and also hard on reporters and photographers. But — they are necessary.

And if you’re ever in the privileged position to photograph a person when they’ve opened up truly and are vulnerable in front of you, you owe it to that person to take the picture.

It’s hard. You’ll want to cry too, but you gotta press that button, for their story’s sake.

A few days after this picture was published, a lady who read the article had found the ring and returned it.

I’d like to think I helped with that.

A few months later, we heard the man died peacefully, with the ring on a chain around his neck.

Like I said, World’s Greatest Husband.

Was a pleasure to photograph you, Sir.

Ben.
(Note: I’m moving some content across from my Wordpress. Apologies for spamming old posts.)

Mark JesserComment
The Editor: "We don't do DULL"

Morning news conference.
Winter 2008-09.

On a good day, news conference was exciting.
You sat there – in the best approximation a newspaper could fathom of a lounge room (which looked more like a proctologist’s waiting room, really …) – and you drank it all in.
Reporters and photographers slouched in armchairs scribbling notes and doodling in margins, swapping press releases and job sheets like playing cards – the older ones plucking first from the pile and the younger ones scrabbling over what was left, clutching whatever they could salvage close to their chest.
News conferences are a personality and visual rainbow.
The fashion conscious. The fashion un-consious. The suits. The bowties. The guy who wore a trenchcoat 10 months a year. And so on.
And then there were the smells. Nothing unpleasant, but when a dozen –often more – personalities are shoehorned into a small room, you nose knows it.
Still-setting hair gel, hairspray and Brylcreem; aftershave and perfume; coffee, tea, milo, Gatorade and Pandol (usually consumed by bleary-eyed sports writers during Sunday morning conference); the scent of ink wafting off everyone’s copies of that day’s newspapers; and sometimes the stale smell of burnt dust and melted globe as the chief photographer tried with screwdriver to coax a bit more life out of an aging flash while he kept one eye on the growing newslist and ear on the discussion.
The clash of this above the nervous tension of some and the exasperated boredom of others meant that morning news conference was a busy assault on your senses and a very easy place to become distracted.
One morning, instead of listening, I was watching the chief photographer prise open the back of a water-damaged camera and thinking that the camera (albeit soggy and past it’s prime), looked much more exciting than the current tools at my disposal, an A5 notebook and Bic pen.
So my heart nearly stopped when The Editor slammed his newspapers onto the coffee table and tore me away from my daydream.

“We DON’T do DULL,” he said. Each word came out of his mouth slowly, without malice – but he was serious.

Which struck me as weird. Of course, newspapers ‘do dull’. News wasn’t always exciting. But we still wrote about it and photographed it because it happened. We try to make it exciting and appealing for readers, but sometimes a cheque presentation story is exactly that, and no amount of pumping it up can change that.
Part of my brain thought about that in the space of about one second while another part of my brain realised (with unashamed joy) that The Editor wasn’t directing his dictum at me.
That honour went to The Reporter a few seats down the couch from me, who, he said was working on a “pretty standard profile story” on a community leadership role being filled by a new person to town. The Reporter was going to chat to the gentleman on the phone, then organise for him to pop outside of his office for about 20 minutes so a photographer could get a picture of him in the main street.

“Some suit standing in main street? That’s dull,” The Editor said.

“So we drop the story? It’s boring?” asked The Reporter.

“No. Let’s try to get him at home, outside with his family. Let’s do it on the weekend, too, when he’ll hopefully have time to talk.”

The Reporter made a few calls and re-organised. A week later that story ran, not as a small story with a headshot, but a large feature article with several pictures.

I learned a couple of things from this.

Editors sometimes kid themselves and their staff. They might say “we don’t do dull”, but, the truth is, occasionally they have to. Deadlines rush in, people won’t co-operate – sometimes dull is the best you can do.

But I learned this from The Editor: there’s always room to push a bit. Asking can’t hurt, and the chance of 'yes’ is always worth it.

Mark JesserComment
The Year of Desk
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I’ve had a desk for over a year now. Not a shared workstation. Not a hot desk.

My own table with a computer on top of it, a chair underneath it, a set of drawers, a pin board and a bookshelf.

At the start of the year it was blank and empty. 365 days later, the shelves are full of photography gear and books, pictures, Post-its and gaffer’s tape.

This isn’t a big deal for many people. But for me, it is.

Desks are odd. In newspapers, photographers don’t have desks. Sometimes you do if you’re a reporter, but not usually. It’s more like a cubicle you work in. You can maybe put up a picture of your wife, but you can’t mess with desk to much. Once, when I was a cadet, I swapped my mouse to my left-hand and an IT guy screamed at me.

“It’s my desk,” I said.

“But the other people who use it are right-handed. So don’t.”

When I was in news photography, everything is generic. Company cars, hot desks, lenses are all shared. You can customise your camera (with gaff tape) and pick your camera bag, but that’s it.

In my career as a newspaper photographer, here’s a list of places that I could make my own:

* Communal camera bags and a pretty-regular desk (South Coast, NSW).

* A drawer (Tasmania).

* A filing cabinet. (Albury-Wodonga).

Which was good in a the-world-is-my-office kind of way. You feel you can work absolutely anywhere, as long as you have a camera and a laptop (later iPad), and an AirCard (later wi-fi, thankfully. Weren’t AirCards rubbish?).

My office today. Somewhere between Wodonga and Yackandandah. pic.twitter.com/zTUIK9aC

— Ben Eyles (@benhasacat)

November 23, 2012

So it was a shock to the system when I arrived at TAFE and was given a desk to set up however I wanted. HOWEVER. I. WANTED. Okay, I’ll admit, I may have gone a little overboard.

Trying to reinvent my desk. Standing for PC. Sitting for Mac. Finding #sitstandbalance

A photo posted by Ben Eyles (@benhasacat) on Jul 9, 2015 at 12:48am PDT

But with desk comes great responsibility. And challenges.How does it stay clean?

How do you remember where you put things?Before, everything I needed was either in my pockets, bag or boot. I was content in the knowledge that I could carry everything I needed for anything the job could throw at me.

This was another thing entirely. What kind of job was so intense that it required you to “please sit down” before you started it? When people said “you better sit down”, you know something bad was sure to follow.Turns out working at the same desk day in, day out, isn’t so bad. You find yourself in a pretty nice routine:1) Drop bag and make tea.

2) Teach Cert IV Photography students.

3) Lunch and emails.

4) Teach more Cert IV or get to work with Online Diploma students.

5) Tidy up. Go home. Wife. Maybe do some more emails. Walk dog. Shoot. Edit. Prepare for tomorrow.

6) Repeat until weekend.That said, the inner-Nomad still sometimes gets the better of me.

Friday #TAFElife. pic.twitter.com/5Wz4nxnVqi

@gsyoung Come on out. The wi-fi is fine!

Old habits, huh? Ben

Mark JesserComment