How Much Are Your Photos Worth?
August 7, 2010 | Filed Under Photography, Video
Whether it’s a stolen computer or hardware failure, it seems that one of the top things that a lot of people care about are photos.
Just this week, I was consulted about what to do for three students who had their laptops stolen. And a friend of mine once paid $2300 to mainly recover their photos (and other files) from their dead hard drive.
I was browsing around recently and stumbled upon this video (and blog post from award winning photographer director Chase Jarvis and this is what he does for his photos and video (the video also covers his photo and video workflow). If I needed some photo or video work done, I’d know I could rely on him should a fire, flood, or a meteor strike:
I’m in the process of reorganizing my media, but I do have most of my photos and videos stored on a Drobo. I also recently bought a 1 TB external mini hard drive from Western Digital, but it’s quite slow so I’ll likely replace it with a mini drive from G-Technology mentioned in the video and also separately recommended by an Adobe Creative Suite evangelist. And in the photography workshop I took two weeks ago, one of the instructors also mentioned storing files using RAID.
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Bringing Back the Old & Trying the New
March 30, 2010 | Filed Under Video
I had been using viddler for video hosting for a long time because it had good privacy controls while youtube had none. When I chose viddler, it allowed the storage of source video files, but I was waiting for the day when they could no longer support it. Two days ago, I got an email from viddler about their new source file storage policy which included the following:
The Terms of Use are changing to state that personal level accounts’ original source file will be stored for 30 days from the date it was uploaded. Of course, the converted video file will be available as long as your account is active. And you will still be able to download the converted file.
This email is to make you aware of the change in policy – and to give you 30 days to download any original source files you may need. Original source files uploaded before this email (March 29, 2010) will be available until May 1, 2010. Original source files uploaded from today (March 29, 2010) on will be available for 30 days.
This change seems to make sense especially with HD video on the rise. While 30 days is still generous on viddler’s part, I wanted to give Vimeo a try (they only retain the source file for a week). A filmmaker friend of mine mentioned that Vimeo is kind of like what Flickr is for photographers; I still like the privacy features of Vimeo, but it doesn’t have a feature like Flickr’s guest pass links or viddler’s secret URLs that can be passed on to others easily, but they do have a password feature which might be sufficient.
I considered youtube, but the community there is not what I’m looking for and I like how vimeo is a community of creative people, plus their content restrictions in their Community Guidelines support their personal creativity focus:
No gameplay videos, “fan vids”, sexually explicit videos, or music videos, movies, TV, and trailers that you found on the web.
- [...]
- You may post videos of yourself on TV, as long as you have the permission to upload and the video is limited to your involvement in the program only.
- No videos that are just compilations of scenes from TV or movies.
- No captures of video games or gameplay, regardless if it is edited or not. Machinima with a story is allowed, provided the story is more than “guys doing exactly what the game was made for (eg skateboarding or shooting people)”. Machinima videos must be properly labeled as such in the video description to avoid accidental deletion.
- Video game developers may post videos of their work provided they cite their involvement in the description of the video (maps and mods to commercial games don’t count). Here we are talking about development videos, not commercial trailers.
Above is a video I edited back in 2007 of Icer Air. It’s in standard quality, but it was a good way to get used to the interface of the tools: GarageBand and Final Cut (Express). I really wish I had an HD camera at the time.
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I am Not a Foodie, I Just Like Food
December 27, 2009 | Filed Under Baking, Cooking, News, Photography
Paul Child: What is it that you really like to do?
Julia Child: Eat!
Paul Child: And you’re so good at it!
(Julie & Julia)
Recently, I was watching an Iron Chef America episode where Giada De Laurentiis and Rachel Ray competed against each other with Bobby Flay and Mario Batali as their respective teammates. What stuck out is how Ray kept saying, “I am not a chef, I’m just a cook.”
Coincidentally, I had recently been thinking about the term “foodie” which has apparently officially made it into mainstream language, at least according to the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster and they each have slightly different definitions:
OED: A person with a particular interest in food; a gourmet. (Sometimes distinguished from ‘gourmet’ as implying a broad interest in all aspects of food procurement and preparation.)
MW: A person having an avid interest in the latest food fads.
Something has always bothered me about that term especially when people call themselves foodies as if it were a credential that could be earned when it’s really a self-classification and many times, it seems to be used by someone to give themself more credibility with an air of elitism (According to OED, “1982 V. Woods et al. in Harpers & Queen Aug. 66/4 ‘Foodies are foodist. They dislike and despise all non-foodies.’”); there appears to be a similar conversation around chef vs. cook. I’m curious how many self-proclaimed foodies like cooking (OED) and how many just chase the latest trendy restaurants and just eat (MW)?
I also started wondering when the trend of taking photos of food during meals started to become more popular. When I was getting more into photography, I started taking photos of food because I found it as an interesting subject as still life and good practice for framing, composition, depth of field, and lighting. I used to be the only one taking photos of food I had made and food I had ordered, but now it’s not uncommon to be in the company of many (especially in a group setting frustrating our hungry dining companions who aren’t taking photos and also potentially being disruptive to others). I suppose now that social networking has become a regular part of people’s lives, it’s just natural to visually share what people are experiencing through taste.
Since I started reading Best Food Writing 2009, a birthday gift from a friend of mine, I thought it would be a good opportunity to expand my creative adventures to include food here (and my exploration of food establishments in my travel site).
Be warned that although I’m okay with cooking, I’ve mostly been doing baking and desserts (pictured above are pound cake and mixed berry Zinfandel sorbet I’ve made in the past). I’ve enjoyed the precision of baking and how it’s easy to create a baked treat as long as you have the staples of butter, flour, and eggs (and baking powder and baking soda).
After I had a private cooking party this year for my birthday and after organizing a screening of Julie & Julia followed by a cooking party with friends, I’ve been inspired to expand my culinary repertoire into cooking more. There should be some interesting adventures ahead…
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Watermarking Photographs
November 18, 2009 | Filed Under News, Photography
Photography has gotten a lot easier these days with digital cameras and their auto settings and I’ve seen people carry around digital SLRs instead of old point and shoots more and more. When I took a black and white film photography class, the countless hours I spent in the darkroom developing film, developing prints, and printing prints made me realize how much more I’d rather work in the digital photography format than with film; though some found the darkroom therapeutic, I did not.
As with film photography, I don’t “print” my photos as-is, but with adjustments. The camera never captures what the eyes truly see; Ansel Adams did a lot of dodging and burning on his photographs.
My post-processing workflow involves reviewing and selecting photos, color and lighting adjustments, captioning and keywording/tagging. and publishing. And then there’s the time spent taking the photograph with consideration for composition and lighting. This is not just for my digital SLR photographs, but I do the same with my point and shoot photographs.
So when someone downloaded my photographs from Flickr and included them in their own photo album passing them of as their own (albeit unintentionally), I felt as if the time I spent on my photos had been stolen, too.
I haven’t been a fan of watermarking because it also affects the photograph’s imagery, but I’ve reluctantly turned to it. In a perfect world, everyone would check to see if it would be okay to use photographs (or any other work of others) before doing so, but it’s unfortunate that everyone assumes that if you can get it on the web, you can do whatever you want with it. I’ve seen lifted photos on Facebook and Evite and they even have copyright watermarks on them and I’m quite certain that the person didn’t ask for permission first. It’s not just about attribution, but also what the photo is associated with. I’ve been contacted by book publishers who were interested in using my photographs and when doing so, I want to know the context in which it will be used before giving permission.
I use Adobe Lightroom to process my photos and use the LR2/Mogrify plugin to watermark them in an obvious way. Lightroom has watermarking capabilities, but they’re extremely limited and watermarking a full resolution photo results in a watermark that’s too tiny to see in thumbnail mode that it looks like dust on the photo. I also add my information in the Copyright metadata field within the photo itself (although some photo editing applications unfortunately will wipe out that metadata).
In Flickr, I don’t allow downloading by the public and have made it difficult to right click and download the smaller photo (it’s a setting to overlay a blank image as a deterrent). Only my Flickr friends can download some photos (people photos usually); since Flickr doesn’t have more granular download permission settings available, I’ve gotten around it by only making the downloadable photos private and setting the license to which then allows downloading of the photos in private view.
In the old days, duplicating a photograph took a lot of time and effort; nowadays, photographers need to turn to technology deterrents to discourage plagarism.
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Canto Videos
March 28, 2008 | Filed Under Entertainment, Film/Movies
Some videos I’ve discovered recently…
Cute video from Wong Fu Productions (Yellow Fever guys). It’s amazing this was shot in Hong Kong in only one day. And the English subtitles are actually good.
I couldn’t help but laugh at this. (In Cantonese)
Sometimes I forget how great it is to know Cantonese.
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Manga Reception
September 3, 2007 | Filed Under Entertainment, Events, Reviews
Last week, thanks to a friend, I went to Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and saw the current special exhibit on manga which was pretty good. Some of the stories are just weird, but I guess that’s not out of the ordinary? The exhibit runs until September 9th.
The event was the Annual Corporate Partners Reception at the Asian Art Museum. I knew several other friends were already attending because their companies are corporate partners, but it was crazy that there were at least 12 friends who either worked at Chevron, PG&E and Wells Fargo or had friends who worked there (each person was allowed to bring 2 guests).
In the bright stop-sign-red manga lounge was a photo sticker booth that was taking free pictures for anyone silly enough to do it (though they weren’t stickers). Naturally, a few of us decided to flash back to high school and take some.
Can’t beat free drinks, appetizers, and art!
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A Summer’s Evening with Vienna
August 9, 2007 | Filed Under Music, Photography
I first heard about Vienna from one of my staff. She graduated from Stanford with a Computer Science degree and decided to leave her Silicon Valley job to pursue a music career (Vienna Teng isn’t her real name).
Although nearly 2.5 years has passed since I saw her live for the first time, I still really enjoy her music. From seeing her for the first time, she seemed down to earth and was quite entertaining in introducing her songs and sharing snippets of her life. Seeing her at the Twilight Concert Series in Bol Park in Palo Alto was no different.
Check out her music and download and listen to a few songs. One of my favorites is the Lake Version of Gravity (not officially released) that can be downloaded here.
The Photos.
I couldn’t decide which lens to bring between the 28-135mm and 75-300mm, both of which I’m borrowing. In the end, I brought all four (including the 50mm and 18-55mm) since I had to bring a different bag that had the smaller lenses in it already. I ended up just using the long range lenses, mostly the 100-300mm. I thought about getting up from my comfy position on the straw mat to get closer, but decided to stay and not be as serious in getting shots and instead enjoy the music. At such a long focal length, as expected I had to use a faster shutter speed. It’s definitely nice to have a 300mm lens on hand.
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Trademarked Tree
July 29, 2007 | Filed Under Photography
Yesterday, I decided to visit the Cliff House area and when I was there I browsed the gift shop. They were selling postcards, greeting cards, gift cards, and framed prints made by the Haus Maus company.
I saw a photo of The Lone Cypress appearing in the photo products and accompanying the photo was a note in the back that read:
The Lone Cypress and its images are trademarks of the Pebble Beach Company, used by permission.
My first reaction was… how the hell can you trademark a tree? How ridiculous. I’d understand trademarking the company’s logo which is a graphical representation of the tree, but it’s unreasonable to prevent others from having photography rights.
Pebble Beach, where the tree resides, is private and you have to pay to cruise on the 17 Mile Drive and so I kind of understand a restriction in photographing things in a private area. But when I’ve been on the 17 Mile Drive, I’ve never been told or seen any sort of restriction regarding taking photos, especially of the Lone Cypress (so I snapped the photo above and many others, granted I’m not selling those photos). On top of that, the tree is on the coast which is partially out in the open.
What about the picture of the Lone Cypress in the California Coastal Records Project that’s available for purchase? Based on the Barbra Streisand lawsuit, it seems unbelievable that the Pebble Beach Company could enforce such a claim.