With trendy shops and restaurants, Robertson Boulevard in LA is known as a good star-sighting spot. (OK, if your idea of a star is Kelly Osbourne.) And where there are stars, there are paparazzi. So The Daily Truffle has ID’d all the photogs hanging around the street day in and day out … Splash, Bauer Griffin, Wire Image, Getty. It’s insane when you think about it, really.
Photo by Amy Smith
If you’ve ever freelanced, you’ve certainly come up against the nebulous issue of what to charge. Granted, putting a price on your creative output is highly subjective and there’s no magic formula that will satisfy all. But you can use one of the many sites that will help you calculate your fee as a jumping off point.
• The National Press Photographers Association has a good, basic resource that includes useful links and a “cost of doing business” calculator.
• A Photo Editor does an occasional feature called “Real World Estimates” in categories like stock, ad campaigns, publicity. The writers, from photo agency Wonderful Machine, walk you through their shoots step by step, factoring in all the costs and fees.
• Shakodo is a free online site where professionals and amateurs alike can virtually gather to discuss pricing and industry-related info. The site founders aimed to break down walls and make it all more democratic. In theory it’s a great idea, but it remains to be seen whether those afore-mentioned pros will really be giving up their hard-earned, and usually tightly held, knowledge.
• Then there’s fotoQuote, which is not free — for $149.99 you’ll get a pricing guide on stock and assignment photography, and the most recent edition added video rates too. It is not cheap, but if you’re doing a fair bit of business (and even more than that, feel like you’re not getting paid adequately), it could be a good investment.
Photo by Matt Lambros
• Matt Lambros photographs grand old abandoned movie theaters, including the Orpheum in Massachusetts, Loew’s Kings in Brooklyn and Proctor’s Palace in New Jersey. [After the Final Curtain]
• To mark the 30th anniversary of the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, Time has a photo essay of Ron Edmonds’ famous and Pulitzer Prize-winning images from that day. [Time]
• The finalists for the National Magazine Awards have been announced, and National Geographic, the New York Times Magazine and Time are all in the mix for photography awards. [ASME]
• Photographer Cary Norton has built the Legotron, Mark I, a large-format functional camera made from Legos and a $40 lens from eBay. [CNET]
• Who cares about the quality, it’s adorable: a digital point-and-shoot that looks like a Leica. [Gizmodo]
This video was created by South African design firm Studio Botes for designers who are striking out on their own, but any freelancer could pick up some tips.
It’s cherry blossom season in the DC area right now, which is an insanely beautiful time of year. This photo is of my uncle and sister along the Tidal Basin, taken by my father in 1971.
In a recent article on the Newark Star-Ledger site, George Berkin, a contributor to something called “NJ Voices,” writes on the case of Newark teen Khaliah Fitchette who was unlawfully detained in March 2010 for taping a medical emergency on a city bus with her cell phone. During the incident, Fitchette was handcuffed, her cell phone was seized and the video was deleted, and the police tried to charge her with obstruction of justice. Last week, the ACLU filed a lawsuit in federal court on her behalf.
Berkin is a big fan of the bible and Sarah Palin but not of abortion and evolution. So if you want to take a wild guess on where he’ll come down on the issue, go ahead. If you’re stumped, for Berkin, it all comes down to being thoughtful.
A thoughtful person would have realized, “Now I understand why the police, angered by my defiance expressed by my refusal to stop taping, would have handcuffed me. I certainly did not enjoy being handcuffed and being held in custody for several hours. But,” a thoughtful person would have concluded, “I certainly brought that unpleasantness upon myself.”
Fitchette wasn’t being thoughtful when her rights were violated, and she should just learn some thoughtfulness and not attempt to tape anything in public because it might hurt someone’s feelings, and if she is unlawfully detained and her constitutional rights are violated because of her thoughtless behavior, she should accept that and not participate in the ACLU’s vendetta against the Newark police department. (A police department, mind you, that has a well-earned reputation as one of the most corrupt in the nation.)
Here’s an interesting twist for Berkin, who hates government spending: Lawsuits like these cost taxpayers A LOT of money. And they are entirely avoidable.
Source: Newark Star-Ledger
I’ve been called a lot of things in my lifetime, some good and some bad. But after the Espinoza video was released in 2010, a working photographer based in Los Angeles, who I thought was a friend, sent me an email calling me a fauxtog — ouch.
Hate this fauxtog more than the drunkk
So it’s a great feeling when you’re the only photographer to capture the most important moment of the anti-war rally that took place in Hollywood on March 19 — which was the arrests of 11 brave members of Military Families Speak Out for staging a sit-in at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.
Photo: AP Photo/Shelby County Register’s office
Today marks the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, and last week a cache of photos of King’s killer, James Earl Ray, were released by the Shelby County (TN) Register’s Office. The photos, along with old documents and letters, were housed in a Memphis warehouse and recently uncovered.
As the AP reports, the photos, taken by Memphis photographer Gil Michael, aren’t revealing or shocking, but they are interesting to see given the significance of the event. Most have never been seen by the public before. The Shelby County Sheriff at the time, Bill Morris, had the photos taken to show that Ray was not being mistreated while being booked. You can see nine of them on the website of the Commercial Appeal.
By the way, if you’re ever in Memphis, the Lorraine Motel has been turned into the National Civil Rights Museum, and it’s well worth a visit. In addition to other artifacts and memorabilia from the time, they’ve preserved the room King was staying in before his murder.
Photo by Tomas van Houtryve
Wired’s Raw File blog has a report on Emphas.is, the new crowdfunding site for photojournalism. In it, acclaimed documentary photographer Tomas van Houtryve talks about his experience as one of the first to use the site since its much-delayed launch on March 7.
Van Houtryve, who is raising money for his “21st Century Communism” project that documents the remaining Communist countries, seems at the same time excited about the site’s potential and frustrated about all the technical glitches he’s experienced so far — he actually had to start the project on his own site first until Emphas.is could get its act together. Still, he says:
“Backers have started to pose relevant questions. As my project proposal has made its way through social networks and attracted support from strangers, I’ve made some really fruitful new connections. In addition to generous funding contributions, several individuals have stepped forward with key contacts and very precise and helpful advice. I have already managed to make stronger photos due to their input. This is a pleasant shift over the lone-wolf existence.”
The model for Emphas.is is the same as Kickstarter, only it’s solely devoted to photojournalism projects, so presumably you sort the wheat from the chaff and attract people who are very committed to photojournalism. Plus, they’re promising world-class photographers are going to use this platform, and the backers will get to connect to projects in a personal way.
As the site says, “Apart from the satisfaction of seeing an important project realized, you are invited to tag along on the journey.” It remains to be seen whether this model could be a savior of sorts for photojournalism, but it does look like there will be some good journeys to tag along on.
boywithgrenade.org 
