Last week we reported that Zoomr CEO Thomas Hawk was thrown out of a San Francisco art museum because a guard thought his expensive camera could be used to spy on female employees (www.imaginginfo.com/web/online/News/Photographers-Face-Ejection-Over-Lenses-/3$4097).

Really.

For the record, Hawk is an extremely talented PROFESSIONAL photographer and the top dog at a company that many say is better that its counterpoint-Flickr.

Well, thousands of you read the story. A surprisingly large amount for such a short blog story. And those who commented about their own similar experiences were from Puerto Rico, California, Denver, New York City and Tennessee.

In the past I have written about how UK photographers risk getting their public rights jeopardized as well as a case in NYC that has officials trying to get pros to fill out permits before shooting there. I have resisted getting on the bandwagon as of late, but I am steamed. Pros shooters and even amateurs are really facing a crossroads here, where these types of stories are becoming the norm. As one commenter put it: “now we have camera profiling.”

Four recent issues reported just this summer include:

China Olympics Bans Professional Cameras

D.C. Rep Slams Union Station for Barring Photography

Photographers Face Ejection Over Lenses

Photography Guidelines in UK Set to Include Amateurs, Tourists

Not sure if security guards are just overzealous in a post-911 era or photographers are being thrown the rulebook. For the record, I’d be curious to know just how vast this problem is. I invite you to please list your experience in the comment area below if you have be a target of photographic profiling. Thanks! -A

Last week I attended the Long Island Photo Workshop, held in Smithtown, NY. Its 30th year as a wellspring of photographic knowledge for instuctors and students alike–all professional photographers, the Workshop featured industry notables including Joseph and Louise Simone, Hanson Fong, Gary Small, Fay Sirkis, Janice Wendt, and Dave Black. Courses ranged from “Professional Digital Imaging” taught by Gary Small, which highlighted techniques for using Photoshop, to “Light is the Greatest Influence” led by Dave Black, and “Mastering the Techniques-How to Be a Complete Photographer” instructed by Hanson Fong, who covered 10 classical bridal poses, flow posing, window lighting, infrared B&W, and Hi-Key Lighting. Each workshop enjoyed the intimacy of a small class with a hands-on approach to photography.

In fact, my personal experience at the workshop couldn’t have been more hands-on, and I mean literally. I started my day off sitting in on portrait pair Joseph and Louise Simone’s “Create Your Own Signature” class, which covered the gamut of everything portrait related from how to work with subjects under carefully monitored lighting to refining rules of composition, and using the subject’s personality to express itself through live demonstrations. As I watched the Simones in action photographing a family, focusing in on the tiniest of details, which included changing a young girl’s hair style (she couldn’t have been older than seven) to a half-up-do, little did I know that I would be next.

When I introduced myself to Joseph and Louise Simone between breaks, the two insisted that I pose for a portrait. Remembering that my own grandfather had once told me that I wasn’t photogenic, I dropped my head, and half embarrassed/half flattered replied “I’m not a model.” The Simones in unison answered, [I’m paraphrasing now], “that you don’t need to be a model to pose for a portrait— it’s more about capturing who you are, and not about putting on a pretense.” And, in fact, after my modeling session, I can now assuredly concur, but still blushing from the initial shock, I tried to laugh off their suggestion. All I needed was a little soft encouragement from my editor… And there it was, just when I was ready to shrug off the entire request as a mere pre-noon ego boost, my editor bestowed some tactful words of wisdom, which sounded something like: “I wish I could smash your head open and get into your brain, so that you would understand that if the Simones want to photograph you, you let them do it!”

So there I was getting primped and powdered. My experience as a model–I am going to use that word in conjunction with myself as much as possible here–gave me a deeper insight into the world of portraiture. Until last week, my photography work was limited to behind the lens and behind the computer, writing, shooting, reading, editing, press releases–ugghhh, but being the subject for a portrait shoot stretched my perspective to new lengths of understanding.

One of the purest forms of photography–yes I said pure–portraiture is too often misunderstood. Though some may decry it for the ostensibly ‘manufactured’ or ‘arranged’–these are words I’ve have heard thrown around the industry–aesthetic; the produced look, the contrived lighting, the rigid postures and poses, I would venture out onto a limb here, and say that the adjectives used above would most likely describe a bad portrait. For my encounter with the medium was nothing short of, dare I say, comfortable! Yes, there is a science to capturing a portrait; one that expresses the subject or the intention of the shoot through the framework of the lighting, background, camera position, and pose, but it should not interfere with the sincerity of the image itself.

As Louise Simone took my hand into hers, massaged my fingers and sculpted them into a delicate masterpiece, and as Joseph stood behind the camera snapping shots with a cat-like subtlety, I found a simple peace and flexibility within this ambiance of structure and precision. It was as if I was calmed by my faith in them; they gave me their vision, and we created that reality in the images they shot.

If I had to define the end-product which hangs on my living room wall next to a Goya print, I would say that it is a candid portrait. And no, I’m not being ironic when I use the word candid–the photograph captures more than just a girl in a red dress posing for a picture; what that is, I can’t say, but I can assure you there is something more…

So what I’ve taken from the Long Island Photo Workshop, or more specifically, what I’ve learned from the Simones is that if you look at a portrait, and there isn’t that “something more” then the naysayers are right, it’s just a manufactured scene with contrived lighting…but if you ever find yourself staring into the character of a given photograph, rooting out a certain mystique in the shapes that envelop the scene, astounded by the eloquence and multidimensionality of the subject looking back at you, then most likely you are staring into a portrait…

I recently received a children’s book in the mail, and didn’t have to wonder very long why it was being sent to the editor of photography magazines. The book was sent to me from the publisher, Abrams Books for Young Readers (www.abramsyoungreaders.com). The title of the book was Babar’s USA. Authored by Laurent De Brunhoff, the son of the originator of the beloved elephant that was first created in 1931. The book is illustrated with photographs by Zephir. Photographs … that caught my interest.

Babar was created in a bedtime story told by Cecile de Brunhoff, Laurent’s mother. Laurent’s father, Jean de Brunhoff illustrated the story and published it. After Jean’s death in 1937, Laurent took over as family storyteller and has been bringing Babar stories to children since 1946.

Babar’s USA mixes illustrations of Babar and his family traveling across the country with digital photography. Many of the photographs were taken by De Brunhoff and his wife as hey traveled cross country. The artist then printed the images, tracing them on a light box, he drew in the figures to scale. In some instances, he scanned these collages into the computer and further manipulated them digitally.

I think it’s great that a household name such as the character Babar has “embraced digital photography” in the pages of this book. Besides just seeing the images, which unless you’d read about the manner in which the final pages were created, might have seemed to just be any old pictures mixed with drawings.

At the end of the story, Babar arranges a surprise for the elephants of Celesteville: boxes filled with computers, video games, iPods, cellphones and digital cameras. Talk about embracing technology. Laurent de Brunhoff is in his eighties now, and has incorporated not only the grandeur of many of the more photogenic national parks and other locations in the U.S.–but also includes pictures of diners; the airport in Nashville, where a musician played as they waited for their flight; a visit to Graceland to pay homage to “the King” (Elvis); and Disney’s Epcot; among other places.

Bringing such a classic figure as Babar and his family into the present day with all of its technology gadgets and gizmos adds a freshness to this well-known storybook character. It’s good for our industry whenever people are exposed to digital cameras and photography through other artistic mediums such as literature.

There is one thing that bothered me though. Near the end of the book, Celeste emails digital images to her friend Wendy, and the note she writes is in abbreviated text as if she was text messaging on a cellphone.

“Thx much for the gt time we had in NY!” it read.

Wendy’s reply is similar:

“Hi Celeste!!! There’s nothing nicer than a visit from frnds. Thx 4 coming!!! :-)”

I think it’s great that computers, email, digital cameras and other techie-items were incorporated in this story, but I wonder if children reading books like this one will will mistake text-appropriate terminology for proper grammatical expression.

Perhaps it was only meant as an homage to the way present-day children and adults communicate with each other, by email and text messaging but I wouldn’t want to see kids growing up thinking the way you text message someone is the correct way of spelling. Maybe there are other books on bookstore–and school library shelves–already that use such language, and this is only the first I’ve come across one. Language is the basis for how we communicate, and I understand texting for what it is when used on a cellphone, but it doesn’t have to translate to emails–at least for children I don’t think it should. It’s one thing for an adult who knows how to read and write to abbreviate words used for correspondence (although I doubt Miss Manners would agree), but I can only imagine what elementary school teachers see on their students’ spelling tests.

Diane

While I now love the convenience that consumer photo-sharing and printing sites such as Snapfish and Shutterfly offer, I admit that I haven’t always been in love with the online process.

I consider myself pretty technologically savvy for a thirtysomething mom: I navigate my iPod with ease, I text-message my husband and friends, and I can even figure out how to fix my MacBook laptop when things go awry (forget about PCs, though — they’re a whole different animal). Yet when I first joined the online photo portal world four years ago when my son was born (I’m a Snapfish member), I was annoyed by some of the glitches that I soon encountered during my uploading endeavors.

For a supposed time-saver, using this type of online service didn’t seem that convenient when I had to check each individual photo in my image library, a process that wasted many a summer afternoon when I should have been playing with my infant. Plus, more often that not, I would finally finish uploading all the images, only to find that half of them hadn’t uploaded correctly, or at all.

Now I know that I’m not the only one who has felt this type of photographic frustration. A new study by digital media management company Memeo shows that other consumers are also working around the kinks and conundrums that still plague some of these online solutions. The study found that some of the respondents’ biggest gripes were the time it takes to upload photos (36%) and that family members who want to access these photos can’t figure out how to use the sites (19%). (I can certainly relate to that last point — I don’t even want to reveal how many hours I’ve spent in an e-mail trail with my 80-year-old grandmother trying to explain to her how to see her great-grandkids on her computer screen as she tries to mouse around the Snapfish or Flickr screen.)

To be fair, things are much better these days than they were during the last Summer Olympics — I’m happy to report that I can now select multiple photos at once to upload, go stir the Classico, and come back a little later to view all my albums online. The service I use (still Snapfish) now offers a ton of gifts, photo books, and other photo accoutrements that keep me shopping for hours (I especially love the collage-poster option — I’ve started a tradition of creating a 20 x 30 version every holiday season to showcase my family’s favorite photos from the entire year, which I display next to the previous year’s version in our hallway).

Most telling (and most disturbing to those of us in the industry) from this Memeo survey, however, is that a whopping 79% of respondents revealed they have taken digital pictures they’ve intended to share, but never did. The photo industry still has a lot of work to do in terms of educating consumers and eliminating the intimidation factor. Only then will photo sharing reach its full potential online.

Last month I had the opportunity to see the world. If you’re wondering whether I went on some multiple country world tour, or just returned from Disney World’s 11-country-buffet at Epcot Center, you can rest assured that I did neither. Instead, I saw the Real World—and I don’t mean MTV’s pseudo reality-television show. What I did see, though, was untainted by a hotel view, a television screen, or a ten-foot grinning Mickey Mouse. It was candid and sincere, and it was a display of press photography from the 2008 World Press Photo exhibition.

I was invited by Getty Images to cover the event for our website (you can find the story in our Online Exclusives section), and was made a witness to the many different realities of the people showcased on the clean walls of the United Nations building. My experience seeing a world unscathed by a political pundit’s quick-speak, or a news network’s agenda, was for lack of a more exotic description, simply eye opening. Though the realities of those subjects that I watched from a distance that night, with a pen in one hand, and a pig-in-a-blanket in the other, seemed unreal in the context of my own, sheltered reality, I also saw a world shared by people in significantly different places, but who unknowingly affected one another. I have not been able to quiet that vision since.

I thought of that vision again this morning when my web editor asked me about my blog topic; she was putting together this week’s newsletter and needed to know what I would be blogging about. Forever in the throws of procrastination, I embarrassedly asked her if she had any ideas. I received an email with three appropriate topics along with a 1pm due date. The items she sent me were: “UK Government to Discuss Photography Guidelines with Police”; Brangelina’s Baby Pics; and “Astronaut Photography Researcher: A Space Journal.” Never one to discuss science before noon, I sat at my chair staring at the remaining two topics which were indignantly staring back at me. Brangelina’s Baby Pics vs. UK Government to Discuss Photography Guidelines with Police. My thought-process was as follows: “The Brangelina story is national, and I have an American readership. Do British people read my blog? Is the term ‘British people’ politically correct, or are they people of the UK? Press Photography, Brangelina…”

It went on this way for some minutes, and then my eyes scanned a couple of lines in the UK story:

“The announcement was made in the House of Lords on 16 July after Lord Rosser submitted an oral question on public photography rights. Addressing Lord Bassam of Brighton, who represented Her Majesty’s Government in the House of Lords, Richard Rosser said ‘Is [Lords Bassam] aware that magazines for photographers are reporting that photographers, including professional press photographers, are being challenged by police and private security guards when taking photographs in the street and other public places?’ He continued: ‘Photographers are sometimes filmed themselves; they are told to move on or asked for their name and address. They feel that they are being harassed.”

Right there, the last line: they felt that they are being harassed…stuck with me. I again returned to that feeling I had the night of the World Press exhibition; it was as if my conscience was harassed by those images.

Like the pictures of the body bags returning home in droves from Vietnam that my parents always told me about, these images of soldiers, citizens, women and children in Iraq was my first uncensored glance into a world unclaimed by popular media circuits, but of which was my own, and it was affecting my reality again. Press photography is the last of a dying breed of mediums that showcase the truth. Irrespective of eloquent sloganeering, good lighting, and convenient historic narratives, it is a vision and a reflection of ourselves and our world. If I didn’t step foot into the United Nations building that day, I most likely would have been blogging to you about Brangelina’s baby pictures. Before you read my next line, stop a minute, as I did when I wrote it, and think about that.

I say let the photographers do their job, because if we don’t, then the only news items we will find in our own industry and in, dare I say, contemporary culture as a whole, will be Brangelina’s new baby photographs.

As many of you may already know, this is the last year of the old Yankee Stadium. A new stadium is currently being erected across the street.

Recently, I went to see a Yankees-Red Sox’s game– even forking over more than $300 on StubHub.com for prime seat, since it is the last year. My husband and I had no idea of just how good the seats were until we arrived. We had Field Level seats just a few rows back between the Red Sox dugout and homeplate. We were in the field of vision of the players, if they would have just turned around.

I was in awe the whole time, not really caring who won (shhh), but just “wowed” by the experience. I mean we even had waiter service. That’s right. There was a menu and we could order lunch from it.

After I got over the initial shock that I was a stone’s throw away from Derek Jeter (i know, it’s cliche, but those uniforms look so nice in person), I looked around at the stadium. It was probably going to be the last time I saw the place afterall.

Call me naive but the photo industry practically “owns” the available ad space around the stadium walls and seating areas in the field and inside where the concessions are as well. Below the scoreboard: there was Sharp and Canon, on the field level was Sony, Fujifilm and Nokia; Mitsubishi popped up too. They were the main contenders…they weren’t all necessary referring to cameras directly–just the brand names were listed.

I felt proud that the industry has such mainstream appeal…but I wondered ‘why does Canon and the others go so well with baseball, like say baseball and beer, or baseball and Cracker Jacks’ (which I happened to be pigging out on incidently)?

Well, I looked at what I was doing at the game. It really enhanced my experience to capture this memory with my camera. I even took video of the entire 9th inning…Jeter slipped and fell at bat and I have it on video for all posterity. I shot the seats we were in, the players doing their warm-up swings on deck, the crowds pawing at each other to grab a foul ball, the field sweepers, the plastic covering when it began raining, the subway stop we walked out of. It all added extra fun to the experience.

Whether you make a living from photography or take photos as a hobby or to capture memories–Photography is important. It is a vital piece of American culture. As American as baseball. And the industry’s products that are compatible and/or support digital make photography even more satisfying.

I mean my husband has never asked me to take a picture of him anywhere. But he asked me to take lots of pictures of him at Yankee stadium that day–at the subway stop, by the field, in his seat, in the rain. We will soon show these to his 87-year-old father, who once took him there as a boy.

When visiting New York City this past weekend to check out a July 4th Yankees/Red Sox Game, I had the opportunity to see “Polaroids: Mapplethorpe” at the Whitney Museum of Art (on view until September 7, 2008).

While shooting Polaroids to keep a record of his artwork in the 1970s, Robert Mapplethorpe fell in love with the Polaroids’ immediacy and pretty soon, he began to experiment and hobby around with the medium. In fact, many of these instant photos have never been seen, overshadowed by his later, more precise work.

The result was thousands of photos of the young man’s friends and lovers and even common everyday objects. The exhibit, which showcase more than 100 shots, one right after the next, highlights the nature of Mapplethorpe’s experimentation with framing, lighting, angles and finding beauty in the everyday. These photos, taken from 1970-1975, were his tutorials, in essence, preparing him for the medium-format Hasselblad he would get as a gift a few years later. Ultimately, he would alienate the immediacy of the Polaroid for the crisp, sharp quality of a pro camera.

Here’s what the New Yorker magazine said about the exhibit:

“Many of these small, intimate photographs convey tenderness and vulnerability. Others depict a toughness and immediacy that would give way in later years to more classical form. Unlike the highly crafted images Mapplethorpe staged in the studio and became famous for, these disarming pictures are marked by spontaneity and invention. Together, they offer insight into the artist’s creative development and reveal his pure delight in seeing at a formative time in his career.”

The show is accompanied by a book that places this early work in the context of his life-long artistic production.

Perhaps some of the spontaniety and fun he saw in his earlier photo days was lost with the Hasselblad. It’s too bad Mapplethorpe died young from AIDS in 1989 and never lived to use the digital cameras of today, where immediacy does not mean sacrificing quality.

Did the inventor of the Stanley Steamer car also build The Shining hotel and discover dry plate photography?

Well yes.

The Stanley brothers were geniuses. But I never knew about them until recently.

A few weeks ago I flew to Estes Park, Colorado, for a friend’s 40th birthday party. The location was beautiful– as was the hotel where the event was held. Does the historic Stanley Hotel ring a bell?

Well, if you’re a Stephen King fan or a devotee of the Sci-Fi channel you may recognize the place. It is infamous for being haunted and the inspiration for King’s book The Shining. One year the Travel Channel named it the most haunted hotel in America.

I believe it. I captured lots of ghostly orbs on my Nikon digital camera during my tour of the grounds. And I felt that freaky energy. Joshua, our tour guide, explained to us, manner-of-factly, his own dealings with the so-called “permanent residents” of the Stanley Hotel.

King claims his one-night stay at the place was full of other-worldly encounters and freed him from a writer’s block. Later, his popular book The Shining, inspired from his stay, was made into a movie starring Jack Nicholson. But to King’s chagrin, the location for the 1970s Stanley Kubrick film wasn’t the Stanley Hotel. And the movie wasn’t true to the book.

So, in 1995, King directed his own Shining version, an ABC mini-series that represented the book and it was filmed at the Stanley. Candid photos from the making of the film line some of the hotel’s walls, strangely juxtaposed to some other really large, old, beautiful black and white photos. That’s when I discovered the hotel’s rich history and its strong link to photography.

Like a beacon of hope, the stark white hotel stands on a cliff overlooking the picturesque town of Estes Park, surrounded by the snow-capped Rocky Mountains. It was built by Freelan O. (F.O.) Stanley, one-half of the famous inventor twins, for his wife. How’d he get all that money to charm his wife with a fancy hotel?

I learned F.O. and his brother Francis E. (F.E.) were the inventors of the Stanley Steamer car and dry plate photography, among many other things. They formed the Stanley Dry Plate Company to manufacture the dry plates in 1883. The twins received a patent in 1886 for inventing a machine for manufacturing the dry plates. They sold the company to Eastman Kodak in 1903 and made a bundle.

The Stanley Hotel is a monument to this process. Antiquated, but detailed dry plate black-and-white photos are peppered throughout the hotels walls, adding to the place’s mystique. Some believe the invention by the Stanley brothers was what prompted their little sister, Chansonetta, to become a talented photographer. The Stanley Hotel’s official story is that invention was born out of watching their sister’s frustration with the wet plate process—that the enterprising brothers wanted an easier process for their sister, an aspiring photographer.

The dry plate process, which involves a glass plate coated with a gelatin emulsion of silver bromide, could be stored until exposure, and after exposure it can be brought back to a darkroom for development at leisure. These qualities were great advantages back then over the wet plate process. Wet plates had to be prepared just before exposure and developed immediately afterwards.

Whichever came first, Chansonetta Stanley Emmons gained fame in her own right, as one of the first female photographers in the country. Her images depict rural American life at the turn-of-the-century. She also captured many landscapes and Maine life. Today, there are many books devoted to her and her work has been exhibited nationally.

Underneath the photo of Chansonetta below are two of priceless photos as exhibited on the walls of the Stanley and a picture of the Stanley Hotel today.

[Unfortunately, I had to contend with a significant amount of glare (or maybe it was the ghosts…) on the glass. But notice the details despite subjects having to stand still for at least 15 minutes until each photograph was fully exposed.] –a.s.

Photographers of all levels will soon be able to check out Photrade.com, a free new site (now in the private beta stage) where users can “share, protect, and make money.” Not only can you display your images, you can also sell stock, prints, and merchandise through the site’s Adcosystem, an ad-supported system that pays photo owners for every image view (unlike storage sites like Flickr, which allow you to maintain your galleries in cyberspace, but don’t pay you a penny for it).

Both amateur photographers and pros are invited to sell their images in a fully protected environment (all images are watermarked to prevent misuse or theft). If selling is your goal, photographers can pick a suggested minimum price, a suggested marked-up price, or a custom price. You can also earn money through an ad-revenue setup (either through banner ads in your gallery or in the images themselves, and from splash-screen ads). This ad-revenue service is similar to the newly launched Dimpls site, which allows users to place logos and ads next to relevant pictures to get click-through cash.

These two services (especially Dimpls) are obviously more geared to amateurs who don’t want to give away the photo farm for free (though isn’t sharing the real goal of posting your images online? I don’t even consider how much money I could be making off of the kids’ snapshots that I upload for Grandma and Grandpa to view in Florida). And how much money can I really make anyway?

I am curious to see if (and how many) pros would actually use Photrade.com (the site keeps emphasizing that it’s for professionals, too, though I’m hard-pressed to see why any pro would want to “compete” with your average Joe in selling his or her images here). Consumers and strapped-for-cash companies will likely be checking out sites such as these (and there will be more), instead of having to pony up their pennies for more expensive online stock houses.

Back from Yosemite, I thought I’d share a few more photos from my trip.