The Swamp

My very first book now available on Amazon

The Swamp  available online at Amazon, makes a great gift idea,  I wanted to share the beauty I discovered  of local wetlands in all seasons. Wetlands sustain more life than any ecosystem in the world. As much as many tropical forests and more than the most fertile of farmlands.

Image Brief

Too many photos sitting idle on your hard drive?  It's not easy finding the right stock agency to market your images, this is where ImageBrief can come in handy. Image Brief allows you to connect with ad agencies and brands looking for specific photos that you may have on hand.

Image Brief 

Check out their what's selling section for further photo ideas.

Property release form

Property release form what and when?

Property release

This is a property release form used by the National Geographic Society. A property release form is used to record the owner's permission to take photos of their building, car, pets, art work,  just about anything except people.  If you plan on selling a picture commercially, many clients will ask for a property release form, many times the owner will be more than happy to sign a release form in exchange for a copy of the photo you plan to make.

What's in my camera bag?

What's in my camera bag have always been popular in photo articles, so here is mine.

This is my minimum set up for spot news, in the fall I replace my water bottle with a warm tuque and gloves.

A Canon 7D and Canon 50mm lens or my 24-70 f2.8 Canon L lens  attached to my camera,  a 70-200mm f4 L lens, a Canon 430 EX flash, a Canon 2x extender that I can attach to my 70-200mm lens if needed, easier to lug along that the much larger and heavier 100-400mm Canon lens. A GPS to pinpoint locations and find alternative routes, a spare CF card,  pen and small note pad, business cards, press card with lanyard, Lenspen and microfiber cloth to keep lens free of dust and blemishes, a small flashlight, all packed into a Lowepro messenger camera bag.

So when I head off to cover spot news items in a hurry, I can grab this bag and have all my equipment on hand once on site.

Stock sales

As photographers, most of us dream of waking up in the morning, spending our day shooting photos, ship our best shots to a photo agency and then living off our royalty payments from our chosen agency. But reality is a very different situation.

Stock sales with  agencies aren't what they used to be. For example, I have photos placed with Corbis. In the mid-2000s  their gross revenue was around $225 million, today they have a gross revenue in the $100 million. Unlike their collections of images, that continue to grow, sales are on a downward spiral. Their situation isn't very different from any other stock agency. 

Don't expect to make a full time living by  submitting your images to an agency. Corbis does get my photos in front of buyers that I would not normally have access to, and for me in this business, every sale counts.