For sale – Nikon AF-S 600mm f/4 ED IF Nikkor Super Telephoto Lens – serial #201820
The Nikon 600mm f4 is currently the longest fast lens available in the Nikon line-up. This lens has been a mainstay in my lens arsenal and is now available due to my updating equipment. This lens is in perfect optical condition and has been regularly serviced by Nikon. The glass exhibits no marks and there [...]
Digital Workflow E-book updated
‘Digital Workflow for the Working Photographer’ has been completely updated to take account of the changes in the most recent versions of Aperture 3 and Lightrrom 3, and considerably expanded. Although this e-book is not intended as a definitive guide to all the features of Aperture and Lightroom I have now included much greater detail [...]
Alamy reduces file size requirement
Many of my images are available through British based stock firm Alamy. They have today announced the sensible move to reduce their minimum file requirement from 48mb to 24mb in size. This is undoubtedly a reflection of how images are currently being licensed. There cannot be many sales that actually require the huge file size [...]
Does Microstock Pay?
For many years traditional stock photographers (like myself!) have been bitterly complaining that their income has been steadily eroded by the proliferation of microstock agencies, i.e. agencies selling Royalty Free images for extremely low prices. How can anyone make a living when licenses are granted for $1 or less per image? Well, ask Lise Gagne [...]
Global Directory of Who’s Who
Wow – I must be getting really famous, as I have just received an email telling me I have been selected for inclusion in the 2010/11 edition of The Global Directory of Who’s Who. What an honour? Maybe my work at the Olympics brought this on. Or maybe I’m just a great photographer who deserves [...]
Staff and volunteers
Today was a tough day at the Nordic Centre with two medal events back to back. Glad to report that the photographers have got used to my way of working and we had a great day, not a single problem. Granted, there were less photographers today than we have been used to handling, less than [...]
Panasonic LX3
It’s been pretty strange being at the Olympics and not toting a pile of Nikon bodies and lenses all over the place while rushing to fulfill the needs of my photo editors, arranging transportation to venues, downloading memory cards, editing and transmitting images and occasionally even sleeping. However, wanting to capture the experience I decided [...]
Another day at the Winter Games
Someone asked me today why we couldn’t have moved the snowboard and freestyle ski events could not have been moved from snow starved Cypress Mountain to Whistler, where we still have plenty of the white stuf, despite the temperature hitting +8C in today’s sun. Unless you visit an Olympic site you can have no idea [...]
Olympics day 4
It seems that finding time to write a blog each day is very difficult. Would never have guessed that I would work longer hours and more pressure as a Photo Manager than as an Olympic Photographer. This was another very busy day at Biathlon, again we were inundated with photographers looking for something to shoot [...]
Olympics day 2
Survived two days of my first Olympics as a Photo manager after six previous Games as a working photographer, and if the experience so far has taught me anything it is that I will never ,ever, again cuss at, denigrate or otherwise abuse a Photo Manger ever again! It’s probably the hardest job I have [...]
Olympic Blog begins
Just 2 days to go to the opening ceremonies – and there still seems so much to do. There is more technology installed for this Games than any other winter Olympics. The big 6 Agencies, AP, AFP, Reuters, Getty Images, Canadian press and EPA have banded together and bought technology that allows them to transmit [...]
30 Days to go
My apologies for the long delay since my last post but my work for the Vancouver 2010 Games has kept me extremely busy. There is just 30 days to go to the opening ceremonies and suddenly we are starting to wonder how everything will get done – but of course we will as that opening [...]
Photomechanic and Snow Leopard
I have long been an advocate of Photomechanic for initial sorting of images and efficient captioning and keywording. A small glitch has occurred with the program after upgrading to Apple’s Snow Leopard OS. Although the program starts correctly when a memory card is inserted into a card reader the ingest dialogue box either takes several [...]
Nikon upgrades offer compatability with Snow Leopard
Nikon has announced that it has a series of upgrades for several of it’s imaging software packages. Click on the links below to upgrade your software. The upgrade includes not only compatibility with Snow Leopard (OS 10.6) but also offers support for the D300S Capture NX and Capture NX2: A compatible version is now available [...]
Mac Snow Leopard Issues
I’ve been using Mac OS10.6, Snow Leopard, for a little over a week now and have encountered few problems. Areas that have required attention have been: Print drivers – Although Snow Leopard is supposed to automatically update drivers on any installed printers this has not been happening on existing drivers. Updating the divers for my [...]
Another ‘Agency’ offering to sell your photos
I have today received another blanket email from yet another photo agency, allto1.com, offering to help you sell your photos. This time touting themselves as a rights managed only agency that is “an alternative to large established photo agencies that are beating down the price at any cost”. My questions are: Why would a buyer [...]
Annie Leibovitz may lose photo rights
World famous photography icon Annie Leibovitz may lose the rights to her own photo collection to settle massive debts she has incurred. Despite making millions from her celebrity photographs she has managed to incur huge debts from loans, unpaid bills, and lawsuits. She is also currently being sued by a fellow photographer after using his [...]
Nikon software and Mac Snow Leopard
Nikon has posted a warning to users of it’s various imaging software, including Capture NX and Nikon Scan that Mac users should not upgrade at this point to Snow Leopard, Macintosh’s latest version of OS 10 The problems are unspecified on the Nikon site, simply warning of incompatibilities. I have not yet upgraded to Snow [...]
Apple Aperture update
More of a maintenance update than any exciting new features, Apple has today announced version 2.1.4 for Aperture. This update addresses stability and fixes some minor pronlems, most notably that the ‘Do not import duplicates’ in the import dialogue now works correctly. Full details at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3604
Macintosh Snow Leopard available on August 28
Not a direct photography related post but many photographers use Apple computers. Apple has announed that it’s latest OS will be available on August 28th, severalweeks ahead of schedule. As far as I can see there is nothing terribly exciting for photographers in the new OS other than the fact that it runs faster, is [...]
2010 Winter Olympics Photo Manager
I am pleased to announce that I have accepted the position of Photo Manager for the 2010 Winter Olympics for the Nordic Events to take place at Whistler. I will be based in Vancouver from 16 November until after Christmas when I will move up to Whistler where I will be based until the end [...]
Nikon D5000 service advisory
Nikon has today announced a potential problem with their latest DSLR the D5000. A sub standard component may prevent the camera from turning on. A special repair facility is being set up by Nikon to replace the faulty component in as timely a manner as possible. Full details at click here
Beware of joining Picture Stock
I recently received an email inviting me to join a photo agency called Picture Stock. Wary of the wording in this ‘invitation’ I decided, out of curiosity to take a look. The email described this invitation as a ‘phenomenal business opportunity’ offering not only to handle my image collection, but also indicating I could get [...]
Correction, manipulation or just cheating?
With the tools available to todays digital photographers it is incredibly easy to alter the content of a photo in ways that render it not just more esthetically pleasing, but to alter the meaning of the photo as well. Today we hear yet another case where an unscrupulous photographer has passed off images that have [...]