The American Wildlife Refuge, a non-profit wild bird-of-prey rescue organization in Raleigh, North Carolina had a variety of their Educational Birds on display at Wild Birds Unlimited in Cary on Saturday, December 5th. Volunteer handlers answered questions for several hours as they displayed the raptors to their audience.

The organization rehabs wild birds that are injured and returns them to the wild. Some birds, perhaps due to injury or too much human contact cannot be put back into the wild and those birds join the Educational Birds. They function on donations. You can donate simply by tying your Food Lion MVP card to them.

While I would love to have gotten these photos of birds in the wild, even photos of captive birds can help us appreciate their beauty and their power and strength. Enjoy the photos!

Laura was the runner-up on America’s Next Top Model Cycle 13. Several people have asked how I got this opportunity. Well, Laura is my great-niece. Her grandmother Wanda Sue is my sister.

My family has been suggesting that I get a chance to shoot her before she heads off to the Big Apple to pursue her career. I had a very narrow window of time to do that. It had to be after the show finished and before her time demands make her unavailable to even family. That time was this past weekend.

I knew I wanted to accomplish several things while shooting her. Those included a beauty session, a couple of editorial sessions showing up some Wanda Sue’s Fashions. Wanda Sue (we just call her Sue) had made several of Laura’s outfits that she wore to the judging panel and Wanda Sue became kind of her own celebrity. Then I wanted to do a couple of high fashion looks.

To do this, I would need a styling team. I wanted someone excellent with hair and someone with a lot of creative makeup ideas. It would have been easy to pack up some limited gear, fly to Kentucky and shoot on her schedule. I would struggle to find the talent needed and even then, I wouldn’t have a working relationship with them. I also wanted to shoot the editorial shots in an urban setting, so it seemed logical that shooting here in Raleigh-Durham would be perfect. Stylists I trust are here and my location looks are here.

I contacted Jennifer at D’Jin Salon in Durham to see if she would be interested and she jumped at the opportunity. Her salon would serve as a perfect base of operation, doing studio shots in the salon and the editorial looks around downtown Durham.

For makeup, I had recently worked with Daniel from Libra Looks. He had a book of makeup ideas that he had been working on and was a fan of the show. Though Daniel and Jenn had not worked together, I got them emailing back and forth and let them have creative control over all styling related issues. Hey, I’m not a stylist.

They make Laura look good. She poses well. I make sure the photos are sharp and lit well and surely magic would happen.

While dodging interview after interview and local shoots, Laura and I worked out a plan to get her here. 37,500 frequent flyer miles and some taxes and fees later, she had a flight from Lexington to RDU.

To add an interesting twist to this, my youngest son’s Junior Ice Hockey team was playing two games in Wake Forest this same weekend and we had arranged to feed the team before their Saturday game. My wife’s parents drove in from Kentucky to see Chris play and help with the team meal.

My MIL has been watching ANTM all season and cheering for Laura so my wife and I decided to make this a surprise that Laura was coming in. In retrospect perhaps I should have had them pick her up on the way!

The surprise would have to be delayed 12 hours as filming for the Tyra Banks show caused Laura to miss her fight. The next flight wouldn’t get her to RDU until 8:30am the next day instead of 9pm the night before.

We also caught a break. Tropical Storm turned noreaster Ida damaged the fleet of vans Chris’s team was planning to use to get to Wake Forest. So they had to bring a bus and the driver limits prevented the team meal from becoming a reality.

The night before the shoot, the stylists hinted they were nervous about the shoot. We had no idea what wardrobe was coming and they saw an opportunity with a celebrity model as too important and didn’t want to blow it. I was worried too because other than the vague outline of what to shoot, I had no idea what “looks” to do. I don’t get chances with models of Laura’s calibre very often either and I didn’t want to blow it. But I had faith in the styling team so I knew it would be okay.

I also invited Tom Winstead to come shoot with us. Tom and I shoot a lot together and he has always helped me out and this was a good way to repay him for everything.

With the team set, we now only had to dodge the two hockey games because I don’t get to see Chris play often and with the in-laws in town, they were not to be missed. We also wanted to have at least one meal with him.

Saturday, 8:30am

Laura arrives at RDU. A quick trip back to my house for breakfast and then off to the salon.

11:00am

We arrive in Durham and the stylists start looking over the wardrobe and talk with Laura about the ideas. We start setting up lights, backgrounds and such while the styling beings. Visitors arrive in the form of my wife and in-laws to watch the beauty shoot portion. By 2pm, they depart.

3:00pm

We start the first of two editorial shoots. In between, we keep the the styling, but add a little additional makeup and Laura becomes a marionette puppet. A quick studio session with that look, then we style for the 2nd editorial look. Then back inside for the final two fashion looks.

6:30pm

Leave for Wake Forest and the hockey game. Luckily my wife brought the computer to the rink, so I was able to download and get some photos up quickly from the WiFi at the rink.

11:30pm

Leave the game for home. We arrive a little after midnight and its back to editing for a bit and we probably get to sleep after 1am.

Sunday, 8:30am

Time to start day 2. The hockey game was in the middle of the day, so after a breakfast, it was time to drive to the game. I got a little more editing and posting done before we departed. Its a 45 minute drive from home to the rink.

12:30pm

The 2nd game commences with more photoshop work in between periods. The game ends and we head to the local mall food court with the team.

4:00pm

We leave Wake Forest for Durham to start the second day’s photography. Its a 45 minute trip to the Salon. The stylists planned to get as many looks in as they could before we had to call it a wrap. Several of them were complex and required considerable styling time. Before we had to quit at 11pm, we got in four complex high fashion looks.

11:30pm

Finally home, a quick edit to get some shots from Sunday up and then call it a night

Monday 6:30am

The alarm goes off. Time to get Laura to the airport to send her home.

Through out this whole process, we all were in pure awe of how talented Laura is. I’ve never had this many keepers from a shoot. All of her poses are strong. Her facial expressions are spot on. Clearly she took Tyra Banks’ advice about “Smizing” (smiling with your eyes).

Laura is also incredibly versatile. Each look was different. Even within the same look, one angle would be completely different than another. Jenn describe her hair as perfect. She was a wonderful canvas for her and Daniel’s ideas. Laura hit it off well with the stylists which I now realize may be some of the most chemistry needed at a set. When sitting in a chair for over an hour being poked, prodded, glued and tugged, having a good report with them is important.

Then the camera turns to her and and infinite number of poses appear beautifully before the camera. It was the most incredible shoot I’ve been part of. Enjoy the photos.

This season has a twist! This year, there will be voting for your Fan Favorite. The winner of the voting gets six months of rent paid at a luxury apartment in New York City to help pursue their modeling career.

Laura won!

After the voting was over, Laura ended up on top. Thanks to each and everyone of you who voted for her!

Okay I photograph a lot of models. But every once in a while things fall together and magic happens.

The model contacted me about a vampire shoot that I ended up not shooting, but we still wanted to shoot. We set a date and knew everything would be outdoors. I had to find a makeup artist to make her rock.

Earlier in the week I had no idea where I was going to shoot Lorena. I was to a point of starting to panic. But a chance posting on a flickr group asking for someone to help hold reflectors at another shoot provided me my inspiration. She was shooting at Yates Mill Pond. Yates Mill Pond! What a great spot to shoot. All the pieces were in place.

I had styling, a model, assistants, a great location. Now I needed one other piece to fall into place…. the weather. What a wonderful day Sunday, November 8th turned out to be in Raleigh. Post shoot I’ve flagged 25% of the photos as keepers. It was a wonderful session.

As we headed to shoot the last look, Tom, a photographer shooting with me spotted these misty light purple/periwinkle bush/flowers. Tom asked “How about there?” I said “Sure”. With the use of a scrim (a transluscent light reducer / diffuser) between the model and the sun I squeezed off this photo. Other than some minor tone adjustments, no Photoshop mischief was used in this photo. No textures. No tricks.

I’m a happy photographer!

Rob Miracle demonstrates how to use a scrim.

When you plan to have an workshop on outdoor portraits you hope Mother Nature cooperates.  Well it wasn’t to be in Asheville Saturday as heavy grey clouds and light showers filled the skies during the session.

With a backup plan in hand, the workshop started out indoors at the clubhouse of Biltmore Lakes.  With the Biltmore Lake as a picturesque backdrop and a last minute model to sit for the workshop, the students learned about the different types of lights used in portraits and how that worked with available light.

The session then went on to take about the quality of light and how the light size controls shadow hardness and then how to modify light using reflectors, scrims and flags.

The photographers took turns photographing the model while the other students used the modifiers to alter the lighting.  It was a good opportunity for the students to learn how to direct a model as well.

A break in the clouds allowed the class to move outdoors.  Once outdoors, demonstrations of scrims and flags commenced and the students spent more time.  Of course the mostly overcast skies produced near perfect outdoor portrait conditions.  Finally the class moved back indoors to cover using camera strobes to do creative lighting using shoot through umbrellas and multiple light setups.

“Rob is an excellent teacher. Everything was easily understood and he answered all our questions. The feedback he gave on what we were doing helped us realize, not only what we were not getting but how to correct it. ” said Lori Hancock, one of the students.

The students all left with new knowledge to help improve their photography.

This session will be repeated in Raleigh on Saturday, November 14th.  There are spots still available. Register now!

We have also added an additional session for the “Introduction to Digital Photography” on Saturday, November 7 at 2pm.  You can also register for that session as well.

I’ve lived in North Carolina for 10 years and I have yet to make a trip to the mountains in the fall. Visions of picturesque mountains vibrant with color and crystal blue skies danced in my mind as to what I would see.

Getting there, at least for me is hard. Its hockey season, which means my disposable income is trips for our boys hockey habits. Four hour trips with overnight stays and meals get expensive and finding a free weekend to go the other way for photography has historically not been practical. This year, I got an opportunity to go to the Mountains.

I planned this weekend a couple of months ago along with my friend, Lori, who lives there. The middle of October should be the peak of color. I had the weekend of October 10 free and so we decided that would be the weekend to go.

Mother Nature took a lesson from Murphy and his Laws.

The trees are late changing. Warm temperatures and a wetter year has pushed the peak color back two-to-three weeks. About 1/3 of the leaves above 4,000 feet were changed. Saturday was a complete wash with rain and fairly dark skies. We had planned on Saturday for other activities so that wasn’t so bad, but Sunday, our morning to drive the parkway was fairly well fogged in.

I had actually hoped for foggy conditions, but not mountains in the clouds. I thought that the crystal blue skies and loads of color with fog laying low in the valleys would have been cool. The plan was to drive up to several spots along the Blue Ridge Parkway, ending up at a location called Graveyard Fields where you can access a couple of waterfall’s with an easy hike.

But as we headed out around 9:30 we realized that conditions were not good. A light rain was falling and you could barely see the mountains. With hopes it would pass and burn off, we trudged on. We would drive for a while and see a clearing where some sun was peeking though and find a pull off. But as we grabbed the cameras, the fog and clouds would move in and close off the shooting opportunity. This happened several times.

The original plan was to have a model with us to pose in the landscapes. But given the cold, wet conditions it was best that we didn’t have a model.

We passed a group of four photographers, cameras mounted to their tripods and aimed into the fog, patiently waiting for the fog to clear. Ironically as we returned, they were still there, still pointing at the fog. That’s dedication! At times visibility was less than 50′.

We eventually got to Graveyard Fields and caught a few moments before the fog rolled in. Since we were not going to get any sun, we headed down to the stream that feeds the Lower Falls. We stopped to photograph a nice spider web dripping in water droplets. As we reached the creek, there was a fairly nice scenic with the fog filling the gap between trees as the running brook ran with water. This was a good opportunity to try out slow shutter speeds to blur the water.

Not having a polarizer or a neutral density filter and only being able to get to ISO 100 meant cranking the F-Stop up to F32 or higher, to try and get a 1 second or half second exposure. The problem with that is two fold. Most lenses stink above F11 with regards to sharpness. With that tiny of an aperture, every spot of dust on my sensor stood out. Boy is my sensor icky.

We headed down to the lower falls. Getting down is easy. We shot around there for a bit and decided to head back as I had to return to Raleigh. As we drove back, the sun was finally staring to peek through and we stopped to get more traditional landscapes.

While I didn’t get those post-card photos, I think I prefer the bad conditions as they provided a much more moody landscape to photograph.

Overall I think were happy with the results.

What do you think? Leave a comment below!

You have that new camera you just picked up and you’ve tried to read the manual and it kinda makes sense, but you want to go learn and shoot some stuff. Yet you spend another night with the manual taking pictures of your furniture… There could be a good way to solve that problem.

Photo meetups!

In many communities, photographers get together and go shoot stuff. It could be anything from shooting sunsets to shooting urban decay to events like a small town rodeo. At meetups you get to meet other photographers who’s experience runs from someone who just got their first camera to seasons professionals — all sharing a common love of photography.

There are three main ways you can find meetups. Flickr, Meetup.com and your local computer club.

Flickr

Many photographer’s have found each other through Flickr. Flickr is a photo sharing service that has put a lot of effort into the social aspect of photography. Flickr has good tools for meeting other photographers. You can easily search for photographers, mark them as contacts and friends, email them, comment on their photos, mark your favorites and so on. Flickr also has “Groups” which let people come together on various interests. If you are into photographing urban grunge, there is a group for that. For meetups though, you need to find groups based on your location.

Searching for your city or region will give you a list of groups in your area. You can look at the information for the number of photographers and last activity. Find the one with the most photographers and recent activity and join them. If those groups are not currently having meetup’s free free to make a post inviting people to come to a meetup.

If you’re lucky you will find a raging active community with multiple meetup chances. Here in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina we have three groups that manage active meetups:

• Raleigh Flickr Group
• Raleigh Social Group
• Triangle Strobists

The Raleigh Flickr Group and Raleigh Social group are tightly coupled. RFG holds a standing 1st Tuesday meeting every month. The topics vary, but frequently they are shooting based and generally involve meeting for drinks and dinner then shooting afterwards. RSG fills in with ad-hoc meetups that are scheduled when people feel like it and can vary from just getting together to random shoots. In addition to shooting and social meetups, these groups also get together to talk about post processing with programs like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom.

Triangle Strobists is a bit more focused on using camera strobes for more creative lighting. Almost all of their meetups are shooting meetups where the photographers get together and share knowledge and equipment. They meet on the 3rd Tuesday every month. The photographers of Triangle Strobist are a sub-set of the overall Raleigh/Raleigh Social Group groups, so in effect we have two standing meetups and a lot of ad-hoc ones.

In all cases, the groups are open. There are no dues like clubs, you come when you can and no one judges you based on your skills. If you show up with a point and shoot or a pro grade camera you will be equally accepted. You will find this kind of openness among the Flickr meetup communities across the world.

Meetup.com

Meetup.com is a website for meetups, not just photography, but for any thing. But photography people make good use of it. You put in your topic you are interested in and your zip code and the website will present you with a list of meetup groups along with the number of photographers and you can find out how often they meet and what previous topics are.

Searching for a Raleigh zip code and photographers, 11 groups were presented. Some of the more popular ones include:

• Raleigh Outdoor Photography Club
• The Raleigh-Durham-Chapel hill Photography Meetup Group
• The Raleigh Urban Exploration Meetup Group

Local Camera Clubs

You can use Google or check with your local camera stores to find information about any local camera clubs. Many cities have them and some will be more active than others.

These various groups are great ways to meet new people with common interests and learn more about photography.

Are there any resources that you have found that helps you? Leave a comment below.

There was an interesting comment left asking why portrait print prices were so high. In this case, the photo buyer, thinks that photography is priced too high and is curious as to why prices are like they are. Understanding pricing isn’t only important for the photographer, but the buyer as well, so we will introduce the unexpected “Part II” of this post. Thanks to Julie for the idea!

Portrait pricing and editorial/commercial pricing are completely different beasts when it comes to pricing. Generally the portrait portrait photographer’s expense base is higher, but they charge less per person. This seems odd, but they do more “sittings” than editorial/commercial photographers will do. I take that back. A photographer shooting newspaper assignments will typically shoot the most, but they get paid the least per assignment.

For the moment, lets focus on the portrait photographer (this includes, weddings, bridals, seniors, babies, etc.).

Most of these photographers use a pricing model of a Sitting Fee and then Print costs. Sitting fees can range anywhere from $50 to $500 depending on the photographer. Print costs however are pretty consistent between photographers. There will be some variance. An 8×10 will typically run between $20 and $30 for most shops with a very common price being $25 for an 8×10 sheet.

Most of you know you can go to Walmart and have an 8×10 printed for $2. Why should you have to play 10 to 15 times as much?

This is going to be like a magician telling the secrets to his tricks. Many pro-photographers have long hidden their costs so they don’t have to explain these crazy markups. In particular after having plunked down $200 for a sitting fee, $25 for an 8×10 seems like highway robbery. I like to describe this as the “Three Tee’s – Time, Talent and Taxes”.

In reality, a portrait photographer appears to be making money hand over fist, but they are not. There is a large “Cost of Doing Business (COB)” involved. First, they have a studio in most cases. The rent alone will run $1000 or more a month. Add in utilities, insurance, loan payments on expensive equipment ($2000 per lens, $3000 per camera body, $2000-$3000 in lighting), any employees, and other expenses have to be paid for if you are shooting or not. Once a photographer knows his COB, then she can figure out how many sittings (or weddings) per month they will have and hopefully the sitting fee offsets these costs. Even photographers who shoot on location have similar expenses to be maintained.

It also takes time beyond the 2 hours you got for the $200 to manage your sitting. A photographer cannot shoot 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, so the $200 for the sitting has to cover a lot of time not shooting. There is the time involved in booking your session, working on advertising and such just to get you as a client. Once booked, there is the photography time. After that, there is the post production time, which can be considerable, the post-session meeting to proof the photos, the time to photoshop the final products, get them to the lab, get them back to you and then spend time with the accounting. For a typical 8 hour wedding, the photographer will spend 50 hours of time.

The combination of the sitting fees plus print sales less COB is the amount of money the photographer has left to pay his salary. Considering that the photographer cannot shoot all the time that $200 has to go along way. But to keep this simple, lets assume the sitting fees offset the COB and the photographer’s take home pay comes from the print sales.

Lets break down that $25 for the 8×10. No self-respecting pro photographer is going to sell you prints from Walmart (okay I’ve done it in a pinch when I hit a deadline and the pro-lab messed something up and I have to get it reprinted in a hurry). Their lab price for an 8×10 will be between $4 and $8 per 8×10 sheet (2 5×7′s, 8 wallets, etc.). The pro-lab may have to ship the prints which will most likely go priority. So if you only order one 8×10, thats going to add another $5 to the cost. That $25 8×10 now has a physical cost of $9-$13. If the photographer has to ship the print to you, that adds another $5 (up to $14-$18).

At this point the photographer has $10 that he can put in the bank towards his salary.

Guess what. The Tax-man says “Not so fast”. A small business organized as a sole-proprietorship (which many photographers do) have to pay out 50% in taxes. Thats right, half. There is the Federal Income Tax, State Income Tax and this “small business tax” which goes to cover Social Security and Medicare that you normally have deducted from your pay check. The rates for a small business owner are much higher than for an employee.

Out of that $25 you are being charged, the photographer gets to pocket about $5 to pay his living expenses.

Talent. Why did you hire a professional photographer to shoot your portraits? A photographer needs to be paid for his skills and vision.

Time. You can see above, that its not just 2 hours that your $200 sitting fee is going for. If it takes 8 hours per 2 hour sitting, $200 means the photographer is making $25 an hour and with the expenses involved that may end up being closer to minimum wage. The photographer has to build his time into the equation.

Taxes suck.

Oh and you are the only one the photographer will be able to sell these photos to…

If you are trying to make a living, you can’t sell 8×10′s for $5. Because of this, you will find fewer and fewer people using photography as their primary income and more and more people doing it part time or as a secondary income.

Time, talent and sadly taxes.

You think great! Someone wants to buy my photo and it would be cool to say I’ve been published on a book cover and you ship the photo off and get you’re $100.

The problem is the fair market value of this transactions among commercial photographers is $3000 or more. You just gave away your photo for 1/30th of its value to a business that is going to use it to sell their book and market it. When a photo buyer asked for “exclusive” rights, they are buying out your copyright. It is no longer your photo. When the book shows up on Amazon.com your photo will be there. To you, the $100 may seem like a lot but its not. Lets say this book will sell for $30 a copy and they company may sell 50,000 of them. Thats $1.5 Million in sales that your $100 promoted for them … and … you can never use that image again ever. You have to take it down from your flickr site, and any other place where you’ve published it.

Well guess what. The photo buyer had the budget to pay you the full $3000. But they know that there are plenty of non-commercial photographers out there who take excellent photos (and there are many of you, who are hobbyists who are better than paid professionals) that they can get for cheap because you’re not experienced with the photo market.

Why do I bring this up? This happened to me this week. I got offered $100 for a cover of a book and was asked to give up exclusive rights. When I countered with a fair market pricing, they balked and I lost the sale. I certainly could have used $100 in my bank account. My wife isn’t happy with me because I held the line on the pricing. I even priced my buyout pricing for considerably less than $3000 because I wanted to close the deal. I offered them a limited exclusive and a non-exclusive offer that was still priced below fair market value and I lost.

Why? Because the buyer will find someone with as good of a photo who lacks experience in photo pricing and they will get it for $100.

Here are some definiations to help you understand the photo marketplace

Stock Photography

You (or your agency) take photos of things you think might sale, then offere them up. You sell them for less money because you plan to sell the same image multiple times.

Assignment Photography

You take assignments to shoot photos of a subject requested by the buyer. Pricing will vary based on usage. Newspapers may pay $50 an assignment, where a major magazine or ad agency might pay several thousand dollars depending on the usage.

Exclusive Rights

You sell all rights to your photo to someone else. This is call called a buy-out and generally is worth between $2000 and $3000 or more dependind on your clout

Commercial

Commercial photography is simply advertising. Photos sold for add uses generally sell for 4-5 times that of editorial usage.

Editorial

The photo will be used in context with information. Photos that run with news stories in a newspaper or magazine are editorial. Photos that run in an add in the newspaper are commercial. Books are generally considered editorial, however, cover art will be used to advertise the book, so book sales have some commerical aspects.

For what its worth and to help those, this was considered a “Stock” sale. They were asking to buy a photo that I already had shot. There are a lot of low-ball stock agencies out there where hey could pay between $100 and $500 to get a cover photo (btw: The fair market value for a stock photo used for a book cover is around $600 to $1200 for non-exclusive rights), but no stock agency will sell their copyright since they make their money by selling the same image multiple times.

The photo buyer was good, he brought up “paying stock agencies $100″ to get you thinking that $100 to you was a good value even though no stock agency would agree to their terms.

“Well you should have just sold it and taken the $100. Are you likely to sell that photo again?” you might be asking.

That’s a good question and one that was running through my mind. But there are two issues: First, it doesn’t try to hurt to get the buyer, who has a deeper budget to come up with a more fair price. You haggle. Secondly and more importantly, it was an attempt to defend the declining commercial photography market. Commercial and editorial photographers who are trying to make photography a full time job cannot compete when buyers knowingly take advantage of photographers that don’t normally sell their works.

I’m trapped in between. I’m no longer trying to earn a living through photography and I could use the money but I feel a moral obligation to hold the line.

If you are intersted in learning more about pricing your photos, check out:

• Pricing Stock Photography
• Editorial Pricing Estimator

What should I do? What would you have done? Leave a comment below and leave me your thoughts?