LINK: Content Creation and Stock Photography.

Anyone that has blogged for any length of time has come across this problem. You have a story idea but no image to go with it. Sometimes we run into this problem as photographers as well. 9 out of 10 times we will have just the image we need, but occasionally no matter how hard we search our hard drives, that perfect photo eludes us.

When this happens its nice to have access to some free stock photography to use in your designs. Check out this article from The Design Blog on using morguefile.com for stock photography and content creation.

Full article here.

Needed a quick image to create a graphic for a Spanish language blog. Using morguefile.com you can find some great images to use in a pinch.

Pimp Daddy Caddy

The Grand Daddy, Pimp Daddy, Caddy !

Image shot at vintage car show in Western New York.

Can A Monkey Have Copyright ?

I thought this was an interesting take on copyright and a legal battle against wiki commons over this image.

Cute little guy snapped a selfy and now there's a fight over who owns copyright.

Since I started my amateur photography hobby, I've become fascinated by copyright law. So many things I never thought about before, effect copyright. Whether you're an amateur or professional, so many factors have to be considered when profiting from a photo. For instance I never knew you needed property rights when photographing a building or property for that matter.

Then you have all the privacy issues involved in street photography, when you just randomly photograph a person on the street.  Anyway, I thought this was a cute story, and worthy of a post link here. I'm really curious to see which way the court leans. Frankly, I don't think wiki commons has a leg to stand on , but who knows.


Italic text taken from telegraph article.

Wikimedia, the US-based organisation behind Wikipedia, has refused a photographer’s repeated requests to remove one of his images which is used online without his permission, claiming that because a monkey pressed the shutter button it should own the copyright.

Full story here. 

Who do you think owns the copyright ? 

Getting A Perspective On Things.

Yesterday , I quickly snapped a bunch of pictures. I needed some photos for  the Spanish learning blog. It was rather boring subject matter, and I just snapped away without adding much thought to the photos. A quick snap of a lawn mower, a wheelbarrow, I snapped a couple images of food on a grill, and didn't think twice about anything I was doing.

The photographs were taken with my phone, with very little thought to each image. The end result really showed the lack of care that went into each photo. The lighting was awful, the perspective terrible, and the overall result showed a photographer who could care less about the subject matter that was being shot.

An image I shot for a Spanish blog. Terrible subject perspective, and by simply adjusting the angle of the shot the image would have been improved tremendously.

The lawn mower shot is probably the best example of this. The image almost looks warped by the angle it was shot at. If I hadn't been so lazy and simply squatted down  for 5 seconds to get a better angle or shot perspective the image would of came out so much better. In most cases your perspective should be eye level with your subject matter. The end result should be as if you were looking straight at the object. This isn't the case with every shot, and varies with subject matter, however, a good rule of thumb is shoot at eye level for basic shots.

Another good rule of thumb would be to take multiple shots from different angles. By doing this you will always get the best angle or perspective of the subject matter that you are trying to shoot. In this case I just snapped one quick simple shot and moved on to the next item. HUGE MISTAKE!

The day was cloudy, and the lighting was not very good either. If I would have just taken a moment to adjust the brightness level on the phone, this would of certainly improved the light quality of the image and made for a much better end result. The lighting is so terrible, I couldn't even improve it in my image editing program.

The end result is of course what you see above. A bland image of a lawn mower, with poor lighting and terrible perspective. I learned from this experience, and although I went ahead and used the photographs, I know the next time I shoot some images like this I'll put a little more tlc into it.  With just a few seconds of added effort to each shot I took, the end result would of been dramatically improved.

I made these three rules to follow from here on out.

1. Always take multiple shots of a subject.
2. Take each shot from a different angle.
3. Adjust the brightness on the camera and use different setting for different angles. 

I feel that by following these 3 simple rules, even the most boring subject matter will have a much improved and a better quality end result. 

Although product photography is much different than shooting an object outdoors, you can see the difference in perspective and creativity. This image was taken for a friends blog using my phone camera, using outdoor light,  and the background is a paper bag with a pattern printed on it. Although this isn't great product photography, it does show what a little thought and creativity can do for otherwise boring subject matter.

August Update.

I've had a lot going on, and I think I'm going to be adding a bunch of stuff here shortly. Long story short, I've been taking a lot of pictures. Some good, some not so good, but I have been taking pictures, and of course learning.

As I stated in an earlier post, I've been putting some of my photos to use, on various websites and blogs. This has really helped me get motivated to snap more pictures.  One of the blogs is a Spanish blog, and for the Spanish blog I need to take pictures of literally everything from food, to buses, to houses and furniture. If there's a word for it, I need to take a picture of it.

Now that I've been snapping more shots with both my phone and my Nikon it's making me get a bit more creative with the types of images I'm taking, the perspective of the shot, and trying to create something a little more exciting out of somewhat boring subject matter.

This month I think I'm going to be getting back to adding some tutorials, and I'll definitely be posting some of the photographs I've been taking.