My reaction to this has always been to cringe, my mind racing to the gear I don’t have, the poor light or a million other excuses. This is all part of why people need a professional photographer to take their images for them and why we always get better results.

This precise scenario arose recently with a friend wanting some images of the great food produced by their kitchens to promote their restaurant. Food photography is well known as quite a difficult area of photography to get right.

The gear I had was just my SLR and flash gun.  Not the ideal setup and with the images to be shot in the kitchens themselves, during a busy food service just before the food went out to the diners, the pressure was going to be on!

Overall I was really pleased with the images I produced, especially as I had no time for prep and considering that in a normal commercial arrangement I would have insisted on completely different conditions for the shoot.

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• Plate to Pixel: Digital Food Photography and Styling (texaskitchen.wordpress.com)
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• Food Photography (photographyfraud.wordpress.com)
• Why is food photography so expensive? (foodservicewarehouse.com)

I thought that in this post I could share my workflow from loading the images from my camera to my computer and all the way through to the upload to Alamy. This includes the process to edit the images so that they are ready for Alamy’s stringent quality control.

Most of my photographs are shot with my Canon 5d Mk2 shooting using its RAW format. To process the images I use my MacBook Pro with Aperture 3 and to do the final edit the images Photoshop CS3.

First of all I need to get the images from the camera to my computer, at the same time I add my IPTC Metadata and keywords. To do this I connect the camera via USB cable to my Mac and open Aperture. When Aperture loads I select the import option on the top left of the application. This opens up the import interface and I can select all the photos I wish to import.  When the images are selected I can then use the import settings menu on the right hand side. I have set up my Aperture so that all my Australia Images have their own library and each shoot has its own project. This import will go in as a new project. I enter all the information including the caption and keywords, which will correspond with Alamy’s caption and keywords.  Having pressed the import button it is generally time to hit the button on the kettle and make a brew whilst Aperture imports and processes all its thumbs and the metadata.

The next stage whittles down the images until I have the images ready to export. To do this I use Aperture’s star rating.  My first sweep through the images is the first star sweep. All images that I want to keep get one star. On my first sweep I am only looking at getting rid of only obvious no goers, ie. out of focus, poor exposures or accidental exposures. (of course I never normally have any of these!) The second sweep through the images I do in full screen mode and I only two star the images I definitely want to send to Alamy.

Third star sweep leaves only the images I want to send to client, or in this case Alamy.

The third sweep through is for editing.  All the two star images are checked so the exposures are aesthetically correct, cropped and the white balance is spot on.  At this stage it is also a good idea to have another look at your keywords and add any others you wish to add to individual images. I then export the images as Jpegs at original size to a folder on my desktop. Its now time to do an in-depth edit with Photoshop.

Exporting from Aperture, Jpeg original size, Don't forget to add a custom file name, I always add the master file name also for future reference.

When the files have opened in Photoshop the first thing I do is check the levels. When the levels box opens I use the histogram and pull in the edges so that the sliders are in to where the histogram shows data. If there is a significant change to the image I then use curves to make it aesthetically correct.  The next thing I sort is the image size.

Finder always shows a compressed image size. Make sure you check the true file size in photoshop.

In finder some of my cropped images show up as 16mb on disk which is below Alamy’s 17MB minimum for upscaling but this is a compressed size.  To get the true size go to image size in photoshop and it will tell you the true image size. Alamy’s minimum file size is 24MB but you can upscale a 17MB file up to 24MB. Normally my camera punches in at around 60MB with an image size of 5700×4000.  Alamy thinks that the bigger the better and are happy to accept files as big as your camera can make and if I were sending in the images on DVD I would probably send in the images at full res but as I upload my images I reduce the image size to 4000×2667 which gives me a file size of 30.5MB which uploads a lot quicker!

Change the image size in photoshop to make you image just above Alamy's 24mb minimum file size.

All is not complete though and the next stage is crucial – you have to inspect your image now closely for any imperfections.  Zoom all the way in to 100% and scroll across the entire image carefully looking for any imperfections. Some people find it easier to increase the contrast in the image for this step to make the imperfections show up clearer but I rarely do so.  Imperfections normally come from dust on the lens or sensor or alternatively from digital noise, I then check that the colour profile is still set to RGB colour save and close the file. I then get online and upload the file to Alamy.

ALWAYS zoom in to 100% and check you image for any imperfections which may occur anywhere on your image

To see my Australian Stock Images on Alamy visit my Alamy Homepage.

Breaking a long silence on my blog with a series of images I took last week. These bicycles I found up on the range above Mclaren Vale in South Australia. Beautiful.

Running on a Thursday and Sunday evening the Mindil Sunset Market is a visitation highlight of Darwin. We decided to drop in on the midweek Thursday market and it was a great evening out. Make sure you take an empty stomach as I have never seen so many food vans in the same place before! From Tai food to kangaroo skewers and everything in between all the food looked amasing and you have plenty of time to make your choice and walk over the dunes to the beach to watch the sunset while you dine.

After the sun had set for the evening we went down into the market and looked at all the local wares that were on offer. The quality of the crafts were high and all the stalls were fantastic, there were tarot card readers and other entertainments as-well. A big thanks to Mick from Micks Whips who helped me achieve #164 on my bucket list “Learn to crack a bull whip” he put on a great display of skill promoting his stall with bull whip tricks.

As the evening got later live music from lots of artists kept the market in full swing and the atmosphere fantastic.

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Click image to visit Craft & Vision Website

Being new to the Ebook format I decided it was about time that I had a look to see what books were out there to spend my hard earned money on. Conveniently this conscientious thought co-insided with an article about a new book released by Alexandre Buisse called Extreme Perspectives, from online blog PictureCorrect. It seemed too good an opportunity to miss with my interests in outdoor, extreme sports and photography combined this could be a good way to start my ebook library!

It has to be said that I thoroughly enjoyed this Ebook which is largely made up of an informative self critique by Buisse of some of his favourite and most successful images, which guides you through the dos and don’ts of mountaineering photography.  As Buisse says himself, he believes that his learning in climbing and mountaineering photography can be applied to any outdoor extreme sports and I would have to agree. You don’t have to enjoy the great outdoors to appreciate the outstanding stories depicted by his photographs and the use of fine technique. Within the book Buisse explains his gear choices and includes some photographic philosophies he tries to uphold whilst shooting and with his post production.

Craft & Vision who published this Ebook has a mission statement on their website to: create the best value in photographic education through ridiculously low-priced eBooks.  Their website also carries titles from photographers like Dave Delnea and Andrew S. Gibson as-well as  David duChemin, the best-selling author of Within The Frame.

Extreme Perspectives – Alexandre Buisse is available from the Craft & Vision website for immediate download for just $5.  In my opinion it is a fantastic ebook which I thoroughly enjoyed reading and no doubt I shall be referring back to the Craft and Vision website to extend my ebook library.

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• Extreme Perspectives: an eBook to keep your DSLR (pixiq.com)

To get a sense of just how bad things are for professional photographers right now, the story of Robert Lam is instructive. When Time needed a photo to illustrate its “New Frugality” cover story in late 2009, it purchased Lam’s image of a jar of change from stock-photo agency iStockphoto. The going rate for a Time cover had typically been $3,000 to $10,000. Lam was paid $31.50. Nevertheless, Lam declared, “I am happy”—the payment was more than he’d expected the photo to generate, and he was delighted to have a Time cover in his portfolio. Veteran professional photographers were livid, calling Lam an “IDIOT,” among other unkind words.

Lam told me by phone that he’s only a part-time photographer—he makes most of his income through a furniture store he owns. Last year, he earned $4,000 from stock photography. Since it’s his passion and hobby, not his job, that sum is fine by him. Most of what Lam has learned about lighting has come from reading online, on Strobist and similar blogs. Typical of the DIY approach of this set, Lam’s Time cover was shot using materials Lam found at a local sign store.

My reply is this:  Good for Robert Lam!

The truth of the matter is that the majority of professional photographers would laugh at the thought of setting up their studio to take photos of regular objects. Many do not have the time to carry out a shoot that may or may not create revenue for them.

I have spent time shooting random objects like this at a time when I was struggling as a young, fast-learning freelancer.  It is incredibly time consuming.  If “semi pro” and “amateur” photographers like Lam can create and make a revenue from such images good on them, not many pros have the time to put images like this into their libraries.

Much of the doom and gloom on this issue in trade journals and on blogs is incredibly daunting for young photography students and people wanting to be photographers. Some of the comments left on related articles online are to this effect.

For new professionals and students it would be good to concentrate some of your studies towards understanding royalty-free and rights managed photographs as-well as the usual curriculum.

I will always be an advocate of every photographer having stock images available. Some of the photos I have put up in stock libraries are similar to that of Robert Lam’s.  It takes time to shoot stock and have a library of images but even if you have only take 5 photographs there is no reason why you cannot make them available for sale today.  The initial setting up and editing of photographs to meet submission guidelines is time consuming as is meta-tagging and key-wording but when they are there, they are available indefinitely.

Related articles

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Jumping Crocodiles! Well that was something we had to see! We were having a few days in Kakadu National Park which has been hit with one of the worst wet seasons for a while with plenty of flooding and plenty of roads in disrepair.

It has to be said this is par for the course during the wet season up here but this year the prolonged nature of it has delayed the arrival of the dry season here when all the tourists flock to the Darwin area.  Despite the fact much of the park was closed we thoroughly enjoyed our time in Kakadu National Park with the crocodiles, snakes, ants and millions of mosquitoes!

One of the places that was very much open was the Jumping Crocs boat cruises and after paying our $35 per adult we all jumped on the two story boat that would take us up the Adelaide River. With only a few people aboard our 3pm boat we were able to roam round the boat to see these magnificent creatures. With an informative and interesting patterthe captain steered us down the river introducing us to the crocs whilst his crew hung the meat off the side tempting the crocs to jump.

We didn’t have long to wait and I shall let the pictures show you how cool it was, absolutely top notch! An added bonus was the Kites on the way back who were lured in by the crew before they opened the bar and we had a cold cider on the rest of the journeyback. A fantastic tour.

Related articles

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A couple of photographs that I missed off my Uluru article were these two.  They were both taken in the morning and I think the one of the clouds over Uluru, Ayers Rock may be one of my favourites due to its individuality.

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