**Warning - this site downloading images for free**

Yet another site allowing downloading of copyrighted images for free. I have sent them an official complaint and also on their Twitter page. I know its "finger in the dyke" stuff but its time we made a stand against this. It's an Indonesian site so I don't expect any sort of response but there you go.

Just had my 10 millionth view on my website

I never saw it click over but I have just had my 10,001,226 hit on my website. Time for a champers or three.

Second place in Digital Camera Warehouse/Canon EOS photo comp

Just won second place in the Digital Camera Warehouse/Canon EOS "Low light, black and white" competition and just looking at how to spend the $2,500 prize money to be spent at DCW. Probably will sell my 70-200 f/4 L and replace it with the Canon 70-200 f/2.8 L IS II. The image is Akubra Man in the right hand column of this blog.

Theft of images and how to find them

There is now an excellent way to find out how many of my images are being used illegally and without permission from me. It's called Google Image Search. While there may be issues with the TOS of this site, it is still worth a try. I have downloaded the Chrome extension (Firefox extension also works) so I can right click my images on my website and hey presto, up comes the image and the location/website of same. Always check "All sizes" of the particular image because sometimes they show there and not in the Google pages. I have found many on Facebook without attribution or permission, hundreds on blogs which I don't really have a problem with but I have found a lot on commercial websites around the world. I have over 4,000 images on my PBase site so it will take a fair amount of time to find them all. The most ironic to date was to find one of my images of a silhouette of a bicycle being published on a UK police website about stolen bicycles. I pointed out to them the irony of finding an image on their site which was actually stolen from my website and that images should have the same protection as cyclists! I also noticed that a brochure on this website also had the same image on the front cover so it would appear that it was infringed on a hard copy publication rather than website use. It will be an interesting read when I get a response. I have also found one of my images of the Sydney Opera House on the blog of a UK television personality (who was once a resident of Sydney) but have yet to received a response from him. Another found on a religious surfer website and I pointed out that I thought one of their commandments was Thou Shalt Not Steal and received an immediate apology. Yet another on an Australian television station website which has a "foot in the door" approach to shonky tradesmen and who has since apologised for publishing an image of mine illegally on one of their webpages. And so the list goes on. I did get a positive response from one dentist in Hollywood who offered to pay (and did with 24 hours) for two years use for one image of mine and hopefully will renew the license when it expires. A pic of mine of the Richmond bridge in Richmond, Tasmania seems extremely popular with travel agents specialising in Tassie who seem to have group memory loss as to where they may have purchased the image as it was not from Tourism Tasmania (as a couple of them stated) as I have checked with them and they are horrified that their name is being used as a source. A real estate company in Sydney was most indignant that I sent him a "ridiculous" (according to him) bill for $120.00 for use of one of my images of the Rocks and offered me 10%. Sigh. It does not seem to dawn on those who nick images that it is theft, pure and simple.

Fun with fisheye lens

Just bought a Canon 15mm f/2.8 fisheye lens and I am having a lot of fun. The lens is fairly sharp but it does suffer from CA which most of the time can be fixed in Photoshop but I do avoid shooting anything with backlight. Images above were taken in Sydney's historic Queen Victoria Building.

Yet another stoush between Getty and its photographers!

There is outright revolt by Flickr/Getty professional photographers who are appalled by Getty's "take it or leave it" contract wherein RF images will be transferred to the microstock Thinkstock (yet another Getty acquisition) without any input by the photographers. (Click on headline link) There have been such vague answers by Getty personnel that images may or, there again, may not, be transferred to MS. Another aspect of the new contract advises that if an RM image has not sold for three years, it will be changed to RF and again will end up in Thinkstock. While I only have 26 images on Getty, I have done fairly well over the past 18 months but I certainly will not sign any new contract and will just wait until my contract expires in December 2011 and that will be the end of it.

**A photographer's paradise*

We have just returned to Oz after spending six days at Kaikoura, South Island, New Zealand visiting friends who returned to New Zealand after living in Australia for 30 years. They had bought an old cheese factory last August and have converted it into an upmarket bed and breakfast cum beach/guest house. It is not your normal B&B and caters to those who would like to get away for a week or weekend and spend it in luxury surroundings. The three bedroom accommodation is fully furnished and self contained, and has top of the range furniture and kitchen facilities. For those interested, here is the link Hapuku guest house accommodation End of ad!!!

The weather was fine for the first three days which was great and we took a whale watching cruise out of Kaikoura and saw a couple of sperm whales and a large pod of very frisky dusky dolphins. We spent a lot of time eating and drinking (not to excess I hasten to add) but most NZ wine is very drinkable (apart from Sauvignon Blanc which I just cannot drink) and enjoyed the hospitality of New Zealanders who are always happy to chat to tourists like us. Then the legendary South Island weather set in and the temperature dropped to 8 degrees and it rained...and rained. But, we did have a good time and bad weather can make some quite good snaps. Here is link to my gallery of images New Zealand 2011

Expected to live on air!

Increasingly, it would appear, that buyers of images seem to think that professional photographers can live on air. A week or so ago, I was contacted by someone who was setting up a slide show on a plasma screen in a restaurant in the UK with an Australian theme. I don't know if the restaurant is actually owned by Aussies or this is just a one off thing. They asked if they could use several of my images but and now I quote from the email "We are on a v limited budget and don't have lots of money to play with sadly. Not sure how you will feel about this request but images are so great and we'd love to showcase them. Would it possible to get even a few as donations as a one off?

Look fwd to hearing from you,

I quoted a very reasonble fee per image and suggested if they bought four, I would "donate" the fifth. Never heard from them again.

And about a year ago, I was approached by our national television broadcaster asking me permission to use some of my images for a staff development website. I always know when I see the term "permission to use" really means a freebie! I quoted a very reasonable fee and I received a short "we don't have a budget for photography". I suggested to this young woman that the ABC has a budget for her salary, her producer's salary and the web developers fees but strangely they don't have a budget for the photographer. Of course, I received no response.

Sigh. I am always at a loss to fathom why folk expect photographers to constantly donate their work. They appear to think that we are not a profession at all and we just wander around the streets and countryside snapping away in the hope that someone will send us an email asking us to donate our work. Oh joy! Never mind the enormous expense of professional digital cameras and good glass plus the ever ending updating of Photoshop and computer gear. And when on the rare occasion they do expect to pay, the fees they offer are ludicrous. A couple of days ago, an Indian publisher (part of a large UK publisher) approached me via one of my sites asking my fee for an image to be placed on a front cover of a new title. He said that their fee for front covers was 3,000 rupees which I thought was a nice sum until I checked a currency converter to find it was $65.00! I told him to get back to me with a more realistic offer but he said that was what they paid. By the way, the average fee for such use using a couple of stock library calculators is around $600. Now I know that was a reasonable fee back in the good old days before microstocks but to be offered 10% is a joke. Conversely, I get surprised when one does work out. A Rumanian casino contacted me, asked for a fee for use on a small poster in one of their shopping centres. The image was model released, I quoted a fee, they didn't quibble and I got paid within 24 hours. No worries. I'll definitely send him a Christmas card. As will I to a German medical company who paid for their image within two hours of my quote.

Sorry about the rant. It's Monday morning here and we are back to standard eastern time and our beloved cat Dougal's body clock is still an hour ahead and he demands to be fed his breakfast even though its pitch black outside.

Follow up on Brick Lane Gallery

Spectacularly unsuccessful as far as sales of mounted prints are concerned but hopefully someone will have noticed my work. Back to the drawing board!

Slideshow of some of my work

Brick Lane Gallery, London

A week or so ago, I was invited to exhibit some of my work at the Brick Lane Gallery, London and after much deliberation (as I vowed never to hold an exhibition again!), I took the plunge and have booked space at the gallery for an exhibition which starts on 16 March and ends on 28 March 2010. I will arrange with RedBubble to print mounted work and to deliver them to the gallery. The Gallery will do all the promotional work including creating catalogues, contacting press, etc etc - all the stuff which makes exhibiting a nightmare! All I have to do is decide on which images to hang which is no mean feat I can assure you. It will probably be a mixture of candid street images and commercial (and hopefully purchaseable!) prints so at least I can claw back some of my expenditure. One certainly does not hold an exhibition to make money and all I want to do really is to obtain some recognition of my work outside Australia (although "inside" Oz would be good too!).

I will update this post when I have decided which images to have mounted.

**Photodeck affiliation with Photographers Direct*

Today, I received an email from Chris Barton of Photographers Direct with the news of their affiliation with Photodeck Click on header link above for info.

I have been a member of Photographers Direct ("PD") for a long time and over the years, have been fairly successful in selling stock images via PD. Of course, the plethora of "freebie" and cheap image sales from microstock sites have affected all stock photographers and while I do not consider myself a "stock" photographer per se, my income has plummeted somewhat alongside many other pro togs! The news that Photographers Direct has now affiliated itself with Photodeck comes as good news as it does broaden the client base of both PD and Photodeck photographers considerably. I guess time will tell if it works out for us all. Please feel free to comment on the affiliation and how you think it will pan out.

My Photodeck website

A spider's tale

I sit on our deck in my pod chair after dinner on a balmy Sydney summer's evening and watch an industrious garden spider start to weave her web. It's not a dangerous spider - just a common or garden spider. Having lived in Australia for over 35 years, one tends to know dangerous spiders and this is not one of them. She starts on the support lines - one from the Indian carpet (bought in the Dali Llama shop in Dharmsala many years ago)near my feet and up and away she shoots across towards the passion fruit vine about three metres away. She then links up all the support lines by weaving between them in ever decreasing circles. I am amazed at her level of industriousness. Of course, this web will have been destroyed at sunrise when several rainbow lorikeets use our deck as a flight path towards the bird feeder.

**Collages

There comes a time when "ordinary" presentation of photography becomes a tad less challenging. So I am now looking at ways to present my work a little differently with some help from Photoshop. Recently I found an old copy of Better Photoshop Techniques issue 2, 2005 (published in Australia by Better Digital Magazine Pty Ltd) and found an interesting article on montage joining (better known as collages). As I have no idea how to paste screen shots, you might have to bear with me so I will keep the instructions on how to collage photographs as simply as possible.

Bring an image into Photoshop (I use CS5)and using the Rectangular Marquee from the tool pallette, make a selection on the background, holding down the Shift key. For some reason, the first selection is square but after that, the selection can be rectangle of any dimension. Keep holding down the Shift key until you have selected several rectangular sections. The first selections are going to be the "top" level of the photographic collage. All other selections after that are going to be placed under the top layer selection. After you have completed the selections, copy the selections (Edit>Copy) and paste it as a new layer (Edit>Paste). When you paste anything into Photoshop, it automatically appears as a new layer. Then add a Drop Shadow layer style by choosing Layer>Layer Style>Drop Shadow. Don't be alarmed when your selections disappear - you will see the selected areas when you adjust the distance and size settings in the Layer Style. Its up to you how you want the drop shadow or collage to look. An important tip is that each time you produce another layer for selection that you do this from the original background layer. I found myself tearing my hair out when layers would not work as I had wanted to but found that I had missed the important step of producing the further selections by selecting the background layer. So select the background layer and continue to make the selections for the various layers. Make sure that the new selections overlap the originals. To place the collage against a white background (or any other colour for that matter!), create a selection that surrounds all of the parts by holding down the Control and Shift keys while you click on all of the thumbnails in the layers palette. Once all are selected, pick Select>Inverse, choose the Background layer and hit the Delete key. For the image above, I used the eye dropper tool and selected the sand in the pic to be the background colour.

Ipad

Just testing my newly acquired toy. So far, so good.