The Project

Jan 3, 2013 | WRP Ed Zone

The project, it’s what I’ve been doing nearly since the moment I first picked up a camera. I’ve lost count how many I’ve done and know that I’m currently working on seven with only one due to finish in 2013 (and have a couple to start this year). I’m constantly asked about how one gets involved in a project, where does one start and how does one go about doing them? I wish there is a “play book” that covers all the possibilities, I could use it, but there is not. Are there some general tips that can help you start? I can only offer what little I’ve learned so far. Every project teaches me something new, but in this short forum, here are some words of encouragement to get you started.

All of our projects except a handful over the decades have been ones we initiated. This means they are projects I wanted to do and I think that is key! Why? I really feel the #1 requirement to taking on a project is that it is one you have a deep passion for! This is important for many reasons: personal commitment in the good and bad times (when you’re flush or thin), putting something of yourself into the project, convincing those you want to work with you are very serious about seeing it through and making a difference.

How do you find these projects? They come from your heart and imagination! They come from your life experiences and your own personal curiosity. They come from ideas of where you feel your photography can make a difference. You have to want to tackle a project that you have questions about and through your photography, you will find not only your own answers but answers you can share through your photography with others.

It is really important that you take note, being a great photographer is not part of this equation. Neither is being the owner of a ton of camera gear. If you think about it, if that were the case then no projects would ever start and surely never finish. When it comes to your photography, the only requirement I can think of is the ability to accept failure and be able to admit to it. There will be times when you will miss the key photograph, which is part of the whole process. No matter the reason, you simply gotta suck it up and admit the failure. That’s how you not only gain respect from those you are working with, but it’s how you learn so you can do better the next outing.

Many ask me how do you find the contacts for projects? When folks ask me that, I know they really shouldn’t be doing that project or projects in general. The key to success is doing your homework! This can be the boring, paper chasing, sometimes a dead end process you must wade through. You could think of it of your first test to whether you should be doing the project at all. It ain’t easy, it ain’t supposed to be. I always think of it as the natural weeding process. When you do your homework, finding the contact person will be self-evident and you will know exactly who to contact and where.

That homework provides much more than just a contact. It provides you the road map you need to figure out what you have to do photographically to be ready as best you can be for that first day. It prepares you for the questions you need to ask and answer with your camera. It prepares you for the exciting times and the snooze times. It will provide you with a game plan and the idea of what the end game might be.

I’m commonly asked about the money, how do you figure out how much you should charge for doing the project? I’m the wrong person to ask this question of, the vast majority of my projects are all self funded. If anything, I pay for the privilege to be a part of that project because I provide the folks images, free. The funding for any given project comes after that fact when that material is turned into an article and the like. The projects that end up paying you directly usually don’t come until you’ve paid your dues and done those without pay. Project work to be honest with you is not for the weak at heart. This is why the first requirement is, the first requirement.

With all of this said, which doesn’t even scratch the surface of working on projects, I can’t think of anything more productive, rewarding or worthwhile in photography! I can say that from doing them for over 30yrs and continuing to do them. The key to them is the sharing of your images! Not great images, not thousands of images, just sharing those that you have made that tells the story. In that sharing you learn so much and at the same time, pave the road for the next project. I don’t have a checklist I can provide that makes it easier. I can provide you a checklist of all the reasons why you should do them. At the top of the list is because your photographs can change the world!

New Year’s Resolution – Sharper Images?

Jan 2, 2013 | WRP Ed Zone

“How do I get sharper images?” A question I’m constantly asked. There is a lot that goes into getting a sharper images, especially of a moving subject. You will find right here on the site videos on proper handholding and panning, and they are essential. But what’s even more important is once you have these techniques down so well they are second nature, that you practice them ever day! That’s right, practice every day. You don’t have to put much time into it, just a few minutes but that’s enough to make a difference in your photography. When it comes my favorite subject for practicing, gulls like this Laughing Gull are it. They have erratic flight paths which keep your reactions sharp. Shooting with a simple rig, D4 / 300f4AFS, simply going out and making a few clicks is all it takes to keeping sharp on panning (get the pun?). Don’t have gulls in your backyard? How about a dog, cars driving by, bicycles on a run, kids avoiding homework? There are plenty of moving targets that you can train on for a couple of minutes of keeping the technique fluid is all it takes!

Workshop Sign Up – Receive Print – Last Day!

Dec 31, 2012 | WRP Ed Zone

I have a few sheets of paper left, a bunch of prints have gone out. Last Chance – this year!

There are all based in the beautiful Eastern Sierras, a region John Muir called the Range of light. A photographers paradise, it’s here waiting for you and your passion!

Sharon & I wanted to make signing up a little more special so for those who sign up for one of these workshops before 31 Dec, 2012 will receive a 22×17 autographed print of their choice (an image you find on either of my two websites that I’ve taken). Now, you can keep the print or give it to someone as a gift this Christmas. To sign up, give Sharon a call (9-5PST M-F) @ 760.924.8632 or 661.204.1506. Looking forward to shooting with you!

Here’s a couple of love notes from our recent Mono Lake & Photo Bi$ Class

The Sierra’s are an awesome location to photograph, having your insight from a photographic and historic perspective adds imensly to enhancing the experience. This was the best workshop I have attended. The kick off dinner at Giovanni’s really helped set the stage and alowed folks to meet. Focusing on shooting only helped us grow a bit at each shoot, I know I did. I really liked the diversity of the locations as it forced us to adapt. shooting Mono Lake three times really helped me. i know I said after the first sunrise that I had a hard time photographing Mono Lake but, the sunset was much better and I like the images from Sunrise better too. I like how you don’t setup a shot for everyone and we all shoot the same think. Rather, you expect and encourage us to make our images our own, very cool.
Tom Walker

fantastic Mono Lake workshop. I like your style of teaching and active critique in the field. I’ll be back!
Barney Koszalka

Wanted to thank you both again for a great weekend at your photo biz class.
Good news, I’ve been shooting a touring horse show that’s starting out in San Diego as the design firm that I work for is branding the show and we are using my images to create the show collateral. Yesterday our client emailed saying that they have the cover of Horseman’s News magazine. So while I haven’t sent a text photo package out yet, and my client paid for the cover I still wanted to share with you that one of my images will be on the cover of the December issue of Horseman’s News.
I’m putting what I learned to use, the first thing I did was research the magazine and I found out that they are the largest equine publication on the West Coast, printing 25,000 copies a month. Based on those numbers I was able to negotiate a nice usage fee with my client. Thanks for sharing all of your insight in the biz class and giving us the tools of the trade.
Ryan Skinner

It was an absolute pleasure to spend time with you and Moose, and to learn so much. Oh my gosh, that business class has absolutely changed how I look at everything. The night the class ended, I started a complete re-write of my 1500 word article (desperately needed), have started shooting new pictures for it and am looking for an avenue to publish it.
I am looking at where photos are used everywhere…I had kind of looked at that before, but now I am looking harder than ever, which is opening up my mind to more ideas and possibilities. I just can’t express enough how great that class was and how thankful I am that I was able to attend.
Kristina Jacob

How do I Expose for Snow Revisited

Dec 27, 2012 | WRP Ed Zone

[SWF]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/snowe1.swf, 585, 444 [/SWF]

A great question of late from readers has been, “How do you (as in Moose) expose for snow?” Of course living in snow, I have a number of off the cuff answers, but I’ll move past those and get to the heart of the question as I look at it. What color is snow? Unless a Moose or dog has passed by, it’s white, right? I honestly don’t think there are few viewers of your photography who wouldn’t recognize the white stuff on the ground as snow. If that is true, then seeing detail in every crystal of the snow is not mission critical to tell the viewer the white stuff they are looking at is indeed, snow. With that assumption in place, why would one automatically dial in +1 exposure comp just because you’re shooting in snow? That is the common wisdom and common thread in the emails that are coming in. Exposure is YOUR greatest tool to express the feeling, mood and life in your photograph. Just because you see something white, don’t automatically do anything.

[SWF]http://www.moosepeterson.com/swf_imgs/snowe2.swf, 585, 444 [/SWF]

We have two photos here, both of snow. The feel of both is totally different. The top photo has a bluish-gray cast, the bottom photo the snow is your basic snow white. The top image makes me feel cold, that’s why I underexposed it in camera and did not remove the color cast in post. The bottom image, I exposed normally (no comp) and did remove the color cast in post. The key to both images is the RANGE of light in the entire scene  and not the fact there is snow in the scene. I exposed for the subject and not the white stuff. Like with most of my photography, I try to keep the light range within 3 stops. When that’s the case, then I just have to click, the D3’s meter will do the rest. When it’s outside that 3-5 stop range, well then you have to resort to something like this to deal with the greater range of light. Look at the light between the photos in that post and this. Can YOU see the difference in the light falling on the scene? It is exacerbated by the snow, but not determined in whole by the presence of snow.

SO how does Moose expose for snow? Just like any other scene, it depends on the subject, the light on the subject, the light on the rest of the stage and then the story I want to tell within the confines of my viewfinder. Exposure is way too powerful a tool to just dial in some value of exposure compensation. The world doesn’t need another technically perfect photograph. The world needs another photograph with passion to move the viewer!

The Crop Revisited

Dec 27, 2012 | WRP Ed Zone

It must have been the first or at the most, the second crit at school the very first semester of the very first year. A student put up their image up on the screen and it was this little, itty pity image. I scratched my head, the instructor just stared. He took the slide out of the carrousel and looked at it, it was all taped up with silver tape leaving this little aperture.  All Steve said was, “What, you couldn’t have moved closer, changed lenses?”

I seem to have earned quite a reputation for many things, one of them is having a thing against cropping an image. So I’ll say this right off the bat so you don’t have to read any further if you don’t want to, what anyone does with their images is strictly up to them! I am not the photo police! But when photographers show me their images and ask for comments, then they will get my comments and when I see an image has been cropped (yes, I think it’s really easy to see), what screams through my head is, “Couldn’t you have moved closer or changes lenses?”

Back in the day when I started, submitting prints was on its way out, submitting slides was in. When you create a print, you naturally have to crop an image since paper is not the same ratio as a 35mm slide/neg. Since I printed up a storm, I had to crop and learned how to be successful at shooting for that crop knowing I would be cropping when printing. The print would be the final presentation of my vision. Once printing went away and all I shot were slides, then composition was still done in the viewfinder but that was it. There was no cropping to be done, it was all done.

When sending slides to photo buyers, taking your image and applying the very obvious silver tape to “crop” the slide in the slide mount stuck out like a sore thumb. I remember one conversation with a photo buyer complaining about a photographer who had done just that, sent in their slides cropped with silver tape. All the photo buyer could say was, “You have any idea how stuck those images were in the slide page?”  That wasn’t an impression I would ever want to leave with a photo buyer, I could get right in the viewfinder or slides covered with stickem. So what does that have to do with this day and age and digital?

Yeah, you can set a preset with the Crop Tool in Photoshop and crop all day long. And unless you make a print 24×30, you probably won’t see any possible quality loss from cropping. So then why do I not crop my images still? It’s just one of those benchmarks I took hold of that signifies a photographer as, a photographer. It goes along with getting the exposure right and the image sharp when you go click. You compose within the viewfinder and get it right when you go click.

When I look at the work of those who I hold in high regards, Jay Maisel, Joe McNally, Dave Black, Joel Sartore, Wayne Lynch and others, they do all their cropping in the viewfinder as well. I’m sure there are a lot more and there’s a reason for that standard. Arranging the elements in the viewfinder so the subject pops and the rest of the elements support the subject while telling the story, well, isn’t that visual story telling? That’s my definition of photography. There are definitely pros and cons to this standard. The pros are the workflow is simpler and faster (important when you’re in the business of selling images) and quality assured. Cons, the biggest one is it makes taking the photo one helluva of a lot more challenging when you know you’ve gotta get it right when you go click. And when you don’t have it, you don’t go click.

You might have heard I don’t like my images cropped even when they are used editorially. That’s true, I get kinda serious when an photo buyer wants to edit my click. I mean, why buy the photo in the first place if you don’t like it? If you got a copy of my book Captured, rest assured those images aren’t cropped either. I was very blessed in that I had the best in the biz, Jess laying out the book honoring my no cropping request. In those regards, I am totally, completely, out there on my own. I am a nut! And that’s the whole point!

Just because that’s my standard, it does not mean a single other photographer has to follow it. But if you ask me about your photo, heads up. It’s my own quest in being a better photographer, to get it right when I go click. I rather love being able to say, “What you see is what I saw in the viewfinder” when it comes to the crop (landscape & aviation images are often finished in PS. Wildlife images are not). When you don’t give yourself the option to “fix it in post,” photographers push themselves. This always make a better click and the story telling, the subject, that passion of that click becomes clearer and clearer. We all must find whatever the tools, techniques and personal vision at the camera and the computer that work best for you.  For me and my photography, that means using my feet and lens to put in the viewfinder what it is I want to communicate to you the passion I’m feeling at moment.

Sign up for Workshop – Get a Print!

Dec 21, 2012 | WRP Ed Zone

There are all based in the beautiful Eastern Sierras, a region John Muir called the Range of light. A photographers paradise, it’s here waiting for you and your passion!

Sharon & I wanted to make signing up a little more special so for those who sign up for one of these workshops before 31 Dec, 2012 will receive a 22×17 autographed print of their choice (an image you find on either of my two websites that I’ve taken). Now, you can keep the print or give it to someone as a gift this Christmas. To sign up, give Sharon a call (9-5PST M-F) @ 760.924.8632 or 661.204.1506. Looking forward to shooting with you!

Here’s a couple of love notes from our recent Mono Lake & Photo Bi$ Class

The Sierra’s are an awesome location to photograph, having your insight from a photographic and historic perspective adds imensly to enhancing the experience. This was the best workshop I have attended. The kick off dinner at Giovanni’s really helped set the stage and alowed folks to meet. Focusing on shooting only helped us grow a bit at each shoot, I know I did. I really liked the diversity of the locations as it forced us to adapt. shooting Mono Lake three times really helped me. i know I said after the first sunrise that I had a hard time photographing Mono Lake but, the sunset was much better and I like the images from Sunrise better too. I like how you don’t setup a shot for everyone and we all shoot the same think. Rather, you expect and encourage us to make our images our own, very cool.
Tom Walker

fantastic Mono Lake workshop. I like your style of teaching and active critique in the field. I’ll be back!
Barney Koszalka

Wanted to thank you both again for a great weekend at your photo biz class.
Good news, I’ve been shooting a touring horse show that’s starting out in San Diego as the design firm that I work for is branding the show and we are using my images to create the show collateral. Yesterday our client emailed saying that they have the cover of Horseman’s News magazine. So while I haven’t sent a text photo package out yet, and my client paid for the cover I still wanted to share with you that one of my images will be on the cover of the December issue of Horseman’s News.
I’m putting what I learned to use, the first thing I did was research the magazine and I found out that they are the largest equine publication on the West Coast, printing 25,000 copies a month. Based on those numbers I was able to negotiate a nice usage fee with my client. Thanks for sharing all of your insight in the biz class and giving us the tools of the trade.
Ryan Skinner

It was an absolute pleasure to spend time with you and Moose, and to learn so much. Oh my gosh, that business class has absolutely changed how I look at everything. The night the class ended, I started a complete re-write of my 1500 word article (desperately needed), have started shooting new pictures for it and am looking for an avenue to publish it.
I am looking at where photos are used everywhere…I had kind of looked at that before, but now I am looking harder than ever, which is opening up my mind to more ideas and possibilities. I just can’t express enough how great that class was and how thankful I am that I was able to attend.
Kristina Jacob