Cameras

Digital cameras have introduced us to a world of possibilities that were previously not available with shooting film. The ability to instantly see what we’ve captured, and to edit, share and print the images has changed how we take pictures. It has also changed how many photographs we take, where they get stored and what we do with them. We were limited to 36 images per roll of film, now an average digital camera can store hundreds if not thousands of photographs on memory cards, encouraging (even taunting) us to shoot more.

Shooting more photos means capturing more memories, always a great thing. The downside is what to do with all of them, how to manage them, keep them backed up and share with friends and family. Utilizing local, network and online storage for backing up is a great, easy idea, and allows sharing the memories without the need or pain of attaching large files to email.

Local and Online Solution

This is an amazing solution in that you get the best of both worlds. Local storage, which is easily accessible, to an entire home or office, and online storage, accessible from any location with high-speed internet access. This solution is called a network attached storage (NAS) device, an example of which is the WD My Book World Edition. This device also takes the guesswork out of backup procedures with automatic and continuous backup software.

Utilizing the included MioNet software, you can also access your NAS from anywhere that has an Internet connection. This is a big advantage over external hard drives directly attached to your computer and the reason that we advocate using a NAS. As a photographer taking pictures anytime, anyplace, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to upload all the day’s shots to the NAS device in your home or office? You can rest assured all is safe, and if you have a staff, they can begin working with photos while you are on to the next shoot.

Being cross platform and supported by both Windows and Mac means you can painlessly share and access all the photos and data you have on your home network, or anywhere in the world.

Online Web Based Solutions

Ideally, utilizing both an online backup storage and sharing solution with a local NAS would give the best possible scenario for recovery of data should something happen to the local NAS.

Here’s a roundup of some of the top web sites that offer sharing for your photos. An important thing to note is that only one of these sites, Flickr, allows for unlimited photo storage. The other sites are mainly for sharing your photos and are not viable backup options.

Flickr has become somewhat of the standard for online web albums and sharing photos.  They’ve made it so easy a grandmother can upload photos, yet still utilize advanced features such as commenting and tagging, along with the ability to create custom photo streams to appeal to everyone. Groups created inside Flickr share photos, critiques and ideas and this is all offered free. A paid account with Flickr opens up the upload and storage limits to be unlimited and gives access to advanced statistics. There is no built in photo editor on Flickr, though.

MyPhotoAlbum has one of the most attractive web interfaces for sharing photos of the bunch. They offer 1,000’s of different templates and designs to create a very personalized, fun web album of images. They don’t limit the number of photos or albums you can host and offer privacy settings that enable you to control who can and can’t see your images. MyPhotoAlbum also stores the full, high-resolution images on their server with no editing needed. Another interesting feature they offer is a personalized domain, http://you.myphotoalbum.com, allowing you to create an easy-to-remember address to email your friends and family.

Pbase has been one of the largest photographer image sharing communities online for the last few years. With forums for chatting and albums galore, it’s become one of the premier places to show off your photography skills. Advanced amateurs and professionals alike use this service to showcase their best photos, learn from others and get inspired. Pbase is a paid service, unlike most of the others listed, but for that you are also getting advice from other photographers. It’s probably not a site you’d want to use to just upload photos from your last vacation to share with the parents.

All of these sites offer basically one thing: online storage of your images. The advantages to this are plenty:

• Easily share with friends and family by simply emailing a link. No need to attach files to emails one at a time.
• Commenting and tagging in albums allows you to quickly and easily identify and find photos.
• Some offer automatic backup solutions, great in the case of a hard drive failure, corrupt operating system or home invasion / flood / fire.

Backing up online should be done in addition to localized storage, not instead of, just to have a fail-safe.

Got any backup, management or sharing tips of your own? Leave a comment below…

Win a HP StorageWorks RDX Removable Disk Backup System worth £235!

Photography: ToastyKen

Photographers have felt the effects of outsourcing in surprising ways. Back in the glory days of photojournalism, shelling out thousands of dollars to ship a photographer to a war zone might have been considered as much a part of a news magazine?s expenses as typewriter ribbon, shoe leather and lengthy bar tabs. Today, with subscriptions falling, advertisers turning to the Web, and perfectly good local photographers with top-of-the range equipment available in locations from Afghanistan to Zambia, it makes little sense for a publication to pay a foreign photographer?s per diems, let alone the plane fare. When the war in Iraq was at its hottest, many of the images that appeared in the world?s top news publications were shot by local photographers who were working for the wires. But how has geography affected other aspects of photography, and are the price differences something that smart photographers can take advantage of?

Clearly, the differences in the cost of living around the world offer plenty of advantages for clients. When Grazia, a style magazine originally from Italy, opened its ninth edition in India in April 2008, local assignment and fashion photographers should have been rejoicing. They now had an opportunity to shoot for a prestigious magazine that valued images and would pay a professional rate. The reality though was slightly different.

Major Magazine Publishers See Local Photographers as Cheap Labor

To judge by an ad placed on Lightstalkers.org by the magazine?s photo editor, Natasha Hemrajani, Grazia appears to have seen its location on the sub-continent as a chance to tap into some particularly cheap labor. The magazine was looking for a photographer in Kerala to take a portrait of a Yoga teacher for one of its first editions. The budget for the shoot was 2,000 rupees. That?s about $50.

The request caused a bit of a storm and to her credit, Natasha, a freelance photographer herself, did sound embarrassed to be making it:

?[F]or some reason we?ve been asked to launch on a ridiculously low budget and shoots come to my department pre-expensed,? she wrote. ?[I]f this doesn?t work out we?ll have to run with images sent to us by the subject herself but I?m hoping that there?s someone out there who?ll do shoot for us at this price.?

It?s possible that she got lucky. The average income in India is about $66 per month so $50 for a day?s shooting (minus expenses) might not look like such a bad deal ? at least to the magazine. But for a local photographer who?s still had to buy several thousand dollars? worth of camera equipment, it would make more sense to stay in bed.

Or turn to wedding photography, where prices can be more comparable with other parts of the world. At least one Indian photography firm is offering shoots that range in price from 20,000 rupees to as much as a million rupees. $500 might sound like a bargain rate for a wedding shoot, but it?s likely that most customers are taking packages that are much higher. Frank Chen, a photographer based in Shanghai, for example, charges 20,000 yuan for a typical wedding package. At around $3,000, that?s roughly equivalent to the amount typically paid in the United States. (Although if he were in the United States, it?s possible that Frank, a particularly experienced wedding specialist, might be able to charge more.)

It?s likely that other photographers ? those who don?t speak English, don?t advertise on the Internet, and who target only local markets made up of people with average incomes ? are charging a great deal less. It is clear though that for some photographers it is possible to charge a rate that?s close to the amount earned in richer parts of the world. Whether they actually get those rates as frequently though, is a different question.

Who Cares Where the Stock Photographer Is?

The situation looks a little rosier for stock photographers. While the prices of rights-managed images are set in part according to the location in which the image will be used, in practice, the region appears to have little effect on the fee. Changing the area in fotoQuote, for example, software that generates Rights-Managed quotes according to the industry standard, has far less effect on the price than changing the usage. EnviroSEA, a photography organization that promotes the work of photographers in Southeast Asia, charges up to $149 for prints of its members? images and uses fotoQuote to generate its fees, rejecting any image priced under $49. Even its royalty-free images start at $69 for a 500 pixel ?Web? image and rise to $289 for an ?original size? photo. There are plenty of microstock photographers in places more expensive than Thailand who would like to be earning sales prices like these.

But EnviroSEA?s approach makes sense. When it comes to buying images, clients don?t care where the photographer who produced it lives. They only care whether the photo can do the job they want and whether it?s worth the price that?s being asked.

The effect of geography on photography then is mixed. For clients, the presence of a professional close to the location of a shoot can have a dramatic effect on the expenses involved in getting the picture. Natasha Hemrajani wasn?t just looking for a photographer in India; she wanted one in Kerala who could reach the subject of the shoot without incurring more than ten or twenty dollars? worth of expenses. But the price of the equipment alone means that there?s a limit to how low photographers can cut their prices even in parts of the world with low incomes.

On the other hand, when it comes to selling pre-made items such as stock images on a global market, the location of the photographer has little effect. If a buyer in London or New York is willing to pay several hundred dollars to use an image, he doesn?t look at the photographer?s bio to see where he is. He just pays the fee and takes the picture? and uses it on the other side of the world.

Correction: The original post incorrectly described Amit Bhargava as the photo editor who posted Grazia?s ad. He is not a photo editor at that magazine nor, he says, would he ?offer or work for such a ridiculous amount.? Our apologies to Amit.