Cameras

Photography: Brex

Think of aerial photography and you might imagine someone leaning out of a helicopter shooting migrating wildebeest for National Geographic. That could be fun but those jobs don?t come along very often and fortunately, it?s not the only way to take pictures from the air.

Hanging your camera from a balloon might be a lot less romantic that hanging over the African savanna but you?ll not only cut the cost of the image dramatically, you?ll also be able to fill a demand for the sort of aerial shots needed for a wide range of different clients.

Jack Fisher of EagleAerialImages.com told us that he has

?taken pictures for developers who wanted to know in advance what views each apartment in a projected complex would have, appraisers who want photographs of parcels of land, attorneys who need needed photographs in legal cases, homeowners who just wanted pictures of their homes, real estate companies who wanted to make their listings stand out from the crowd, social clubs, sporting event organizers, schools, golf courses, etc.?

While those shots could have been taken by hiring a plane or a helicopter, Jack uses equipment supplied by SouthernBalloonWorks.com, a supplier of blimps for both advertising and photography. Balloons, he says, are often the best solution for shots taken at altitude, beating even remote controlled model aircraft.

?Shooting from full size aircraft and helicopters is very expensive,? he explained. ?Invariably the photographer with a balloon can quote a price at well under their rates. Using radio-controlled models is always going to be a two-person job. One to accurately fly the model, the second to actually shoot the pictures. ? [I]n crowded city environments, where projected elevation shots are required at very specific heights, a full size aircraft or helicopter is out of the question. Likewise the use of a radio controlled models cannot only be difficult but also dangerous. Imagine attempting to use an RC aircraft or helicopter in downtown Manhattan to shoot pictures 400 ft in the air. A tethered balloon is far safer.?

Safer but not necessarily easy. Location, wind strength, local ordinances and permits, and even the effect on helium of different altitudes all have to be considered when photographing from a balloon. And then there?s the fear that the camera could fall or the wind could blow it away. SouthernBalloonWorks, for example, sells an emergency valve that releases the helium if the tether breaks so that photographers can get their camera back.

Photo courtesy SouthernBalloonWorks.com

Nor is the equipment cheap. Although it costs a lot less than buying a helicopter ? or even renting one a few times ? a complete balloon photography system ranges from just under $3,500 to around $5,000 (not including the emergency valve).

Add in the cost of helium and the usual expenses of travel to the location and time on the job, and the minimum price for an aerial photography job can be steep ? or at least seem that way to the buyer. Jack?s own rates have ranged from a very reasonable $200 for a single-family home shoot that was close to home and took an hour to complete, to thousands of dollars for a complex city center project.

Not surprisingly, the biggest impact on price though is supply and demand.

?Are you the only aerial photographer in the area? Will the client be able to shop around and compare prices? How quickly does the client need the job done? [For] a recent shoot I quoted for? the variation on prices quoted was from $6,000 to $60,000 for the exact same job,? says Jack.

Location and marketing then are everything. So if you?re in an area with little competition and plenty of potential demand, balloon photography could be an opportunity worth considering.

Take a look at Flickr?s Abstract Aerial Photography group and tell us what you think

Photography: Robert Buelteman

Every photographer has a different vision of success. For some, life would be perfect if Time Magazine were to send them and their camera bag to Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan. For others, sipping wine at a gallery opening while collectors battle to buy their art would be the ultimate sign that they?ve arrived. And for many, just being paid for a picture or winning a commission for a portrait would tell them that they?ve got talent, technique and an audience for their work.

But what happens next? What do you do after you?ve got used to phone calls from editors, when you?ve seen the red stickers on your framed photos or once sales and commissions have become a standard part of your life?

That was a dilemma faced by Robert Buelteman, a 51-year old landscape photographer known for his pictures of California. His black and white images had already been published in two books. His photos form part of the permanent collections of Yale University Art Museum and The Santa Barbara Museum of Art. And a steady supply of commercial assignments meant that he was able to earn a rewarding living from his camera.

Ansel Adams, Fiber Optics and Sculpted Plants

For most enthusiasts that would be the stuff that photography dreams are made of. But the death of a number of relatives and a desire for new challenges led Buelteman to look at a completely new way of creating pictures.

?It isn?t that I was running from dissatisfaction so much as I was seeking new possibilities for myself and for my art,? he explains. ?As a witness to the loss of four family members to cancer in the late 90?s, I had learned that life is short, and didn?t want the precious gift that my life is to be spent doing what had already been done by so many so often.?

Twenty years earlier, Sarah Adams (the granddaughter of Ansel) had shown Buelteman Walter Chappell?s Metaflora portfolio of flower images at her home in Lee Vining. As he searched for a new outlet, Buelteman recalled that meeting and an idea he?d had about combining photography with fiber optics.

The result was a method that draws on his studies in chemistry, physics and optics at Berkeley to create a new kind of Kirlian photography, a technique that involves passing an electric current through an object on an a photographic plate to generate an image of the corona discharged around the object?s edges.

Buelteman?s approach though is particularly difficult. He takes live plants and ?sculpts? them with a scalpel until they?re translucent. Working in the dark, he then prepares an ?exposure matrix? made up a sheet of 8×10 tungsten-balanced transparency film mounted on an easel. This is supported by a sheet of metal in a solution of liquid silicone, which itself is sandwiched between two sheets of Plexiglas. To create the image, Buelteman connects to the metal sheet to a spark plug cable, places the sliver of plant material on the film, and fires 80,000 volts through the metal ? and the plant. The current leaves a glow on the film in the shape of the plant. Finally, Buelteman uses strobe lights and fiber-optic cables to add extra light effects.

3,000 Exposures? 30 Images

It?s a process that can demand a great deal of time and experimentation. A single photograph can take anywhere from an hour to create to a number of months spread over several years. Calla lilies, for example, only bloom for a few weeks, creating a short window each year to get the picture of the plant right. The 30 images contained in Buelteman?s first portfolio ?Through the Green Fuse? took 3,000 exposures and 60 hours a week for two years to produce.

?This is not a technique that one perfects,? Buelteman told us. ?It reminds me of dancing.  Dancing is its own reward, and once you try to do it right, you?ve lost the rhythm.  This process, impossibly difficult with so many variables that it defies the traditional controls that we have come to expect as photographers, is a roll of the dice.?

The images though, shot without a camera and dependent on the corona created by the electrical charge are unique, and certainly very different to the traditional black and white photos Buelteman had produced in the past. The response though has been phenomenal. Galleries have snapped up his photos and the Santa Fe Institute invited him to be an artist-in-residence, giving Buelteman the freedom to continue developing his technique.

At the same time though, Buelteman has continued shooting and selling his black and white landscapes which he prints himself. Without those sales, he points out, he might ?you know, have to get a job or something.? And creating the pictures helps to keep him grounded and engaged in his art, he says. It?s something he predicts he?ll never give up.

It would be wonderful to say that the moral of Buelteman?s story is that it?s always possible for a photographer to change direction, branch out into new areas and succeed. But of course, that isn?t the case. There was no guarantee that Buelteman?s technique would work, that any of the images he produced would be attractive or that anyone would want to look at them or own them. But that wasn?t the reason he did it. Being a successful photographer might be rewarding and satisfying but the thrill of success itself is never a reason anyone ever picks up a camera. That?s always done for the pleasure of creating pictures that make you proud. Buelteman himself notes the most important characteristic he looks at to measure the success of his technique isn?t the number of exhibitions, print sales or media  interest the images generate but his personal excitement and passion to continue doing it.

?When, as an artist, you have tapped into that special place where you no longer feel separate from the rest of life there is a spontaneity and a beauty and a rhythm in your art that others respond to,? he says. ?While this is a place available to all of us, I find myself able to visit only occasionally.?

And, of course, if it turns out that people like your new images well enough to buy them as much as they like your old ones, then that really is the stuff of dreams.

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.