Andrew Ferguson dot NET

One of the things I think is great about photographs is their independence. Photographs are inherently neither Republican nor Democrat. They capture an image as it occurs and then freeze it forever.

This is not to say that photos never deceive. On the contrary, photos can be manipulated to show whatever the photographer wants. State agencies, prominent newspapers, and magazines have all shown photos that misrepresented reality.

Thus, there is still some responsibility placed on the photographer to represent the entire scene as it played out.

There’s a build up to this. I’m pretty sure you saw it coming. So here it is. On Wednesday, Al Jazeera English, the English division of Al Jazeera (yes, that Al Jazeera) was in town for the Democratic National Convention.

For those not familiar with Al Jazeera, they are more or less the CNN of the Arabic-speaking world, reaching 120 million viewers in 80 countries¹.

And when I say town, I actually mean my town: Golden, Colorado.

From www.rockymountainnews.com:

When Al-Jazeera comes to Colorado to cover the Democratic National Convention this month, it will use Golden as the backdrop to show the Arab world what life is like in a typical U.S. town.
…
Al-Jazeera’s Washington bureau will broadcast from both Denver and Golden, reporting on issues that will include the economy, the environment, health care and the Iraq war.

The backdrop for its Aug. 27 broadcast from Golden will be the Buffalo Rose, an iconic bar in the heart of downtown, where the college-educated townies and tattooed Harley riders blow off steam after work.

It was pure luck that I happened to find out that Al Jazeera English was in town. I was driving back from an afternoon of climbing and my climbing cohort mentioned that they were in town. Only practical thing to do was grab my camera and go into reporting mode (by the way, I now shoot for The Oredigger).

And so it was: several other photogs and myself, a rather large group of protesters (for Golden at least), the Golden City Police, and Al Jazeera English.

See the rest: Al Jazeera English at the Buffalo Rose

Read the article one of my photos went with: Locals clash with international reporters

¹http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/aug/14/golden-to-host-arab-network-during-dnc/

I’m going to go out on a limb and proclaim these as some of my best photographs. Ever.

It’s taken over 10000 clicks, but I think I’m finally starting to discover my style.

My cousin Nick wants to know:

My question is about copywriting my pictures. To my knowledge every picture I make or take is copywrited just because I did it. I was wondering if putting “all images copyright john doe 2008″ on the bottom of every page of my website would cover me, or do I need to do something else?
And should I copyright them to my name or my website? (”copyright john doe 2008″ or “copyright ABCompany.com 2008″)

Note: Don’t forget that I am not a lawyer (IANAL). These are merely my understandings and thoughts.

Under current United States laws, anything you make is automatically copyrighted. Additionally, you can submit your work to the United States Copyright Office for a fee, however I have never done this and don’t think it’s worthwhile.

To my knowledge, adding the “All images copyrighted by…” phrase does not offer any additional legal protection. If you were to add the phrase, I would use your name, since that’s the legal entity that owns the copyright.

I’d also like to take a second to mention something called Creative Commons. Almost all 10,000 of my photos and most of my blog is released under a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons allows you to retain the copyright, however it lets others use your work with specific requirements.

For example, most of my work is released under a By-Attribution, Share-Alike, Non-commercial license. This means that anyone is allowed to use my photos as long as it’s for non-commercial work (i.e. they can’t make money off of it), if they modify my work they must share it under a similar license, and they must attribute me.

I’d suggest you take a look at: http://creativecommons.org/

I hope that helps and let me know if you have any more questions.

I was going to link to these last time, but I forgot. So here are quick links to all the EDays photos I shot.

General

• MediEval Days 2008 - All
• Best of…
• Fireworks Setup
• Oddems

Day One

• Fireworks
• Ballroom Dancing
• Line Dancing

Day Two

• Orecart Pull
• The Capital (with Governor Ritter)
• Alumni Panel
• Smash Lab’s Deanne Bell
• BBQ
• Kristen Key
• I Hate Kate
• Goldfinger
• Concert Randomness

Day Three

• Cardboard Boat Race
• Trebuchet Launch
• Mining Competition
• Field Events
• Alexandra McHale
• Adam Hunter

I was going to post this over the weekend, but I ended up writing my paper instead (which I’ll post as a serial soon). I also appologize for the length of this post. It’s a little on the long side, but I packed it with some pictures and graphs for all you ADD kids. So here’s the much belated EDays 2008 post:

I’ve been shooting EDays for about 3 years now and it’s one of my favorite things to shoot. It’s three days of non-stop action with little sleep and lots of variety. Over the three days of shooting, I got about 11 hours of sleep. But I took 1190 photos and only 456 made the decent cut (38% isn’t actually half bad). Of those, I think there’s less then a dozen (about 1%) that I really like (and you’ll see those in a few months when I do my next round of inductions into my portfolio.

But, I still wanted to do something fun and different this year, so I rented a lens. In my current setup, I have a:

• 18-70mm
• 70-300mm
• 50mm f/1.8

…all Nikkor.

I decided that going with a small focal length lens, somewhere on the order of 10-18mm, would be ideal to rent. The first thing I did was find places to rent from. In the greater Denver area, I found Mike’s Camera Store and Camren Photography.

Mike’s didn’t have any Nikkor lenses with a small enough focal length, so I was able to narrow the selection to the DX 10.5mm f/2.8 AF-S G and DX 12-24mm f/4.0 AF-S G.

Both those links go to Ken Rockwell’s site. He does what I believe to be the best and most useful review of lenses. When I get an aching to buy a lens, I pretty much always head over to his site and see what he thinks.

Based on data from Wikipedia on viewing angles, I whipped up this graph that shows viewing angle as a function of focal length:

I found it very interesting that relationship isn’t linear, so I opted to go with the smallest focal length to get the most “bang for my buck.” That and I’ve always wanted to shoot with a fisheye.

So I rented the 10.5mm for two days and since Camren Photography isn’t open on the weekends, I got it for four days (for the price of the aforementioned two days).

Here’s a breakdown my day of the lens I used, how many photos I took with each lens, and how many photos with each lens (by day, again) ended up making the cut. Numbers above the zero axis are photos taken, numbers below the zero axis are photos that made the cut.

When I edit photos, I ask myself three things: Do I like it, does it tell a story, and does it move the story along. If it doesn’t meet all three of those criteria and I can’t make it meet those three criteria, then I dump it.

That’s why there is a lot of atrophy on the lasts days pictures. I tend to take a lot of photos of action shots (because you can’t predict everything) and then severely whittle them down to ensure the story continues.

Shooting the fireworks was absolutely amazing this year. Having the wide angle lens allowed me to get all of the fireworks and often times the crowd (at least for the non-aerial shots). Many people thought that this has been the best show since 2004.

The alumni panel was pretty interesting. I wish I could have stayed for the entire thing, but I had to race over to shoot Deanne Bell from Smash Lab. If you’ve ever seen Smash Lab, you know that Deanne is very animated when she talks. I had a blast photographing her while she presented.

She also had a great slide about her life philosophy that I thought was pretty spiffy as well and worth mentioning here:

• Surround yourself with people who love what they do and are damn good at it
• Don’t get too comfortable
• Suck it up sometimes
• Be confident and persistent
• Imagine the impossible

The concert was also pretty good. The music was okay. I think that I Hate Kate should have headlined instead of Goldfinger (who enjoys listening to 40 year-old emo has-beens?). Learning from last year, I talked with all the bands and CSC before hand to get the rules for this show. All three bands were very fine with me taking picture throughout. Wes, the CSC supervisor, was also very helpful and nice, especially when compared to their performance last year.

Here are some notes I made while editing; mostly for my reference, but you may find some use as well:

• Don’t use a flash during concerts (or anywhere else where there is non-white light), it destroys the Look and Feel (LnF).
• When nothing is going on (relatively), posed shots always win over bland.
• Using a fisheye makes it bit harder to crop since the distortion is uneven across the plane.
• I need to shoot with a faster shutter more often.
• Talk with the comics before hand. This will ensure that you don’t tick them off and that they don’t make fun of you.

I’ve also come up with the official checklist for a good EDays:

1. Are you drinking, drunk, and/or hungover?
2. Are you sleep deprived?
3. Are you sore?
4. Do you have a sunburn?
5. (Bonus) Did you meet attractive members of the opposite sex?

Answering “yes” to all of the questions means you had a good EDays.

I edited the last of the 2008 EDays photos last night and I’m uploading them to Flickr right now. I’ll post a complete report of EDays over the weekend. I’ll also whip up a “best of” set of pictures to show off as well.

Stats: It took about two weeks to go through 1143 RAW photos. I ended up with 459 JPGs.

Enjoy your Friday.

Note to future self:

Bed Bath & Beyond has a fantastic collection of inexpensive, but good, frames in the sizes I want.

Who would have thought?

Nikon D70 || Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D || 1/50 || f/1.8 || ISO800 || Handheld

Nikon D70 || Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D || 1/60 || f/1.8 || ISO200 || Handheld

Someone had left their sweater at the desk I sat down at. She later came and picked it up as the library was closing.

My brother got me a Bogen Super Clamp for Christmas. It was on my wishlist, so I was pretty pumped to use it. What I didn’t realize is that it didn’t actually come with all the hardware that I needed to use it. This was my fault.

After doing a bit of research on exactly what I would need and want, I finally ordered a swivel-bracket with umbrella mount and a 5/8″ snap-in pin.

I used B&H photo, which is the same company I ordered my tripod and head from. I can now take cool photos like this:

In reality, I’ll be able to put my flash just about anywhere now:

The bent arms of the clamping jaws make it particularly appropriate for clamping onto a variety of shapes. Pipes, railing, doors, shelves, tables, tree branches, electrical conduit running up the wall in a high school gym (not too tight…) are all no problem.