New Digs

(Photograph copyright 2017 by Dan Routh)

We have been working in a space in 620 South Elm St (the Old Blue Bell factory) in Old Greensboro for the past several years. The building was recently sold to developer Andy Zimmerman and a planned renovation has begun. Our section of the building was scheduled to be gutted and renovated first, so we were offered a new space in the other side of the facility. From Suite 254 we are now situated on third floor in Suite 332. As of today, we are now up and running. Besides our location services, we can handle studio portraiture, model, actor and executive head shots and small product and tabletop photography. If you have the work, we need your business.

Print Installation

(Photograph copyright 2013 by Dan Routh)

A print installation of one of my images at a client's office in Research Triangle Park.

The Last Two Weeks

Two weeks ago, this happened on the floor above my studio.

Which caused this.

And brought a visit by this guy.

Things slowly began to dry out.

And now the studio's starting to come back together. It's been a strange two weeks, but we are getting there. I hope. 

(Photographs copyright 2011 by Dan Routh)

Firefighters and the Flood

Some days are better than others and of course, some are more trying. Today was one of those trying ones, for sure. Late this morning while I was beginning to edit a job, the fire alarm in our building went off, which is never a good sign. After checking things out, I found out a cable worker had knocked a sprinkler head off in the hallway above my studio, directly above. A deluge of water soon began to pour through my ceiling and I started the rush to move my computer and camera equipment before it was ruined. With the help of my wonderful building neighbors, I was able to move everything that could be horribly damaged (I hope) including my film archive. Still, a lot of water came in and a lot of damage was done. A flood. Bright sunny day, my studio is on the second floor, fifteen feet above the ground, and I have a flood.

However, even in adversity comes opportunity, I guess. I've been thinking of doing portraits of firefighters, and have been thinking about who to approach. This morning, they approached me. The firemen of the Greensboro Fire Department showed up at my door and I grabbed a couple of images of them as I was documenting the damage to my studio.

(Photographs copyright 2011 by Dan Routh)

On Being a Greensboro Photographer in 2010

(Photograph copyright 2011 by Dan Routh)

We are here in 2011 and I guess it’s time to make a few comments on this blog and what it was like to be a photographer in Greensboro in 2010. Photographically for me, 2010 was really a pretty good year. I shot a lot, especially for this blog, and I shot a lot of photographs that meant something to me on a personal level. I started this blog as a marketing tool for my business, but somehow it has begun to evolve into something else. Because the economy has kept me close to home, I have shot close to home and discovered that the community around Grays Chapel is full of opportunities to produce documentary images of the places, folks and things that are here. I’ve begun to look at my neighbors more seriously and I’ve discovered there are a lot of wonderful people doing wonderful things right here. I hope to continue documenting these people and things, and I appreciate all the very kind comments I have received on many of the images I have posted. If I can make someone feel something or remember something through my images, then I have succeeded as a photographer.

On the business front, 2010 was not nearly as wonderful. I have been producing commercial photography for some 34 years, and I can honestly say that this was the worst year business-wise I have ever had. Face it, the economy sucks, especially in the Greensboro area, and many clients that I used to do work for on a regular basis have either disappeared or pulled back seriously. At the same time, prospective clients have seen that they can shop around for the lowest price and many, many folks in my profession are more than willing to work for anything, regardless of their costs or what their work is really worth. And finally, I have seen some clients just settling for less quality in general. With the rise of mediocrity in our culture, sometimes all a client wants or needs is an image, and any image will do, hence the rise in the use of low cost or no cost microstock sales.

What will 2011 bring? I honestly don’t know. I do know that things can’t keep going the way they are now for professional photographers in general and me specifically. Hopefully the economy will improve and things will start to thaw out in the advertising and editorial markets. Perhaps I will finally learn how to adapt to this changing market; believe me, I’m trying. Perhaps I will reach a crossroads and have to make a turn. That is a possibility. I do know that no matter what happens, I will continue to shoot as much as I can, because besides being a professional photographer, I am just a photographer, first and foremost.

Five Hundred Posts

(Photograph copyright 2010)

Last week I passed a milestone (sort of) on this blog in that I passed 500 posts. That’s about 2 years worth of posting five times a week. Guess it’s time to take a look at my blogging efforts and see where I am. I started my blog as a marketing effort for the most part and it continues in that vein. I post mostly images with the occasional prose, because that’s what I do. I take photographs, professionally. I have for some 34 years.

As a marketing effort, my blog has had mixed success. I wish I could say that perspective clients are running all over each other trying to book me, but they aren’t. I have booked jobs as a direct result of someone who found me online, but with the recession hitting the Greensboro area hard, work has become harder and harder to find, especially new work. I’ve also found that in order to make a blog work, you have to market the blog itself through social networking, forums, etc. So, in order to use a marketing device, you have to market it, and so on; something that quickly becomes very time consuming.

All of this marketing is on top of the time and effort it takes to produce content. After all the main reason for posting my work is to show folks something that I think is worthwhile seeing. Producing a “good” image every day, every week takes a lot of work, and I try not to post anything that I don’t consider good. Granted, some images are a lot better than others, but I do attempt to show something every day that will stand on it’s own. Some of my images come from actual jobs, but many are produced just for the blog.

So, where does all of this lead me? I will continue to post as much as I can. Any marketing success is dependent on how long you can continue it. I will also try to continue working on my craft, because when all is said and done, that has been the biggest benefit I have gotten from this whole experiment. I have made myself go out and shoot content just to be shooting. Even after 34 years, it’s amazing what you can get from practice. I think I’ve learned some things visually, and I sure have enjoyed doing it.

Back to Bad Contracts

In an earlier post I talked about a bad contract I received for a stock photograph a publisher wished to use as a book cover. The original contract had all kinds of language allowing reuse and copyright options that were unnecessary for such a transaction. I told the publisher that I would not sign any such contract, but I would sell one time usage for the stock image for a fee and nothing else. After negotiating and sending proposals back and forth, we settled on a contract that spelled out exactly what I offered originally. They bought one time usage for a cover for a specific book and nothing else. I don't know why they sent me their original contract, maybe they hoped I wouldn't read it, but the whole exercise was not needed for a one time simple use. Moral of the story; read any contract you receive and be willing to say no until you can negotiate the sale to what you want to sell and to what the client actually needs.

Need a Photographer? Then Find a Photographer.

In need of a photographer for your commercial or editorial project, or even your portrait in Greensboro, North Carolina? Then by all means, give me a call. But, if for some reason I’m not available, or if you need a photographer in another city and you don’t want to send me, or if you just don’t feel I’m right for the job, then take a look at the ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers) service “Find a Photographer”. On the national site, there is a listing by geographic area and specialty for the whole country with contact information and portfolios of member photographers. The national link is http://asmp.org/find-a-photographer. Most chapters also have their own listings. ASMP-NC, the chapter for North Carolina members has a link just for this state at http://asmp-nc.org/Find-a-Photographer.php. In either case, you are provided with a comprehensive list of established and experienced professionals that can fill your needs in completing your next photography project.

"Founded in 1944, the American Society of Media Photographers (originally the Society of Magazine Photographers and later the American Society of Magazine Photographers) is the leading trade association for photographers who photograph primarily for publication. ASMP promotes photographers' rights, educates photographers in better business practices, produces business publications for photographers and helps buyers find professional photographers. ASMP has 39 chapters across the country and its members include many of the world’s foremost photographers." (from www.asmp.org)

PS. For all of you with IPhones, there is a Find a Photographer app available for your phone.

Goodbye 2009, Hello 2010. On Being a Greensboro Photographer.

(Photograph copyright 2009 by Dan Routh)

Another year has passed and we are headed into a new one. What will it mean for photography in Greensboro, North Carolina? Guess that’s the big question, at least for me. To be honest, this past year has been pretty rough economically for photography and most other businesses in these parts. Of course, commercial photography is totally dependent on other businesses, so things sometimes compound. 2009 has been a year of low budgets or no budgets for many clients. Photography has become an option for some marketing instead of a necessity. Quality has become less of a key word than the term commodity. Competition for jobs has kept increasing.

What does 2010 have in store for the business of photography in general and for this blog in particular? Lest I dwell too much with what was wrong with the past year, I can honestly say I’m optimistic about the new one, guardedly so, but nonetheless optimistic. I have to be. Photography is my profession, my livelihood, and my passion, and I’m determined to continue in this business. For all you potential clients out there, that means I am open and available for assignments. As for this blog, I intend to try to continue to shoot and post as frequently as I can. I have tried to post daily and share my images and my vision, as it were. Don’t know if I can continue on that schedule, but I will do my darnedest. I can truly say that I enjoy the effort it takes to create new work, and I really think that although the effort hasn’t necessarily created a huge monetary return on my time investment, I think that I am a better photographer than I was before I started posting over a year ago.

I also hope I can begin to understand the phenomena of social networking. I want to figure out if it is truly a way to market myself and disseminate information to a willing group of people, or it’s “the” thing to do at this particular time and will become a way to waste a tremendous amount of time. The jury is still out on that one, although I still have hope.

Happy New Year to each of you. Thanks for letting me share my work with you this year, and may 2010 bring peace, good health and prosperity to us all. Stop by when ever you can.

Bad Contracts are Bad Business

I started this blog to share my photography with other people, not to be political or post news about photography equipment. There are other blogs that do that better than I can. Most of my posts are simply images and maybe a few words about the people or places I shoot. Since I am a board member of ASMP-North Carolina, I do occasionally make an ASMP announcement or talk about the business of photography. This is one of these posts.

Professional photographers are often requested to sign contracts when they accept new assignments, and over the years I have seen my share, some good, and some not so good. An art director for a large US book and magazine publisher contacted me yesterday with a request to license an image he had seen on this blog for use on a book cover. He sent me a PDF of a layout with my image on it. Evidently he didn’t see my notice that no use of my images is allowed without express permission. Nonetheless, I gladly quoted him a very fair figure for very specific use and terms for the image, and he said everything sounded fine. He said he would forward a contract to me. I questioned the need for me to sign a contract, since the image was a stock image of mine, and my invoice and usage forms act as a contract by themselves. He said the publisher was required to have a contract and that their’s was very simple and would reflect my terms. I told him I would take a look at the contract and if everything were in order, I would then forward a high rez file.

Today I received the contract and it was the most heinous document I have ever seen in my 30 years of business. First of all, the contract read as if I was doing an assignment. My image is a personal image, shot on my time, and already totally my property (The shot had no people in it, so model releases were not involved.). I had offered the art director non-exclusive rights for a book cover first run plus reprints, period, with my terms being payment due upon receipt of my invoice. The contract I received required me to give the publisher exclusive world-wide rights to the image for the life of the work. Editorial use of the image was allowed in any of the publisher’s subsidiary publications for 15% of the original fee plus advertising use was allowed for 20%. They also claimed a six-month option to buy my copyright for an additional 100% of the fee and there was a clause stating that I would be required to reshoot the image if they found it inadequate (Remember, this was for a stock image I had already produced.). Payment for any invoice would be on their “normal” schedule, for which they did not define what normal is .

I immediately called the art director and told him that there is no possible way I will ever sign such a contract. He told me I could cross out any offending language, and I told him I would have to cross out the entire document. I then told him I would be happy to license the image for my original usage terms. He said he would get back to me.

The photography business is rough these days, and none of us can afford to miss a sale, least of all me. However, a bad business climate is not an excuse to give away your work through bad contracts, nor is it an excuse for publishers to try to take advantage of innocent and gullible artists. I still have hope in negotiating a sale, however, a bad deal is a bad deal, especially when it jumps up and slaps you in the face.

Facebook Revisited

(photograph copyright 2009 by Dan Routh)

For those readers who are not aware, I was banned by Facebook back in May for no apparent reason http://danrouthphotography.blogspot.com/2009/05/banned-from-facebook.html. I have tried repeatedly to contact them to find out what I did and to request that my account be reinstated, all to no avail. A friend of mine from our local ASMP luncheon group, Jennifer Westmoreland, has been kind enough to create a "Facebook Bring Back Dan Routh" group. The URL is http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=144586647668 for any of you that are interested. Your help by joining would be appreciated. I can always rejoin Facebook with a new email address, but I spent a lot of time building a group of friends that I would like to keep. Evidently I did something that Facebook didn't like, I did not spam, or post inappropriate items, etc, but I would like to at least be told by the folks at Facebook how and why I was disabled. In fact, the whole thing is pretty silly, because those that know me really well know that personality-wise, I'm not the type of person that gets banned from anything, ever.

Jennifer's website is at: http://www.jwestmorelandphoto.com/mp_includes/body.asp.
Please give it a visit.

Corporate Headshot

(photograph copyright 2009 by Dan Routh)

Portrait out-take from a recent Greensboro corporate job.

Banned from Facebook

As of yesterday, I became part of an apparently growing number of people who have been banned by Facebook for no apparent reason with no prior warning. I have looked through their terms of service and can only figure that I connected with too many people using FB's own "people you may know" service. I have been using Facebook as an extension of this blog and used their own service of having my blog posts automatically show up as a link on my Facebook page. Will I get my FB page back? Who knows. I have contacted their customer service, but they have not bothered to email an answer back to me. Oh well. I did enjoy the social networking abilities that Facebook seemed to offer, but, I probably spent too much time there anyway. My time is probably better spent shooting and sharing those images here.

UPDATE: As of 5-19-09 and after numerous emails to Facebook, I have had absolutely no response.

UPDATE 5-20-09: No response from Facebook.

UPDATE 5-21-09: Ditto

UPDATE 5-22-09: No Response

UPDATE 5-24-09: Not a word.

UPDATE 5-26-09: Total silence.

UPDATE 5-27-09: Connected to a guy named Joseph (or an automated reply?) who said I couldn't talk to anyone at that email address and was directed back to the original address from which I have had no reply.

UPDATE 6-01-09: Still no response from Facebook.

UPDATE 6-10-09: Facebook who?

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

(image copyright 2008 by Dan Routh)

I am finishing up for the holidays and will taking a few days to be with the family and the farm. To all our clients and friends, my family and I would like to wish a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays with hope that the new year will bring better and more peaceful times.

Photo Assistant

Producing a large photo shoot, which is what we have been doing for the past couple of weeks is directly related to the quality of the crew you have working with you. Here in Greensboro we are fortunate to have a group of freelance production people that are second to none. One of these is Phil Allison. I've been working with him for several years and he is as professional as an assistant gets, as well as being a good photographer in his own right. Phil can be reached at 336-253-8277.

Below is the whole crew. (left to right: Joanna (client), Sean (talent), Gail (stylist), Robert (talent), Phil (assistant), Sara (assistant), & Larry (AD/CD)). I'm holding the camera.

(images copyright 2008 by Dan Routh)

Image Archive-Digital Railroad Trainwreck

For the past couple of years, I have been using Digital Railroad as an online archive for stock images. Two days ago, they emailed all their customers and announced that they were closing, immediately. Sorry, no advance notice, nothing. I have been trying to migrate my images to another archive site. So far, I have been only able to move 10%. I hope to be able to get to the rest, otherwise, I will have to reload all the images individually from my backups. Anyway, I hope I will be able to have a searchable online archive available sometime soon. Unfortunately, this seems to be a sign of the times in our profession.

Black & White or Color, Film or Digital ..... Stock or Assignment

(image copyright 2008 by Dan Routh)

Black and white. I learned photography shooting and processing b&w and that's where my heart is. I guess most advertising and product photography is shot in color, but I still get excited when I see a good image in tones of gray. It may be all those books I read by Ansel Adams and I do still think in terms of the Zone System.

I learned on film, I shot every format of film available from 126 to 8x10 and for most of my professional life I survived on film. But, I guess I will take digital. Not that I think digital is any better than film; to be perfectly honest, I don't really see any difference in the end product. Face it, film cameras and digital cameras are just tools to produce images. It's just that today, it's a whole lot quicker and easier to do things digitally. In my area labs are becoming fewer and farther apart and it's almost impossible to find large batches of film for sale. Even if I shot on film, I would have to digitize the image to get it into my workflow so I find it easier to start with a digital file. I shoot in RAW format so my original files act as a sort of a digital negative. I find it pretty easy to replicate a film image with digital. Granted it does take some post processing. And, I really don't miss keeping my hands in D-76 and fixer.

Assignment for sure. Today we are seeing more and more agencies and companies depend on stock imagery, the predominant reason being cost. I understand the economic reasons. Believe me, I understand the state of the economy. It just pains me to see part of the creative process disappear. Traditionally, an agency would create an idea for an image and then assign someone to produce it. I always have enjoyed being part of a collaborative effort to bring an ad or a brochure or an article to life. Today those same creatives either by choice or necessity seem to lean more towards stock imagery, royalty-free images and now even to free image services like Flicker. Sometimes they start with an idea and locate an image to illustrate it, and sometimes they find an image and come up with an idea to match it. If it works they are successful. But it seems to me that a lot of folks are trusting to luck, luck in finding that right image. There is an old saying that "it's better to be lucky than good", but my father told me that for the most part in life, "you make your own luck". Don't get me wrong, there are some talented designers that can use stock images very well, and there are some talented designers that can also shoot their own great images. I myself shoot stock photography and do indeed make sales. I just hope assignment photography survives, partly for the selfish reason that I survive financially on it, but mostly because I want to see the most creative, professional part of advertising and commercial photography continue. I hate to see that artistic collaboration between photographer and art director go away. After spending 30 years producing images, I think I still have something creatively valuable to offer. For the agencies and companies that depend on free or royalty-free or stock photography I hope they consider assigning more work and recommending to their clients that they do so, before someday their luck runs out.