Category Archives: Ideas

Ethics, Ideas

About That Free Use Thing…

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Anyone doing work in a creative medium has had a conversation like one that someone I know just told me about. A person, perhaps a friend or acquaintance or possibly someone with a “cause” that is interesting and worthy, asks to use a photograph for free “just for my own personal use, and maybe to share with a few friends. I’d like to print up some cards and use it on my website. Just send me a high res file…”

Sigh.

This is one of the toughest requests to deal with, especially when it comes from a friend or valued acquaintance. The request seems so innocent, especially when it comes from people we know and especially when they are generally well-meaning. In fact,  they often regard their interest in our work as a compliment. And it is a compliment on some level, and artists do appreciate it when others are moved by their work and are willing to say so.

(In truth, there are occasions when it is appropriate to ask, and there are some when which it is appropriate for us to say “yes.”)

From the perspective of the person making the request, it probably feels something like this:

I love your beautiful work! It moves me and I would like to share it! It is so beautiful that I would like to use it for my [insert proposed use here]. I want others to see your work. Can you send me a copy of the image that I can use? A high resolution file would be great! It will just be for “personal use” (broadly defined… ;-), so can I use it for free?

Here is what the artist hears:

I love your work! It moves me and means the world to me! It is wonderful and powerful and beautiful! But it isn’t worth anything and I think you should give it to me for free! And because I know you, I think you’ll feel obligated. Continue reading About That Free Use Thing… →

Commentary, Ethics, Ideas, Photographs: Imaginary Landscapes

Gray Areas

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This post derives from something I wrote elsewhere in a discussion about a photograph that included something that wasn’t originally in the scene, a discussion that became rather polarized. 

“Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.” 
― Ansel Adams

Imaginary Landscape - Death Valley
An imaginary landscape derived from subjects photographed in Death Valley National Park.

All photographs lie. But all photographs carry a burden of reality.

Except for photographers who overtly and obviously manipulate reality in major ways as a central concept of their work — see Jerry Uelsmann, for example, or some work by John Paul Caponigro, among others — viewers come to photographs believing that the images had their genesis in the real. Photographers can respond to this basic presumption in photography in a number of ways, and perhaps in landscape photography the response has even more implications.

Let’s say you are Caponigro or Uelsmann and a major point of your photography is to produce visual art that derives from and references the landscape but then combines it with non-landscape elements or takes those elements and fundamentally rearranges them so that they intentionally no longer can be taken to represent the real landscape. These photographers openly embrace and build their work on creating imaginary fantastical worlds out of materials derived from the real landscape, creating what I refer to as “imaginary landscapes.” The photographer and the viewer are on exactly the same page here – both accept and embrace the fantasy and the sometimes more ambiguous line between the real and the imagined. This work seems completely honest and genuine.

On the other hand, let’s say you are a photographer who builds and bases a reputation not on the creation of visual fantasies — things we all know are not and cannot be real — but instead on going to great lengths to travel to “special places,” often telling stories of finding special places and special conditions that less focused and dedicated photographers do not find. Continue reading Gray Areas →

Commentary, Equipment, Ideas

DSLR & Mirrorless: Flexibility and Adaptability

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(Note: This is one of those occasional posts adapted from something I originally wrote elsewhere. This one came from an online discussion of the relative merits of DSLRs and mirrorless cameras and their abilities to work with various lenses and photographic subjects. I have edited the original slightly for its re-use here.)

With all of the recent (justifiable!) interest in new mirrorless camera developments from Sony, there are factors that may persuade some photographers to go slow on giving up DSLRs for mirrorless. (It may also convince them to do what I did — I augmented my DSLR system with a second mirrorless system.) As good as mirrorless cameras are becoming, in particular the full frame Sony A7r and newer A7rII, they have their pluses and minuses when it comes to real-world photography. They can do some things quite well – there are advantages in some cases to the electronic viewfinders, Sony sensors provide state-of-the-art dynamic range, the bodies are compact, and more. They do some things less well — native lenses are few, other lenses require adapters, the autofocus systems are slower than DSLRs, there are still latency issues with the viewfinders, and so on.)

In this context, I recently realized that one of the nice things about the new Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II Lens and the newer Canon bodies (like my 5Ds R, which is very similar to the 5Ds)  is that they now autofocus (AF) quite well at f/8. The 100-400 len’s maximum f/5.6 aperture at the long end is no longer a barrier to getting 560mm out of the lens by adding the TC.

I’ve only tried the combination on one occasion so far, when the opportunity to photograph wildlife came up on a recent photography venture along the California coast. I put the 100-400 version II and the Canon 1.4x TC on my 5DsR and photographed two wildlife subjects, elephant seals lounging on a beach and pelicans doing everything from flying past to landing to sitting still. (For those who want more information than I can provide here, I wrote about the initial results in a another article.)

While I do not recommend that people whose primary photographic focus is birds in flight rush out and get a 5Ds or 5Ds R, a 100-400 v2, and a 1.4x TC as their primary setup, it does work decently and in some cases extremely well.  Most importantly, it means that my primary landscape photography setup and can also work very effectively with non-landscape subjects, including wildlife — a task that will severely challenge the best current mirrorless options.

The Landing
“The Landing” — A brown pelican joins the flock on a rock along the Pacific coast of California

The combination focuses well and provides good resolution, even with moving subjects — though, obviously, not as well as using something like a 1Dx with a 300mm f/2.8 prime. It is good enough that I can track birds in flight and catch sharp photographs of them in motion.

Continue reading DSLR & Mirrorless: Flexibility and Adaptability →
Ideas, Site News

A Photo A Day: How Long Has This Gone On?

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Recently someone who was giving a talk on photography noted that I have been posting a photograph every day for a long time. His guess was that I had been doing so for about four of five years. I told him that I thought that it has been longer than this, but I wasn’t sure how long.

Morning Light, Zabriskie Point
Morning light on the badlands near Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park

Morning Light, Zabriskie Point. Death Valley National Park. April 4, 2004. © Copyright 2004 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved. (Originally posted April 5, 2006.)

Judging from some records I just looked up, I think I may have been doing this since early April 2006! Some of those earliest posts are still there, but the photographs have gone missing — in the course of moving the website between different hosts and transferring the content from one content management system to another some of the early content was lost.

(This was not the first photograph shared  I posted online — I was blogging in the mid-1990s, and posting photographs not long afterward. It is a bit scary to think of how many thousands of photographs I must have posted by now!)

My friend (the “someone” mentioned above) was pointing to this history in the context of practice, something that I think is tremendously important in photography. He and I share extensive background and training in music, where the importance of practice is obvious, and where practicing is assumed. Continue reading A Photo A Day: How Long Has This Gone On? →