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QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF PICTURE PROFESSIONALS
ISSUE 3/ 2012
THE
PICTURE PROFESSIONAL
TABLE OF CONTENTS ISSUE 3 / 2012 THE PICTURE PROFESSIONAL
PORTFOLIO Tamar Levine
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PORTFOLIO Camillo Longo
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PORTFOLIO Jason Knight
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CONFIDING IN SILVER Ellen C. Herbert
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CLICK Ben High
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DOCUMENTING THE TITANIC Richard Philpott
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BOOK REVIEWS
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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Michael Masterson
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EDITOR’S LETTER April Wolfe
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Q/A Photo Editor Agnieszka (Aga) Millhouse
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THE LAW: CLASS ACT Joel L. Hecker, Esq.
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CHAPTER CAPTURE
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CONTRIBUTORS
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LIFE IN FOCUS Witold Riedel
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COVER IMAGE “Ancestor worship (Xie xie wai zu mu)” THIS PAGE “Examination Pending” © JASON KNIGHT 1
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American Society of Picture Professionals
Since first forming as a small, dedicated group of picture professionals in 1966, ASPP has grown into a large community of image experts committed to sharing our experience and knowledge throughout the industry. We provide professional networking and educational opportunities for our members and the visual arts industry. If you create, edit, research, license, distribute, manage or publish visual content, ASPP is the place for you. Join us at www.aspp.com.
LIST OF ADVERTISERS Adobe SendNow age fotostock akg-images Art Resource Association Health Programs Aurora Photos Biosphoto Bridgeman Art Library
Corbis Curt Teich Postcard Archives Custom Medical Stock Photo Dan Suzio Photography Danita Delimont Stock Agency Fundamental Photographs Goodman/Van Riper Photography Levine Roberts Photography
MASTHEAD
The Picture Professional quarterly magazine of the American Society of Picture Professionals, Inc.
ASPP Executive Offices 217 Palos Verdes Blvd., #700 Redondo Beach CA 90277 Tel: 424.247.9944 Fax: 424.247.9844 director@aspp.com Editorial Staff Jain Lemos - Publisher April Wolfe - Editor-in-Chief Ophelia Chong - Art Director Contributing Writers Ellen C. Herbert Ben High Joel L. Hecker, Esq. Agnieszka (Aga) Millhouse Richard Philpott Josh Steichmann 2012-2013 National Board of Directors President Michael Masterson Vice President Sam Merrell Secretary Sid Hastings
Minden Pictures Nature Picture Library New York Public Library North Wind Picture Archive Picture Archive Council of America Robert Harding World Imagery Ron Sherman Photography Science Source/Photo Researchers
Treasurer Mary Fran Loftus Membership Doug Brooks Holly Marshall
Sovfoto/Eastfoto The Granger Collection The Image Works The Kobal Collection Travel USA Stock Photo Viesti Associates Stock Photo VIREO/The Academy of Natural Sciences Visual Connections
DC/South Lori Epstein Jeff Mauritzen
Editorial April Wolfe editor@aspp.com
2012 Sub-Chapter Vice Presidents
National President Michael Masterson michaeldmasterson@gmail.com
Technology Cecilia de Querol
Bay Area Mike Kahn
Marketing & Communications Jennifer Davis Heffner
Minnesota Julie Caruso Missouri Sid Hastings
2012 Chapter Presidents
Ohio Mandy Groszko
West Mark Ippolito Jason Davis
Wisconsin Paul H. Henning
MidWest George Sinclair Wendy Zieger
Membership Doug Brooks Holly Marshall membership@aspp.com Website Daryl Geraci webmanager@aspp.com Tel: 602-561-9535 eNews Blog Cecilia de Querol newsletter@aspp.com
Advertising & Executive Officers Jain Lemos Executive Director director@aspp.com
New England Jennifer Riley Debra LaKind New York Jessica Moon Daniella Nilva
• The American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP) is a community of image experts committed to sharing their experience and knowledge throughout the industry and to promoting the professional and educational advancement of members. This non-profit, non-partisan association provides networking and educational opportunities for those who create, edit, research, license, manage or publish visual media. The Picture Professional (ISSN 1084-3701) is published spring, summer, fall and winter as a forum for distribution of information about use, purchase and sale of imagery. • ASPP is dedicated to promoting and maintaining high professional standards and ethics and cooperates with organizations that have similar or allied interests. We welcome the submission of articles and news from all sources, on all aspects of the imagery profession. Send articles and accompanying illustrations with clear captions and credit lines. Contact: editor@aspp.com • Advertising is also desired and welcomed. We offer a specific readership of professionals in positions of responsibility for decision making and purchase. For our media kit and rate sheet, contact Jain Lemos, 424-247-9944. Space reservation deadlines: February 10, May 10, August 10, November 10. Subscription rates: Free to members, $40.00 per year to non-members. Back issues: $10.00 when available. Non-members are invited to consider membership in ASPP. Address changes: Send both old and new addresses to the National Office or update your individual profile in the Member Area on our website at www.aspp.com. • ©2012 American Society of Picture Professionals, Inc. Single photocopies of materials protected by this copyright may be made for noncommercial pursuit of scholarship or research. For permission to republish any part of this publication, contact the Editor-in-Chief. ASPP assumes no responsibility for the statements and opinions advanced by the contributors to the Society’s publications. Editorial views do not necessarily represent the official position of ASPP. Acceptance of an advertisement does not imply endorsement by ASPP of any product or service. American Society of Picture Professionals
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© Bob Schmolze
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE MICHAEL D. MASTERSON ASPP NATIONAL PRESIDENT
DEAR PICTURE PROS, I confess: I love a good story. I’ve had a lifelong love of reading, instilled first by my mother and then by old-style elementary school teachers with jiggly arms poking out of Mamie Eisenhower-style dresses. Their passion for story telling was reinforced by my grandmother’s friend Flora who slowly parceled her library out to me a book or two at a time, all inscribed in elegant script, “To Mike from Mrs. Zenor,” with the date below. She’s the one who turned me on to Twain, Dickens, Kipling, and even Thomas Wolfe. I’ve lugged those books around for 40 years now, some of which you can see behind me in the photo above. And then the magazines! As a child I delighted in flipping through Life, marveling at the photos every week, and the arrival of National Geographic each month (hoping a map was tucked inside) cemented my love of photography and yearning to travel. There are stacks of partially read and soon-to-be-read copies of the New Yorker scattered around my house along with piles of other periodicals. Guilt and lack of time finally forced me to winnow my dozen-plus subscriptions down, but magazines still arrive weekly, beckoning me to delve between their covers. But there’s only one magazine I read from cover to cover, and it arrives quarterly: The Picture Professional. I am admittedly partial to it as it’s the only one I write for, and my picture appears in every issue. That said, and well beyond it, it’s damn good. It’s been a joy working with April Wolfe and Ophelia Chong and watching their collaboration produce ever more delightful results with each issue. I love the direction it’s taken, featuring more and bigger imagery and exposing us to the work of younger photographers. It is all about the pictures. And the stories they tell, of course. This issue takes that further by exploring the narratives woven through these images. It’s an extraordinary sampling of, dare I say, haunting work. It’s work that stays with you, stories that reverberate. Happy reading. And looking! ✹
MICHAEL
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EDITOR’S LETTER APRIL WOLFE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF THE PICTURE PROFESSIONAL
FALL IS MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE time of the year. Aside
from there being Halloween, Thanksgiving, and my birthday, fall is the signifier that time has passed and that summered days are temporary. Here is where we can talk about death. Halfway through the production of this issue, my trusted MacBook shut its internal systems down. For a moment as I blinked at the black screen, I could faintly hear a mechanism spinning, then stopping, then spinning once more halfheartedly, until all was silent, and left only was the wash of heat on my legs from where its battery core rested on my lap. At the moment my computer died, I had thirteen separate windows open in five different programs. Even as the rainbow spiral told me it was far too much for the operating system to handle, I opened more windows and programs. I had pushed us too far. And then, for seven days, as I traveled by bus through the Midwest, I had no computer, none of my files, and, seemingly, no way to prove that I am. But I exist outside of my technology. It’s difficult to remember this when we’re all lurched over our laptops looking for work, keeping up with trends, or selling a client, but we all exist outside of our technology. We all have objects, ideas, and people who we’ve loved and lost, and even then the world has kept on spinning like that rainbow spiral—another signifier— this time for: we’re still working, but please take a breath and a minute to yourself. And even if the spiral halts, we’ve known from experience that it’ll all begin again.
Our cover photographer, Jason Knight, knows this well. In his Dead Man’s Curve series, he explores in depth the passing of time by hunting down the myriad cars that have careened off historic Mulholland Drive and lain to rest. Fashion photographer Tamar Levine takes a completely different spin on time in her series The Edge of a Hem, where not only is she racing against the clock to finish the shoot, but she’s also reconstructing a lush narrative of love and loss in the post-Civil War era. And then there’s Camillo Longo’s cinematic snapshots of something lurking just beyond a well-composed frame; is it humor, or is it fear? Also in this issue, we have Ellen Herbert’s heartfelt memorial to Lauren Simonutti and her striking and painstakingly composed images, as well as Ben High’s tech recommends, and Richard Philpott takes us through the remarkably large project of documenting the Titanic. As always, Joel Hecker keeps us up-to-date on the law, and in our continuing Q/A series, we interviewed longtime photo editor Agnieszka (Aga) Millhouse to get some perspective on the evolution of the photo industry and how we’re adapting. Why don’t you take a little break from your work and flip through these pages. When the world is crumbling, and you’re 30 emails behind, it’s a good idea to take a look out your window and notice that every tree outside goes through the process of death before growth. They return to their beginnings, and maybe it’s time for you to find your roots as well, maybe rediscover why you got into the photographic arts in the first place. ✹ editor@aspp.com. Sincerely, A.WOLFE
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The Obstructions Tamar Levine on narrative, locations and owls
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THE WORLD OF
CAMILLO LONGO
Remaking Reality
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Silver Jubilee street party, 1977, London, UK / Mirrorpix
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S E Rvenice E N inI Swinter SIMA
SERENISSIMA venice in winter
PHOTOGRAPHS by FRANK VAN RIPER and JUDITH GOODMAN TEXT by FRANK VAN RIPER “One of life’s subtlest acquired pleasures is the Venice of winter, of mists and puddles, umbrellas and empty alleys and gondolas in the rain. This book magically acquires the pleasure for us—and no less miraculously — enables us to enjoy it all the year round.” — JAN MORRIS, AUTHOR, THE WORLD OF VENICE; FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE
PHOTOGRAPHS B Y F R AN K VAN R I P E R AN D J UD I T H GO O D M AN
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TEXT BY FRANK VAN RIP ER
AVAILABLE on AMAZON.COM and BARNESANDNOBLE.COM To order signed and inscribed copies, visit www.veniceinwinter.com American Society of Picture Professionals
“Serenissima: Venice in Winter takes us on the rare journey that a perfect book can and unravels the secrets of a very personal walk through the streets, canals, and homes of Venice…This book is a rare combination of pictures that take you there, and prose that lets you feel as if you’re watching it all from the corner of a small Venetian coffee bar, espresso in hand, ever glancing out the windows.” — DAVID BURNETT, PHOTOJOURNALIST, CONTACT PRESS IMAGES
Flappers dance the Charleston atop blocks of ice, 1926. Š Scherl / Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo / The Image Works
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DEAD MAN’S
CURVE American Society of Picture Professionals
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CLICK.............
PAPER & PHOTOSYNTH
PAPER, by FiftyThree (fiftythree.com), isn’t specifically a photography-related app, but it’s immediately useful to just about anyone who has fingers and ideas (and an iPad, of course). Paper essentially creates a library of exportable, archivable, moleskinelike notebooks on your iPad, allowing for the creation of multiple notebooks of varying lengths. I’ve actually found Paper to be exceptionally useful in project management. I can make notes and sketches in Paper, then send either an entire notebook of notes and ideas, or just a single page, off to my collaborators. For me, it’s easier than having to photograph or scan images out of notebooks or the scribbled-on sheets of paper that constantly litter my desk. While it’s handy for jotting out a few quick notes or a quick visual brainstorm, Paper doesn’t have the extensive brush library and customizable brushes that an app like Autodesk’s Sketchbook has, and its paltry nine-color palette (and then only six colors if we don’t include black, white, and gray as colors) is a bit disappointing. At the same time, it’s that simplicity that makes Paper so easy to use, even if you’re not a master sketcher. Right now, Paper doesn’t allow you to import a photograph into any of the sketchbooks, which is, for photographers, the app’s biggest drawback. But next to the organizational elements of the app, the best aspect is the smooth, clean, dynamic ink pen tool that comes as the default brush, which actually makes me want to pick it up and draw with it. And if you want additional brushes, you can buy a few more via an in-app purchase. If you try out Paper and like it, let me also encourage using an iPad stylus. A finger works well enough, but it’s hard to compete with using a stylus when you’re American Society of Picture Professionals
BY BEN HIGH
drawing and writing. So c’mon gang, get out from behind your camera and draw a picture or write a note every once in a while. This app’s been helping me to organize ideas and it’s even been a little bit fun. Over on the iPhone side of life, there’s a photo app that you need to pick up. It’s been around for a minute, but if you’re not using Microsoft’s Photosynth (photosynth.net) to document your environments and tinker with immersive panoramic photographs, you’re really missing the boat. It’s by far the easiest of all the panorama-making apps. It’s almost automatic, as all you have to do is keep the camera roughly in the same spot as you pan around your environment. The best part is that it doesn’t exclusively make panoramic photos. From within the app, you can export a panorama, but while using the app, you can pan around the environment like you’re actually sitting inside of it. The app also allows these environments to be uploaded to Microsoft’s Photosynth website, further allowing you to embed them anywhere you might want to. I’ve been using the app for quite a while now and am consistently amazed at how easy and useful it is. Even if not used specifically to make art, scouting locations or just documenting things around you become a lot more fun when you can recreate a 360-degree view so easily. There are multiple spots I’ve captured using Photosynth so that later, instead of needing to describe, for example, that I live in a weird apartment that used to be a church, I can just show folks. It’s the next best thing to being there. ✹
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X9L-975232 Š Holly Lindberg
CONFIDING IN SILVER Ellen Herbert Pays Tribute to Lauren Simonutti
BY ELLEN C. HERBERT
“The misfirings of my beloved/despised mind that conspire to convince me to destroy all, have rendered me housebound and led to a solitary life. I am a creature of past, proof, memory and imaginary friends.� Lauren Simonutti American Society of Picture Professionals
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DC/SOUTH • NEW YORK • NEW ENGLAND • MIDWEST • WEST Speaker Steven Gosling (left) talks with photographer Mary Jane Moody while photographers Jessica Sheppard and Ashley Sullivan catch up on photo industry news.
DC/SOUTH WHAT’S IN YOUR BAG? Jennifer Davis Heffner
Credit for (4) images: ©Jennifer Davis Heffner
ASPP’s DC/South chapter and Women Photojournalists of Washington (WPOW) cohosted an event called, What’s in Your Bag? at Studio 52 in Washington, DC on May 31. Speaking at the event were Associated Press photographer Susan Walsh, wedding photojournalist Jay Premack, sports and wedding photographer Steven Gosling, and Washington Post videojournalist AJ Chavar. The special surprise guest speaker was world-renowned photographer David Burnett.
Washington Post videojournalist AJ Chavar goes through his equipment during the “What’s in Your Bag” event at Studio 52 in Washington DC.
Washington Post videojournalist AJ Chavar gives his tips on how to convert your DSLR to a video camera.
Award winning photojournalist David Burnett shares a story of what he carries on assignment now and during the film years of photography.
The night kicked off with a wine and cheese party, while ASPP and WPOW members and guests networked. The speakers talked about the variety of equipment they use on their daily assignments, as well as equipment tips for the budget-conscious photographer. The evening concluded with a raffle for prizes from ACE Photo, National Geographic, ASPP, WPOW and Lens Baby.
NEW YORK
Credit for (2) photos: ©Antonio Rosario
ASPP NY + Getty Images Present: Innovation in Storytelling Eric Rachlis, Sr. Director Licensing Services, Getty Images (left); Marisa Benedetto, Executive Producer, HarperCollins Digital Media; and Ilana Safer, Director, Corporate Counsel, Getty Images (right); look on as panelist Todd Gilmour, Creative Director, Dow Jones Content Lab fields audience questions during the lively conversation following the presentation. About 50 industry professionals turned out in the middle of August for an engaging and informative panel at Getty offices on Varick Street. Craft beer, wine, and small bites were served following the presentation as the conversations about innovation in digital storytelling continued.
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CHAPTER CAPTURE
CHAPTER CAPTURE
Wildlife & Habitats
DANITA DELIMONT Stock Photography
www.DanitaDelimont.com
Worldwide Travel, Nature & Culture Wherever they roam, the creatures of our planet do what they can to survive man’s ever-increasing encroachment of their habitat. Our extraordinary nature photographers offer us a small glimpse of what they’ve seen throughout the years they’ve spent in the field, documenting these habitats and ecosystems for the world to understand. For more information, visit DanitaDelimont.com call us at 425-562-1543 or email us at: Danita@DanitaDelimont.com.
ISSUE 3 / 2012 THE PICTURE PROFESSIONAL
JOEL L. HECKER, ESQ. practices in every aspect of photography and visual arts law, including copyright, licensing, publishing contracts, privacy rights and other intellectual property issues, and acts as general counsel to photography and content-related businesses. In addition to The Picture Professional, Hecker lectures and writes on these issues in PhotoStockNotes, the New York Bar Association Journal and the association’s Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Journal. He is a past trustee of the Copyright Society of the USA, and past chair of the Copyright and Literary Property Committee of the New York City Bar Association. Tel.: 212.557.9600; website: www.RussoandBurke.com; email: HeckerEsq@aol.com.
Art producer and owner of NEAT Production, ELLEN HERBERT is a career photo professional. She counts herself lucky to collaborate with a variety of clients, from publishers and ad agencies to filmmakers and photographers, from her home base in East LA.
BEN HIGH is an Iowan turned Angeleno turned Iowan. He used to be a music industry wonk and commercial photographer. Now he designs fancy (sometime photography related) jewelry and shoots Polaroid and instant film. You can see what he is up to at benhigh.com.
RICHARD PHILPOTT studied Fine Art at Oxford and has remained active in painting, film, environmental sculpture, photography. He worked as Head of the Picture Library at Camera Press, then as freelance picture researcher, before founding Zooid Pictures Limited in 1984 as an independent film and television company producing experimental shorts and documentaries. Zooid then pioneered large-scale digital workflows, asset and project management systems, and a comprehensive range of media services for large publishers, museums, and corporate clients. He is author of a biographical study of the work of Vincent van Gogh, numerous articles on the (technological) history of cinema, and has contributed occasional chapters and editorial research to a number of books.
The first time JOSH STEICHMANN got paid for photography was when he turned a snack shack at a summer camp into a 12-foot by 12-foot pinhole camera. Since then, he’s had a love of alternative processes, creative risk taking, and mural prints. Working as a writer, he’s covered everything from Elvis festivals to US Code 2257, and plenty in between. As a photographer, he’s shown across Michigan, and can usually be found jumping Los Angeles fences with a home-hacked Holga.
© Camillo Longo
CONTRIBUTORS
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LIFE IN FOCUS
© Witold Riedel
• www.witoldriedel.com
“I look out the window and I see the lights and the skyline and the people on the street rushing around looking for action, love, and the world’s greatest chocolate chip cookie, and my heart does a little dance.” - Nora Ephron, Heartburn
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