There is a lot to be said for serendipity when taking photos. Earlier in the year after a planned excursion to photograph Japantown at dusk here in San Francisco, I was returning to my car when I saw a really bright street lamp out of the corner of my eye. Taking a double take I realized that it wasn’t a streetlamp in the distance, but the full moon rising over Geary Blvd. I was unable to set up my camera in time to capture traffic silhouetted against the moon, but I was able to get in this one photo. I had a very narrow opportunity to photograph the moon centered above Geary Blvd. as I was on a very narrow island in the middle of 5 lanes of a very busy street, making it too dangerous to shuffle around to reposition the moon. The moon moves much quicker than you’d think… roughly 4 degrees per minute. Something to keep in mind the next time the full moon catches you off guard.
A few weeks back I was hunting for music that I could use on a web based video and had a challenging time. As a photographer who cares about rights to my work being respected, I felt it was important to share that same respect to musicians whose work I wanted to use. Searching and gaining permission to use music for my photo video proved to be a huge challenge and got me to respect the Creative Commons initiative all the more.
While getting permission to use All Rights Reserved creative content is as simple as asking permission it can be frustrating. I’m normally a very patient person, but when I had my video ready to go and I found the music I wanted to use it seemed like an eternity to hear back from the artist. Eventually the artist wrote me back 48 hours later and gave me permission to use any of his work in the future regardless of current licensing designation. I was lucky and found a very cool artist to collaborate with.
Ultimately I burned a lot of time searching for music. It would seem that there is a huge opening for a site to be created matching artists who want to share their work in conjunction with other artists for promotional and non/pseudo-commercial purposes. To me having a directory that matches musicians and photographers to use each others work for mutual promotion seems like a win-win proposition. Until my dream of such a directory becomes a reality below are 5 copyleft resources to search for music and 5 royalty-free stock music resources.
An important note:
Music designated as “No Derivative Works license” cannot be used for photo videos as explained on this Creative Commons page Legal Music for Videos.
So even if you find music you like with this CC license you’ll still need to retain approval from the artist, so build in approval time as you plan your videos release.
“Under CC licenses, synching the music to images amounts to transforming the music, so you can’t legally use a song under a CC No Derivative Works license in your video.“
Film Music by Moby
“‘film music’, is for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short.
If you want to use it in a commercial film or short then you can apply for an easy license, with any money that’s generated being given to the humane society.”
While in Switzerland on my last trip there I found a quiet brook running through the alpine countryside and was in awe of the fall color. The brook itself was a beautiful turquoise (I’ll post a photo of that in the near future) and the ceiling of color provided above it by the trees was a real visual treat. The gray rock cliff behind seemed only to enhance the color to my eye. When the rain began to fall that is when the trees seemed to glow. Moments like this where you’re not rushing around and can witness a picturesque scene unfold before you is one of the magical moments of being a landscape and nature photographer.
I’m trying out a new commenting system here on the JMG-Galleries Blog and I’d like to solicit your feedback on it over the coming weeks.
DISQUS is rolling out a new version of their blog commenting system (v3) this week, integrating blog comments and corresponding comments found on other communities such as Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed. I’m patiently waiting for the full roll out and looking to see when it takes effect here on my blog. The upgrade should be a substantial improvement as comments are threaded and update in real-time with out any need to refresh the page you’re reading.
In the meantime you can still enjoy threaded comments in the current version and login via Facebook, Twitter, DISQUS or as a guest. As always your participation on the blog is much appreciated and I look forward to interacting with you more as DISQUS v3 rolls out.
Working with a long lens you never know what might squeeze into the narrow field of view when photographing masses of animals. I was very lucky on this one morning in Monterey finding these huddling California Sea Lions in a symmetrical pairing as they interacted with each other. Watching sea lions never gets old and I’d imagine the experience of seeing them underwater where they’re far more nimble would be an even bigger thrill.
On the topic of long lens photography be sure to check out my recent posting 10 Tips For Great Telephoto Photography on the Digital Photography School web site.
Huddling California Sea Lions (Zalophus californianus)
The magic of Glacier National Park is that its bigger than life beauty is seemingly presented like acts of a play. Through out the day or sometimes slowly over several days various acts are revealed. Most know Glacier from its iconic sun kissed glacially carved peaks and valleys (see Swiftcurrent Lake Panoramic, Glacier National Park), but between these amazing moments curtains of clouds descends as harsh weather continues to sculpt the landscape. The thrill of Glacier National Park is witnessing these acts, each different the last. Every time I visit I never know what I’ll be graced to see and the anticipation is always palpable. Even when the curtain descends Glacier has a magic to it, teasing you with glimpses of its grand terrain. That alone keeps me coming back.
The past few years online have been an interesting ride and things are only going to get more interesting thanks to Social Media. We are all consumers and now through Social Media the strength of our voice and influence is amplified by the size of our networks (see my previous post 4 Metrics of Social Media Impact). On the other side of the coin many of us are also our own company and brand, this is particularly true for photographers.
Social Media is both loved and feared. How you feel about Social Media for one depends on how much knowledge you have about it and secondly how you use it. Do you use it as a consumer or a company? More times than not we use it as both but with a tendency of one versus the other. Social Media is very easy to fear and several businesses small and large fear it to the bone. Sometimes this fear is warranted and other times its not.
I had an interesting experience with my wife just the other day. We had her car in the shop for some repairs. We were on our 4th visit bringing the car back in a two week time-frame for the same problem. My wife was extremely frustrated with the auto repair shop. Promises had been made and various employees were giving her different information about cost. Did we owe another $700 on top of the initial $500 spent even though they had told us it was guaranteed work? A communication breakdown happened, but by the time we talked to the manager in person we were told that there would be no cost to our most recent repair. The manager stated to us more than once, “Customer Service is important to us and we want you to be happy.”
I did not envy the manager of this shop eating $700 in parts and labor. He seemed like a sincere guy, but his statement and delivery were different than times past. In the age of Yelp neighborhood repair shops live and die by customer reviews. Did he look up that my wife is active in rating neighborhood shops? Did he know that my wife had been relaying her displeasure through sites like Facebook? Check out this video on the relevance of Social Media and read on…
With an eye towards big landscapes its easy to become focused to the point of having tunnel vision when trekking around. These days with every step I take I’m often taking note of what’s beneath me as much as what is in front of me. In some instances this is to make sure I’m not at risk of being bit or stung by animals or insects, but its also to look for photo subjects that I might otherwise quickly walk past or worse crush.
Case in point are these dew covered Harebell flowers. Kneeling down to get what later turned out to be a mediocre landscape photo of the Grand Tetons at sunrise I noticed these beautiful flowers. I made sure to set my knee down off to the side of them knowing I’d come back to photograph them before the morning light became too harsh. While I came away from this particular morning hike with several photos I liked this is among my favorite.
I would rather say: buy...
