1,000 Words

Stockyard Photos was recently featured in a short news brief on the website StockIndexOnline.com. The Article mentions all the recent updates that we have been doing for the upcoming Offshore Technology Conference (OTC 08). We have updated with new images in our Oil and Gas category. You can find the category at this address: http://www.stockyard.com/gallery2/v/Oil-Gas/. We have beautiful stock images ranging from Offshore, Onshore, Petrochemical, Oil Tanking, Pump Jacks, Frac Pumps, Pipes and Pipelines, Workers and Service. You can check out the news brief here: http://www.stockindexonline.com/index.php?q=IndustryNews&id_new=2011.

For those of you that know me, the header for this article may cause a chuckle. Known to wear mostly cargo pants/jeans and only putting a suit on when absolutely necessary, I am not a fashion plate.. Worry not, this is about outdoors clothing.

After returning from my assignment in upstate New York during the worst snowstorm this year, I silently thanked my Boy Scout training and adherence to the Be Prepared motto.

I knew it would be cold, low single digits with lots of snow, so I arranged to field test GameHide’s StormHide/Typhoon Class parka/bib with my editors at Texas Fish & Game Magazine, Roy and Ardia Neves, who happened to have a spare one that fit me. Thank goodness and thank you Roy, Ardia and GameHide!

It snowed most of the time I was there photographing a drilling rig and the only way I could get low enough to frame the rig with the bough of a tree was to sit directly in several inches of snow. The rubberized seat bottom and knees of the insulated bib allowed me to do that w/o getting cold or wet. In a situation like this, it is critical to use a tripod and extremely important to use a remote switch on my Canon EOS1 Ds Mark 2 to ensure rock steady exposure.

Remember, it’s freezing cold and chances are your fingers are exposed to give more tactile adjustments to the controls of the camera, I recommend the Chota Stow-A-Way Fleece which allows you to flip the cover of these unique mittens back to expose the tips of your fingers to make your adjustments and then tuck them back inside the warm fleece cover without having to remove the whole mitten. Additionally, Rapidstyle’s rubberized skullcap can’t be beat for a warm waterproof head cover. It gives needed insulation around your ears and an unobstructed view.

I had scouted the terrain earlier in the day to locate a viewpoint that would integrate the rig with the local environment and found a spot that placed the rig in the foreground and a road leading to a farmhouse in the background.

Since I decided that the most dramatic shot would be at dusk, I needed the lights of the farmhouse to bring attention to it. I drove up to the house and introduced myself and asked if the family would turn all of the lights on in the house at dusk for me. They consented. So now all I had to do was climb back up the hill to my vantage point and wait for the light to fade. With the glow of the evening sky beginning to disappear, I set my white balance for 3200 Kelvin to give me a pleasing blue cast to the scene and also to balance the incandescent light from the rig…. then took my picture.

As always, there are many moving parts to a location shoot. Being uncomfortable shouldn’t be one of them.

Live to shoot,
Jim

The photographers of Bands and Fans put forth the sometimes shocking, always amusing and often inspiring ways music transforms you by photographing Meridian patrons and the musicians at the club - and then following them into their lives away from the show. This before and after transformation is as amazing as it is understandable, given the energy and emotion that blazes from the state whether the vibe is hardcore or Hindi.

We show multiple selves—a different face we show the world depending on where we are, what we’re doing and who we’re with. What happens when all of our selves rock the house? What happens to that unassuming coworker when he or she lets it all hang out? Come and see—and maybe see someone you know.

Participating photographers are Ariel Pena (Houston roller derby photographer); Lauren Cohen (Captures the essence of emotion through music); Brian Anderson (Beauty in Art); Suzanne Banning (Movable self-portraits) and curator Jim Olive, commercial photographer and owner of the stock photo agency Stockyard Photos and The Olive Gallery.

Across from the George R. Brown Convention Center and Toyota Center Downtown, bordering the eastern edge of downtown Houston, the Meridian is a hip underground haven for concerts, special events, private parties and general mayhem. Recent rockers at the Meridian have included Tiger Army, Street Dogs and Imperative Reaction along with Robin Trower and Johnny Winter.

If you select a stock image from ‘any’ website there are some rules. Photographers are just like musicians. When you listen to their songs, you pay, either through advertising, CD purchase, download from the internet, or stolen. The industry standard for using a professional stock image photographed by a professional photographer is the user must pay an annual renewal fee. That’s fair. Your fee is dependent on your readership (how you will be using the image), either on a website (lo res), on a brochure with 2,500 print (or 100K), on a billboard, and perhaps the same image on the cover of an Annual Report. Each application warrants a higher price.

If perhaps you get smug finding a “really good price” for an average image on the internet. You could run the risk of seeing the same image on your competitor’s website or in the brochure they hand out at the industry trade show you both attend. Usually a bargain priced image is too low a resolution to have multiple uses to conform to your branding campaign, much less enlarge the image for an office interior graphic for your boardroom or lobby.

Now let’s look at an assignment project with your experienced and professional photographer:

If your client has need of multiple applications of images of assets such as an office building, a jet plane, an oil platform in the Persian Gulf or a Nobel Prize winning President, the best creative decision, as well as financial for them, would be professionally photograph these assets.

The professional ‘eye’ can see what a novice cannot. He or she will be out at dawn to dusk to capture the most compelling split second glimpse of your subject that your sister-in-law with a new pocket digital cannot. This image will be the ‘1,000 word’ visual message to grab attention and produce an emotion and positive reaction from your viewer. How many times have you thought you would receive the images you asked for to find that not one image was usable and the assignment must be reshot and valuable time and money lost.

From one professional assignment session you will have hundreds of breathtaking images that can be used, reused, enlarged, and reduced multiple times for multiple years. These images can be used for printed web pages, collateral as well as graphic enlargements for the corporate lobby or corporate gifting to valued clients; with no annual fees, no chance of your competitor using the same image.

In summary, it is clear that professional assignment photography is actually more economical. You capture the essence of your valued asset (rigs, fleet, employees wearing your logo and the happy faces of your staff), and you support your local professional talents without using an image you find on a New York website for your client in Houston, Texas.