Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/08/23
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Alan Hull wrote: > I can't help feeling that standards are falling rapidly and the > customer is being cheated. Donal even mentions one charlaton producing > billboards from the 35mm negative. These must be the ones I see in bus > shelters in Sweden. If you are waiting for the bus it is impossible to > even detect form. You have to stand on the other side of the street. Alan, probably reproduction, not the original photos. I fellow I mentioned is a fantastic shooter and his billboards look just fine (even if they weren't shot with a Leica!). But content matters here and the magic moments he captures would be almost impossible on anything else but AF (Canon in his case). > > I received a house paint catalogue in the mail, where a photograph of a > house in different colours (photoshop?) had LEANING VERTICALS, In my > opinion this is professional suicide. They may not realise that there > are a lot of hungry 35mm camera operators out there just waiting for > technical standards to drop low enough to let them in to the big money. That one I won't argue with. Yesterday I got call to bid job to do photo for packaging for one of the country's largest sprinkler watering system manufacturers. I bid the job at around $4000 for location finding (garden), location fees, model, assistant, stylist, my fees and preproduction time and extra plants for foreground that we could control. I spoke later to art director and he said he would do his best to sell me. But he said the last project he did, this client got a bid of $500 for a brochure cover photo (studio), thought it was way too much and negotiated it down to $300. And in the same conversation asked if the art director could redesign this same brochure cover for less than $5000! No, you counted the zeroes right. At least it is crystal clear where the value of photography is these days. Can I hang a plant on my back porch and do a quick photo of a hand watering it? Sure, and make about $500 an hour. But it will be a compromise. Yet the photo they want will be the primary selling tool on the packaging on display in stores. BTW, this is a huge international company all have probably heard of. And no, they don't deserve to have it shot with a Leica. donal - -- Donal Philby San Diego http://www.donalphilby.com