I want to scream every time I visit a "so-called" professional photographers web site and they spend 50% of their biography telling viewers to their web site about their equipment, how much it cost them, what lenses they have and all sorts of stupid SHIT !!!!
Really nothing professional about it dudes. Clients could not give a continental shit what camera you have as along as you know how to use the damn thing.
Advertising your "expensive" equipment on a public space is a real bad idea not to mention amateurish if I did not already mention that.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Nikon - Kissing ASS with the best of them.
It's no secret that Nikon has aggresively taken over market share as far as photography goes. Pro's world wide have been switching, or have been lured to switch to the mighty N and almost weekly people are making the switch. Just look at any photography classifieds page and see how much second hand Canon equipment is for sale these days.
Being a Nikon shooter myself I think it's great that Nikon, once scorned and mocked by the photographic community, is now leader of the pack BUT it saddens me somewhat that those photographers who scorned, mocked and belittled Nikon users at every opportunity have done much ass-kissing and have had their asses kissed by Nikon in order to switch over.
Nikon seems to think that word does not get around but the photography industry is REAL small and people do get to know whose ass was kissed and by whom. I know of several Canon professionals in South Africa who were approached by Nikon and were "given" equipment running into hundreds of thousands of Rands. Of course Nikon has a sting in their tail and these togs have to breathe, sleep and poop Nikon ...... they seem to be trained like little puppy dogs to make the first word ouf of their mouth Nikon and lets not forget all the shirts and hats they have to wear if they happen to be in public.
Nikon then likes to share little industry "secrets" with these photographers who have not actually spent much money with Nikon and customers who've spent BIG bucks with them may not know or are not told such "secrets". For instance there's already rumours about a new Nikon body to take over from the D3 which will be 2 years old this year, this "secret" was told to me by one of these lured-switchers with the message that I must NEVER tell anyone ... BIG SECRET !!!! ... yeah right ... come on I am not a dumb ass. The only difference is that when this new body comes out I have to pay FULL price for it and these guys "get" one for next to nothing ... just to keep blurting Nikon out of their mouths.
If Nikon is purposefully trying to piss off customers who've spent huge sums of money with them, they sure are going about it the right way.
Being a Nikon shooter myself I think it's great that Nikon, once scorned and mocked by the photographic community, is now leader of the pack BUT it saddens me somewhat that those photographers who scorned, mocked and belittled Nikon users at every opportunity have done much ass-kissing and have had their asses kissed by Nikon in order to switch over.
Nikon seems to think that word does not get around but the photography industry is REAL small and people do get to know whose ass was kissed and by whom. I know of several Canon professionals in South Africa who were approached by Nikon and were "given" equipment running into hundreds of thousands of Rands. Of course Nikon has a sting in their tail and these togs have to breathe, sleep and poop Nikon ...... they seem to be trained like little puppy dogs to make the first word ouf of their mouth Nikon and lets not forget all the shirts and hats they have to wear if they happen to be in public.
Nikon then likes to share little industry "secrets" with these photographers who have not actually spent much money with Nikon and customers who've spent BIG bucks with them may not know or are not told such "secrets". For instance there's already rumours about a new Nikon body to take over from the D3 which will be 2 years old this year, this "secret" was told to me by one of these lured-switchers with the message that I must NEVER tell anyone ... BIG SECRET !!!! ... yeah right ... come on I am not a dumb ass. The only difference is that when this new body comes out I have to pay FULL price for it and these guys "get" one for next to nothing ... just to keep blurting Nikon out of their mouths.
If Nikon is purposefully trying to piss off customers who've spent huge sums of money with them, they sure are going about it the right way.
Good Photography or Good Photoshopping?
A debate that never dies, when does a photograph stop being a photograph and cross the borders into digital art?
It seems in recent years with the advent of digital photography, photography itself has changed face somewhat. Where photographers used to rely on getting shots right "in camera" they now have a whole host of software applications at their disposal to take photos out of a digital camera and "make" them perfect ... sometimes too perfect.
There used to be an art in producing an image using available light, filters and good photography skills but now every Tom, Dick and Harry can become a Photoshop specialist and produce photographs that will leave you drooling. But these images are actually too good to be true and in most cases NOT what the human eye saw, or even close to it when it comes to certain photographers.
First off there's the mediocre photographer who is not interested in becoming a better "photographer" but instead relies on photoshop skills to rescue images that were not very good to begin with and turn them into images that are a shadow of their former selves ... this quite simply is not photography and never will be.
Then there's the photographer who has a good eye for composition and can produce single frame images that are correctly exposed "in camera" but instead have become too reliant on image blending techniques and photoshop skills to produce images that look great but do not faithfully represent the truth. These photographers claim that they use such techniques because the camera cannot see things properly so they need these image blends to produce an image which is more accurate to what they saw. I've stood side by side with such photographers and their final image looks great BUT it's most certainly NOT truthful to what nature presented. Sadly these types pass themselves off as Master Photographers but are far from it.
Then there's the photographer who relies exclusively on producing images in camera, using filters and solid photography skills who merely use photoshop to adjust levels, sharpening, white balance and minor image tweaks but entirely on a single frame image. Very much the way it's always been done. This type of photographer uses photoshop as a photo-lab, much the way it was done all these years and believe it or not these types are not a dying breed, they are very much still the majority in photography circles.
In 20 years time I wonder how many "photographs" will actually be "photographs"
It seems in recent years with the advent of digital photography, photography itself has changed face somewhat. Where photographers used to rely on getting shots right "in camera" they now have a whole host of software applications at their disposal to take photos out of a digital camera and "make" them perfect ... sometimes too perfect.
There used to be an art in producing an image using available light, filters and good photography skills but now every Tom, Dick and Harry can become a Photoshop specialist and produce photographs that will leave you drooling. But these images are actually too good to be true and in most cases NOT what the human eye saw, or even close to it when it comes to certain photographers.
First off there's the mediocre photographer who is not interested in becoming a better "photographer" but instead relies on photoshop skills to rescue images that were not very good to begin with and turn them into images that are a shadow of their former selves ... this quite simply is not photography and never will be.
Then there's the photographer who has a good eye for composition and can produce single frame images that are correctly exposed "in camera" but instead have become too reliant on image blending techniques and photoshop skills to produce images that look great but do not faithfully represent the truth. These photographers claim that they use such techniques because the camera cannot see things properly so they need these image blends to produce an image which is more accurate to what they saw. I've stood side by side with such photographers and their final image looks great BUT it's most certainly NOT truthful to what nature presented. Sadly these types pass themselves off as Master Photographers but are far from it.
Then there's the photographer who relies exclusively on producing images in camera, using filters and solid photography skills who merely use photoshop to adjust levels, sharpening, white balance and minor image tweaks but entirely on a single frame image. Very much the way it's always been done. This type of photographer uses photoshop as a photo-lab, much the way it was done all these years and believe it or not these types are not a dying breed, they are very much still the majority in photography circles.
In 20 years time I wonder how many "photographs" will actually be "photographs"
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