FocalPower…the blog

I came across an interesting article in the New York Times: Walls of Art for Everyone, but Made by Not Just Anyone. This article talked about graffiti artists who are paid to graffiti are are starting to take legal action against photographers who photograph their work and make money from the photographs.

Most photographers would feel the same way if one of their photos was used by someone without pay. But how many of us have thought about the legal rights of a graffiti artist when we take a picture of some graffiti? Makes you wonder where the boundary lies and how far some people will push to move that boundary.

It’s very clear that as a photographer you have to understand some aspects of the law. What do you legally have the right to photograph or sell an image of? The ImageCatalog, a micro-stock agency, posts a list of what it considers Copyright and Trademark Infringement. Interesting resource to consider next time your out shooting.

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The FocalPower team has some exciting news to announce today. We have launched a partnership with Jeffery Luhn of Jeffery Jay Luhn Photography over at the FocalPower Forum. Jeffery will be providing his 28 years of experience in the photography business to help moderate three new boards on the forum:

• Photography Skills: Portrait Lighting
• Photography Skills: Still & Product Lighting
• Business of Photography: Commercial Photography

And if we’re lucky (or pester him enough), Jeff might also be posting some of his most interesting stories from his career in the Stories from the Trenches board.

About Jeffery (an excerpt from his website)

Jeffery Jay Luhn graduated from Brooks Institute of Photography in 1979 with two Bachelor of Science degrees – Photographic Illustration and Commercial Industrial Photography. At the time of his graduation he was give a special achievement award for being the top student in the 32-year history of the school.

In 1980 Jeffery founded Visioneering Studios in San Francisco and became known as the photographer to hire for “OUTSIDE THE BOX” thinking. In 1990 he expanded into motion pictures and founded Jeffery Jay Luhn Video Productions in the heart of Silicon Valley. […] Jeffery has worked in 25 countries for publishers, news agencies, manufacturers, scientific research firms, hotel chains, airlines, and many others.

Jeffery enjoys giving seminars and workshops to photographers interested in doing professional quality work. He has taught at California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, Academy of Art in San Francisco and Chabot College in Hayward, CA. His workshops are held in his Santa Cruz, CA studio on a regular basis. Visit his website to view his work and read the description of upcoming workshops. (www.luhnphoto.com)

FocalPower is excited to have Jeffery involved with the FocalPower Forum! Beside being a place for FocalPower support, we look forward to building the Forum into a community of photographers willing to share their experiences and insights for the improvement of everyone’s photographic skills.

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This morning we upgraded the forum software behind FocalPower Forum to the latest patch release. After initial testing, it looks like the upgrade was successful and no functionality was affected. If you notice any issues or strangeness with the forum, please let us know by contacting {support at focalpower dot com}.

This update was a patch update and did not affect any of the functionality of the forum. Because it was a patch update, no downtime was needed to perform the update.

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I was listening to a LensWork podcast #383: Bumper Sticker Depth tonight and realized that the FocalPower Quote Archive could be judged in this fashion. In this podcast, Brooks Jensen talked about how snippets of information have started to replace the in depth information of the past. I personally agree with his notion.

It was just such a notion that caused us at FocalPower to build our Quote Archive in such a fashion as to provide more information about the people behind the quotes. Every quote that is delivered via the Random Quote Widget has a link built into the author so that if the reader finds that quote interesting, they can follow the link to get more information. Most of the time, this link will take the reader to a Wikipedia entry on the person behind the quote. Wikipedia has a great number of entries on famous and well known photographers. Granted, the information may not be exhaustively complete (and we are always on the lookout for personal essays), but there are other sources that can be followed up on at the bottom of most entries. There are occasions when the quote is from a contemporary photographer and the link takes you to that photographer’s website. This usually means that there is no Wikipedia entry available.

The good news for the Quote Widget users is that these links will open up in a new window, so that their website isn’t lost from the reader’s view. We feel this is a good balance between providing something useful to our users as well as to our user’s readers. After all, these quotes are more than just bumper stickers!

There have been a number of ideas bantered around on how we can improve this aspect of the Quote Widget. We always love to hear more. If you have a great idea, please drop on over to the forum and share!

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One of the great things that has come out of the Photography Quote Archive that we are building here at FocalPower, is the photography education that is obtained from the research to accurately document the quote sources. Of course, this can also lead to lost time following the web of information (something that one must always be aware of and attempt to control)…but that’s the price we pay for knowledge!

For example, today I was entering a great quote from Bill Jay and found myself perusing through his website. If you don’t know who Bill Jay is, it’s worth your time to learn about him. He has written over 400 articles and 20 books on the subject of photography and has taught photography studies for 25 years at Arizona State University. He was also the founder and editor of Album, an early monthly photography publication, in 1970. Since Album is such a rare publication to find anywhere, Bill has graciously created PDF copies of each of the 12 issues and makes them available on his website.

This morning over breakfast, I found myself reading the first issue of Album. As I was paging through it, I discovered a section of the magazine called “Quotes”. I was pleasantly surprised to find that over 35 years ago, Bill had the same fascination with photography related quotes as I do today. Quotes contain an intrinsic draw for people that I find interesting. Maybe it’s in the compact nature of of a quote. Or that they are often words traveling forward in time to speak to you. Hmm…

I have added a few new quotes from that first issue of Album to the FocalPower Quote Archive stating the Album issue as the source. And I’m sure others will appear as I have time to look through the other issues.

I highly recommend taking the time to look through these historic PDFs and the rest of Bill Jay’s website. There is a wealth of information on his site about photography. Great stuff!

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We put together a quick video tutorial last night showing how to install the Random Photo Quote Widget on a blog hosted by Blogger:

This tutorial is being hosted on YouTube under the FocalPower Tutorials playlist. Since these are quite easy to create, we will be creating additional tutorials and hosting them on this playlist.

Need help with installing the Random Photo Quote Widget somewhere? Let us know over at the forum and we’ll help you out!

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