Saturday, May 31, 2014

Online anonymity

Is there such a thing as online anonymity? Not really - wherever there is a directory whether or not an individual knows of it, there will be an entry. Nobody is truly anonymous any more. Everybody will have at least one public record online and visible to all. The challenge is in regaining anonymity after an identity has been published. There are various websites that claim 10 steps, 12 steps etc to anonymity but they don't go far enough. There is absolutely no way to erase all online listings of an individual nor of a former business. That is perhaps the answer sought.

When it becomes hard to erase out of date data, it becomes easier to hide in the old data. Simply ceasing to post messages online and removing social media accounts means that after 6 months or a year, all old postings will just fade away into the background of general noise.

Generally, if a nom-de-plume can be used instead of a real name, that helps tremendously. Many are not fast enough on their feet to consider a nom-de-plume. It does help though if somebody does an online search in that the search doesn't throw up anything bar former telephone numbers.

Domain names are a telltale trace of who somebody is. This is why generally, subdomains are very much preferred. Either that or an anonymised domain name (which costs extra). With a subdomain there is no record of the website/blog owner's identity.

There have been moves around the world to make blog posters and website owners more accountable and identifiable. This is a double-edged sword - it means that more responsible postings are more likely to be placed online. It also means that people will be judged by what they write which might well not be nothing to do with their ability to do a job.

On a personal level, there is somebody else with the same name as myself, posting some pretty uncouth things online. While I've not seen any of the 3 or 4 Facebook accounts operated under the same name, their Twitter account is pretty appalling in its vulgarity. There is nothing I can possibly do about this other than legally changing my own name.

Friday, May 30, 2014

How to do a killer job interview

It should be taken as read that everybody has to sit in front of an individual or a panel for a job interview. It doesn't matter what they do, whether they're a sole trader or whatever. Eventually that all important job interview will loom. Both the interviewer and yourself will be nervous. Most interviewers absolutely hate interviewing. What they're looking for is somebody that shows real interest in the company and in the position, who has read the website and remembered salient points. Bonus points if current company news has been observed - especially that which is not yet on the website.

It's always important to make a good impression. Shine those shoes, iron that shirt. There's nothing worse than seeing a bum entering an office for an interview. Very liberal employers may well ignore this but there's no guarantee that the employer will be a liberal. Much is made of dressing appropriately. This seems a lot easier for women because a dress suit, hose and low heels with a matching clutch seems to be universal. For men, it can be harder as there are so many grades of dressy. A smart suit never goes amiss nor do shiny shoes and a recent haircut. Pay attention to nails and to tying a tie properly. Clip-on ties just look cheap and spoil the effect.

Confidence is the next biggie. Be confident in yourself. Just one slight doubt or self-criticism will put the interviewer off. Over confidence will also put them off. Be yourself - don't brag and don't undersell yourself.

The interview goes both ways. It's there to see if you're a good fit for the company. Conversely, it's there to see if the company is a good fit for you. We've all been in those situations when we've been subject to admirers that we can't admire or when we have admired but are not admired back. The romance has to be right. In the past, if a company has not been the right fit I've ended the interview there and then. An example, fifteen years ago, I felt a company was not the right fit. I could not explain it but the interviewer was giving off the wrong vibes. I turned the job down and they went bust shortly after, owing the person that took the position, all their wages. Pay attention to your gut instinct. It's usually right. If it says it's a good company, it usually is. If it says run then don't wait.

Smile, pay attention, ask questions. Don't fidget and don't bring your mobile phone to the interview unless you've got a specific reason to have it. I use mine to bring my interview notes and I read my interview questions off the screen. If coffee is offered, accept. If there's a teacup on the table, don't wait for the interviewer to clear it away, pick it up and place it somewhere in the background. This is a test.

Good questions to ask at an interview:

  • Is this a new job, if not, what did the previous incumbent leave to do?
  • Describe a typical day in this position.
  • Describe the responsibilities of the position.
  • What is the company's management style.
  • What are the prospects for personal growth and advancement?
  • Would you like more references?
  • If I am offered the position, how soon would you like me to start?
  • When should I expect to hear from you?
  • Would you like to know any more about my qualifications?
  • Are there any other questions you would like to ask me?


At the end of the interview, thank the interviewer for his time, offer to shake their hand and then place your chair back where it was, ask where to place the dirty cup if you have one. Then leave quietly and decisively, closing the door quietly behind you. Remember the interview is not over until you have left the premises. The interviewer might be watching you drive out onto the road just to see what your driving style is like.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

The ende of dayes

Are you prepared for the end of days? Are you prepared for the end of the world? How will you or your business survive in a post-apocalyptic world? No, I'm not talking about a plague or pestilence nor a hoard of roaming zombies nor even invasion by Islamist forces nor even of an invasion by Communists. I'm talking about something much simpler than that - something over which the puny human race has absolutely no control and which has happened many times over the years before technology.

The dreaded solar flare! Twenty years ago, a solar flare wiped out most of Canada's power grid, sending the country back into the dark ages. Fortunately, twenty years ago so many systems were still manual that damage was minimal. Today if the same happened, the results could be nothing short of apocalyptic.

A solar flare could wipe out all radio and electrical operations for months or years to come. Unprotected electronics would be totally destroyed. Magnetic media could easily be irretrievably corrupted. All those precious files - photos, documents, plans, software - all gone in the blink of an eye. Modern business taken into the stone age. How many credit card transactions can be processed or debit card transactions? None - the card swipers would all be dead and the magnetic stripes on the cards, gone. We would be plunged into a cash only economy.

Most transport would be inoperable. Cars with electronic ignition would be unusable until a new ignition system was installed. Fuel pumps would be inoperable as the electrics would be fried. The power grid would be down for weeks or months. Microwaves even if they could get power would be unusable as the electrics would be fried. Anything with power running through it, whether it was switched on or was in standby would be fried. Wristwatches that were not old-school wind-up would be fried. Absolutely nothing electrical would work for weeks on end.

The National Guard would be called out on a piecemeal basis to provide food and shelter for those unable to feed themselves or to get to their homes. Radio communications would be dead for the duration of the storm and any radios with batteries in them at the time of the storm would be destroyed. The telephone system would be destroyed. Starbucks, Waffle House, Wendy's, McDonalds would all be history. Food in freezers would rapidly begin to spoil.

After the power comes back on and the computers are replaced, what about the data? All gone, erased by the solar flare as would be the software. There is a way, however, to mitigate the disaster. In fact, there are two ways. The first is purely functional which is to have a backup manual system. It might sound far fetched for a solar flare to wreak such devastation but a simple catastrophe could wipe out power to an entire city or a terrorist incident with a nuclear device could wipe out magnetic data with an electromagnetic pulse. Even if radiation was contained (which is possible) the EMP could wipe out data in a whole hemisphere. The data could be saved with a weekly backup to optical media. Yes - optical media is slow but it does survive EMP because it's optical and not magnetic. The new flash drives - unproven technology that has only been around for a short while. Who knows how sunspot activity will affect it.

How many will die without power? How many businesses will be killed without power?

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Domain names

Does a photographer need a domain name? Does anybody really need a domain name? What is a domain name? Why are they important? What are they used for? How much do they cost?

In answer to the above questions, a domain name is simply a short way to find the webspace upon which something is hosted. It's much easier to type "bongo.com" than it is to type "bongo.flibbertygibbet.com". There is a school of thought that it's important for a business to have a website and thus a domain name that reflects the name of the business. Usually the .com names are held in greater prestige.  In terms of cost, what's happening is specialised domain name companies are selling a series of numbers that corresponds to the domain name chosen (which in themselves have no value) for increasingly large sums of money. Thus a "lowly" domain such as fliffleflaffle.org that might be solf for $5.99 might go for many thousands of dollars if the name spelt something popular like BostonCreamPie.Com. The only importance related to a domain name is the "prestige" associated with it. Webspace provided by a webhost is usually a subdomain of the webhost name. Thus if there was a webhost called "myhost.com" then flibbertyflabbet would be  flibbertyflabbet.myhost.com which is known as a subdomain. Nobody really needs a domain name. The possession of a domain name is usually just a matter of pride and nothing greater.

Many times in the choosing of the domain names, britphoto.us and britinthe.us, consideration was given as to the worth of bothering with a domain name. Dot US domain names are among the cheapest at $3.99 and they're still grossly overpriced. There are some well-known sites that are actually subdomains such as strobist.blogspot.com. The only bonus with a short domain name is that it's much easier to type. That is about the only benefit of a domain name in many instances. Another method would be to have a simple code phrase on various webpages on a subdomain website which would lead Google straight to the site.

Do domain names have a value greater than $3.99? Not really - not unless the purchaser is desperate to acquire that particular domain name. When searching for something online, it's usually far easier to search for a product number or name to find it than to find the manufacturer's website and then hunt though that.

It is rather surprising that the domain name scam has continued for so long. Not many years ago, companies selling things that didn't actually exist in the physical world would have found their directors tarred, feathered and run out of town. It's beginning to look like quite an attractive option.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Looking after your money


Every photographer (and everybody else too for that matter) needs to look after their money in order to survive the rat race in comfort. It's not hard - just common sense rules that have to be observed.
Because another person has something does not mean it's essential to possess it also. It is never known how much the other person incurred getting it so while claims can be made that it was bought with spare cash, such claims can be vacuous and a loan might well have been used in order to pay for it. Owning such a trinket might be seen as a way of appearing affluent in the viewer's eyes. (yes there really are people that stupid).

  • Debt means paying back the capital borrowed plus interest plus finance charges. Far better to save money, gain the interest on savings and then buy the object of desire.
  • Cable TV is unnecessary. Digital TV through an aerial has just as many channels of garbage as cable. It is an easy guarantee that there will be plenty times the average viewer won't find anything to watch on cable or digital even though cable is paid for.
  • Smartphones are a luxury. For the price of the satnav on a smartphone, a car satnav and a flip phone could be used for far less money. Even on a low-cost Walmart plan of $46 a month, a Tracfone would be $10 a month and a satnav would be a one time cost of about $150. That's an annual saving of $282 in the first year after buying the satnav and $432 in subsequent years.
  • air-conditioning is a luxury also. There's nothing wrong with using ordinary fans and removing excess clothing. As an example, the electricity bill here is rarely above $29 a month in the summer.
  • Don't replace anything until it's actually broken. Many fools replace things just because they changed their mind about the style then wonder why they're always broke.
  • If applying for a job and the requirement is that the applicant must pay an application fee or agree to pay for equipment out of their first paychecks or must pay to provide criminal background checks etc, pass on that "wonderful" opportunity. None of those are any of the applicant's responsibility. This kind of requirement just screams how cheap the company is. With a company that cheap, it's probably going to be hard to get wages paid.
  • Always pay taxes on time and in full.
  • Don't fall for the sucker tactics of "but it's tax deductible". Not everything is actually tax deductible and many business items are only 20% deductible.
  • Setting up a fake business to avoid taxes. Many people do this. It is 100% unethical and 100% immoral. Don't do this.
  • Going into arrears with taxes means interest payments. This is foolish.
  • Balance the budget. If there's more going out than coming in then reduce outgoings until outgoings are less than income. If it's not possible to survive on income then start sharing accommodation. 
  • New camera because there are more megapixels, it does something slightly different etc. Just don't - it's not sufficiently different from an existing camera to make it worth the expense.
The whole aim of earning money is not to pay for accommodation, taxes, food, expenses and blow the rest on toys. The whole aim is in order to set aside sufficient money to enable a comfortable retirement. Money blown now jeopardises that comfortable retirement when working will not be an option. Similarly, it is also set aside for hard times - it can take six months and more to find a new job after the loss of a job.

Unexpected expenses can crop up at any time. Too many people reap the consequences of not preparing for the unexpected and lose everything. The time to prepare is now, not when a disaster happens.

Monday, May 26, 2014

Foursquare for photographers

Foursquare is an interesting and a potentially very dangerous concept that has upsides and severe downsides. The general complaint that has been voiced repeatedly is that it allows villains to know when somebody is not at home. Certainly it is helpful for clients to know where a trader is - particularly if that trader is a sole trader providing services.
The facepainting artist above has just announced to clients and potential clients where she is currently located. This is a good thing in terms of publicity. This means her clients can find her. This goes out to Facebook and Twitter. But there is a darker side - a much darker side.

What happens if a villain also uses the internet? Villains are now very tech savvy and have smartphones. They can check to see where the people that live in various houses are if their whereabouts are posted online. Thus this gives them carte blanche to perform their evil, secure in the knowledge that their victims are miles away.

Foursquare is a double-edged sword in many ways. In general it depends upon clients actually having Foursquare as well as being able to understand it. Add in the security chasm that Foursquare opens and it becomes much less attractive. Imagine that instead of a face painter whose equipment costs very little, it was a photographer with all the latest equipment. What a haul that would be for some workshy drug-addict!

Facebook has exactly the same kind of checkin facilities as Foursquare. Facebook's security failings are well known and worse than that, most of the criminals use Facebook also. Does this site use Foursquare - certainly - but the checkins don't always reflect the location of the author.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Twitter for Photographers

Twitter has already been covered several times in broader articles about the so-called social media. This time, it's time for a full expose on Twitter itself and its contribution or lack of it toward photography and websites in general.

When one thinks of Twitter, one usually thinks of Twitter messages that have caused controversy in the media. These have generally been released and withdrawn fairly quickly and frequently released deliberately in order to provoke a media reaction and thus provide free advertising. Sometimes the media's knee-jerk reaction has been miscalculated with unfortunate consequences.

Twitter is used to advertise this website. Tweets are sent out automatically, 20 times daily via 5 different Twitter accounts. The number of website hits generated from those Twitter accounts averages about 3 a month. The Twitter accounts between them have 14,000 followers that are added using auto-refollowers. In general, Twitter is ineffective used in this way.

A few days ago as an experiment, a new Twitter account was set up to advertise the videos my colleague Dixie Nash publishes. This too was set up with automated tweets. The difference there is that no automated Twitter follower software was used. Instead, hash tags were used and the setup was designed so that about three tweets daily were sent over the course of an entire week. In general, response seems to have been disappointing. This is not entirely surprising given the vast amount of automation on Twitter. Look to the screenshot below taken on a tablet. Not a single one of the Tweets was made by a human. They were all automated.
There are real people using Twitter. It's very hard to find them though. It's very hard to reach out to anybody using Twitter. The vast advertising or rather spamming mechanisms operating on Twitter that are now largely free for use mean that genuine communication is now minimal.

Twitter is used on this website. It is used for a very specific reason and that is that it allows for quick updating with factual or humorous messages. It also allows the general public a way to get in touch with the site operator without the operator having to deal with spam emails or junk phone calls. More than that, the fact communications have to withstand public scrutiny lends the medium to more polite and succinct communication attempts.

For photography, or rather the promotion of photography, Twitter is not recommended. In general, Twitter is not a communication method that's of much use other than for quick contacts via a website. It could easily be replaced by a web form if Jack Dorsey decided to retire and take Twitter into retirement also. For a quick and dirty way of making contact, it seems fine though there is a caveat - not everybody uses Twitter.

Saturday, May 24, 2014

The Mall of Death - A great photo location


The Mall of Death, otherwise known as Richland Fashion Mall is a dying mall. The owners seem to be keeping it open in the hope of attracting tenants yet the only real tenants there are a clothes shop and a bookshop. I understand that the owners were so desperate that the bookshop was offered a rent free deal for a while. Bookshops are pretty much a dying breed as everybody turns to ebooks in the face of extremely high prices for the paper editions.

Google auto-stitched several cellphone images together for this photo which accounts for the strange tilt in the image. It does exemplify just how dead this mall is. This is the upper floor. The lower floor is just as dead. There are several attached car parks - some are multi-storey and they are like a ghost town. It's almost as though tumbleweed will blow through the place.

This would be a great place to shoot zombie photos. In fact, the car park was used, after hours, for a "fashion" photography session by one of the online photography groups. Whether they asked permission or not is unknown.

One day I will probably return to the Mall of Death with a real camera. I feel though that a cellphone camera is adequate for many things. To be honest, the cellphone camera is the camera I use 90% of the time. This could well be why traditional camera companies are struggling. The images of a cellphone are good enough most of the time. Dragging along a bulky chunky digital SLR for those few times when a cellphone won't produce good enough images just seems crazy.

Friday, May 23, 2014

Ken Rockwell

Sooner or later, the average person wishing to read about photography is going to hear about Ken Rockwell. There have been various claims made about Ken Rockwell. Most of those claims are probably based on envy.
Ken Rockwell has an apparently very successful website that seems not to run from advertising but from donations. Ken Rockwell's claim is that income from donations supports his entire family and lifestyle. Well, that might or might not be true - this is not something of any particular concern to anybody bar Ken Rockwell.

Various claims are made about Ken Rockwell, including that his contributions to photography are damaging and that he knows nothing etc. Basically the usual poisonous tripe that people full of envy spout. Ken Rockwell makes no bones about his site being solely personal opinions and personal reviews of cameras and lenses. There is nothing at all wrong with this. Ken Rockwell is just displaying his freedom of speech and freedom of expression and people are fully free to disagree with what Ken Rockwell says or the way it is said.

What is truly horrifying is the amount of sheer hatred that is displayed upon such edifices of the uneducated such as digital camera forums aimed at Ken Rockwell. Were the people that wrote such hateful messages to enact actions claimed then the police departments would be very busy and the jails very full.

Ken Rockwell's website is informative and full of openly honest opinion. Generally it is a website well worth reading and well worth casually viewing. There is nothing there that is blatantly wrong. There may be items that are debatable but that is the nature of photography. There are always several different ways to do everything. There is nothing wrong with Ken Rockwell or Ken Rockwell's opinions and ideas.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

eBook review: Starting a Photography Business

Photoshelter has another book available for free download. It's available in PDF format which uploads nicely to Google Play Books for viewing on an Android tablet. As the book is in letterbox format, some panning and scanning has to be done to read it - particularly on a 7 inch tablet. It's quite a short book being just 19 pages; more of a booklet really but it does highlight interesting issues regarding starting a photography business. All of Photoshelter's publications are props to photoshelter's service which is to sell websites to photographers. Thus they will be heavy on the how to do things and very light on difficult issues because Photoshelter, not surprisingly want people to take up photography and to use their services.
The book starts, promisingly enough with a pleasant blue & white cover stating that it contains advice from experts and recent college photographers of the year. This is probably where most people would stop reading because immediately "college photographer of the year" conjure up images of disheveled, unkempt students trying to take a picture with an old and battered camera in one hand while trying to talk on a cellphone and smoke a marijuana cigarette all at the same time. The interviews with the photographers are actually quite good reading however.

There is a section on writing a business plan which looks promising until it becomes obvious that there's no explanation given as to why a business plan is important. There are examples of what might be included in a business plan that make some sense but there's no mention at all of market research which should be the critically important issue for any business. There is no point in anybody starting a business without knowing whether their product will sell. Certainly big corporations can buck the trend and produce a new gadget that nobody has any use for and then persuade everybody that they really need it as Apple did with the iPad. All that's covered in the marketing paragraph is that it's important to identify who the business is going to serve and how to reach them.

How does a photographer reach a market? What is the market for photographers? Who is likely to buy photography? It is certain that after reading these questions, there will be a lot of head scratching before weddings will come to mind as a desperate attempt to produce some form of answer. What competition is out there for photographers? This is another question not answered. Is it even possible to ascertain the number of photographers out there willing to cover a wedding? Quickly checking Craigslist for Columbia, South Carolina came up with around 40 advertisers. The White Pages came up with 43, a Google search came up with 1 million results. The Chamber of Commerce for Columbia had about six photographers listed. The Chamber of Commerce for Lexington had 14 listed. It can be hard to ascertain competition from an internet search. Hard questions have to be asked and real research done which the book does not even mention.

Perhaps the biggest clanger that the book drops is about creating a business entity. Certainly mention is made of creating a limited liability company to protect the photographer from too much liability. Mention is made of insurance too. The book does not mention that in many jurisdictions it is possible to do business as a photographer without actually having a business entity. Indeed, rather than going to the expense of setting up a business entity, it would seem to make more sense to try the water first doing photography as a hobby job before throwing money into creating an official entity.

The best sentence in the whole book states that many photographers fall in love with buying equipment to cover every eventuality. As stated in A fool and their money are soon parted, covering every eventuality is expensive. In the earlier article, the cost of covering most situations without mentioning add-ons like flashes etc, the cost could well exceed $25,000. After that, the statements become a little debatable. One statement alludes to photographers spending $10,000 to $15,000 every two to three years on equipment. That works out at $5,000 a year or $416 a month. This just seems a ludicrous amount. The only assumption that can be made here is that equipment that's not needed is being purchased as a tax write-off and then sold on the black market.

Advice is given on not using credit to purchase equipment and to use existing equipment instead. This is really sound advice. Credit is largely why economies around the world virtually collapsed in 2007. Perhaps the best advice on credit is never to buy anything that cannot be paid for using a debit card.

The section on taxes is well meant but generally not that useful. It's helpful to keep a journal of expenses together with receipts. The book does not mention that so many tax "claims" can be fraudulent, preferring to mention solely to mention mileage as a potential area for fraud. For small businessmen, the accounts usually are riddled with suspect claims - wining and dining potential clients that are actually friends and family and business trips that are actually holidays. The book does mention that the IRS does audit people from time to time.

Setting rates and booking clients is an interesting section though it seems more written as protectionism for local photographers. Dire warnings are made over underpricing work. The fact is though that many photographers these days will be very happy to photograph an entire wedding for $150 and just to slip the images onto a USB memory stick. Given that weddings last about an hour and the photographs are usually done after the wedding, that's not bad pay for a couple of hours work and even includes fuel and the memory stick. The whole section on setting rates just sounds so wrong and smacks more of protectionism than free market economics. Oddly enough despite the title that includes the words "booking clients" no mention seems to be made of booking clients.

The next two sections about insurance and getting an agent just represent desperation on the part of the author to find something to fill space. The biggest reason for insurance which is coverage against 3rd party claims is totally missing. The agent section speaks solely of top photographers or the 1% that can actually make a profit out of photography and that's just plain baffling because the book is not aimed at photographers that are anywhere near the top. The book is aimed at photographers that aren't even trying to do business as photographers yet.

The remainder of the book consists largely of interviews with college photographers. As might be expected, only college photographers that can claim to be in some small way successful are interviewed. The vast majority who aren't have not been interviewed and are thus conspicuous by their absence.

The last page is an advert by Photoshelter. Hardly surprising since this is a publication by Photoshelter. Generally the publication read like an advert. Issues that needed more in-depth analysis were glossed over, problems were mentioned and more emphasis placed on success. The book has been designed to enthuse people into taking up photography as a business and to take on Photoshelter as their photo hosting service. This is not a book that it's possible to recommend as being in any way good.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

How to job hunt successfully

Photographers are like every other mere mortal on Planet Earth. Photographers need to hunt for work - real work - not photography. Pretty much anybody at least with half a braincell realizes that photography is not a job but a paying hobby. Thus, a real job is needed in order to survive and to finance the hobby job. Certainly, for a few unusually successful individuals, photography might actually pay enough to live off though this is increasingly rare these days.

So how does a photographer job hunt? There are three basic methodologies. The first is the scattergun approach. This is how governments around the world prefer their swathes of unemployed people to job hunt yet this is the most counterproductive method known to man. The second is the targeted approach where the individual identifies their most saleable skills and applies them to search for a specific type of job. The third is the sniper approach where a company is singled out and approaches made for a job that might not exist unless the right person asks about it.

The scattergun approach is a complete waste of everybody's time. Governments like their unemployed to employ the scattergun approach because it makes it look as though something is being achieved whereas in fact just the opposite is happening.

  • Unemployed people are made to fulfil quotas of applications. This means that applications are slapped out for jobs for which they have no interest nor even any qualification
  • Human Resources specialists are swamped by the sheer number of garbage applications
  • Recruitment Agencies are swamped by garbage applications and rude responses from applicants when they are turned down.
  • Government unemployment departments are swamped by the vast number of "applications" that are processed through their systems.
  • Generally just about every recruiter gets worn down and irritated by this time and money wasting approach and curse governments for pushing their unemployed people to do this.
Indeed, years ago, in the Western Mail (A newspaper in South Wales) a Personnel Manager wrote to comment on the "nugatory" applications that the Job Centres had their claimants performing. Apparently somebody had applied to him with a really strong resume and a very weak application letter. The Manager concerned wrote back with helpful suggestions about how to improve the letter and received a response to the effect that the individual had 6 months to go before retirement and was just doing the required number of applications a week so that they could receive their National Insurance contributions before retiring and that they didn't really want a job. This is a classic example of how government policy wastes everybody's time. 

Worse than wasting everybody's time, government policy has trained generations of people that the way to apply for a job is to use the scattergun approach. This is largely why so many people are stuck in soul-destroying menial jobs way beneath their capabilities. It has encouraged intelligent people to play the scattergun game and trap themselves into McJobs. This is an approach to be avoided.

The targeted approach. This is the best approach to use unless the individual concerned has the cajones to pull off the sniper approach. To achieve this approach, the resume has to be tailored toward the job one wishes to obtain. The job specifications have to be analysed and the kinds of things done in the last few jobs that are similar highlighted and those that are dissimilar just deleted. Thus for an administrative job with a sales background one would concentrate on the administrative aspects of the sales process - paperwork, verification, file handling etc. Sales awards and prizes are counterproductive - the recruiter doesn't want to know because they're just irrelevant padding. The application letter is crucially important - this has to highlight that the applicant understands what the company does and acts as a sales approach as to why they are the applicant that the company needs. Notice "needs" - the recruiter wants to know what problem can be solved by employing the applicant over everybody else. What solutions the applicant can provide that are better than other applicants can provide.

The sniper approach. This is where an applicant selects a company and decides what job they would like to perform in that company. The sniper analyses the company carefully - the management structure - the strengths and weaknesses of the management team. This might involve long hours in the bar drinking with members of management, listening and remembering. This is a process that may take many weeks. At the end of this the applicant should have a list of the strengths and weaknesses and should know a good deal about how the company is run, its organization and where it's headed. 

For this approach, charts and diagrams are needed and a cool calculated approach, perhaps in the form of a powerpoint presentation. This will highlight exactly where the company is failing and exactly why the applicant is going to be the right person inserted into the right place to stop the rot and make the company even more profitable. Generally such an approach is best made to the top tiers of management. Perhaps pulling out a tablet during a golf match with the manager concerned. More business is transacted on golf courses and in club houses than might be imagined. The approach has to be accompanied by a suggestive or hard sell.

Which method of job hunting the photographer themselves uses is entirely up to them. An alternative would be to take similar voluntary work or voluntary work within an organization just to get a foot in the door.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

A fool and their money are soon parted

The best bit of advice given to me by my father was that if it costs money, it's not going to return anything on the money spent. It's so true and something that I have seen so many times in my life. Look at the internet as a classic example - it's possible to spend thousands on domain names especially if they're held by domain squatters. It's possible to spend thousands on some toe-rag SEO "guru". It's possible to spend thousands more on "getting listed" on search engines nobody has ever heard of nor uses. It's possible to spend thousands on fancy shopping carts and online stores for websites and thousands on web design. Stop! It's all a load of baloney.

For the small businessman, a website is a hindrance rather than an asset. A website costs money to maintain and work. It cuts off personal contact with potential clients. If a prospect will not meet to see your catalog then that prospect is a waste of time and is never going to buy your product or service. If they're not going to talk to you then you have no opportunity to offer a better deal than a competitor nor the opportunity to customize a solution that suits their needs. For most small businessmen, dealing with people out of the area is nonsensical. A caller from Nairobi wanting somebody to fix their plumbing and you happen to be a plumber in Tijuana - you're not going to fly to Nairobi to do their plumbing. It doesn't make sense! Plumbers in Nairobi are going to be far cheaper. The same for photographers - all photographers can take pretty much the same kinds of photographs. These days the only difference is post processing which can be hived off cheaply to somebody in India before the final printing is done based on price at a lab somewhere in the US.

Websites only really work for niche businesses or for big businesses. For small businesses, they're largely a complete waste of time and money. The total annual cost for my small business for the website ran to something like $70 a year for the web-space, $20 a year for the domain name and then a constant internet connection in order to update the blessed thing of $55 a month. Grand total $750 and that's without paying for toe-rags to do the SEO etc.

What does work for a small business is networking. Chamber of Commerce memberships are largely very dependent upon the chamber. They can range from chambers that actively help newer members to grow and blossom to chambers where new members are shunned. It pays to investigate Chambers before paying any money to join. Generally, they're not worth the membership for small businesses, even though some of the membership fee can be deducted from taxes.

Remember in business generally only 20% of expenses can be tax deducted. This is why so many business tax returns are full of such complete nonsense. A spouse being brought on a business trip. Read "20% deduction off a holiday". Many new businessmen don't realize this and thus their deductions aren't as good as they thought. Deductions are a sweetner from the tax department. That's all they are. It's still important to get good value and to shepherd money wisely. I've seen some abysmal money management in the past by businessmen.

If there's a piece of equipment that is not owned that might be needed for a job, the best thing is not to buy the blessed thing. Photographers are particularly bad for buying everything they can find to buy and for going in for needless upgrades to their equipment. As stated before in The Great Digital Scam, upgrades are usually utterly worthless and don't represent a greater increase in anything bar expenditure. If you've managed thus far without the equipment then sure as eggs are eggs, you can manage longer without it. The next question is how often a piece of equipment will be used. If it's not very often then it's not worth buying. Certainly if the income from it is several times greater than the expenditure then it might be worth renting something seldom used but that's debatable and it is probably not worth even renting. Better to focus on jobs that can be accomplished with existing equipment and just to pass on jobs that need new equipment and need the operations of new equipment to be learned.

Perhaps the biggest waste of money is when a fool listens to somebody else for their opinion on how much to spend and what to buy for a business. The worst friends one can have are those that will advise on how to spend money. The best friends are those who urge not to spend money and how to achieve the goals in a more cost effective manner. We have all had friends that have urged us to buy things because they think it's a good idea. Let's look more at that. If somebody is dead set on being a photographer then quite reasonably somebody might urge them to get backups in case their equipment fails. As a minimum many will urge new photographers to have two batteries for their camera and two cameras plus alternate lenses in case one gets dropped and broken. Hold up there - that's a lot of money!

Somebody starting out as a photographer with no specific goal might reasonably say that they want to produce the best quality images and if they're looking at Canon equipment might look at the following:
  • EOS 1DX 18MP @ $6,799 (two of them - just in case so $13,598
  • EF 16-35L lens to cover the wide to mid range photos - handy for small rooms with lots of people. $1,699
  • EF 10-22 Lens to cover ultra-wide to wide - handy for those even smaller spaces $649
  • EF 24-70L to cover a standard range - handy for general portraits $1,499
  • EF 70-200L f2.8 to cover a longer range - handy for long shots down the aisle $2,499
  • EF 100-400 Just in case you need to do longer distances $1,699
  • EF 55-250 Backup in case something happens to one of the L lenses for a range not covered $299
  • 2 spare batteries for the cameras @ $170 each.
Now the grand total for that (and it does not include extras like lens hoods nor a camera bag nor even UV or Polarizing filters) is an eye-watering $22,282 before any bookings have been made and before the photographer has even practiced with the equipment to recognize its strengths and work arounds for the weaknesses.

It's all pretty reasonable to want to do the best but is there a cheaper way? Certainly there is a cheaper way - a far cheaper way. Buying brand new Canon gear still, that whole lot could be replaced by one lens and one body.
  • EOS 60D $900
  • EF 18-135 $699
Even so - that's still a quite massive $1,599 before any work has been done or money earned. Surely it's possible to go cheaper? Why yes it is and quite well too. It's just a matter of switching brands.

Right here and now I will say that my experience of Pentax has been poor. Having said that, if it's treated gently there's no reason why it should not last at least a few months. Thus, the equivalent to the Canon solution in Pentax:
  • K50 $496
  • Tamron 18-200 $199
That is a solution that will cost $695. To be blunt, that's even too expensive for the amount of income somebody is liable to get from photography given that there are hundreds of others who have more of a network, more business credibility, more experience, a better eye, a better eye for the market and who have partners willing to support them while their business flounders.

The big killer with photography is the photographer that does not need to make a living off photography. They can do it far cheaper because they don't need to make a living. This is one of the many reasons why only a fool will buy into the idea that photography will make money. It's an alluring idea that soon parts such fools from $22K.

The moral of the story - enjoy your photography. Have fun with your photography. Then it doesn't matter if people don't like your work. Who cares? The chance of making money from it is nill. Just buy the cheapest you can buy and make it work for you.

Monday, May 19, 2014

The Competition Winner

A few weeks ago there was a competition on the blog to identify four photographs shown in the videos. It was actually won by one of my clients. The four photographs were: Mata Hari, Margaret Thatcher, Camilla Parker Bowles and Eva Braun.

Mata Hari was a German spy who was executed by the British in 1917.
Margaret Thatcher was a former British Prime Minister, famous for being the first woman Prime Minister and for having the longest position as Prime Minister.
Camilla Parker Bowles was the concubine with whom Prince Charles reportedly cheated on his then wife Princess Diana and who subsequently became his wife.
Eva Braun was a German actress who married Adolph Hitler then committed suicide several days later.

The winner of the competition was Dixie Nash for whom I occasionally shoot videos. Dixie Nash is a book-keeper by day and the wild star of PG rated videos by night.


Sunday, May 18, 2014

The Ultimate Field Guide to Photography

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all claims to be the ultimate, best, brightest are usually utterly baseless and without truth. A title like "The Ultimate Guide Field Guide to Photography" is enough to make most people's eyeballs roll towards Heaven. This, however is a complete exception. This is really quite an excellent eBook by National Geographic. It is showing its age a little bit as it was probably written several years ago with plentiful references to film. There are many reading this blog that have grown up using digital cameras and who have never touched film cameras.

In the guide, mention is made of film cameras being coveted in the art world. Certainly there are enthusiasts of all genres willing to take on just about anything. As far as coveting film cameras, it is unlikely that anybody will covet them once film ceases production. Let's take a look at the death roll of film manufacturers - Agfa is dead and buried, Kodak ceased production of Kodachrome and nearly went under. Konica, Efke, Fujifilm have all cut back production dramatically. It's now very hard to find film on sale anywhere and the selection has dropped off dramatically. As digital imaging becomes more widespread, even plate film will eventually disappear. It is a rare and backward dentist for example that still uses film for anything.

While it would be possible to break down the eBook into sections and to review each section, it is quite a short eBook or rather it's a PDF rather than an actual book. It's the first eBook that I thoroughly recommend reading. For beginners it may seem daunting as there's a lot of information thrown out but really and truly, I like this eBook. I recommend it. This has everything in it and explains all the parts of photography, how exposures are made, lighting, backgrounds, framing - absolutely everything. It won't make an expert photographer of anybody overnight but reading and comprehending fully everything in the article will set somebody on the right path.

Saturday, May 17, 2014

The older and fartier photographer

Days of summer tick past ever faster as we head toward the autumn of our lives. The great weights we used to carry during the spring just because we could now seem so ludicrous. Carting around a lens for every conceivable occasion and a body loaded with film for every conceivable occasion in the spring of our lives seemed so normal. We wondered why elders snorted in disapproval as we bounded around the countryside porting the massive weights with occasional visits to osteopaths, chiropractors and chiropodists.
In the days of our summer, we realize that our elders really did know best.  Thus, weighed down by the baggage of youth and quite possibly some war wounds due to our massive burdens, we learn wisdom from our errors. That wisdom, as taught from father to son and promptly ignored is that less is more. 
The goal of every aspiring photographer should be to carry the least possible weight. Indeed this is recommended by just about everybody that has ever carried a camera. Notice how the weight of every generation of camera is less yet the image size and quality is always better than before? This does not mean that because a camera and lens is now 5 ounces lighter that an extra lens can be crammed into the camera bag.

Back in the days of old, photographers carried a camera with a fixed lens. Usually this was an 80mm lens on a Rolleiflex or similar camera which gave the equivalent field of view of a 50mm lens on a 35mm camera or around the same angle of view as an iPhone camera. 

The key is in knowing why a camera is desired. Generally, most people take photographs within the 28 - 135mm range (based on 35mm). For an APSC sensor camera that would be about 17 - 85. Certainly it's possible to have longer and wider lenses but with today's technology it's possible to take several images of a scene using lenses that aren't wide enough and stitching them together.

Gone now is the need to carry multiple bodies with different types and speeds of film - this is all handled by in-camera settings adjustments. The whole camera kit can be handled by one body and one lens for the vast majority of situations. Unless a specially wide or specially long lens is needed, aside from a spare battery, lens wipe and spare memory card, nothing else need be carried. Why burden oneself down with extra junk?

Going further than the burdening oneself down, why even buy more than is needed. Now that lenses have image stabilization, the point of even having a tripod is negligible. With modern ultra-high ISOs that look more like telephone numbers, there's barely any point in having anything other than the on-camera flash. The on-camera flash on the Canon XT is more than enough at 1600 ISO to illuminate a very large area. Do the maths - It has a guide number of 13 metric. At full power at 1600 ISO with a lens at f2.8, the distance illuminated is 18.6 meters. That's a long way. If this was a camera with an ISO of 12800 then the distance would be 50+ meters. 

So, an external flash is not really necessary. A tripod is not really necessary. Multiple bodies are not necessary. Multiple lenses are not necessary. So buy just one body and one lens and be happy. Make your elders happy. Modern technology has made things lighter, better, easier. Embrace modernity instead of clinging to old farty roots and carrying a 50lb bag of camera gear while pretending it's light and considering carrying a daft weight makes more of a man of you.
  

Friday, May 16, 2014

Belief is a really strange thing.

Have you ever seen a Fairy? Have you ever spoken to a Fairy? Have you ever seen a Fairy being arrested by the police? Have you ever seen a Fairy in a mugshot line-up? Have you ever seen a Fairy being elected? Have you ever been to a shop owned or run by a Fairy? How much money do Fairies contribute to the IRS each year? How many Fairies do you see buying things in the shops? How many Fairies are involved in road traffic accidents every year? How many Fairies are lying in hospital beds? Have you seen the school dropout figures for Fairies? Have you seen the chronically high alcoholism, teen pregnancy and drug abuse statistics compiled by police regarding Fairies?

Do you believe in Fairies? Do you also believe that photography is a viable business? The answer to both should either be yes or no. There is no grey area. If you believe in Fairies then you must also believe that photography is a viable business. If you do not believe in Fairies then you must also believe that photography is not a viable business. OK, that might sound a bit strange to the fervent believer that believes that Fairies really do exist.

If Fairies don't exist then does it not automatically follow that photography as a career does not exist either? What's the career path of a photographer? Is there even such a thing as a career in photography? Let's look at some examples:

Little Johnny picks up a callphone and takes a photograph of some famous politician romping in the woods with his secretary then submits the image to his local newspaper. The newspaper publishes and writes the headline "Little Johnny subjected to ordeal of watching famous politician romping in the woods with his secretary". The newspaper won't pay Little Johnny for the image yet it becomes known, worldwide and becomes a really famous image. Does anybody care who took the photograph? Does anybody care who fixed the holes in the Whitehouse roof last time it leaked? The answer to both of those is an emphatic no. Nobody cares who Little Johnny is. Little Johnny believes his name in the paper will bring him fame and fortune. Indeed, his mates all slap him on the back then promptly forget about it, 3 days later.

Dean Misfit fancies himself as a fine art photographer and goes out with his expensive cameras and expensive lenses to all the fancy locations that he has seen pictured. He takes hundreds of pictures that look as good as the images he has seen pictured in books, magazines and art galleries. He contacts books, magazines and art galleries getting few if any responses. Where he does get responses they're along the lines of "cool image. No requirement at the moment. Call us again in six months". Dean Misfit feels disgruntled because his images are as good or even better than those used. The fact is that the magazines, books and art galleries already have more than they can use and just don't want more images. There are so many Dean Misfits around that are desperate enough to pay to have their images displayed or used that Dean Misfit is always going to be at the bottom of the pile. Why should anybody use his images?

Diane Gormless fancies herself as a wedding, pet and children photographer. She has a nice camera and takes pleasant images even if some of them are a bit fuzzy. She has plenty contacts with children or pets and plenty friends who're getting married. She takes a few photos for friends and people give her money for her time and effort. Diane Gormless now fancies her chances at being a professional photographer. The local Community College offers courses to wannabe professional photographers so she enrolls and pays lots of money. Having been hyped into believing there is a market for professional photography, Diane Gormless spends her precious savings on advertising and marketing. The results are disappointing. Now that she has to charge a living wage from her photography, all her friends and acquaintances that used to give her $10 or $20 for images of their pets and family drift away and use friends with cameras that don't charge or use a cellphone. Why on earth should anybody pay for Diane Gormless's photographs when they can get them free elsewhere?

Roger Midfield fancies himself as a sports photographer and gets into as many sporting fixtures as possible with his longest lenses. He takes quite nice images of dramatic sporting moments. He tries to interest the local paper with them to no avail as the local paper is publishing clips taken from TV coverage of the match and with their own photographers who're standing beside the touchline. Roger Midfield is out of luck.

Bertha Beecham fancies herself as a news photographer since she's always there when things are happening. She submits images to the local paper for name credit only. Sometimes her images are published, sometimes not. She applies to the local paper to become a photographer with them and is told they have no staff photographers and use freelancers only. She asks if she can be a freelance for her and is told to join the list. The list is very long due to everybody with a camera being able to take newsworthy photos, including those with cellphones.

So, why do people cling to the ludicrous belief that photography is a career? When was the last time anybody saw a job advertised for a photographer? Checking on the general jobs websites, worldwide, there was no mention of anybody needing a photographer. Indeed, the much maligned Chicago Sun Tribune was one of the first newspapers to do away with staff photographers. And why not when so many amateurs are willing to do the hard work for just a mention in the paper?

There is more chance of becoming the leader of the Fairy Resistance Movement (FRM) and using that group to overthrow the government in order to set up the Confederate Fairy States (CFS) than there is of anybody becoming a professional photographer yet people believe in photography as a career. It just plain is baffling.

Photography is a hobby and nothing else. It never will make money. It never can make money. There sure are a load of delusional people out there claiming to be professional photographers. They might indeed make some money out of it but that money is definitely declining. This is having a great knock-on effect.

Notice how the shelves of Target, Walmart etc all of which used to have entire aisles devoted to cameras are now displaying very few cameras - usually on an endcap? Camera sales are declining as cellphone cameras are now good enough that a "real" camera is not needed.

With more cameras of good enough quality in cellphones, camera sales are declining. With more people using cellphone cameras and those images being published by the media, demand for cameras is falling at just about the same time that demand for "professional" photography has fallen off the cliff never to return.

Why are photographs needed? This is one thing the believers in Fairies never ask. The first reason is because people want to record family events. A cellphone will do this and crucially upload it automatically so all one's friends and family can see it. The second reason is so that events can be recorded for posterity publication on websites etc - again a tablet or a cellphone does a more than adequate job of this task. What about advertising? When so many flaws in an image can be fixed in Photoshop, there's not real requirement for a photographer to be skilled in photography any more and since it's possible to take 10 photographs and more every second and to reshoot until an image is seen as right, no particular reason to use anybody other than a minimum wage yokel to do the job.

Yet people fervently believe that as one of the 80% of people in the US with a camera chasing the minuscule number of opportunities to sell photographs, that they will be the one to do it. The odds are better of winning the lottery than of making money from photography. People believe in photography and that their skill is better without ever realizing they are on an expensive path to nowhere.

One of the books on the subject that I read recently held the advice of one individual that attempted photography as a career. It is good advice. Start small - one body and one lens. If it's not possible to earn the expenditure back from that one body and one lens then there's no point in throwing good money after bad. Believing that buying just one more gadget/lens/flash is the way to get the work is the thinking of a fool. A fool and their money are soon parted. If a job requires equipment that is not possessed then turn the job down.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Video and Photo using compacts

Today I tried to do a selfie using an older digital zoom compact. Let's just say it didn't work. A friend wanted a photo of this pudgy little white guy. The camera used to be good until it went wrong and Canon repaired it - it was a known warranty fault. After the repair during which the sensor was changed, image quality was never as good. Focusing certainly wasn't as good. It used to focus when it was doing a selfie. Now it just won't. As a result it gets used solely for video now. Bizarrely, it focuses well for video.

I have been on a quest to seek out a better camera that takes sharper images and does better quality video. Sadly, this quest thus far has been fruitless. The digital video cameras are generally very good but way over what I'd be prepared to pay for the amount I'd be using it. The digital compacts have either vanished totally or are gigantic behemoths that aren't deserving of the word compact. Nevertheless, I looked at one of the Nikons. I looked at the video and was not greatly impressed. Nikon scored an own goal. The photographs looked blurry. I put my glasses on and looked more closely and yes they were blurry. Definitely not what should have been promoted in a promotional video. It was like screaming "Hey, we're Nikon and we just slapped out this camera". Clearly riding on their reputation without giving any thought to the quality that their reputation is built on.

It seems, sadly, that thus far the only suitable camera for selfies is a hulking big digital SLR. The compact won't focus worth a hoot and the only other option is a cellphone image which will, of course, have my arms outstretched in the image. It's really not very conducive to doing selfies.

The major problem is that none of the cameras I have bar my elderly zoom compact actually have articulated viewing screens. This means that there's just no way to see what the camera is seeing. It's a case of stand in front, use a really wide lens and pray.

Cellphones have certainly killed all the innovation in digital compacts.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

The bucket list

If you were going to kick the bucket tomorrow, what would you like to be remembered for? For myself, I'm not really bothered about what I'm remembered for. I'm more interested in trying to get all the things I'd like to do done before I kick the bucket. Life is all about experiences and whether there is an afterlife or not, experiences definitely enrich our present life if not our future lives too.

For the traveler, it could simply be a list of the top ten places they'd like to visit; for the photographer, the top ten things they want to photograph; for the foodie, the top ten things they want to eat etc.

Travel and photography are synonymous for me as I'm more of a travel photographer than anything else. I have written a couple of books on high-speed imaging which an unnamed individual fought me tooth and nail to stop me from taking the photographs for and to stop me from writing. My bucket list consists of travel photographs and types of photography. Thus, in no particular order save for the order I thought of them.
  1. The bridge over the River Kwai (I realize this is not the original bridge but it'd still be neat to photograph it).
  2. Schlieren imaging (This is not high on my list of priorities but it's something I'd like to do).
  3. More high-speed imaging (at the moment I lack the facilities).
  4. Monument Valley - It's in all the films. I'd like to see and photograph it up close - perhaps in the winter one year.
  5. Fall colors in Virginia - I particularly like the photo I often see of an old watermill surrounded by autumn leaves.
  6. Animals of Africa in the savannah - I'd love to though I'm not sure quite how safe Africa is for pudgy white guys.
  7.  Shipwrecks of the Orkney islands in Scotland. That's easy enough with just a short flight from the mainland.
  8. Bolivia - the salt deserts and the train graveyard.
  9. Lake Titicaca - this looks to be a fascinating region.
  10. Moscow - St Basils cathedral.
Now I bet you're wondering why I don't have Machu Picchu or  Arlington on my list. The fact is that I've been to Arlington and have no desire to visit Machu Picchu since it has become far too touristy. One of my great dislikes is touristy areas. I like to be able to wander alone in safety, taking photos at leisure. This is largely why I am probably going to be burnt at the stake for being a heretic for saying that I don't like DisneyWorld. It's a tourist magnet and that's all you'll see. It's full of sweaty tourists belching over each other and greedy vendors demanding vast sums of money for trinkets.It was hard to take a photo on one of the occasions I was taken along to DisneyWorld to get a photograph devoid of people.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Hits, SEO and all that baloney

I just had the rather miserable experience of reading the PhotoShelter guide entitled "The Photographer's Social Media Handbook" which seems to perpetuate the myth that social media is advantageous for business. This is not, I repeat, not my experience. Social media is OK for messing about on - blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc but for gaining contacts and clients, it's worthless.
 Let me cite my blogs as examples. I pimp the heck out of this blog via whatever medium I can find. My other blog, I don't even promote. I update it at most four times a year. It still gets 50 - 80 views daily. This blog, when I don't pimp it, gets maybe 30 - 40 views but when it's pimped can get up to 300 views a day.

Now here's the kicker, somebody promoted one of my postings on their own website and over about 3 days that page received about 1,500 viewings. As many of my regular readers will know, this blog carries adsense. Adsense income does not seem to increase when the blog is pimped and getting 300 - 1,500 hits a day. It remains pretty regular. Given that revenue is click driven, this is somewhat strange.

In terms of SEO, I know the blog can be found - each post has its own search tags and I try to make the tags different in order to attract more viewers. The tags are reflected in the content of the page. For example in the first paragraph I wrote "gaining clients" and this is also a search tag because it's something that somebody looking for a discussion on SEO etc will be looking for.

Hits do not equal income from adsense. Pimping a blog does not mean a permanent increase in visitors. SEO does not mean people will actually be looking for your website. 

Fortunately, this blog is not a business venture. I had a couple of websites that were run as business ventures. Neither seemed to attract any visitors whatsoever. Immediately people will scream about needing a professional to do the SEO. The fact is, they were professionally done sites with professionally done SEO. The professionally done hit counters registered massive hits yet the phone never rang, the web forms were never touched and the discussion forum never had any entries. Then I slipped Google Analytics code into the site while the professional wasn't looking. What a different story - 2 or 3 hits a day! Changing one "professional" for another did not increase hits or calls.

I am left with very much the feeling that SEO and all that malarkey is just a confidence trick. A few days ago in the article on customer service, it was stated that some companies don't really care about their social media presence, responding weeks late or never. Some just respond to the positive things and ignore the negative. Some respond to the negative and get people to continue the conversation by email, sent to an unmonitored email account.

Going further, back to the article on link and hit farming, there are people out there willing to make your website look popular for money. The problem is that like my two SEO "gurus", they're not likely to do anything other than absorb your hard earned cash.

Moving away from websites, lets take a look at something closer to home for most people - LinkedIn and CareerBuilder etc. You put your resume up on LinkedIn and on CareerBuilder. What happens? If you're lucky, nothing. If you're unlucky, you get spam calls - I used to get the people wanting me to peddle insurance door-to-door calling when I had my resume up. I never had a single genuine potential employer check me out.

The whole problem with the internet is that no matter how much tweaking you do or pay to get done, the results just are never going to be worth the time or money invested. It's far better to let others do the talking and therefore the advertising and just to get on with real life and real business instead. 90% of the customers to most businesses are passing trade. Somebody sees the sign outside AK Knox Widget factory and mentions to a friend "I didn't know we had a Widget factory in town". It goes around and soon customers for Widgets start making orders.

10 years ago I was at a seminar in the University of Wales, Swansea. A company selling farm machinery from Carmarthen was giving the presentation.  It was quite long and effective and I still remember most of it. The crux of it was that they hired a web professional that cost an arm and a leg. Their web professional produced a cute looking site. The site never attracted customers. In the end they redid the site themselves, using books on web design and had a better site that their own customers approved of. It did get a higher hit ratio but their problem was they had a lot of obvious scammers trying to get something for nothing from them via their website and precious little else.

Mike Collier was another example - he started Colliers Photographic Emporium and Services in Swansea, South Wales in about 1988. Somebody persuaded him to put up a website which he did. It got no extra trade nor anything worthwhile so he junked it. Currently his son is running the business and is trying again with a website. Again, it's clearly not a site that they have any faith in because all the paid online services at the time of writing are performed by a different website (fujifilm).

Unless you are a big business or selling something very niche that people want, no amount of SEO and all that baloney is going to do anything. If you're selling something very niche then SEO is irrelevant as your website will be sought out. If you're a big corporation then online advertising is pointless as you're on every street corner anyway. I suppose if you were into coprophilia photographs that would work too as there can't be many people into that (and yes I did just seed my blog to get extra hits).

Monday, May 12, 2014

The Great Paypal Scam

Paypal a scam? Say it ain't so! Yes, that great bastion of nothingness is just another online scam but perpetuated by eBay. First off, Paypal is not a bank. It does not have to adhere to any of the banking rules and regulations. It does not have to adhere to rules of privacy, secrecy or even have to give you your money.  It is the modern equivalent of investing with Don Guido. 
A while ago, a fellow approached me to purchase a tablet that I had mentioned I wanted to sell. Payment was made via Paypal. Being somewhat suspicious I called Paypal who told me no way should I ship the tablet to the fellow and immediately reversed the transaction.  They actually charged me for this! Anyway, from the words of Paypal, any transaction made that is not made through eBay can be reversed at the behest of the payer. The payee has no say in any of this. Now that doesn't sound entirely honest and is one of the reasons I have not linked my Paypal to a bank account.
Paypal is also making things really easy for the online crooks. I placed the following advertisement on Craigslist: 
"One virtually unused Canon 580 EX2 with carrying pouch and stand.
I bought this thinking I was going to use it and ended up not using it at all. I just don't do flash photography.
Buyer must be prepared to meet in Lexington. Cash only."
The advert attracted no genuine responses at all even though there was a photo on the advert. I'm just getting very much the feeling that people have become very meh about photography and photographic equipment.
I did, however attract a scammer.
 
After convincing the budding felon that I did not have a Paypal account, he wanted me to give him my bank details and bank account number so that he could deposit straight into my bank account. Strangely enough, he found that my account was so old that this was not possible and that my bank hadn't actually connected to the internet yet. They'll believe anything in Nigeria! 
Thus, the little felon promised to send a check by post with a tracking number to my PO Box (the PO Box that I'm planning on closing when the rental is up at the end of the month).  Had this check actually arrived, it would have been framed and hung on the wall as a trophy.

The fake check scam and the Paypal scam are pretty much the same thing, operated slightly differently. The fake check relies upon inertia in the banking system. A fake check drawn against a genuine account might take months to be discovered, particularly if the owner of the account is a soldier serving overseas. The bank, of course, rectifies that immediately and the money trail is reset right up to the account where the fake check was deposited and the money taken back out of that account. With the Paypal edition, the money is paid into the account and then after the goods have arrived, a claim is made that the box was empty or contained nothing but a brick or that nothing ever arrived. Paypal sides with the buyer every time and thus the victim is out to the tune of the goods and the money. In my opinion, Paypal needs to be shut down or sold off to a bank to operate under banking rules and regulations.
<link to Facebook page was here>
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Sunday, May 11, 2014

Customer service - the good and the bad

Like it or not but we all give and receive customer service. As photographers we buy things and we occasionally sell things too. There's nothing that turns us off more than walking into a store to find store employees chatting on their cellphones and turning away from us. We have all experienced dreadful customer service whether it's from local stores to multinationals, government and our own suppliers.

Let's take a look at some awful customer service.
  • A prospective customer walks into a store and is ignored by staff who don't even look up from the customer they are dealing with to acknowledge your existence. This has happened to me many times, most notably at AT&T stores.
  • A prospective customer walks in and staff walk away in order not to be bothered with doing their job. This most often happens at Walmart. As an aside, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. This is the attitude of the average monkey.
  • A customer makes contact with the organization and receives no response (Walmart) or a response that's so late that it's laughable (careermarketplace.com)
  • A prospective customer is told in no uncertain terms by a minimum wage employee that the way they are planning to do something won't work and never has worked despite the prospective customer having experience of the subject that the minimum wage yokel does not.
  • Equipment is sent off for repair and takes forever to be returned.
  • Upselling - when a prospective customer selects the item they want to buy and is then subjected to upselling attempts by the salesman. 
  • Add-on sales - where the prospective customer goes in to buy an item and then finds the salesman busily trying to sell add-ons that were not wanted in the first place.
  • A customer/prospective customers phones and is put on hold for long enough that they hang up and call somebody else.
  • Automated switchboards - I personally just hang up when I get those and call somebody else.
  • No after sales service. You've bought our product now don't bother us again! 
With service like that, it's very hard to turn that around into a good experience for the customer. Customers will run away very quickly at the first hint of incompetency or poor service. Not only that but an unhappy customer will tell on average ten people about their poor experience. It's even worse when the poor service is exhibited publicly on social media. It is now May 11th and a bit under a month after I sent my comment about receiving scam emails from careermarketplace.com. Responding this late after my comment just demonstrates that customer service is an afterthought. I'd forgotten all about the scam email by the time they replied.
Seriously, if you're going to use social media then use it, don't just post it on your webpage to look cute. If you're not going to monitor it constantly for communication and are not going to respond (Walmart) then don't put the blessed thing up there. Poncing around on the internet isn't going to gain sales or goodwill.
Now let's take a look at good customer service.
  • Answering the phone promptly and preferably within the first 3 rings with a clear and pleasant "Good morning/afternoon *pause* This is <insert company name> *pause* <insert your name> speaking. How may I help you?"
  • Greeting customers with a pleasant smile and a "Hello, how may I help you?"
  • Actively putting the customer first. If already dealing with a customer, politely excuse yourself for a second and acknowledge the new prospective customer that has just arrived and either summon somebody else to help them or discover if it's a quick query such as "where's the bathroom". 
  • Give good after sales service - to the customer, you are the company. 
  • Deal with customer complaints immediately. Failure to do so will cause an already upset customer to be even more upset. Even if you're with a customer, this is the only time you can break off. This demonstrates to the customer with a problem that you're serious about helping them and to the customer that you're dealing with beforehand that you're serious about supporting them after they make a purchase.
  • Recognize that some people just come in and erupt and there's nothing that can be done except to be respectful and wait until they have finished erupting. It's never personal - it's just part of being human.
  • Answer customer's questions respectfully, honestly and promptly, seeking advice for answers that are unknown by yourself. Lying and evasion are never OK.
  • Respond to social media - if used - promptly and honestly.
Whether you're running your own business, working for a business or just buying things, look at all your interactions from two viewpoints. Remember the Sufi way of the four gates.
  • At the first gate ask "Am I about to speak the truth"
  • At the second gate ask "Is what I want to say necessary"
  • At the third gate ask "Is what I am about to say beneficial"
  • At the fourth gate ask "Is what I am about to say kind"
If the answer to any of those questions is no then do not say it.  This will better all your business dealings whether as a customer or as a salesman. People are human and like to be treated as though they are your friends. Even the bible says "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (Luke 6:31)

Saturday, May 10, 2014

eBook review - Night Photography by Lance Keimig

It would be nice to be able to be more positive about this book. It was quite well written and had some excellent images in it. A lot of work had been put in to it but what killed this book for this reviewer was the authors casual regard to breaking the law, to trespass and his apparently very lax morals. It is not a book therefore that I can recommend purchasing. It was one of the few books that I've read that I have been utterly and completely disgusted by.
The book starts off promisingly enough with a nice photo of light trails above a moonlit beach. There are an awful lot of really nice night images in the book. None, though, of the really difficult photographs of things like the Milky Way. I'll be honest - I have not yet mastered photographing the Milky Way nor Schlieren Imaging though one day I would really like to. For the Milky Way the problem is that I need really dark skies with no street lamps for a few miles in all directions. For Schlieren, the problem is more that I only vaguely know how it's done and very few resources explain it properly. That would require a lot of experimentation and a large circular mirror that I don't currently have.
After the usual preambles which last about 10% of the book (oh boy, authors know how to inflate the size of their books), the book starts off with the history of night photography while using a Joseph Niepce photograph from 1827 as a sample of night photography. As far as I can tell, that photograph was actually taken in bright sun. Some estimates say that it was taken over 8 hours and some say that it was taken over several days. Needless to say, nobody agrees that it was a night photograph so quite why it's in a book on night photography or in a chapter on the history of night photography is not adequately explained.
Moving on, the book does contain some very nice photographs and most of them are genuine night photographs. I skipped through the chapter on the history of night photography as that seemed to me to be largely filler to make the book look bigger than it actually is. 
Chapter two looked much more promising being entitled "Night Photography Equipment". I wondered how the author was planning to stretch "take a camera, a lens, a tripod and a locking cable-release" into a whole chapter. After a bit of wittering about old style cameras not in mainstream use, the book suddenly launched into strings of acronyms - CMOS, DSLR, RAW, ISO without ever apparently adequately explaining what they mean for novices. The chapter chuntered on discussing Canon and Nikon dominating the market without really getting to the point in a concise and meaningful way. Flipping through a few more pages, by the end of the chapter the author is recommending people to dress warmly for night photography and to take snacks and thermos flasks. Clearly this is an author who's into padding in a big way.
Sadly, the end of Chapter Two is where the author totally lost my respect by detailing how one photographer apparently routinely wanders into areas without permission to take night photographs. This is very much akin to somebody walking into a children's play area who sits down and starts reading a porn magazine. Trespass is never OK no matter what the reason. Fences are there to keep people out for a reason. It might not be because of patrol dogs. It could be because of turtle eggs or the like. Perhaps there could even have been a crime committed that had not yet been detected and passing over the scene could contaminate it. Trespass is against the law and condoning trespass is morally reprehensible. Thus after this point, the author totally lost the last vestige of decency.
Chapter three begins to talk about the basics of night photography, trying to make out that it's much more complicated than putting a camera on a tripod and doing a long exposure. Of course with long exposures it is possible as the book concedes to spice things up by setting off flashes inside buildings to light up the insides. A lot of time is given to wittering about irrelevancies and the author goes into immense depth on subjects that have no meaning for today's photographers. It's almost as though the author had found a book like the Ilford Manual of Photography and had dived through it looking for tables to put into chapters to pad the book out. There seems a dreadful amount of sheer padding in every chapter so far. One of the more absurd tables is about the color casts of various kinds of lighting. Really? How is that important to digital photographers that can correct color casts? It's not as though there's a setting for every type of color cast and the fellow conveniently neglects to mention mixed lighting which has several color casts.
The following chapter was just sheer padding. It was film based photography. I don't actually know of anybody that still actually uses film let alone processes it. Then the next chapter seems all about "digital capture" and utter irrelevancies. By this time, the book and the author had worn my patience down. I have a low enough tolerance for baloney.
Chapter six was another of those monotonous chapters about workflow. I have seen entire books on this and none of them are worth the time of day. This chapter was no exception. How workflow relates to night photography is anybody's guess.
Chapter seven continued the theme of chapters that were nothing to do with night photography, concentrating on my pet peeve which is High Dynamic Range or how to take an awful image and make it positively dreadful.
I was about to take the book back to the library when Chapter Eight caught my eye - it was all about moonlight and star trails. Clearly moonlight is an interesting subject though star trails are not that great - they're just curved lines in the sky. One of the things that the author does seem to love is tables. Sadly the tables given just are not complete. It's as though they have all been copied from the snippets available online. Really and truly, there will be far more information on sunset and sunrise times and moonrise and moonset times together with all the planetary motions from the apps available on smartphones or even on the NASA website. My own preference is for smartphone apps as they make life so much easier.
Chapter nine was all about taking time exposures and waving light sources around to create shapes on the final image. This is largely something that can be done post exposure in photoshop and just reeked of lack of ideas. Unsurprisingly that seemed to be the last chapter.
Generally, this was a very disappointing book that promised far more than it came close to achieving. In general the display of dishonesty in encouraging trespass was reflected by the generally dishonest way in which the book purported to be about night photography but was actually all about padding with just one chapter on actual night photography. Had I actually paid for this book instead of borrowing it then I would be very annoyed with myself for being taken in by what I feel to be a misleading title and would be inclined toward wondering if I was within my rights to go for  a refund.