I have in the past worked with an award winning food photographer and from what I know, they are in a class of their own but as technology would have it, a slew of foodie pictures found regularly on Instagram has made life a little more difficult. 

Foodies blog about where to eat and what to eat, and in the process take photos for their Instagram feed as part of their promotional efforts. Some of the pictures showcase capture the unique atmosphere of the eatery or restaurant while others are styled in such a way that reflect their creativity and lighting. 

There are still people who shoot food but budgets for a stylist would depend on the client. Today, almost anyone who wants to get creative can look through the numerous instagram photos that are tagged with #foodphotography to get an idea on what is possible. This comes at the expense of professional stylist who once commanded decent paychecks just to style food. 

Today, the digital photographer is nothing more than a journeyman, who goes out of his way to make a budget shoot possible. Food styling was once an art. If it looks good on picture, then it's good to eat...except that it wasn't the case. Industrial glazes and chemicals were added to bring out the color and making it look exceptional during the age of analogue film was an art in itself. you needed quality studio lighting and exposure readings had to be made at every step to avoid unexpected results. Photographers would burn through boxes of Polaroid prints just to check the color and lighting. It was, ultimately a time consuming process. 

With Photoshop, changing the colors isn't a big deal anymore. You want the lobster to look more crimson, it can be done with the right tint. Selective tinting is a boon to food photography and for that, you can ask any digital artist. 

How Instagram made Food Photography Fashionable 

The advent of social media changed the food photography landscape. First, people posted to Facebook and Flickr, and when Instagram came along, that became a food fashion statement on where you have been eating. 

It also helped to promote the eateries themselves, forcing chefs to style the food in a platter that is welcoming to the eyes and photography aficionados. The choice of plates, cutlery and table setting had to be tempting enough for people to drop by and take pictures for their friends to see.

This sort of thinking started to influence how food photography was conducted. It was not about shooting the images at at studio anymore like what you find at Dominoes Pizza or McDonalds. 

Today Food Photography is a mass market exercise that is not dominated by professionals but amateurs. 

Pros help to style the photos in the menu but they don't sell the restaurant. It is the mass market posting on social media that ultimately decides your success. 

This has led people to believe that food styling and photography is but the tip of the ice berg. An image with the right food proportions is what gives the idea on what your guest are getting but ultimately, it is the posting on social media that builds your reputation. 

We no longer have to wait for a jaded food reviewer to tell you that the food doesn't taste as good as it looks, you can already get that if you mates are foodies who eat in many places and post what they have tasted on Facebook. 

Social media campaigns have to tied with socially shared pictures and that's what builds branding and interest in the long term. The short term is always about putting up a print ad or two to get the ball rolling. Promotions at this point is just to tell people you're open for business. And as long as your food comes out of the kitchen that is great to look at and inspires the appetite, those pictures will go viral. 

Food Photography as a Business

The prospect of an Instagram foodie styling and shooting your menu is a reality. Restaurants don't need to hire professional photographers these days as budgets for them will run into thousands of dollars just for the menu pictures alone. 

Pros would like to take that business but with the onslaught of Instagram foodies, that makes it a very difficult proposition. 

What's more, being a pro food photographer would also mean starting up in a location where there is a food culture and with competition coming from amateurs, it gets more difficult to include a professional food stylist as a part of the package. 

So not only would you have to be the photographer and stylist, you also needed to be a good digital artist to know how to enhance those shots you made. 

The good part of this is the simplicity of it all. No DSLRs are necessary. You can shoot with a portable strobe (like the Foldio 2) and an iPhone if you knew how and as long as your services are priced accordingly (and not by the thousands of dollars) you probably can have your cake and eat it.

UPDATE: Instagram photos now in portrait and landscape


So what better way to sell your restaurant than with a full size picture instead of a square one? Get your customers cracking, dress the tables and dining area and color coordinate your table wares. The food is going to be complemented with more than just a square close up of the food but everything else about the restaurant can now be experienced. 

this is a creative common image example

We have all heard of the term, deflation, that's when things get cheaper economically. Now every economist will tell you a deflation is a bad thing. This is when the price of a product or service goes down either due to poorer market conditions or demand.

Stock photography has been in a deflation spiral for some years. Microstock photography, which hints broadly at cheaper pictures which can be sold more often therefore making its margins through bulk purchases. Microstock is also a royalty free approach to licensing photos, allowing consumers to pay as little as one dollar to use a stock image on a web site.

As the technology behind cameras evolve, it can't be said for the photography business in general. Everyone with a camera, mirrorless...DSLR....or a smartphone camera, can provide an image that is acceptable to most microstock agencies.

What's more there are thousands of images which are released into the Creative Commons domain, some of which are pretty outstanding in quality, all for free for web use. These photogs hope that by giving away some of their imagery, they could in turn get valuable web traffic to their site and promote their name.

This 'free' stock image sites (there are over 50 right now) compete directly with royalty free microstock images. So the the game has gotten even harder to compete in. 

Making it as a Stock Image Photographer

I have read stories of photographers pulling in hundred of thousands of dollar ins revenue from their stock image sales, but I can assure you this can't be from microstock photos.

Stock image agencies are always on the look out for more talent to contribute to their image library. It cost them very little to sign you up....or for that matter, validate your photos as acceptable after all you are responsible for potential lawsuits.

Microstock photography is probably a good way to start if you are thinking of submitting images to any photo agencies. The reason is simple. If your photos get rejected even at a microstock level, don't even hope of getting that past larger stock agencies like Getty, Alamy, Fotolia, etc, etc.

To start, all you need is a smartphone like the iPhone 5 or 6. If you already have one, then you don't need to spend another US$500 buying a compact camera.

Tips to Start Shooting as a Microstock Photographer

I am going to lay out some advice to keep you going and as cheaply as possible. This will work out in your best interest for one very simple reason....microstock is not going to make you rich but it can earn you some decent beer money.

Each region or continent of the world has a search term that stock agencies track, and these are very useful if you happen to live in a particular region of the world where they pay for such images. To get an idea, here is a list of key terms from one of the agencies. 

# Rule One : Be Opportunistic when Shooting Outdoors

As microstock photographer, you have to recognize a great photo opportunity when you see one. For example a great day, with the sunlight breaking through the clouds, or maybe a street scene where colorful flowers are arranged for sale. Shooting street vendors selling their wares (the wares...and not the vendors should be in the picture).

When you go out to order food or a coffee at a nice setting. Whip out your smartphone to capture a picture in the best possible arrangement. It's a photo opportunity that you have already paid so why not make the best out of it? Remember to arrange them in such a way that brand names are obscured. This makes them more marketable.

#Rule 2: Learn to capture photos without glaring brand signs or faces of people

This is another trick that will help you sell photos. Getting people into pictures is really very easy, especially identifiable people. The hard part is having them in the picture without their faces in it.

One way to do this is actually using long exposure on a tripod. People's figures and faces will get blurred while you get a public picture of a place. A festive atmosphere is best with people in them.

The other method is to spend time on photoshop to erase them out, which might or might not work since stock images of public places look more lively with people in them instead of without them.

#Rule 3: Use Hand, Arm and Leg Models

A object on its own is pretty useless unless a human interaction is in the image. This is where asking a friend for help will come in handy. Hands holding items, or any bodily part used as part of the composition is one way to get away from the model release conundrum most photographers have to get around.

You need to spend time and effort to arrange the shoot and once you do, shoot an entire theme on it. Won't cost you a dime as long as all the objects in the picture are borrowed.

#Rule 4: Get a Friend to Pose for You

These days, stock photos call for model releases and the same can be said of microstock images as well. If you have a friend who looks the part and is a willing victim of your photography exploitation, then ask them to sign on!

There are a lot of people who think they would make good models and for your part, you could help them on their way by giving them an online portfolio of images to use as their own.

Nearly every microstock agency these days ask for model releases once you have recognizable faces. If you go through the trouble to get one for them, the chances of you selling a picture is far greater than that without a model.

#Rule 5: List with Every Microstock Agency 

Royalty free means photos are not exclusive to one agency. So if you are going down this route, list with all the available ones you can manage and I can assure you that there are heaps out there. The best microstock photo agencies are the ones who find ready market for your photos. This means they should be advertising about their service either offline or online.

Microstocks that don't advertise often take on Photographic Missions as a way to address a client's requirement. They find willing client who are wiling to buy the right photo submission for rates amounting to a few hundred dollars at a time.

Here is where you make that distinction on which path to take. If you want to shoot what you like and submit them to microstock agencies all over the world, then make sure these agencies are doing their part by actively seeking buyers. There are loads of agencies that just exist online without doing much to push their services to buyers. These are dead ends and there are plenty of such agencies littering the Internet-scape. Go with one that actively advertises online to start with. They might get more exposure but you also get drowned out as their libraries probably have a hundred similar type photos as yours.

Lastly, you have to ask yourself what sort of buyers would be interested in your photos. And here is some food for thought. Over 20 years ago, I met a photographer who had gone to Myanmar's Bagan city, and he took beautiful panoramic slides of the place. However Myanmar at that time was going through a rough political patch so even though they were beautiful photos, no one ever wanted them because there was no market for it.

People who buy specific photos fall into a handful of categories. They are either in the news business, blogsite, tourism and promotions, hotels and service industry. This is a finite market and they are looking for the cheapest option for photos. Big brands and large corporations these days are also on the look out for cheaper images, so that too is another potential market for microstock photos.

The Last Word on Microstock Photography

The rule here is not to spend too much time and effort for just one photo. Make sure you have a whole theme of photos lined up when you do put in some money to make it happen. Microstock cannot be a zero cost business. You will have to come out with some form of monetary investment if you intend to pursue this further.

If you are lucky enough to make decent money on it, and enjoy doing it. Then you can consider moving up the chain by being a semi-pro stock image photographer (you will need to invest in a proper camera though). For that, you can start to hone your skills with more complex subjects as a larger sensor camera will give you greater latitude with low light or challenging lighting environments. Beyond that, just hope you are lucky enough to secure some sales to keep you going. 

[disclaimer: none of the photos featured here belong to me. These are royalty free photos for non commercial use.]

Michael Freeman @ work. Copyright Benard Quek.

People often ask what it takes to go professional as a photographer. Is there some skill or technique required for something which you need to have to be a Pro? The low down on the matter is there is a little bit of both but you'd be surprised how little technical skill goes into it. 

When I was engaged as a DSLR consultant to Sony Asia Pacific, I knew very little about digital technology. I had of course been shooting with a Nikon 5700, 5 megapixel camera at that point of time but I didn't really care about what made it tick. What I could do was to take a good picture and that was what counted. Everything else was picked up over the years and my understanding of the technology that went into it grew by leaps and bounds. 

Having had the chance to work with so many professionals, you will become jaded. They seem to have all the luck in the world in getting paid for what they love doing. But the fact of the matter is that they have to sell themselves more than that lemonade stand on a hot summer's day. They pay more attention to creating opportunities for themselves than just sitting in the office waiting for people to call them up for a gig. That's what sets them apart from others. 

So if you want to set up a business being a photographer for hire. Here are some talents you must ante up on. 

#1 Run like an Entrepreneur

Its about the business stoopid! Never for one buy into the hogwash that you have to be this or that but business acumen is a very important part of the equation. You cannot succeed in a business without being business minded. Professional Photography is not about the art but your ability to run a business, taking into account things like cost control, marketing, and business sustainability. The business process is 90 percent of being Pro. The remaining 10 percent is really about the photography.

#2 Learn to be a People Person

In a service type industry, you need to be a people person to gain their trust. It makes no sense if you are hated even by your dog and are argumentative on photo briefs. It's a bit like politicians, who need to win people over for the vote. The things you say, your demeanor, actions and slick presentation will earn you enough likes to enjoy a long term business relationship. Remember that there is always a cheaper photographer out there who can steal your business so it does not matter how much is your running cost versus charges but how you lock your customer into your service portfolio. 

#3 Be a capable photographer

Watch the words I use, be capable....not excellent, that's because it doesn't take a lot to know what angle is best or how to frame a subject. Everything these days is automatic, from ISO setting and White Balance. If you fuck up and have a spiffy full frame camera, you can correct those mistakes on Adobe Lightroom and even claw back up to 2 stops of lost dynamic range using RAW files. To be capable is knowing where to place your subjects in a frame and how best to enhance that subject in a scene. Some photographers even use Photoshop to blend in a blurred background when their own cameras are incapable of performing that sort of 'bokeh'. For me that's what counts as creative as you make use of what you have and achieve a similar effect without spending a bomb on a kidney busting Leica lens. 

Digital Photography is Ultimately a Simple Process

Here is another thing the Pros don't tell you. In the digital age, all you need to do is press the shutter button. This means you have more time to concentrate and focus your mind on how to compose a picture and do it well. Everything is taken care of when you set your camera on auto. It can even calculate backlight issue and use an enhanced exposure just for that one scene. If you don't like what you get on the LCD screen, you can always take a step back and take another one to correct the first shot you made. Your mistakes are easily correctable. 

Creativity is just another means to express yourself and that can be staged for better effect. Don't like it? Take a moment to change it. Everything you want to do better in the next frame can be achieved. In any business, your success depends on you as an entrepreneur, that same rule applies to a photography business. How you lead, communicate and engage your clients determines your success. 

Why Digital is Easy

Digital photographers these days don't even need to shoot on location as they can shoot different objects & backgrounds separately and combine them into a finished picture using Photoshop. So all you need to do is compose the best possible picture to get it right and that's a hell of a lot easier than say in the analogue age. 

In film photography. There are so many things to worry about. 

White Balance was a huge concern when you get it wrong. In capture, the film has to be corrected by using a lens filter. ISO/ASA is fixed too. You do not go postal and select any ISO you want as the film ASA speed is fixed. You can push the film but a few stops by shooting it at a higher or lower ASA but not all films can handle it that way. Some will show more grain while others hold up to the development process better. Then you have the film stocks that don't handle dynamic range as well you might like. This is something you have to learn about and the idiosyncrasies of each film type has to be remembered. 

Today, anyone with an iPhone can shoot a good picture. In daylight, it looks fabulous to the point people can't tell the difference if it was shot on a full frame camera. That's why Apple can flaunt its iPhone camera capabilities to billboard size.

But this is not to say you should go pro with an iPhone in tow but that's not to say you should always start with a full frame camera. 

Studio gear is cheap. Studio lighting is even cheaper now than ever. I use to lament the cost of having studio strobes but these days, you can kit yourself out for less than US$1K. That's how cheap it has gotten over the years. 

 

You don't need a full frame DSLR to shoot something like this

Cheap strobes that are not color accurate can still be corrected in post production in Adobe Lightroom. It really does not matter! 

No money for strobes? No problem. Borrow those Tungsten lights for outdoor use and you're on your way to shooting studio work. 

There are many niches in Photography, but you have to learn to become a jack of all trades before you can call yourself capable. In the old days, there were master photographers who shot on those huge Linhof and Sinar cameras. Today, a master photographer is routinely used and abused term to mean you just shoot photos for a living. 

So don't get caught up with the jargon and be a good photographer. Ante up on those business skills and you can count yourself to be among those who shoot pictures for a living. 

A bad day for photography as it was cloudy, learn to enhance and edit your image to save the day!

In a previous life, I was a magazine editor who had to carry a camera and take photos of cars for the print use. This was in the 90s. During that time, I was told repeatedly that shooting cars was the most difficult aspect of photography (analogue) because of how the lighting fell on the car on specific times of the day. In daylight, you can only shoot during the early hours of the rising or setting sun.

Shooting was a pain as you had to recce a suitable location in which to place the cars. That made the whole process even more difficult as it had to be done in advance, prior to getting the cars needed.

Then you have to wait for the weather of course. If that holds up, you have a shoot on your hands.

The process kept a lot of people at work. The whole photography business, even in a studio environment to shoot a car advertisement would cost in the ballpark of US$100,000. Photographers with large studios and strobe lighting were dominated by a few players. Film exposure had to be captured right and that was how the business was done.

I even met John Lamm, of Road and Track magazine once and spoke to him about his photography. He was essentially the man every guy wanted to emulate, photographing the latest cars for the hottest car magazine on the planet. This was the stuff that made college kids dream about being a professional photographer. The art, the skill and the know how was something you had to pick up over time because analogue is brutal when it comes to mistakes. There are no second chances if you fuck it up the first time.

The Great Digital Disruption

Of course when digital photography and Photoshop came along, things started to change. What made matters worst was that magazines started to cut budgets in view of the stuff you an already find on the Internet. Shooting cars wasn't a big deal anymore. Anyone could get the official pictures from the marques which look strangely like pictures taken off a digital workstation.

Looks real? Baby...this is a rendered image!

Advertising companies could even get files from the 3D modelling workstation and place that car in almost any imaginable background and blend that into photo realistic quality. Any other enhancements can be done in photoshop. Car photography, became what is later known as composite photography...where objects are added to to create an image.

But don't get me wrong, photographing cars still happen but not on the same scale as it would for shooting a Top Gear episode.

The decline of print magazines contributed to the decline of photographers working on such publications because suddenly, anyone can shoot cars. You didn't need a pro but just anyone with a camera with an eye for composition. I remember in the old days, we had to shoot covers for the magazine and this meant we had to shoot a car with the right composition to use. There must be room for text, and room for the masthead of the magazine. Heck, you don't need to do all that.

With digital, things got a lot easier. No more fussy with the photos, just ask the digital artist to render a background and drop the surgically clean official image from the car manufacturer into a blurred background. So many work arounds were available where you didn't need to incur the cost of a photographer. This meant that photographers did less specialised work.

Photographers had to play second fiddle to the digital artist who can literally create magic from the desktop.

What Can Photoshop do for You

Photoshop was a blast and it shows. Having a photographer to shoot a car of a different color didn't have to mean having three different colored cars had to be on set. Just shoot one and a digital artist will render a photo realistic color onto it.

This meant no more long hours in the photography studio. Just one shot, or one take with the perfect lighting and that's it. No more fussy around to recreate the look of the first car image of a different color. 

Better still if you have a photo realistic 3D vector of the car which you can tip around on its axis. You can have a different view by tilting the camera of the 3D program and render the image. Who needs a photographer now when everything can be done on a computer?

Digital photography suddenly didn't seem so great anymore when you have hyper realistic cars speeding around the track of a computer game. As long as a vector file of the car exist, you can have that rendered anywhere in the world and have pink elephants flying overhead for good measure. 

Digital has Levelled the Playing Field

Today, we don't need to go on location to shoot a car. You can render one by buying a cheap background image and blending the car in. Drop in the lighting shadow and you're done. 

The only thing that hasn't changed is that motor sports images still have to shot on track or in circuit. Beyond that, there is hardly anything that can't be done. I mourn the passing of a bygone era where the image was sacred. Hardly anyone notices this as many of you have never shot on analogue film. 

The decline of print journalism also contributed to the decline of automotive photography as less and less are paying attention to shooting a car that looks good. Publishers are unwilling to hire a photographer to shoot a unique image when they can already rip one off the Internet for next to nothing. Makes perfect cents doesn't it?