Saturday, July 31, 2010

The market for professionally taken digital photographs

I was recently the subject of a magazine story, and, before it was published, the photographer Shawn Henry came to campus to "take my picture". That phrase doesn't do justice to what he actually did, which resulted in 148 photographs, eventually edited down to 30, and then to 5 that were sent to the magazine editors to choose the final one.

Mr Henry has given me permission to link to his copyrighted photos, in case you want to see how this sausage was made: here are the 148 pictures, the 30 pictures, and the final one (this link may take a minute to load, it's to the Forbes article...)

These pictures didn't take a lot of time for him to make; as I recall, we were together for about half an hour. (Even though we were outdoors, he deployed some lights and reflectors.)

Seeing how a pro works has made me feel better both about how I often don't like either how I look in pictures, or how other people look in pictures that I take.  Many of the pictures linked above were not so flattering (particularly in the set of 148), but I liked the final one. So selection from a wide variety helps. (And now I just need to lose a little weight:)

Modern electronics have probably changed not only the equipment that photographers use, but also how they work.

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