Author: danrouth

Greensboro, NC based commercial and editorial photographer.

Egg and Feathers, Photographs on the Green Table

Still Life


Today’s photographs are from a project I started almost accidentally. We have an old green painted table in our den that sits in front of a large window. The texture of the wood in the tabletop is extraordinary and the natural light that rakes across at different times of day and during different weather conditions is equally wonderful. I have started shooting still-life photographs on the old table, mostly very simple objects, things I find around my home and things that have very special meanings to me personally. I’ve already posted a couple of images from the project (my Grandpa’s knife and my Grandma’s thimble). The photographs today are an egg and feathers from our small chicken flock. I will post more in the coming days and weeks. With the business climate and the cold weather keeping me at home more than usual, sometimes you don’t need to go far to find subjects.

(Photographs copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)

Work Image and Post-Processing

Photography, Portraits

(Photograph copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)

This image is from a recent commercial shoot. For this blog, I do a considerable amount of post-processing to my photographs. I look at a blog as a venue for experimenting and trying new things. How much is enough? Actually, I think enough to produce the feeling that I’m after in a photograph. Digital imaging has made it easier to do such work, but it’s nothing new. In film days we used to do all sorts of lab techniques and duping processes to produce the looks we wanted. It just took a little longer and was sometimes a little messier. Even black and white master Ansel Adams talked about the negative being the score and the print being the performance. A raw digital file is merely an electronic negative and it is up to each of us to decide where to take it.

Pig Picking

Farm, Food, Portraits


It was pretty cold this past weekend, but not cold enough to stop neighbor Tommy Routh from continuing with his annual “pig picking” for friends and neighbors at Goat Lady Dairy in Grays Chapel. A 200 pound free range hog raised by his son-in-law Bobby, split in half and cooked slow for about 15 hours until the meat falls off the bones. This is the “whole hog”, with a choice of ham, shoulder, rib and tenderloin. I’m primarily a vegetarian these days, but I freely admit I did have to try some. Excellent.



(Photographs copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)

Back to Bad Contracts

Business

In an earlier post I talked about a bad contract I received for a stock photograph a publisher wished to use as a book cover. The original contract had all kinds of language allowing reuse and copyright options that were unnecessary for such a transaction. I told the publisher that I would not sign any such contract, but I would sell one time usage for the stock image for a fee and nothing else. After negotiating and sending proposals back and forth, we settled on a contract that spelled out exactly what I offered originally. They bought one time usage for a cover for a specific book and nothing else. I don’t know why they sent me their original contract, maybe they hoped I wouldn’t read it, but the whole exercise was not needed for a one time simple use. Moral of the story; read any contract you receive and be willing to say no until you can negotiate the sale to what you want to sell and to what the client actually needs.