Fellow Photographers,

With Christmas just a couple of weeks away, we are starting to see a Christmas theme to this newsletter. Firstly the “Deal of the Day” this week is for my annual Christmas Critiques event – a free event that I run each Christmas for all those who have supported the studio throughout the year.

The two events I am highlighting this week are All You Need Are Strobes, which is the last of the regular Friday Night at the Studio events before Christmas, and Oh Calamity! which is a post Christmas / pre-New Year full day group shoot.

In the blog I have a reminder about the studio’s gift certificates which make great Christmas presents – either for you to give to someone else or for you to add to you Christmas wishlist.

Do you know someone which is getting a DSLR for Christmas? If so you might want to recommend my Introduction to DSLR Photography Course to them which starts on January 11th. In the blog this week I have a short video introducing the course.

For all of this and more, please read on….

Deal of Day

Christmas Critiques

Every Christmas I run a free event at the studio to say thank you everyone who has supported the studio over the past year. It is a time to meet with other photographers share images that we have taken during the year and enjoy a mince pie and a drink

The event is only open to people who have been to an Ian’s Studio event, workshop or course in 2014 or if you have hired the studio in 2014. Bring along a selection of images you have created this year (please include something you have taken as a result of attending one of the studio events, workshops or courses).

You can bring images as prints or as digital files which we will display via a laptop and video projector. You can also email/dropbox images to me ahead of the event to save time loading them on to the laptop. I recommend a maximum of 5 images person (we may only get to critique 3 or 4 depending on the number of people attending).

I do need to know numbers so although this is a free event you will need to book via the event page: http://www.ians-studio.co.uk/events/christmas-critiques-2014/

I look forward to seeing you there.

Forthcoming Events

Friday, 12 December 2014 – All You Need Are Strobes

All You Need Are Strobes

Location: Ian’s Studio
Time: 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Price: £25

Setting up a home studio can be expensive. But it doesn’t have to be. You can create most studio style images using just a handful of stobes (flash guns), a few cheap lighting stands, and various bits of material.

At tonight’s event I will show you ways of creating studio style images with limited resources. You will see it all in action and get the chance to shoot with my strobe based studio gear.

The model for this event will be Laura. Laura is a new model that I had the pleasure of doing a test shoot with in October. That test shoot was primarily to go through all the lighting set-ups that we will consider at this event. I was impressed with Laura and decided that she would be the natural choice as model for the event when I ran it at the studio.

You can see images of Laura on my website: http://photos.imb.biz/model/shoot/lauratest

Price: £25

Please book via my website: http://www.ians-studio.co.uk/events/all-you-need-are-strobes/

Saturday, 27 December 2014 – Oh, Calamity!

Oh, Calamity!

Location: Ian’s Studio
Time: 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Price: £69

On the Friday between Christmas and New Year, I try to run a full day event. This year that Friday will be Boxing Day – so instead of running an event on Boxing Day we have a group shoot on Saturday 27th December.

For this event I have invited back model Calamity, who recently modeled for our sold out “Unusual Underwear” event. Event and model both proved to be very popular. For this new event Calamity will be working at mixed levels up to Art Nude. To ensure that everyone gets plenty of time to shoot with Calamity I will be limiting the maximum number of photographers for this event to just FIVE.

You can find Calamity’s profile on Purpleport: http://purpleport.com/portfolio/calamity/?referrer=ianbutty (Contains nudity)

Price: £69

Please book via my website: http://www.ians-studio.co.uk/events/oh-calamity/

From the Blog…

[Blog] Gift Certificates

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Are you unsure what to buy the photographer in your life? Has someone asked you what you would like for Christmas but not quite sure what to ask for?

We offer gift certificates for Ian’s Studio. They come in £5, £10 and £20 denominations and you can buy any number of each so effectively we can make up certificates to almost any value.

The certificates are valid for one year and can be exchanged for almost(*) any service that the studio provides includes events, workshops, courses, studio hire and event portrait sessions.

To purchase gift certificates please go to our make a payment page – enter the amount the certificate is for and put “gift certificate” in the the payment for box.

If you would like to give your loved one the gift of a specific event, workshop or course, we can provide gift certificates for the event you wish to give. For example if you know someone who is getting a camera for Christmas why not buy them a place on our Introduction to DSLR Photography Course.

To purchase gift certificates for a specific course, workshop or event please go to our make a payment page – enter the course/workshop/event fee and put “Gift Certificate for [Name of Event]” in the payment for box.

If in any doubt please contact me and I’ll sort it out for you.

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(*) Gift certificates may not be used for some ‘book by the hour’ model/studio days (known as slots days) due to payment often going direct to the model and not to the studio. Similarly the certificates are not valid for workshops and events run by other photographers who have hired the studio for their event.

[Video Promo] Introduction to DSLR Photography Course

I’ve put together a promo for my Introduction to DSLR Photography Course.

For the best way to view the video – please click the full screen icon and veiw in HD.

The course is 7 sessions long and will be running weekly on Sunday Evenings 7pm – 9.30pm. starting Sunday 11th January.

If you know anyone for whom the course might be suitable please share this video with them. And remember if they book and name you as the person who referred them you will receive a £10 credit which you can use when booking events, workshops or courses at the studio.

For more information and booking for the course please go to http://www.ians-studio.co.uk/idpc

For instant notification of new videos from Ian’s Studio please subscribe to the video feed on YouTube.

[Blog] Check your licences on Flickr

If you use flickr to host your photographs you need to check what licences are set on your images, and you need to do it now. Yahoo, the owners of Flickr is about to start selling canvas prints of any images which whose licences are set to “Creative Commons” – and they are going to pocket all the money from those sales. Now that is exactly what the “Creative Commons” licences (well some of them anyhow) permit. And a lot of people who set the licence to “Creative Commons” don’t have any problems with this. Quite a lot of other including myself do have problems with this.

Here are just a few of the problems:

There are a lot of photographers who selected Creative Commons as a way of saying to other flickr uses that they can use their images – it is done in a spirit of sharing not for big multinationals to make money from direct sales of their work. Photographers in this category are faced with a stark choice either let Yahoo make money out of their work or prevent anyone from using their images.

Do you know what your default licence is set to? If you like me joined flickr many years ago (8 years in my case) You may not have understand “Creative Commons” at the time you signed up. Some photographers have selected it as their default licence without understanding the implications. Other may have selected it long ago and forgotten about it.

Do you work with models? Have you supplied them with any of you images? Have they posted them on Flickr? Some models do. What licence have they set?

While Yahoo/Flickr are not doing anything illegal, it does go against the spirit of what Creative Commons is all about. Creative Commons is all about sharing, grass roots producers helping other grass roots producers. It’s not about making money for multinational companies. And frankly what Yahoo is doing “leaves a bad taste”. Interestingly even my namesake Stewart Butterfield (no relation btw) who set up flickr has said it is “a little shortsighted … It’s hard to imagine the revenue from selling the prints will cover the cost of lost goodwill”.

So what should you do about this? Firstly check the default licence you have set on flickr. This is easy to do.

Click on your avatar in the top right of any flickr page and click settings.
Click on the “Privacy & Permissions” tab
scroll down until you find “What license will your content have” this will show you the default licence that is applied to images as you upload them.
If you want to protect yourself completely set this to “All rights reserved”

To change the licences on all your existing images you will need to use the batch organiser. To do this:

Click on “You” the top of the menu bar at the top of the flickr page
Select “Organize” – This will take you to the Batch Organiser
At the bottom of the screen ensure the dropdown box says “All your content” then click “select all” just below it.
When all your images highlighted with a red/pink border drag them into the main part of the screen
From the white menu bar at the top of the screen select “permissions” and click on “change licensing”
Select “None (All rights reserved)” from the pop-up menu
Click “Change Licence” – this will set the licence to all your current images.

If you need to change the licence on an individual image you can do so by using the dropdown box under the images when you view your image.

Photo of the Day

POTD Fri, 21 Nov 2014: Fascinating Fascinators

Amy at Fascinating Fascinators event at Ian’s Studio

This image comes from the “Fascinating Fascinators” event at the studio. Amy who is both model and designer of the headgear, came to the studio for the event. While much of the evening was headshots with an empasis on capturing the fascinators, I asked Amy to bring at least one look that would work as a silhouette. This was it.

You can see the full set of images from the event with Amy here: http://photos.imb.biz/model/shoot/amy-fascinators

If you want to know more about the techniques involved in shooting silhouettes you might want to book yourself on to this event at the studio in April:http://www.ians-studio.co.uk/events/shooting-silhouettes/

PLEASE NOTE: This is not a source of free photographs.
This photograph is (c) Ian M Butterfield. All rights are reserved. No use Is permitted (including non-commercial use) without prior permission. If you wish to use any of my photographs please ask first.

Image Reference: FG1121A-G14277

Recent Sales

For those who are interested in Stock Photography here’s some information about some of the strange and not so strange sales that I have made.

NON-SALE 25 Jun 2004: Avenue of sphinxes leading to Luxor Temple Egypt

Avenue of sphinxes leading to Luxor Temple Egypt

NUMBER OF SALES TO DATE: 0
SOLD VIA: None
LICENCE: Rights Managed

I don’t normally report non-sales but I thought this one might be of interest. I have had this image for sale on Alamy from when I first joined Alamy in 2002. It hasn’t sold. I nearly sold in 2004…. for $574.20

25 June 2004
Country: United Kingdom
Usage: Editorial
Media: Educational magazine – print only
Industry sector: Retail books/magazines/newspapers
Sub-Industry: Miscellaneous
Print run: up to 25,000
Placement: Front cover
Image Size: 1 page
Start: 25 June 2004
End: 25 July 2004

But then four weeks later on 19 July 2004 I got the following in my Alamy account:
“Sale Refunded $-574.20″

I did query this with Alamy and was told it can happen. The moral of the story don’t spend the money until it actually arrives in your bank account. Refunds happen.

The image still hasn’t sold.

Alamy link: http://www.alamy.com/image-details-popup.asp?Imageid={D96E9318-FDA7-4A09-B1B9-59B82773A2F7}

Image Reference: 2002EOS00301