Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with photographs

How much money does the gossip magazine / gossip blog / tabloid industry make?

Elle Vator — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:23:45 -0800

So, celebrity gossip is everywhere and lots of $$$ is forked out for images of famous babies, etcetera... BUT how much money does the gossip industry MAKE? I can't find any online statistics about Gossip Industry Revenues. It's actually very odd and mysterious.

I'm looking for numbers on gossip magazines, gossip blogs and/or the tabloid industry, with the goal of comparing the Gossip numbers to the Porn Industry and the Television Industry respectively. I could use global numbers, US or North American numbers.

It would be useful to find a webpage as comprehensive as this: http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html

...but I would take a single, high impact sentence about the tabloids and gossip rags (such as this gem: "US Porn Revenues are greater than the combined revenues of ABC, CBS and NBC"), which was properly cited and verifiable.

Anyone got anything?

My camera and me: one of us sucks, but which?

Bardolph — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:15:31 -0800

Photography-satisficing-filter: I would like to take family snapshots approximately as nice as this. Can it be done with my higher-end point-and-shoot (currently taking shots like this)? And if not, what's the minimum I'd need to spend on equipment to get there? For all my other very modest photography needs (sunsets, flowers, vacations, the usual), my two-year-old Olympus SP-550 UZ does me just fine. But I would really like to be able to take slightly better medium-to-close-range shots of people. What I especially like about her shot vs. mine:

1. Sharpness/clarity/crispness. No matter what the lighting's like, I feel as though my Olympus consistently produces pictures that are slightly "soft" or foggy. My messing around with the shutter priority mode has succeeded only in replacing blurriness with graininess.

2. Lack of distortion. Somehow, anyone I've photographed close up with my current camera ends up looking vaguely fishbowly and unlike themselves-- what's up with that?

3. Shallow depth of field. This is less critical, since I know it's hard to get in a point-and-click. Still, it'd be nice.

I know there's a school of thought that says you should just learn to work the camera you have-- and my Olympus has tons of complicated modes, including aperture priority, shutter priority, full-manual, and Scene, so it's entirely possible that I'm just not using it to best effect. (I also have Photoshop, so I'm fine with learning to fake stuff in post-production). On the other hand, I don't want to spend a ton of time trying to optimize my technique with this camera if in the end it's simply incapable of producing the shots I'd like.

So... do I need to buy a DSLR? If not, what should I work on, technique-wise? And if so, what's the (approximate) minimum I'd need to spend for something that would suit this particular, very specific purpose?

Help me preserve Grandma's travel scrapbook

rtha — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 13:02:03 -0800

I'm looking for tips and best practices for scanning the contents of my grandmother's scrapbook. I have my grandmother's excellent scrapbook. It's filled with souvenirs of her life and travels in the US in the 1920s and 30s: snapshots (mostly black-and-white, some sepia - either by design or due to fading); train tickets; menus; postcards; newspaper clippings. And so on. These are mementos of trips to Banff, and San Francisco (before the Golden Gate Bridge was built), and Los Angeles, and DC, and other places.

The pages are held together with a cord looped through two grommets; the photos and other items are held in with either glue or those little photo corners; many items are captioned in white ink.

I have access to a large flatbed scanner. I'd like to be able to scan the entire page when possible, at a large enough resolution that I can go back and crop individual photos and captions if I want to.

I don't know enough about this process to even know quite what questions to ask. What resolution? With photos or other items that are easily detachable from the page, should I just scan them separately (but that would lose some context - most of these are grouped together by event or time period). If you've done a project like this yourself, what do you wish you'd known before you started?

What city is this?

xmutex — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 10:59:42 -0800

Anyone know what city this is? I believe it's from the 1940s or '50s.

Help Me Find This Photo Exhibit!!

aabbbiee — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:41:46 -0800

Help me find this online photo exhibit from a few years ago- photographs of people who define themselves as members of subcultures through dress. A few years ago (probably around 2005), I saw an online exhibit of photos (or it may have been a selection of photos online that were part of an exhibit elsewhere) that I have been thinking about ever since. However, I didn't bookmark it at the time. Repeated attempts at Googling have turned up nothing.

The photographer was focused on how different subcultures of people dress alike, and photos of people in each of a variety of subcultures. One, for instance, had a title of "Urban Dad", where each photo was of a fit, toned, possibly silvery gray-haired man wearing expensive sporty casual wear, and a brightly colored Baby Bjorn with a child in it. It was as if they'd all chosen their clothes from the same page in some Urban Dad catalog, but in fact each person in the project had been pulled off the street and photographed separately.

There were multiple arrays with titles, and all had 6-8 photos (or more, possibly). Another might have been Young Rocker Dude, where they were all wearing beat-up jeans over black motorcycle boots. None of the people were too costume-y. All of the people clearly defined themselves as outside the mainstream through dress, either by being very trendy or cool or goth or twee or something.

Part of the message was that people recognize each other as members of their unique subculture and dress to be identified as part of that subculture, like I Am A Young Hip Williamsburg Mother.

The photographs were not taken on the street. They were taken with studio lighting and a white background. Most of the people were wearing very trendy clothes for the time, which was probably 2004, but no earlier than 2002 and no later than 2006.

I want to say that the artist was Dutch, that she was female or it was an artist couple working together. And I want to say that they did the photographs in New York City. Some of that might be right or nearly right, or maybe all of that is wrong and I am completely off the mark.

Anyway, this was not terribly obscure at the time. I am sure I saw it in the arts section of the New York Times or another major news source, but it resonated and I'd love to find it again (and email it to people who've had to sit through my awkward descriptions for the past 3-5 years). I have looked for it several times and cannot even come close to a reference.

Can you help me?

How can I hang my photographs?

wild like kudzu — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 08:49:45 -0800

So I really like to take pictures, but I'm bored with framing them. What other cool ideas for mounting or backing large high quality printed photographs are there? I've heard of people pouring some sort of shalaque over a photograph on wood, but I don't really know how to do it. Anybody got any ideas?

How do ringside pro photographers do their thing?

wastelands — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 12:08:11 -0800

How do ringside (boxing, MMA, etc.) photographers work? Are there any pro or serious amateur photogs at MeFi who could satisfy my curiosity about ringside photography? Specifically:

* Given how fast action can occur, do they plan shots or just take a ton of them and filter out later?

* I notice they use two cameras, presumably for close up vs. far off shots. Do they pre-focus at the two distances so they don't have to think about it? Or do they still do some adjustment on the fly?

* Analog or digital? I'd assume digital would favor the approach of taking loads of shots and culling later. But I think a lot of pros still use film.

* How do they decide which shots to use? Or is it their newspaper/website/etc. editor that does that for them? I assume shots with punches landing, people dropping from knockouts, etc. would be favored over all other shots?

Thanks!

I need to go to design school

hamandcheese — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:45:19 -0800

Large-format printing filter: Help me figure out a workflow for getting my very large photographs into a 60" x 90" Adobe Illustrator file. Difficulty: need the job done tonight! I need to build some camera-ready PDFs that will be printed 60" by 90". CMYK, 1 inch bleed, one large 300 ppi photograph plus some small text elements per file.

My problem is that we're talking about HUGE file sizes here. Am I doing something wrong? I exported the files from Lightroom as 30", 300 ppi, and they come out as 200 MB monsters. This is one thing, but then I took them into photoshop to get them up to the 60" dimension I need. Unfortunately, when I save the PSDs, they're 2 freaking gigabytes! These things take forever to work with and even longer to save. I must be doing something wrong.

What workflow should I be using so that I can keep the file sizes down and still achieve decent print quality? I have access to Adobe CS3, and I need to finish this project tonight. I haven't done any large-format design work before. Help me hivemind!

1,500,000 words and no where to keep them

i_am_a_fiesta — Mon, 04 May 2009 01:24:34 -0800

My dad has many boxes of the photographs he took during college 30 years ago. After completing my freshman year, I have equally as many digital pictures saved on my computer. While I would love to make 1500 prints, that isn't very plausible. What's the best way to preserve these pictures and make them easily accessible and viewable in the future? (I might be able to choose 200 or so to make the most accessible and viewable.)

Online Photography Display System

netbros — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:06:41 -0800

I'm planning to post photographs to my own website as a travelogue. I'm looking for an eye-catching interface that is easy to use and maintain. What would you recommend? I'm not interested in one of the photo sharing sites like Flickr. This will be on my own site. I've seen many of the Flash interfaces and photo-a-day blog types. Some seem to work fairly well, but others just aren't very viewer-friendly. Free obviously is best, but I don't mind spending something to get a nice, pleasant looking product. I am somewhat computer savvy, so I can probably deal with setup and configuration. In your experience, or from what you have observed, what is best? Thanks for your help.

But I Did Everything Right! Right?

foxy_hedgehog — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:06:31 -0800

I backed up all of my iPhoto library onto my iPod (by using the iPod as a hard drive) in anticipation of a Mac hospital system reinstallation. I retrieved my music files just fine and loaded them back into iTunes, but the saved iPhoto library on the iPod won't open and won't let me import it into iPhoto. I'm viewing the contents of the iPod through the finder, and the iPhoto library is there -- in all its 13 GB glory -- but when I try to open in within the iPod, it flickers and nothing happens. When I try to import it via my newly reinstalled copy of iPhoto, the library isn't "clickable" in the import window. I tried copying the library from the iPod to the desktop first, and it seemed to work -- the copying process took 50 minutes -- but I can't access or import anything from the desktop either.

Anyone have any thoughts on what I might have done, or am doing, wrong? Please let me know if you need any clarification.

Interesting photos wanted!

sixcolors — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 17:30:38 -0800

Nonlamephotopraphyfilter: What are some websites, books, and/or magazines that have some neat photos? Flickr pools and sets, count too. :)

Idiot requires simple DVD slideshow help

Beautiful Screaming Lady — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 15:49:45 -0800

DVD authoring for a genuine simpleton. I have three photographs, as jpgs. I want to create a DVD of these photographs playable on any standard consumer DVD player (not a computer), but not as a slideshow. I'd like the DVD to have a menu, where each menu item goes to a photo. When a photo is selected from the menu, it will be displayed forever until someone tells it to stop or the electricity supply runs out. I don't want a normal slideshow where one photo leads to the next and then goes back to the start, I want each photo to be independent and only selectable from the menu. I have no control over the player that'll be used to show the DVD, so I can't rely on it being a fancy professional piece of kit made out of gold and diamonds. I don't have a DVD player, and have never had one, this is all unknown territory for me. Is it as simple as burning the jpgs onto a CD/DVD as data? Do normal standard budget DVD players read jpg data??

I have the photos, Vista Home Premium, Windows Movie Maker, Windows DVD Maker, Ulead MovieFactory, blank CDs/DVDs, the internet, some cardboard, scotch tape, AA batteries, a bunch of empty toilet roll tubes and some uncooked rice. Assume I am simple. Please tell me what to do. Thank you.

Preposterous Filter: Who took that picture I saw in the "Mars Bar" back in 89/90/91?

From Bklyn — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:29:23 -0800

Preposterous Filter: Who took that picture I saw in the "Mars Bar" back in 89/90/91? So, in the late 80's/early 90's I used to periodically find myself in "Mars Bar" (In the East Village, in N.Y.C.). Alright, maybe more than periodically. More to the point sometimes, in all the chaos, there were photos on the wall.

This is my question - There was a series of black and white photos up for a time that were insane and great: In the most memorable one (for me) a woman is standing in the middle of a nightclub's empty dance-floor. People are sitting around the periphery, not really paying attention. She has no shirt on, and is standing in a sort-of karate stance. The kicker is that she appears to be shooting up, a.k.a injecting something into her arm with a hypodermic needle. As best I can remember the photographer had a some-what plain Chinese name.

There was another of the someone's leather-jacket-wearing back that was also surprisingly great.

It's been bugging me for years, no one I knew back then knows who took them, though a couple remember the pictures.

Thanks, hive mind!

How can I back up photos while travelling?

lindsey.nicole — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 14:49:17 -0800

How can I back up my digital photos while travelling without a laptop? I'm going on a three-week vacation to Mexico and not planning to take along my laptop. I only have a couple of Compact Flash cards for my camera (older Canon Powershot A95), and I'm leery about getting mugged and losing all of my photos.

Is there a gadget that would download my photos from the Compact Flash cards to a small, portable drive, without having the laptop as a go-between? I'm thinking of something similar to a keychain flash drive that I could leave in a hotel safe while I'm out on day trips, so that in the event of robbery, I have back-ups of my pictures.

I'm leaving fairly soon, so something that can be bought at FutureShop/Staples/Best Buy/etc would be preferable.

Thanks!

How can I find out what my early-20th-century apartment likely looked like when it was first built?

purplecurlygirl — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 06:43:34 -0800

I want to know what my apartment looked like when my great-grandparents' generation was living in it! I'm looking for web-based answers and pictures rather than wordy descriptions that would require a library visit if possible. I live in a five-story apartment building in Queens, New York that was built in 1916. My apartment still has original floors (!) which are in pretty terrible shape, but it makes me wonder what the place looked like when it was built. Was there gas for a stove at that time? What about electricity? Could the radiators possibly be original? How much have renovations likely changed the layout of the apartment (for example, adding closets where there weren't any before, or putting in individual bathrooms where there might have been a shared lavatory before)?

A diner in my neighborhood has photos of local street corners in the 20s and 30s juxtaposed with photos of the same street corner in, say, the late 80s or 90s. But these are all exterior shots not from the same photographer and I want to know how the interior of buildings would have looked in the teens and early twenties (actually, all of the twentieth century would be interesting).

Where can I find pictures of the insides of apartment buildings in NYC from that era? Or any photographic history of New York or other large American cities to show what living spaces looked like at the time?

EU Passport Photograph in Boston/Providence area?

Ylajali — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 16:05:42 -0800

Does anyone know where I can get a passport photograph taken that meets EU regulations in the Providence/Boston area? I went to the UPS store, but they took an American passport photograph. I tried taking it myself with the help of some fancy software, but the photographs were rejected by the consulate. Now I'm desperate and I've no idea where to start looking for a place that might be able to help me out...

Photos + [your suggestion] = A Happy Christmas

moxiedoll — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 12:00:40 -0800

How can computers help me turn hundreds of 1980s photographs into an awesome present? I stole bags and bags of loose snapshots from my parents' house and I want to turn them into a present. Using computers? To put them on CDs? A few points:
1. I see that services exist that will make DVDs out of photographs, but I'm not really interested in a DVD with music and all and I'm loathe to mail the pictures away.
2. Maybe I could buy a scanner and do it myself? I need a printer anyway, so I could buy a regular printer with a scanner I'd use for this project OR I could buy a scanner / printer that's especially for photos and give it to my mom (who likes to get prints of digital photos) as a BONUS PRESENT.

Surely people do this all the time...
We'll call the budget $300 for now - any suggestions for methods or machines?

Names of the locations in these old slides?

Venadium — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 11:20:58 -0800

Need help identifying some places (and maybe even people?) in a bunch of old slides I found at a thrift shop. Picked up an old Argus slide projector for $3 at a thrift shop in CT a couple weeks ago. There was a small box of slides included, and the pictures look like they were taken on some kind of family vacation in the summer of 1989. Two of the pictures were taken in downtown Ridgefield, where I bought the projector. The rest are a mystery.

I've scanned all the slides and thrown them into a set on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mgoddard/sets/72157607241381299/

Old photos of Cambridge, MA

rxrfrx — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:24:49 -0800

I am looking for photos of the Cambridge, MA area taken between 1950 and 1999. I am especially interested in the commercial areas along the current Red Line route (Porter/Harvard/Central/Kendall), and the industrial areas southeast of Central Square. If you happen to know of any repositories of offline photos, that would be cool too. Thanks!

How can I make a DVD of photos and text?

speug — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 17:21:35 -0800

I would like to make a CD/DVD of family photographs in a format which could be read by standard web browsers. This would enable me to link the photographs to text, scans of birth certificates etc. just as one does on a web page. [This is a Windows computer and I can (re)learn HTML if necessary.] If this is a rational thought could somebody please point me towards appropriate software?

Sartre Is Smarter

gerryblog — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:17:51 -0800

Do you recognize the original of this photograph? A stink was made a few years ago when France's National Library airbrushed the cigarette out, and I'd love to have the side-by-side comparison if possible.

Copyright law for online images

leibniz — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:09:44 -0800

What are my legal rights, and what compensation can I get from a UK television channel who used a photograph I had taken without my permission, but which I had uploaded onto facebook?? Channel 4 news in the UK recently used a photograph I had taken of a friend of mine in one of its items (it's on screen for well over a minute). This was used without permission or credit. I had uploaded the image to a public group on facebook, but as I see it, I had uploaded it for use within the group and not for commercial purposes. It is certainly not legally public domain just because it is on a social website.

The news item can be found here.
The photo can be found here (requires facebook login).

So what I would like to know is firstly what my legal rights are here, and secondly who I can complain to (in UK remember) in order to get compensation? I hope I can get some money to donate to his legal fund.

(You may have seen the mefi FPP I wrote about the case here btw.)

Help an amateur take some great wedding photos!

tomble — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:45:27 -0800

My friend asked me to be the photographer for his wedding (which pleased me a lot!). As an enthusiastic amateur, what should I know about wedding photography? What photos shouldn't I miss? I plan to turn up early in the morning when everyone is getting ready and take photos thorugh to the end of the day. Obviously I need shots of the ceremony, shots of the people attending, shots of the happy couple dressed in their finery. I'd also like to make the photo set more interesting than standard snaps. What interesting or unusual wedding photographs have you seen? What should I know about wedding photography?

Thanks in advance!

Beard, or no beard for my wedding?

studentbaker — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:57:59 -0800

Beard, or no beard for my wedding? I’m getting married in less than two weeks. I’m having trouble deciding whether or not to shave my beard for the ceremony. It matters less for the actual day and more for the pictures, I guess. I’m undecided and my fiancée is terrified to answer and make a regretful choice.

Anyone disappointed in his or her spouse’s decision in regards to facial hair on the big day?

Photographers, any issues with beards? I’m wearing a black suit with a white shirt, if it matters.