bigfoot!

Went camping this past weekend.  Here are a couple of my favorite shots.  The one below is from Ice Caves, not an easy shot considering how the floor is icy as all hell and rough and I kept expecting to crack my skull open.

 

The best dog in the world. 

 

And once the sun came out, the vine maples really got pretty. 

Pete Springer Photography – Portland, Oregon

poor poor me

Just checked my webstats and they cranked way up over the afternoon– nearly 500 hits!  And only about ten of those are me checking the stats.

 Now I gotta figure out how to turn those clicks into clients…

Pete Springer Photography – Portland, Oregon

popularity contests

 One of my favorite shots from the photos I was working on last night.  I had to crop it to make it fit here– but the original prominently features the Digi5000 (or whatever silly name is on the camera).

So last week on Friday my site was getting hammered– well over 400 hits for the day.  It's much slower today and I'll be happy to hit 100.  A lot of those are coming from photo forums rather than local.   That catwalk fashion show gallery is still getting slammed, and I extended the deadline on prints until next week– but so far only looky-loos– no new buyers.

Boy, I'm not sure what happened with my relationship with ultra, but it seems sunk.  I e-mailed the editor yesterday about getting into a fashion show and never heard back.  Luckily, I was able to track down the promoters/planners and talk my way into the show that way.  I guess my photos were a flavor of the month or something.  They still owe me an ad, though, so I'll need to try to keep on good terms with them for a while.  I'm just really confused– one day they were running literally galleries of my photos– the next day some guy with no sense of focus, WB, composition, exposure, etc is being featured instead.  And add salt to my wounds– yesterday I ran across nearly 20 of my photos on the Philosophy Talk website– without a single photo credit! 
This is not easy, that's for sure.  I know I have the drive and I absolutely love shooting fashion, but the whole, "One day they love you, the next day they hate you" is fucked up.  This market just isn't big enough for that type of roller coaster!  

And though I have a MUA I love working with, I'm starting to get frustrated there too.  Whenever I tell her about a shoot, she wants to see a photo of the model first so she can approve or disapprove.  She did this to me yesterday– after I offered to pay her for a shoot!  This whole thumbs up or down is crazy.  It's one thing if it's TFP, but who when I talk to the hair stylist and clothing stylist, they just want to know the date and overall theme of the shoot– not give me some evaluative critique about selecting models.  For chrissakes, this is Portland, Oregon!  We're a po-dunk city that nobody in the rest of the world cares about– why all the attitude?  Oh yeah, it's "fashion".  Well, for once I'd like to see a good ol'  friendly attitude that reflects Portland!  I mean honestly, for me, if a fashion shoot doesn't work, the worst thing is I end up with a bunch of portraits.  And based on my webhits, my portraits are quite popular. 

I wonder if Helmut Newton ever had folks question his style?  Of course he did.  Yet his stuff is brilliant and usually not the kind of work you'd see in a mainstream mag.  I notice he's shot a lot of portraits too– I wonder if those were outtakes from fashion shoots that didn't quite work?

Pete Springer Photography – Portland, Oregon

ups and downs

Yup, another photo of Harvest.  I'm trying to post-process and get ten or so shots a day up on the website.  It's harder than it sounds and basically after dinner is the only time I can work on them.  Meanwhile, I'm plugging away at my marketing attempts during free moments in the day.  I'm working on sending out a handfull of postcard promos right now, but I don't think it's working.  No one has called or e-mailed about it and no one appears to be hitting the web promo.  In fact, on Tuesday– less than 100 webhits all day, and I couldn't get anyone to write or call me back, and I seemed to be spinning my wheels in sand (and most of us know how bad sand is to cameras…)
 Then the next day, nearly 300 web hits, people writing me back, and I was able to line up a couple of meetings for future shoots.  I just can't seem to get a grasp of the best way to market myself. 

But then today, met with a TFP model over coffee and I'm excited about shooting her.  It was a craigslist deal so my hopes weren't too high but she's fairly tall and has a very pretty face– sort of eastern European– though she's actually part Greek.  It's tough financially shooting TFP, and I hate trying to set up meetings and doing the whole "check her out first" thing.  It's so superficial (eh? superficial in the fashion world?  no way!).  But then every once in a while there's a model with a particular look that gets me all excited about lining up a shoot.  Which is great because my photos are definitely better when I'm inspired.

 

Pete Springer Photography – Portland, Oregon

seaplane website

Just ran across this on the Seaplane website. It's a photo I shot for Holly Stalder back in October. I guess she liked it…

So lately I've been in a weird funk– last week was fantastic and I was easily getting hundreds of web hits a day (464 last Tuesday!). Sold some prints, had a phone call from someone claiming to rep a designer at Nike, started my postcard mailing campaign, stopped by a couple of boutiques and the world looked grand. This week– never heard back from the Nike person, my web hits are down (around a 100 per day…), and yesterday I found out a paid shoot I did for a boutique in March did not meet the owner's satisfaction (she didn't think there was any connection between the location and clothes– and of course I chose the location…) and she is not only doesn't plan to use my images, she's actually already using another photog. Needless to say, that's a bad sign…

Add to the mix that a local website that used to run my fashion show photos has recently opted to run the photos of someone else, I'm having trouble trying to arrange a couple TFP shoots, then I see this photo on the Seaplane site. I've been trying to get backstage at an upcoming fashion show for them– no luck on that of course– but they sure don't mind using my photos to promote themselves. It's maddening and very disheartening.
Pete Springer Photography – Portland, Oregon

couple favs recently posted

Here’s a shot I finally got around to post-producing yesterday. It’s one of my favs from a recent portfolio shoot. The model was just wonderful and the shoot went great thanks to all the help– Krista Teyema, styling; Kristen Arnett, make-up; and Julie Ruckman, hair.

I still have a whole bunch to dig through and post, but I made some great progress yesterday and my biggest problem (a good problem to have…) is there are so many good images that narrowing them down is tough!

Pete Springer Photography – Portland, Oregon

reality vs. photoshop

Shot this image for a local DJ who wanted a poster to promote his shows.  He chose the models, styling was by one of the models, and I chose the make-up artist (Kristen Arnett) and hair stylist (Julie Ruckman) and location.  His past posters had a real photoshopped look to them, and he told me he wanted more of an actual photo look.  Cool– that's what I'm about– nailing shots in camera that don't need tweaks in PSCS.

Here's the poster he came up with… doesn't look much like a photo to me, but hey, it's not my poster (and yeah– the photo above was shot a second or two after the shot on the poster– but it's the image I have with me today and it illustrates my point).  It's funny 'cause I purposely chose the setting sun for my light 'cause the quality of light at that time of day is stellar.  Didn't much matter in the final product, of course.  I also gave him a beautifully processed image with the skin left unsharpened and everything else sharpened to perfection– that didn't matter much either.    Whatever, it's his poster.

 

Pete Springer Photography – Portland, Oregon

say what you will about gw…

… but he's great for photo ops.  Photo ops of protestors, that is.  I've been digging through some of my older street protest photos and hope to create a seperate gallery soon.  Here's one I ran across from August 2003 in north Portland.  It was shot with my 10D and I had no idea what I was doing– a lot of my images from the protest are sort of blurry and they were all shot in jpg… this was before I started shooting in raw.  You can see my reflection in this guys goggles.

Thanks GW– ain't nothing like a crappy president to send folks to the streets and give us photogs great photo ops!

Pete Springer Photography – Portland, Oregon

those whacky arabs

Checking my web stats as usual yesterday (a whopper of a day for some reason– 464 unique hits to my site). Ran across this one, which was bizarre. Some guy (yeah, I'm guessing it's a guy) in Dubai searching my site for "nude woman"! Yeah, I know you can't see the search words 'cause the limitations to the size of this image, but they are there.

Okay, I know things in Dubai are a bit more restrictive than in other parts of the world when it comes to naked chicks– but with all the nudie pics on the web, why this guy was searching for them on my site is beyond me. Hey dude, if you're that hard up for nudie shots, try google. Just be aware that if you don't want people to know that's what you're lookin' at, you might try being a little less obvious and using a hidden ISP or something like that.

A couple months ago, I had a web hit from some guy in Iran looking for swimsuit shots. Reminds me of a Simpson's episode where Bart tells Lisa and Homer that he knows of a website showing monkeys doing it. Lisa tells them, "You know the internet is more than a global pornography network." And Homer grabs the kids and rushes off saying something like, "C'mon kids! Monkeys doing it!"

Pete Springer Photography – Portland, Oregon

my feelings exactly

See how pissed off this guy is?  That's how I've been feeling towards a certain fashion show organizer recently.  I won't name her because I don't even want to give her that publicity.  But for this particular fashion show, for the program guide, I shot seven models in seven different outfits using my strobes and gear.  Had to pay for a location for hair and make-up, parking, and spent a good six hours prep and shooting.  Add in another three hours post, downloading, editing, burning, uploading, etc.

Then for the show, I attended the rehearsal, shot the show, spent a good 20-hours in post, downloading, editing, etc.  Posted 102 images from the show.  All this work was worth a cool grand easily.  Not bad for a fashion show organizer to get a $1000 worth of free photography, right?  That's what I thought…

 Nope, the organizer had the balls to complain that I only posted 102 images of the show on MY website!  She actually complained that wouldn't be enough "pix" (as she called them) for participants to choose from!  Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth!  But it gets better– she also asked me to send her a CD of all the images I had shot from the program guide shoot– for her "records"!

Needless to say, this pissed me off.  I thought about ignoring her e-mail, but this is one bridge that needed blowing up, burning, and blown up again.  So I pretty much told her what a dumb-fucking-stupid-inappropriate complaint it was that I had only posted 102 images– on my website that I pay for after using my gear and time!  This person just got a thousand dollars worth of photography for free and had the balls to say that wasn't enough?  See the guy in this photo?  Multiply that by ten times and you'll know how I feel.

I am so sick and tired of people thinking photography is free and hey, can you send me the digital files 'cause that's free, right?  Websites are free too and so is post-production and so is digital storage and so is creativity and camera gear and studio strobes and all that.  La la la la… livin' in a fantasy land.  Walk into a boutique and grab something off the rack and walk out without paying and see what happens.  It's all free, right?   

Maybe if it was a Gucci show featuring Gemma Ward– hey, that might be something I'd bend over backwards to shoot for free.  Alas, last night I edited down the show photos to half of what I originally posted and I'm already thinking that is about 57 more photos than it deserves.