livebooks blog

• After Tom Gralish helped pinpoint the photo that was used as the starting point for the famous Obama HOPE poster (by Mannie Garcia for the AP), the AP on Wednesday “reached out” to the lawyer of Shepard Fairey, who created the poster and is now much richer and famouser. Carolyn E. Wright, the author of the Photographer’s Legal Guide and the writer of the Photo Attorney blog, wrote a long post Thursday analyzing the AP’s case and concluding that she, at least, would take the case. via: Online Photographer. John Harrington has several good posts on it too: here, here, and here.

• Everyone is atwitter over Paolo Pellegrin’s photo essay for the New York Times, Great Performers. And they should be. It’s stunning and unveils just how staged most celebrity photos are with its dedication to a photojournalistic truth. It also reminded me instantly of Paolo’s Iraqi Diaspora project, which I saw at Visa pour l’Image this year, and which had everyone in Perpignan atwitter to see a photographer so skilled in black and white also blow us away with color.

• Greg Gibson has a great post on his blog explaining in detail how McLatchy-Tribune News Services photographer Chuck Kennedy convinced the White House to let him set up a remote camera at the foot of the podium during Obama’s swearing in. Probably the most impressive part is seeing just how many front pages ran the image…a great lesson for photographers about always trying to do something new, even when it seems like it’s all been done before.

An image by Alan Chin from the New Hampshire primary season. © Alan Chin

I’ve been collaborating with Michael for a number of years. Initially it was because he had picked up an image of mine that was in the New York Times while I was freelancing for them in Iraq. One day I had Googled myself and I saw [my photo] was on this blog. I saw his commenters were reading all these things into it and I wrote in and said, I’m the photographer and I want to answer some of your questions. I was very factual, just to give more context. Of course no one had done that before. It started this whole interesting conversation online. Somehow in the process Michael was like, I’m really interested in hearing what you have to say and I would love to hear some more.

And in the next few years, any time I did something that I thought was interesting, after it was published or if I couldn’t get it published, I would send him a picture to let him run it on the blog. I figured, if it’s already been published or it’s not getting published, then what do I have to lose. I might as well have it be seen and talked about rather than just sitting on my hard drive.

Then when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama officially announced their candidacies, both of them did trips in New Hampshire and I decided to go up and shoot that. And I’m not a political junkie; I’m not a Washington photographer. I’m not very well experienced in this, I’ve never been in the bubble, but I thought this was obviously a really important time. So I sent Michael pictures from that because I couldn’t get them published. And he loved it, and the audience of the site loved it. And basically he committed, he said, look, you’re having a problem getting assignments. How about I pay at least a little bit, so at least you don’t go broke doing this, at least you can afford to put gas in your car, and you can cover some of these primaries for me. More »

I was connected with Izan Petterle through Duda Escobar, the show manager for PhotoImage Brazil and the reason I’d come to Brazil in the first place. She invited me down to give the keynote address on wedding photography.

During the planning she asked if I would be interested in teaching a post-convention workshop with Izan in a Brazilian wilderness area called The Pantanal. I didn’t know anything about Izan and was a little nervous about jumping into something unfamiliar in such a remote area. I was also concerned about leaving my business for almost three weeks in August. Initially I declined.

After thinking about it a bit, I decided it was a great opportunity to get out and see a very remote part of a beautiful country. And after speaking to Izan I was completely at ease. Izan has been doing PhotoExpeditions for years and he is a wonderful, kind person. We decided to proceed with a PhotoExpedition after the PhotoImage Brazil conference.

Because I was so late agreeing to do the expedition, there was precious little time to promote the workshop. The day I left for Brazil, no one had signed up yet. Izan and I almost canceled the trip, but he kept assuring me that Brazilians are spur-of-the-moment people. He felt certain we would get some students.

In the end we decided to do the trip with or without students; it was a great chance for both of us to stretch our creative legs a bit. Since leaving journalism in 2000 I have mostly photographed women in white dresses each Saturday, and it was time to do something new. Sure enough we ended up with three students, all of whom signed up just a day or two before the start of the expedition! More »

A wedding image by SAS Becker. ©SAS Becker

I graduated photo school with some great contacts but not a lot of practical photo skills. I didn’t feel technically astute enough to be a first assistant so I became a photo editor. That taught me a lot about producing a great shoot, but it wasn’t as fulfilling for me as taking pictures. So in 1993 my husband and I took the leap and started building our stock photo library. We walked into a stock agency with a box of 8×10 black-and-white prints and got signed on the spot. The thing that was great about stock was that we could learn how to shoot on our own time. Granted it was our own dime, too, but through trial and error we figured out what we were doing. The stock allowed us to build a portfolio, which led to magazine assignments. The editorial work led us to a rep, which got us a few advertising gigs.

The ironic thing is that when we were first starting out people would ask us to shoot weddings. We ended up doing about ten a year. But we hated it. We had no control over the situation. We were used to directing our subjects and having time to figure out the lighting. With weddings you have to be “on” the entire time and the only time you get to direct is during the formals. So we let the weddings go by the way side and shot primarily stock for the next decade.

Then digital happened. All of a sudden everyone was a photographer. The cameras got better and more affordable. The price of equipment was no longer an obstacle to beginning shooters. The market was flooded and our stock sales dropped a lot. Now, here comes the bride… all of a sudden weddings are looking pretty good, and so are family portraits.

The great surprise is that now I actually love weddings. All the things that drove me to photography to begin with exist in weddings and portraits. I love people! As long as I get to photograph them, especially at a big party, I am happy. And, may I add that now that I have been shooting for twenty years, and I know what I am doing, the lack of control isn’t such an issue!