Ok, first to get your attention I needed to post a photo I edited last night of the lovely Caro. Caro is from Guadalajara and was just an amazing model to work with. One of those models who was enthusiastic in front of the camera and has a great spirit. She has also been chosen to be in Maxim Espanol, so you know she is a beautiful and capable model.

This shot was taken in Todos Santos, a small village about an hour north of Cabo San Lucas. It was the picture perfect town to shoot in, with the dirt roads and authentic architecture. It was pretty fun to watch the town transform as the photographers and about 15 models show up and start shooting. There is no getting permits, property releases and all that goes with shooting in the states. You show up, grab your camera and shoot away. I guess that’s what makes Mexico so much fun, plus they have amazing beaches to work with. We had every male from about 14 to 25 in town, circling in cars and motorcycles, as we shot. The girls were really rock stars that day.

Dan Heller is not quite as cute as Caro, but he is just as vital to Photographers as any good model is. He is a champion for the industry and is a very succesful author with three book on Photography. He just posted a great entry on his blog regarding copyrights and his idea that we should allow other companies to help facilitate the registering of copyrighted material. But the best part of his post is he explains the how and why’s of copyrighting your images. He is very detail oriented and his research and analysis is to be trusted. I have not had a chance to read the complete post, but will do so this weekend.

Here’s a snippet:

“The Role of Copyright
Copyright is the mechanism that provides accounting, accountability, and protection by way of copyright law. This is because only works that are registered with the copyright office can be protected in a manner that has any real, economic leverage and protection for a company to build a business representing such works. Under copyright law, only registered works are eligible for statutory damages. Here, if someone “steals” a work, fines start at $750, and can grow to $30,000, per infringement. In fact, they can rise to $150,000 if the infringement were deemed to be willful. (This particular deterrent will be important to remember later.) By contrast, the fines for infringing on a non-registered work is whatever the prevailing rate would be if it were properly licensed in the first place. (Ok, there are other values that can be calculated, but that’s besides the point in the bigger picture, since those are more rare than common.) Since we’re talking about micro-valued works such as songs and photographs, a “prevailing rate” of $.99 (or less) per unit is too minimal to justify the legal effort in pursuing infringements. It was for this reason that statutory damages were created in the first place; it’s the only way to give meaningful protection to micro-valued works as a disincentive to steal them. Without statutory damages, protecting the underlying asset is impractical, thereby making investing in building a business unlikely, if not impossible.”

A few months ago Dan and I had a conversation on the phone and I have slowly been transcribing the content, but I think for the sake of getting it to the net, I’ll post it as a podcast. That will be on my to do list for this weekend.

This is the “Gumwall” in Seattle by the Pike Place Market. Two or three years ago, this was barely covered and the bricks were still clearly visible. Now it has become quite the piece of art with lots of colors and textures. Ideally this should be shot with a tripod and with an aperture of f/8 or better. The light was really bad today and instead of boosting my ISO above 200, I chose to open up my aperture to 2.2 as I was hand holding the shot. The first was shot at 1/125 and the second @ 1/160. I boosted the vibrancy and the saturation a bit, to bring out the colors.The first shot is the much stronger shot, but the second looks like dripping wax, so I thought it a bit in interesting as well.

Back in 2002 I took a two week trip through Thailand and Cambodia as a tourist.  I learned of a culture I had only read about and envisioned in my mind, when I first heard the Rush song, “Passage to Bangkok”

This is a reprint of an article I wrote for Pilot Guides.com , with larger full size images. I have since learned the tribe is the Akha Tribe and not Hmong as originally noted in the article.

A Day in the Land of Smiles

Driving through the lush green hills of Northern Thailand, Tony the guide and interpreter, would help with pronunciation of various Thai words and teach counting to help pass the time. One can get “Wat’d out” as there are so many Wats to see, so a change of pace would be nice. There are emerald green mountains with rice paddies sprinkled throughout. Each paddy usually has a thatched hut, for shelter from the blazing heat. The paddies are flooded with about 18″ of water and usually separated in four to six distinct parcels about an acre each. The roads are shared with motorcycles, carts, bicycles, cars, everything. It seemed like chaos at first, but is now more of an orderly chaos in my mind. We would drive from one change of scenery to the next. Each corner would bring the beauty of a mountain, jungle, rice paddy or a cow on the side of the road, grazing. On the highway, it is not uncommon to see a farmer, herding his cows in the median as cars drive by at 60-70mph. The cows are usually tethered, however.

I always had a romantic view of what it would be like to go to Thailand and the hill tribes seemed to be the ultimate in this regard. I guess in some ways I had this feeling that the 20th century had not arrived to these far off reaches of society. But with a paved road that goes right up to the village, I found this was not to be. Right before the entrance to the village a rice paddy to the right had some wicked clouds that would soon dump rain on the area and then disappear 15 minutes later.

When we first arrived, we were greeted by a swarming of children. As we got out of the van, the echo of “Ten Baht” could be heard everywhere. They immediately ask for money just for you having the privilege of being in their village. Tony had to do a bit of crowd control. The chatter of “Ten Baht” and “You buy” envelopes your senses and it is extremely frustrating as the romantic ideal of being in a hill tribe village, fades. I really was ready to leave after about ten minutes of the high pitched, pitch for money. Some of the children were selling bracelets made of seeds and/or yarn, which I gladly paid 5 or 10 Baht for. Just to help, without throwing money at the children…. continued at break

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