Using Filters
Apropos of this previous post, below see some of the effects possible using lens filters. It’s the Alhambra in Bradford, on a bright, non-contrasty day in mid-May.
Unfiltered greyscale:
From the top: blue, green, yellow, red.
Hmm….
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Photography Degrees and Filthy Lucre: a Reader Writes
Remember some months back, how useful it was to work out broady how much it costs to do an undergraduate photography degree? Were you shocked? Students expect to find themselves short of cash, that part is no big deal. But what about when your work is being assessed on the amount of money you’ve been able to throw at your work? Sound at all familiar?
When Stephen Sidlo, a recently finished a photojournalist graduate from Swansea wrote in yesterday, it rang all sorts of alarm bells in terms of assessment standards and general probity. His letter is reproduced here in full. Pull up your favourite armchair, pour the tea and begin.
As a very recent graduate to the BA (Hons) Photojournalism course at Swansea Met, I have time and time again complained at the lack of support and recognition that Photography students receive. Now as the Education Minister made clear they want more working class backgrounds into the institutions and me being one, have come out with debt resembling some of the figures that have been mentioned on this site. Yet after the 2007/08 year, this to me is a tip of an ever increasing iceberg I found.
Getting a student loan of around £1500 every 3 months give or take £100 is the limit I personally received. Total up how much it would be to do a basic freelance photography job, and you would have to take into consideration the main thing the camera - yet with university you can loan the cameras out it isn’t the problem apart from the studio fees previously. Minus £1000 in rent and food for those first three months, that’s £282 a month in rent - the rest in food, dependant on how much you can get from the rest, maybe travel home for Christmas as well. The overdraft is also spiralling out of control from the first two years at university don’t forget. So say there’s around £500 - £700 left, now start taking away your equipment and printing costs, and so forth.
During this year’s ADM for the NUJ in Belfast, I overheard the current problems freelance photographers are having these days with money to buy equipment. This is a valid problem as many photographers live below the breadline, some risking life and limb to bring back stories of rebel movements in Africa, or stories from Iraq. Many students look up in awe at these, yet start their careers possibly as an assistant at weddings or tea boy in a newsroom. The typical photographer shells out £2000 for a top of the range camera and lens, another £1000 maybe on lenses, £800 laptop, storage, additional digital equipment, £100 for a website, rent and food.
At the ADM I was sent as a student delegate to see how I could benefit from them, they were surprised I couldn’t afford the full fee after I had spent countless pennies on cameras, paper, business cards, £300+ on an exhibition, postcards, travel to shoot, portfolio, portfolio printing…so on. Then on rent and food.
A freelance photography speaker got on the stand and spoke of their problem of pricing within the industry, but what about us!? I did speak to them but some members did say “Well you have the student loan, and a part-time job….and some of the other students are getting on fine…” As if to say…you’ll be grand just keep plodding on. But I didn’t want to, I wanted a grade that reflects my ambition and creativity that I have sacrificed for 5 years from when I started my first college studying for a two year ND in Photography.
We do sacrifice a lot, it cost me £60 with rail card to go home to see my family…that I then sacrificed which isn’t on. Even social life was non-existent in the last year and not because of the work load. I was stressed constantly, always waiting for pay or loan day to pay for rent, food and a box of postcards. I could have cut corners and got cheaper postcards or business cards but I reckoned it would look as if no effort was put in, yet that’s not me so I designed my own on CS3 and paid £200 for them and had them for my exhibition. I understand they were needed but it’s just another bill on top of many. In a slightly twisted way I actually wish that it is debt, and that I still owe that money because I could have put more effort into it all.
A recent survey in The Guardian newspaper found that the average debt is at £17,000 with a starting salary for graduates is at £13,000 or lower. After this we still have to buy all those items on the freelance list. Universities don’t have a grant specifically for students studying photography. The Guardian also said that if I hadn’t gone to university and started out in the workplace, I’d be further up in the ladder by now and earning over £22,000.
To show you to extent of how much we students pay for I do have an appeals application form to my University in front of me stating that the amount I had to find to do my course directly contributed to why I had a lower grade. Having countless visual diaries and theory work doesn’t seem to matter apparently. If my printing paper was of less standard because of money problems it was marked down for example.
I had two jobs at one point, bar work taking up the nights, but paid pittance towards this. I don’t want to say it wholly contributed to my lower grade but I did feel that it stopped my creativity.
I look at Doctor and Law courses that are very expensive and driven, but with Photography its creativity and on many occasions I stopped short of producing something I was proud of for my finals in the London graduate show (which cost me personally around £800, food, printing, framing, renting the space, travel, business cards, postcards, portfolio…I don’t want to actually go on because it does make me angry), with no help whatsoever.
The universities do have a Student Finance department, and what they do is send you first to a councillor to literally sit there and talk to them about your feelings and life, finances (this is not a joke) and how its affecting your studies. They give you money towards the course, not the £400 a month for living. So they ask you how much you need, and you can literally feel the surprise from them when you ask for something that resembles a lotto jackpot….instead you receive £200 and go through it again next month.
I have grown away from different class bitterness, but do hold some problem with the university bureacracy who mark you down on paper weight, type and style than what the image is. I was proud of my theory work, 5 visual diaries of handwriting and image deconstruction, 2 lever arch files of contacts, plans and future development, one 8000 word dissertation and my own magazine released, and a regular student delegate for the NUJ. But at the end if Jimmy has a nicer portfolio box than Stephen it looks like it shows in the grading.
I received a Third.
I really don’t want to say it’s all the moneys fault, my theory work was sound, my dissertation the same, the only problem I can see is that when in March/April some people still had money left they continued and had fresh work for exhibition, I used my work I had done previously which was stronger, yet wasn’t taken into consideration because they didn’t want to look at previous work for a 60% assessment module.
I felt very empty and still do. I didn’t want to base my photography creativity on how much money I have, yet that is how I found it. My website is also half-done because I couldn’t find the rest of the money to pay him.
I now am applying for photography jobs, yet have no faith for a while after my results, living back at home, I am also on the dole while I look for bar work because I don’t have any money for new business cards, lenses or a flash for occasional freelance work. I am very ambitious and creative yet extremely disappointed, as was everyone in my class when they heard my grade.
There is nothing left to do but this appeals application now.”
Stephen’s work can be seen here:
Stephen Sidlo Photography
His Blog
Page at Source
Portfolio
Popularity: 16% [?]
Why does your website come up higher than mine in Google?
One of a series of AskMe questions this week, this one a lot simpler to answer than the dreaded “film or digital?” - one for another day! The question in full is:
“How come when I google my name the Northern Exposure site comes up before my co.uk one? I added a meta tag in my code with lots of words.”
A series of robots (and humans) do the somewhat hefty job of indexing the whole of the internet so that the search engines (Google, Yahoo, AOL etc) can find us on the world wide web. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the combination of methods used by content management and web authors to try and ensure that their site has the correct ranking. The higher the better, obviously.
The WWW is indexed using text - words alone. For photography websites, and especially for static brochure-type sites based mostly or wholly around photographs, SEO is difficult to manage because there is simply not enough data (words) for the robots to catch.
Things you can do to improve your site’s search ranking:
1. Name your photographs in several places. The file name SaltburnPier01 is far better than IMG00356, and do make use of captions, titles and alt=”" tags. The more words associated with your photographs the easier they are to find.
2. Write about the work. Descriptions, explanatory pieces of prose, critique or even appropriate poetry, anything (See 1). Doesn’t have to be on the same page, but the more text the better.
3. Link to lots of other sites. Traffic is vital for SEO. Visitors in and through your site will automatically add to your ranking. Success definitely breeds success. If you have no visitors, you’ll get no visitors.
4. Keep your links relevant. For photographers, that means linking to other photography sites, and not to a general mashup of your other interests, unless they’re part of your context or genre, or they’re one of your clients.
5. Put your domain name (URL) into your signature on all your emails, and attach to any posts you make in photography forums, and in comments on other blogs. In other words, promote your own site. All the time.
6. Use Web2 social media like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Deviant Art, Lomography, whatever is current, fashionable, and is where the people you want to see your work are hanging out. If you’re not active on these sites, take a couple of days to get around as many of them as you can and register with a name unique to you that will help you stand out or create the feel or buzz you’re seeking to create around your work If you can engage properly in the ‘community’ on any of these sites, do so. Creating a sense of community around one’s work has never been easier, but like most things of any value, takes time to cultivate.
7. Use metatags. They won’t help much on their own, but put them in anyway.
8. Use a proprietory Content Management System (CMS) which is well known as an instant provider of good SEO. Currently WordPress is streets ahead in this game. If you want to make your own static website using something like Dreamweaver, make sure you do all of the above and keep your content regularly updated and changing.
9. WordPress is great for photographers, but there are a whole host of other content management systems for photographs out there. Look also at Drupal, Expression Engine and Moveable Type, and album and gallery systems like JAlbum, Banana Album, Simple Viewer, PixelPost and so on. Specifically look for sites made with any of these and see how high they rank by Googling their keywords or titles.
10. If you can’t manage much or all of the above, or still feel you need a static word-free site just for just photographs, like an extended business card, then do supplement your website with a weblog. A how-to of blogging for photographers is overdue here, but is on its way in the next week or so. The most basic key to successful blogging is very simple though: do it and just keep on doing it.
As ever, anyone with additional hints or tips, please do follow up in the comments section.
Popularity: 23% [?]