Simon Blint, Director of Visitor Relations at the SF MOMA, Yeah You A**hole, Photography is Not a Crime

Looks like Thomas Hawk had a little run in at SF MOMA. Nice picture though!

Recently I blogged about my excitement regarding the San Francisco MOMA’s decision to begin allowing photography in their permanent collection after years of maintaining a closed no photography policy. Directly because of this change in policy, I decided to purchase a family membership in order to support the museum, both with my artistic energy and financially. I was excited to begin spending regular time exploring and documenting the museum.

Unfortunately, I should have known better than to really believe that the San Francisco MOMA was serious about opening up the art and architecture entrusted to them to the general public.

It’s sad really that a photographer and artist following the museums own policy gets ejected from the museum.

This part did make me laugh though - shows you what people DON’T know, or care to find out.

He accused me of using a “telephoto” lens to spy on his staff from the public staircase on the second floor. Blint obviously knows nothing of photography because the 14mm ultra wide angle lens on my camera body was about the furthest thing possible from a telephoto lens.

Reminds me a bit of my own experiences… recently I took my DSLR to the swimming pool to photograph my wife and my daughter in one swimming class and my son in another. I got a few odd looks - granted it is a swimming pool - but I noticed quite a few people with point and shoots who didn’t even get a second glance… can’t wait to go back with a 5D and 70-200 f/2.8L and see what happens ;)

Be sure to read Thomas’ post and digg it as well!

Tags: moma, photography, rights, san francisco, sf, sfmoma, simon blint, thomas hawk

The Wedding Photographer

Sorry I haven’t posted much the past few days, but I was stressing out because I was gearing up for my first wedding shoot. Needless to say, the stress wasn’t all that warranted, and I survived relatively unscathed! I rather enjoyed it actually, I rented a 24-70 f/2.8L lens from Pro Photo Rental - I HIGHLY recommened them, they are US based but had no issues sending me the lens across the border into Canada. FedEx on the other hand - they need to get their act together.

Anyways, I shot the wedding with 2 Digital Rebel XTi/400D’s. One had the 24-70 f/2.8L on it, the other I slapped on my 75-300 f/4-5.6 USM. Managed to snag a 430EX from the maid of honor so both XTi’s had external flashes as well which made a huge difference. Also took my laptop along, was a great idea - offloaded one card after the shooting at the bride’s residence in the morning, and then some from the afternoon shoot in between the ceremony and the reception. Good thing too because all said and done I ended up taking 1897 images, I’ll keep you posted as to how many I show the bride and groom in a week or two. I’d love to show you some of the shots but I told the bride they’d be the first to see them, and I think that’s the way it should be. So that’s why you got a shot of me above with that sweet piece of glass… I don’t want to send it back tomorrow!

Oh yeah, here’s the MOO cards I had made up from the pre-shoot which were placed at every setting at the reception. Great little piece of MOO-vertising if I must say so myself!

Tags: 24-70, 24-70mm, B&W, black and white, canon 24-70 f/2.8L, L series, moo, photographer, photography, self-portrait, wedding

Strobist: Lighting 101

Good set of articles over at Strobist.com with regards to off camera flash use and lighting…

Been having fun with the 430EX I picked up for the wedding shoot just over a week from now… been learning a lot as well! The image above I actually used the pivot features on the Speedlight and bounce it off the wall slightly up and pretty much right behind me… definitely makes a difference over the on-camera and straight on flash.

Tags: 430ex, bounce, external, flash, light, lighting, photography, Portrait, self-portrait, strobist, Tips, Tutorials

The Flickr Collection on Getty Images

Interesting post on the Flickr blog yesterday… sounds like they are teaming up with the Getty Images stock photography site to promote Flickr users photos and hopefully make it easier for Flickrites to get there images up on Getty.

Team Flickr has long wanted to create a way to make it easier for those who use photos in the digital publishing industry to do so in a way that respects the talent and rights of our members.

The great folks at Flickr and Getty Images are joining forces to build a platform that will enable the creation of a first class collection of royalty free, rights ready, and rights managed photographs that will debut later this year.

Maybe they can use some more stock golf images? Supposedly coming later this year. Should prove interesting. I sure hope they don’t use the Magic Donkey to determine what is Getty Images worthy!

Tags: flickr, foot, getty, golf, grass, images, partnership, photography, stock

Almost Arrested for Taking Photos at Union Station

From Andy Carvin’s Waste of Bandwidth blog:

As some of you may know, I’ve been testing out a Gigapan panorama photo system over the last week, after I received a loaner of their robotic camera mount from Carnegie Mellon’s robotics lab. I brought it in to NPR to demonstrate it to colleagues and go on a photo safari to photograph the architecture at Union Station. Apparently, as far as Union Station’s security operations are concerned, that’s a criminal offense, since we nearly got arrested.

Check out the rest of his post then head on over and digg the story.

Tags: almost arrested, andy carvin, gigapan, photographer rights, photography, union station

Photography is not a crime!

Check out these cool shirts over at cafepress.com!

Tags: cafepress, photography, shirt, swag