Monday, July 21, 2008

Good Morning Monday - Reporting From Annapolis, Maryland - PhotoNetCast, Photo Competitions, and More

Good Morning Everybody,
This is our third day in the wonderful historic and beautiful city of Annapolis, Maryland - a city with a large number of colonial buildings and most within easy walking distance. It is a very cool stroll through time for an American history aficionado. We had dinner with our small party of classmates last night along with our instructor - Barbara Ellison - and we are fired up for today. This kind of seminar is a completely different kind of thing for me - completely out of my normal genre of photography which should make it quite interesting and fun. I'll give you the rest of the story tomorrow.

I mentioned last Thursday that I was a special guest over at PhotoNetCast.com for their eighth episode. PhotoNetCast is a round-table discussion of four talented photographers. The first is Antonio Marques - hailing from Cologne, Germany - the show host and author of his fascinating blog: Words: irrational - digital photography explored. Next is Martin Gommel also from Germany. Martin is also a master blogger - his blog is in German, but I can assure you, his images are in the universal language of creativity. Check out his blog Kwerfeldein - digitale fotografie lernen right here. Third is fellow blogger, Brian Auer from San Diego. Brian runs the ever popular EpicEdits.com blog chocked full of all kinds of good photo info. He has been a favorite around here for a while. The fourth is Jim Goldstein, a wonderful landscape photographer, who also has been featured here at DigitalProTalk.com. Be sure to check out his work over at his blog JMG Galleries right here - always beautiful images.

Pulling all of us together from so many varied time zones becomes quite the challenge. Antonio and Martin had the 6 A.M wake-up call, Jim and Brian had the kids in bed - dogs out the door - evening time zone, and I had third shift at 12A.M till 2 A.M. I'm not griping here - just putting in perspective the scheduling of an international podcast. We all hooked up on Skype shortly before midnight (my time - EST.)

I have to say, it is quick a kick for me as to what can be accomplished through technology these days. Anyway, we had quite the discussion on print competitions - what they encompass, how they work, and what to be cautious of. What was most interesting to me was how so many of their participants trade away all their rights to their images by participating in many of these competitions. That's right, you pay your money, submit your images, and kiss all your rights goodbye.

Thankfully there is an organization out there - Pro-Imaging.org - that tracks the competitions that force you to release your image rights to them and those that don't. Here is the list of competitions which require you to give up all your rights to your images right here - 73 total. And, here is the listing of the competitions that let you reserve the rights to your images right here - only 17 at last count.

If you want to hear the entire discussion, just head over to PhotoNetCast.com right here. The latest episode #8 should be posted sometime today. All the supporting links from all of us will also be posted for easy reference. You can stream the show from your computer, download the MP3 file, or download it from iTunes - enjoy the listen and the discussions.

1 comment:

  1. Do you know anyone who does time lapse video in the Annapolis area?

    ReplyDelete