Getting paid

Any professional photographer will have his or her own horror stories about the business of being a photographer. Unless you're a major name in advertising photography, or whatever, getting the work can be difficult. But there's another aspect which may be less obvious to the outsider: getting paid a reasonable fee for your work.

I get many approaches from magazines for editorial shoots. The exchange usually goes something like this:

Hi, I'm from XYZ Magazine. We're planning a feature on [insert subject]. We need a photographer for a whole day.

I duly confirm that I can do the job and that I'm available, then I ask how much they are paying. This elicits one of two possible responses.

Either: Well, our budget is really limited, so we're hoping that you'll do it for free. The exposure will be really good for you.

Or: Well, our budget is really limited. We can pay X. [where X is an absurdly low number that wouldn't even cover my gasoline for the day]

Two things about this nonsense irritate me. Firstly, the fact that these magazines set unrealistically low budgets for photography (and presumably for every other professional service they'll need). Secondly, the fact that this happens repeatedly indicates that there are (so-called) professional photographers out there who are accepting these offensively low rates, or working for free.

If you're one of those photographers: shame on you!

If you're one of those magazines: shame on you!

Parking madness

What is it about parking in Portugal? Portuguese drivers seem to think they can double-park wherever they want, blocking other people in.

My apartment is in a backstreet of Loulé. On the ground floor is a popular café and several solicitors' offices. On my side of the street cars park along the kerb. On the far side, there is a parking bay for cars to park perpendicular to the street. All day long cars arrive to visit the café or one of the offices and, if no parking place immediately outside their intended destination is available, they simply double-park, blocking in two or three legitimately parked cars. Naturally, when the owner of one of the blocked cars wants to leave, they lean on their horn to attract the attention of the offending driver. This means that, sitting here in my office, I have to listen to the insistent blasting of car horns all day long. And frequently, when I want to go out, I find myself blocked in by one of these arrogant idiots.

Furthermore, often when I arrive home in the middle of the day and wish to park, I find an empty parking slot blocked by a double-parked car - yes! they are even too lazy to turn into a vacant spot, preferring to block it and two other cars! I've even seen an offending driver come out from the café to let someone out, then reverse back into his original position, thereby blocking the now-empty spot from being used by anyone else!

When the offenders do eventually emerge to move their car they rarely, if ever, show any sign of remorse or guilt, or even haste. On the occassions when I have challenged them for their arrogance and rudeness, they bristle with offence at my anger, claiming variously that they "were only five minutes" or "this is how it's done in Portugal".

Well, enough is enough! I'm going to start a one-man campaign against these rude, arrogant morons. If the police won't help (which I strongly doubt they will), I'm going to print up some multi-lingual notices and spend a day or two gluing them to the windshields of offending parkers.

Does any other country suffer from this kind of pig-headed, self-centred rudeness by drivers?

Cinema Disgrace

Teresa and I are avid film fans. At home we have a ginormous plasma screen and regularly rent DVDs. We'd given up going to the cinema because our local establishment (an 8-screen complex in Algarve Shopping Centre, Guia - operated by a company called Castello Lopes) consistently disappointed us on every visit - poor focus, poor sound, pour ventilation, exhorbitant popcorn prices and so on.

But the new film about Queen Elizabeth I - The Golden Age tempted us back. What a mistake! Castello was once again spectacularly successful in spoiling our evening out. First, the men's toilets stank of stale urine. A neatly printed label above each urinal declared that the flushing mechanism had been disabled "to save water" and that instead there was a special chemical block with a "microbiological action" to ensure that everything would smell fresh and hygenic with just one flush per day. Well, Lusmundo management, it doesn't work - the toilets in a Moroccan bus station smell better. And when I pointed the problem out an employee in the foyer, he simply said "Yes, I know." So if he knew, presumably "the management" knew, and yet it still stank.

The next jab at one's sensibilities was the price of the popcorn and drinks - the Ritz in Paris wouldn't dare ask that much.

Once in our seats, it was quickly obvious that the auditorium ventilation was not operating - it was unpleasantly hot and stuffy. Since the outside temperature was mild, I guess they thought they could save money by not running the ventilation.

Then the film started and, guess what? It wasn't properly focussed. After an eye-straining ten minutes I got up and went to find a functionary to fix the problem. A few minutes later it was apparent that someone in the projection booth was attempting to set the focus correctly. The picture snapped into focus, then quickly blurred again. This was repeated three or four times over a five minute period. Then all activity stopped - with the picture still out of focus.

What's more, the projector appeared to be having a problem with it's power supply - the screen image was constantly flickering and oscillating in brightness.

At the interval, Teresa and I got up and walked out in disgust. We'll wait for the movie to come out on DVD. And we are never going back to any establishment owned by Castello Lopes - ever.

Did somebody actually listen to me?

As a follow-up to my earlier post on Languages and Locations, maybe it just a coincidence, or maybe somebody in Google actually read my post and acted on it.

Fact is, all of a sudden, the Blogger toolbar at the top of my blog (which was previously in Portuguese) is now in English!

Well done, Google!

War

Some of the most memorable photographs ever taken have been war images from the likes of Robert Capa, Don McCullin and W. Eugene Smith (to name some of my own heroes). The current conflict in the Middle East is also producing some outstanding photography, in spite of the obvious preference of the US media for images that glorify the combat and the combatants.

The capacity of an image to move a viewer greatly exceeds that of words, written or spoken. Yet today I found a quotation that seems to me to express perfectly the futility of war, a quotation that deserves to be displayed alongside the most telling images.

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

- Jeannette Rankin

Languages and Locations

This one has been annoying me for some time now.

Every browser (i.e. Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) has a setting allowing the user to specify their preferred language. Indeed, you can also specify additional languages so that a site can display itself in the first available language in your list. A simple mechanism, understood by all browsers and all web-servers.

More recently, a number of clever geeks have started selling software which locates you, the internet surfer, geographically, according to your current IP number - that being the "coded address" used by the internet to make all the magic happen. Being able to tell that a website visitor it located in Portugal is useful to some sites, in a variety of obvious ways.

Unfortunately, as with every technology, this new capability is already being abused and misused. Microsoft themselves are guilty of misusing it: if I go to look for some technical information on their site, chances are I'll be shown the required document in Portuguese (since I am physically located in Portugal), even though my browse setting clearly states that my preferred language is English and the document is obviously available in English.

Google are also guilty, both on their search site, which regularly tries to make me use their facility in Portuguese, and also on their blogging site, where this blog is hosted. The little tool bar at the top of my blog insists on remaining in Portuguese, in spite of my browser setting AND my stated preference in the blog settings.

This is a clear case of geeks being thrilled with a new toy but failing to think the problem through properly. Come on Microsoft and Google (and countless others) - use the established mechanism for choosing the language and confine your use of that ever-so-clever new geo-location toy to choosing which of your many servers should send me the requested page IN THE LANGUAGE I HAVE SPECIFIED!

Scary stuff!

Are you an adrenalin junkie? Do you like to jump out of airplanes or scuba-dive with sharks, just to get your blood pumping? Perhaps you're the more passive type: do you watch scary movies to get a buzz?

Well, I just came across an alternative. Right here. No white water rafting or crocodile wrestling required: just spend a few minutes to watch this video. I guarantee you'll be frightened.