The week of July 21, 2011

Who can afford these things

Actually, it all started yesterday after a baseball game when my nephew told me that photography was a pretty good business because he'd seen Peter Lik's photo gallery in Las Vegas where he saw wall sized photos were selling for around $6500.

I think he figured that Mr. Lik must be typical of all photographers. He should know better that not all photographers do that well or else I wouldn't have picked him and his dad up at the airport in my five year old Toyota SUV.

Then at lunch today my good friend John and I were talking about another friend who works for one of the wire services who'd just gotten a new set of Canon Mark IV canera bodies and was about to get some new lenses to go with them. Our friend shoots a lot of sports and that's just where Canon's new 500mm and 600mm help out. Their new image stabilazation in the lenses according to Canon give the photographer four full shutter speed stops. That's a lot of help in stopping action with out the accompanying shake that might be expected.

My friend and I are happy that our buddy is going to be getting these new lenses sometime soon. Like us he's getting older too and can use all the help he can get. What we don't understand is who can afford a lens like the 600mm that Canon suggests will sell at retail for $11,999.00.

It's not unusual for a metro newspaper to pay a freelance photographer who supplies his own equipment just $350 a day for doing sports or other news coverage. That's not a lot to pay off a bag full of camera bodies and lenses along with all the other stuff a photographer needs to get the job done plus eat.

Anyway, congratulations to photographers like Peter Lik who seem to have found a way to make a very nice living with by producing great work and marketing themselves very well.

I often take things for granted like most of us do and I assume that I understand the world around me especially photography a lot more than I should. Recently, I was once again reminded that certain things haven't really changed as much as I had thought on a visit to Anchorage, Alaska.

I first started to hear about the new world of digital photography in the mid to late 90's. The first batch of digital cameras left a lot to be desired and weren't seen as much of a threat to traditional film based photography at that point.

Now ten years later, digital photography has come into its own as the main way of making photos. In the last few months Kodak announced that Kodachrome was no longer going to be manufactured. A few years earlier they had discontinued black and white paper. I figured by now silver halide(old fashioned) photography was pretty much dead.

Travel Tip- Take along a plug strip and adapters

With all of the electronics we seem to be carrying these days we find our selves with a bunch of recharges and other plug-ins that often need to be used every day on our trips. Just as often we find hotel rooms with a minimum of electrical outlets to plug everything into. I've learned by experience that bringing along a basic plug strip makes things a lot easier. Just set it up and plug everything that needs to charged or powered up for the next day.

It certainly makes sense for domestic trips, but it's actually a must when you're traveling abroad. Most countries call for adapters to simply be able to plug our US devices in. If you remember to buy them at home in advance they might be as light as $5 each, but if you forget to bring them along don't be surprised that the gift shop in your hotel might like to sell them to you for $20 a piece if you're not lucky enough to sweet talk the front desk into loaning you one for your stay.

When you bring along a plug strip all you'll probably need is just a single adapter for the power strip instead of a handful for all the things you need to plug in.

Wondering what to bring along? A good resource is Electrical Outlet.Org . As for the plug strip, you probably don't need anything too fancy or too heavy. I got my nice green one on the close-out shelf after Christmas one year.

Dave Dornlas