Bluejacket Photo

From the Associated Press via Yahoo Finance

DOVER, Del. (AP) — Ritz Camera Centers, the nation’s largest retail photography chain, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The Beltsville, Md.-based company submitted its filing Sunday in federal bankruptcy court in Wilmington, estimating assets and liabilities at between $100 million and $500 million. The list of its top 30 unsecured creditors is led by Nikon Inc. and Canon USA Inc., which are owed a combined $40 million in trade debt.

The company said revenue from its profitable photofinishing business has declined significantly with the shift from film to digital cameras, and that 2008 holiday sales were “materially lower” than prior year sales. It also said23 an increase in gasoline prices, along with other economic factors, led to a sharp drop in sales in its Boater’s World recreational marine business last year.

Ritz has about 800 photo stores in 40 states, operating as Ritz Camera, Wolf Camera, Kits Cameras, Inkley’s and The Camera Shops. It also operates 130 Boater’s World stores. The company, which has about 6,400 employees nationwide, recorded sales of just under $1 billion last year.

Not particularly surprised.  Haven’t been to a Ritz Camera in ages, and most of the time I was there to window shop or pick up something cheap like a lens cloth.  If they were using film developing to stay afloat, the latest trends in cheap printers and digital photos has done them in.

Still, Chapter 11 is the “good bankruptcy”…  They aren’t being liquidated, like Circuit City currently is.  We’ll have to wait and see if they can roll with the punches and modernize for the digital camera age.

I wouldn’t bet on it though, not as long as Amazon and B&H have an online presence.

One of the places I asked for advice regarding Gulf Air’s offer of paying for one of my photos with only a photo credit was the TWIP forums on Flickr.  Ms Cathay somehow found out about the post and wrote her side of the story…

Ink Publishing often contacts people on Flickr. We have very small budgets and as contract publishers we do not make the huge amount of money you seem to have worked out above. We only use flickr when we are finding it hard to find the image we need on a photolibrary, so it is usually obscure things (such as your tree of life). You are under no obligation to give the image. I should point out to you however, that a photo credit, especially in magazines with as high a readership as ours, is not worthless and I have myself commissioned many a photographer by seeing a photo I like in a magazine and then googling the photographer. Also we often keep flickr photographers on file who have sent us images and commission them in the future should we trust in their standard of photography and ease of dealing with them.

hope this helps with your query
Helen Cathcart
Senior Picture Editor Ink Publishing

This hasn’t mollified those that were against the deal…  As somone pointed out,  I have trouble believing she’s going to pay me money in the future if she has a habit of searching for people to give her stuff for free…

A slight moral quandary…

Gulf Air magazine (one of those in flight magazines that try to sell you overpriced executive toys and gadgets) wants to use one of my pictures I took while in Bahrain.

The flip side is that the want to pay me with just a photo credit.

It’s not the lack of money that bothers me, per se…. I’m flattered they like the photo and thrilled to actually be in a magazine. However, if they get a photo from me for free, that means that some photographer that is actually trying to earn a living at his/her craft is going to be deprived of income. This has been a topic of discussion in many of the photography forums I frequent… I don’t want to be one of those guys who drive the prices down for everyone else. That’s almost as bad as scabbing.

On the other hand, I’ve never considered the photo to be commercially viable. It was one of the first pictures I took with my first digital camera. I don’t have it in a RAW format, and there is nothing outstanding about the shot. It’s just an average vacation photo (at best).

It would be nice to be published, and have this credit in my portfolio. It could drive traffic to my store (though I see that as very unlikely). I might be able to get some other work with the publishing company (Ink Publishing), since they have many inflight magazines for all over the world…

But do I shaft the photographic community by doing this?

In the end I decided to ask for compensation, even if it means being passed over for someone not as picky. I haven’t been rejected outright yet. While the editor is making remarks about how she has others under consideration that will allow publishing for free, I figure if she had a wide variety of choices we still wouldn’t be talking. I’ve just sent her two watermarked images for her layout person to play with, since she says the flicker images were too small to work with, and I don’t allow anyone to download different sizes (for a good reason, apparently…)

My decision hinged on three things. One, it didn’t matter what “everybody else” might do, I was responsible for my own actions, and the rightness or wrongness of them was separate from what the next person might do. Two, as others have pointed out, photocredit is pretty much worthless, especially on a plane where the viewer was unlikely to be able to act on the knowledge in any way. Three, Gulf Air magazine apparently makes 4 million a year and reaches 200,000 people a month… Why -can’t- they compensate me fairly?

I published this post in a couple of different places. One thing I found interesting was that the responses were more or less 50/50, even amoung pros and non-pros… I was expecting the people who earn a living from their photos to be a bit more hard core about “giving it away for free”, but I was wrong….

Updates provided as they happen…

Oh, and the picture in question…

The Tree of Life, Bahrain

I’m fascinated  by photographers that get an idea and and do a shoot around a theme, or with an elaborate set.  I’m rarely that creative, and don’t have the contacts or resources to do the few ideas I do have.

A photographer I like doesn’t seem to have that problem, and can do a lot with little resources…

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Alice in (a Dark) Wonderland, as imagined by Oberonia of Oberonia Photography!

This is my favorite picture of a Mad Hatter ever…

There’s a very informative discussion of these topics over at Dan Heller Photography…

This page is worth bookmarking, and the whole web site has useful topics regarding the business of photography.

I definitely plan on spending a bit of time there, so I can avoid repeating the mistakes of others in favor of new, creative mistakes of my own.

There will be times when you will be in the field without a camera.  And, you will see the most glorious sunset or the most beautiful scene that you have ever witnessed.  Don’t be bitter because you can’t record it.  Sit down, drink it in, and enjoy it for what it is!  ~DeGriff

Frank Horvat : Now it’s all set up, the model, the streets, the dog and the baby. There you are, with your camera.
Helmut Newton : There I am with my camera. Frank, you see, if I don’t set it up, what am I going to do? What do you do? Do you go out with a girl and God sends you an inspiration?
Frank Horvat : But when it’s all there, girl, streets, dog and baby, do you shoot it the way you had in mind, or do you wait for something else, that is godgiven ?
Helmut Newton : Sometimes it happens, not very often, that God chooses to give me that ray of sunshine or that cloud, at the right moment. That’s why I work outside, because I know that in the studio God can’t do anything for me, all he could do would be send a thunderstorm that cuts off the electricity. Outside he can help me, he could also fuck me up by sending a lot of rain, that would make it difficult, but he very rarely sends me light that’s no good to me. Practically any light, somehow or other, I can deal with.
Frank Horvat : Because you are very clever.
Helmut Newton : No, because any light that God sends me is different. This keeps me interested: “quick, quick, quick, something is happening!”

So, why are we here? What’s the point of this website?

I’m working on becoming a full time photographer. There are going to be (and already have been) many and ravines in the road on the way to that goal. Hopefully the trip will be amusing and entertaining, and you might learn from my mistakes.

I’m not going to talk about specific camera techniques much. The web is full of places with people more knowledgeable than I, but I will point some interesting bits I have learned, or places I’ve discovered.

I’ll also share some of my favorite things… Pictures.  Photographers.  Stores.  Hopefully you might be willing to add to the discussion.

Oh, and I’ll shill my merchandise, too…