The ad shown here suddenly turned into one huge PR disaster for New York ad agency Barker/DZP and it all could have been avoided had they just ponied up to hire a professional photographer to create an original image for the ad.

Released last week, the ad depicts a New York City Firefighter holding a photo from the 9/11 disaster along with a statement, “I WAS THERE”. Nevermind the fact that the ad itself was in poor taste from the start using 9/11 visuals to promote the commercial interests of a New York City law firm. The ad agency chose to buy stock photography to illustrate the ad and that is where the campaign blew up in their faces.

The model in the stock photo they chose turned out to be an actual New York City Firefighter however, he wasn’t on the force at the time of 9/11 not having joined the FDNY until 2004. Further, in the original photo the model had been holding a Firefighter’s helmet which the ad agency replaced with a photo of the 9/11 tragedy. More poor judgement aimed at tugging the heartstrings and leveraging the 9/11 disaster.

After outrage from many who saw the ad and a threatened lawsuit from the model in the photo Barker/DZP pulled the ad and has voluntarily withdrawn from the assignment. That is one huge price to pay in bad PR, lost future business, damaged reputation and just plain old public embarrassment not only for the ad agency but for the client as well.

The sad thing is that the entire expensive PR bungle could have been avoided if only they had hired a professional photographer to create an original and authentic image for the ad.

If the ad agency had expended a bit more energy and budget on finding an actual 9/11 responder for their model (maybe one of the law firms clients?) then hired a photographer to create the photo the ad might have succeeded for their client. At the very least it would not have created this quagmire of public embarrassment and the damage that will certainly linger as a result.

In the end the little bit of money (and effort) saved by the ad agency through purchasing stock photography instead of creating original art is probably looking mighty expensive to them about now. Sometimes, you get what you pay for…

Here is a list of some things the hired professional photographer brings to the table but you toss out the door when purchasing microstock.

• Exclusivity
• Community recognition
• Photo quality
• Campaign building
• Unique style
• Branding opportunity

Each of these concessions from using stock photography could easily be a discussion on their own but here I want to focus on the most obvious from that list, exclusivity. Say goodbye to your campaign or promotion carrying any feel of exclusivity. Let me give you an example.

The image shown at the top of this post is a microstock photo. Yes, I bought it and have legal right to use it as I see fit. It is a nice image that could have many uses. The subjects are young, warm, friendly, professional, attractive etc. It might be just perfect for the ad or website you are working on and just a buck to boot! However…

Using an online image search tool I was able to find that this exact image is in use on nearly 300 websites right NOW! These aren’t little sidebar thumbnails either but featured visuals. Not so special now is it? All of a sudden your project is headed towards the ordinary, looking like everyone elses.

The screen shots shown running down the right side of this post are all real and currently live websites using this photo. They are not mock-ups or fakes for the sake of this post. They only took a few minutes to find.

Add to this the fact that in large part stock photography is general. By that I mean, the less specific an image is the more potential it has for sales. So, the most successful stock images are frequently those which are most ordinary. The location could be anywhere. The people could be anyone. The industry could be anything. In the end, the image you convey just isn’t all that special. Will that speak to your target audience? Will it instill confidence when they see the same photo in another place for something completely different? Maybe even something you would NOT want to be associated with even by accident?

All too often I feel as though the viewing (buying) public is not given the credit they are due. I believe that most people have a innate sense of when something is genuine or not. It doesn’t matter if they’ve seen the stock image repeated in other places or not they simply know it isn’t original or organic if you will. Beyond the question of exclusivity, it sends a message that just might not be the message you really want them to get.

As a commercial photographer you might assume it is natural for me to condemn microstock (unless I am participating, which is another discussion all together). But you might be surprised to hear that I actually have purchased microstock photography. It is a valuable and strong industry that can not be ignored. The product it offers does have a place.

What I hope to help you see here is that there is more to consider than simply the fact that you saved a few bucks on the photo. With that savings come a variety of things you are giving up and maybe, just maybe, that is NOT the best choice for your business or that of your clients.

As you can see from the resulting image here, when all was said and done we wound up with 26 people and we did indeed photograph them from directly overhead. Considering my stomach generally turns back-flips when faced with heights it turned out to be a project with interesting challenges to overcome.

The first hurdle in pulling off this shoot was to find a location where we could make it happen. We needed a spot where I could get high above what would be a large circle of people. In our area the best solution was the Events Center at Binghamton University, a facility built to host Division I college athletics and the shows of visiting major musical artists. My client made the calls and secured the location.

Binghamton University Events Center, main floor.

My perch for this shoot was in the catwalks at the ceiling of the Events Center, roughly 50 feet above the main floor. To get there I would be escorted outside across the roof of the building to an access door for the catwalks and rigging. I wasn’t allowed on the catwalks alone and was required to empty pockets and secure every piece of equipment to assure nothing could drop to the floor below. All safety precautions not only for myself but also the people who would be positioned below me during the shoot.

To get our subjects into place I first staked out a spot on the catwalk and positioned the camera outside the catwalk looking straight down. Two people working together helped to position our subjects in a circle. Holding a rope-line between them, one stood at the circle’s center while the other walked the perimeter guiding each person to their location on the circle.

Even though the setting was indoors, the Binghamton University Events Center has ample daylight coming in from large windows along the side of the facility. That combined with typically off-color stadium lighting made for a mix of light sources to deal with. I chose to surround the group with Speedotron Black Line studio strobe lighting triggered wirelessly with a set of Pocket Wizards. Setup on stands outside the circle of people, the lights were positioned high and aimed across the circle effectively “feathering” the light for a relatively even result. My lighting was mostly preset in the hour prior to our subjects arriving at the location.

With everything in place the shooting began. I shot a number of variations with larger and smaller circles, groups and differing angles. After the shoot I edited the selected image(s) removing the green Events Center floor covering. Ultimately the client had a very good selection of images to work with from the shoot. Shown here is one example of how the image was used as cover art for a special event invitation.

Looking back there are certainly some things that could have been done a bit differently. For example, I might have covered that green flooring with some neutral seamless to eliminate the risk of color cast (which really wasn’t that bad actually). It might have been less of a “production” to have photographed each of the people individually and then build the circle in Photoshop post-production. But where is the fun in that?

In the end, the client came away with some visually striking images they can use in public advertising and PR as well as for internal communications. And even though there was actually a moment or two on that catwalk that made me arrest my breathing, I had a great time producing the shoot.

Don’t trust your camera’s exposure meter!

The one thing that can help your snowy scene photos more than anything else is to override your camera’s exposure setting. It might help to understand that your camera’s exposure meter is programmed to do one thing, determine the proper exposure settings to give your image a medium tone result. Specifically, exposure meters attempt to make everything neutral 18% grey. When you are photographing a snowy scene, you do not want that! So, what do you do?

Camera automatic setting results in underexposure.

Here is an example which shows the result you would get by letting your camera simply choose the exposure settings for you (auto exposure). As you can see, the photo looks dark and grey. Sort of “murky”. This is because the camera meter analyzes the scene and sets an exposure to make everything the average medium tone I referred to earlier. In a scene full of bright white snow, the camera makes the image darker than it should be. The meter is fooled by the scene and mistakenly underexposes the image. So how do we go about fixing this?

Properly exposed image by overriding camera meter

To correct the problem you need to either override or trick the camera’s meter. As you see in this photo, the scene is properly exposed with the snow appearing a beautiful bright white. You see improved results even in the few darker areas as well with the horses showing better color rendition and detail. In the case of this image I simply made an adjustment in my camera settings so the meter would compensate by “overexposing” by a factor of 1.6 stops. A compensation setting of somewhere between 1 and 2 stops usually works well.

But what if your camera doesn’t allow you to override the meter function? Well, in some cases you can fool the camera’s meter into giving you an overexposed result. (Truth be told you would be fooling the camera into giving you the correct exposure, but that is semantics.) With most modern cameras, when you are ready to take a photo you will press down the shutter release button partially and the camera will set its auto-focus and auto-exposure based on the scene you are viewing. To fool your camera into giving you a brighter exposure, you would aim your camera at a scene made up of darker tones (but at the same distance from you as the scene you intend to photograph) and press the shutter release button down to establish the focus and exposure settings. Then while still holding the button in that position, recompose your photo in the viewfinder and take the photo. This trick will not work on all cameras but will on some. You would have to try it with your own camera to know if it will work for you or not.

Try and catch the sun, early or late.

With the sun low in the sky the shadows get interesting

Next is a tip that can actually apply to any outdoors photography, not just snowy scenes. If you can make your photos early or late in the day and manage to have some nice sunlight to work with, the images will undoubtedly look better. Early and late in the day the suns light has more pleasing color to it giving a bit of warmth to the scene. Additionally, with the sun lower in the sky at these times there are more interesting shadows giving shape and character to the subjects in your images.

Carry extra batteries and hold them close!

Another great tip for doing photography in snowy and cold conditions. Cold conditions have a negative effect on usable battery life. In really cold conditions the usable life of your batteries charge can be reduced to half or even less what it would be at room temperature. The catch to this particular tip is not just to carry extra batteries with you, but it is to carry them close to you. The idea is that you want those batteries to be as warm as possible, otherwise the cold shortens their usable charge just like the ones in your camera. So, keep them in a pocket close to your body and use your bodies heat to keep them in good shape. One day that tip could help you get that last shot that really means something!

Put your camera in a zip lock bag.

That might sound odd but let me explain. If you have been using your camera outside in the cold conditions for a while, the cameras body adjusts to the cold temperatures. Then when you bring that camera (and more importantly, lenses) inside to room temperature, you will often find that the camera and lens will very quickly become covered by condensation on the surface. It is moisture in the warm inside air which condenses on the camera’s cold surfaces. It’s like a moist cloud settled on your camera and it is going to take a good while before it dries out.

Next time try this. While you are still out in the cold conditions, place your camera inside a zip lock bag, then bring it inside. Once inside, leave the camera in the plastic bag for a few minutes allowing the camera body to adjust to room temperature. You will find that the adjustment to room temperature doesn’t take very long and thanks to the zip lock bag, there will be no condensation to worry about either!

I hope you will find some of these ideas useful and maybe it inspires you to get out there in the cold and find some great photographs!

Megaphone or Hearing Aid?
With one of the users in my informal case study the organization is using Twitter as a Megaphone. They speak but do not listen. It is easy to recognize a Megaphone Twitter user by simply looking at their totals for “Followers” vs. “Following”. For the Megaphone Twitter user the number of followers is always larger than the number of users they are following. It is usually a large disparity between the two. The offending user I have observed has hundreds of followers while following barely a handful. For me, this sends the clear message that they are not interested in what anyone else has to say. Fail.

On the other hand, the other organization in my case study is a true Hearing Aid user. Their totals for followers vs. following are a much more even balance. But more important than that, this user often replies to or retweets information from other users they follow, something the Megaphone Twitter user never does. They are using Twitter not only as a way to broadcast their own information, but also as a listening device. They get it, this is truly “social media”, an interaction not a message board.

I would not begin to suggest that I could say if one approach is better than another. It all depends on what you hope to get out of using Twitter I suppose. What I can say though is that in my own list of users that I follow I value the Hearing Aid users much more than those who are Megaphone users. When it comes down to it, the Megaphone users do not stay in my “following” list for long.

So who are you, a Megaphone or a Hearing Aid user?

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Here is a great little tip to a tool you can use to get information in return. Google offers their Google SMS service which is like having almost any information search right there in the palm of your hand. All you need to remember is the Google SMS texting number which is “GOOGLE” (“466453″ on most mobile devices). What could be easier?

Here is how it works. Just send your inquiry to Google SMS at “466453″ and in barely a minute or less Google will send you a response, usually an accurate answer to your question. To make this work even better Google has optimized the system to easily handle certain types of inquiries. Try these for example.

Current movie listings – text “Movies 54321″ (using your zip code)
Latest sports scores – text “Score Yankees” (name your favorite team)
Current weather conditions – text “Weather Chicago” (name your preferred city or zip code)

For a more detailed list of the optimized Google SMS inquiry options go to the Google Mobile SMS web page and text away. Google will answer virtually any of your questions instantly as simple as that! Best of all, this service is a free product from Google (your standard text messaging rates still apply as they say…)

Most browsers that support the display of favicons will also show the icon next to entries in your bookmarks or favorites lists. If you are using a browser which offers tabbed browsing, you will typically also see the favicon shown in each tab next to the web page title.

There are two very good reasons to be sure your Web site includes a favicon.

1. It makes your Web site user friendly
   If your browser supports the display of favicons then you already know this to be true. The favicon makes it much easier to recognize a particular Web site you may be looking for in your tabs, bookmarks or favorites lists.
2. Establishing and reinforcing brand/organization identity
   Statistics vary but most agree that it takes some repetition before people will remember your company or organizations visual identity. Use of the favicon is an effective means of building on that recognition.

Those seem like two compelling reasons to be sure that your Web site offers a favicon to its visitors. Your Web site developer should be able to install a favicon for you. If you need help you can of also look to SteadmanTech for help with this and any other web development needs.

From almost any active Photoshop dialog box which presents you with the OK and Cancel buttons you have another option. The option that I speak of is the Option key (Alt on the PC) on your keyboard. No kidding, bad play on words I know. With your dialog box active just press-and-hold the Option key (Alt on the PC) and Photoshop will instantly change the Cancel button to read “Reset”. While still holding the Option key, click on the Reset button. You are now reset back to where you began when first opening up this dialog box and you never had to leave the dialog box to get there! Now you start over changing your settings and adjustments as needed.

There was a time (which todays youth would not recall) in which you might have heard about a new Web site or online service and the natural question to follow was, “Do they have an actual ‘bricks and mortar’ location?” That is to say, does this online entity actually have a real life storefront/office location? Or is it just an online presence. The implication was clearly understood to be that if there was not a physical location associated with the online business, they were not to be trusted. Or at the very least, caution should be exercised.

But moving forward now to today’s business environment, I contend that the core of this question has reversed itself.

No longer is it the business that legitimizes the Web site, but more it is the Web site that legitimizes the business. Time and time again I now see exchanges where the strength, value or trustworthiness of a business is judged at least partially by whether or not they have a Web site. The clear implication is that without a Web site in place in support of a business, organization or service, the entity could be questionable. Proceed with caution.

Now, beyond the question of which legitimizes the other. If there is a Web site in place, is it good one? If not, the Web site might actually be doing more harm than good. Does the Web site provide the information that the potential client or customer is looking for? Or is it a sounding board that fans the business owner’s ego with accolades or streams of useless fluff? (i.e. most Flash/animation intro pages you will ever see) Those are two very different things, maybe worth repeating…

• Does the Web site primarily stroke the business ego?
  or…
• Does the Web site provide information useful to the site visitor?

As a Web site developer, I often find it hard to guide a project more to the later than the former. When making critical decisions regarding Web site development it is a challenge to get a site owner to step fully into the shoes of their customer or client, or more importantly their potential client.

When is the last time you had a look at your Web site through your potential customers eyes? You might be surprised at what you see, if you can manage to do so.

Here is a great example I created while on a recent family vacation to the Kennedy Space Center on Florida’s Atlantic coast. One highlight of our visit to the Space Center was seeing the Apollo/Saturn V rocket up close. It was natural to want to get a few photos to remember the visit and to share with friends. All too often I see people taking photos of this type and making some unfortunate mistakes as they do so.

This photo is an example of the most common error I see people make time and time again. This is a picture of my son standing in front of the Saturn V rocket’s Service Module, or is it? You can see the Service Module of course, but can you actually see my son? He’s there with a beaming smile on his face, but you cannot really tell that from this photo.

The mistake we’ve made here is that he is standing too close to the landmark element of the photo and gets lost in the photo. You would find yourself explaining this photo to your family or friends. I’m sure it would go something like, “Here is my son when we visited the Saturn V rocket. That small blob is him. He was very excited, trust me.”

Here is a photo which does make some improvement, but still misses the mark by quite a bit in my opinion. Some might actually argue that this picture is even worse depending on what you would rather see in the photo, my son or the rocket. Here you can certainly see the enthusiasm on my son’s face, but can you tell that is part of a Saturn V rocket behind him? Not really, it could be almost anything to be honest.

So this picture like the first, still does not tell the story very well. Now you would be explaining this photo by swearing that it really was a Saturn V rocket in the background, really. On the plus side for this photo, I’ve come in close enough that you can see my son in the photo and actually recognize him. On the minus side, the background could be anything at all.

Now let’s make a much improved photo. It is really very simple and requires only a wee bit of thought and a slight change of camera angle to create a vastly superior photo. Below is the photo as I would much rather see it done. I think you can see that this is a great improvement.

I made two simple changes to get this greatly improved photo and it took only a few seconds to do so. First, I had my son step away from the background subject. It only required moving 20 feet, that’s all. This is a mistake that I see people make probably 90% of the time when making photos of this type. I don’t really know why, but as soon as someone decides to get a picture taken in front of some notable subject, they walk right up to it where they will be dwarfed in the resulting photo.

Get away from the background subject! The larger your “landmark” background element is, the farther away from it you should be to get a great photo. If this were a picture of my son in front of the Lincoln Memorial for example, we probably would have been a good 50-100 yards away from the steps of the memorial.

Second, I moved the camera closer to my son which brings his happy face more into the foreground of the photo. Again a very simple adjustment to make when setting up the photograph and it takes but a few seconds. Bringing the person in the photo closer to camera really forces them into the foreground of the picture and separates them from the background behind them.

So next time you are out and about and setting up a photo to show family or friends in front of some notable background subject, remember two things.

• Move the person in your photo away from the background subject
• Bring the camera closer to the person in your photo

With these two things in mind you can come home with some really great travel photos. Photos you will be proud to show off to family and friends, and you’ll have a lot less s’plainin’ to do!