Not that I’m keeping tabs... I know its hard to be original. Inspiration is found everywhere and sometimes we get inspiration from other forms of art or even from our fellow photographers or friends. But to copy your own magazine cover (it could had been a parody, I mean - the same colour tie and everything) is kind of boring... You might not agree with me but hey, that does not make it less true.

My last backup problem has revived an ongoing problem that I have been facing for a long, long time; Digital storage and archival.

Back in the days of film and slides (and its not like I spent a lot of time kicking the can during those days) things were simple. I would take a trip to an exotic location, I would take a few bricks of Velvia - expose them, develop them, edit them (with a real trash can next to me btw) and then save them on sheets. 20 slides per sheet, organized in folders and labelled. Simple stuff. They still sit on my files.

Digital photography means that I generate a few gigabytes worth of images every time I shoot. So where does that go? Where to store them? All media have their own problems. Hard drives fail due to usage, mechanical problems, surface degradation, heat and vibration (not to mention writing errors, errors on checksums etc). CDs/DVDs have surface degradation due to chemical reactions and instability to light and air. CD/DVDs made with specific archival chemicals and gold surfaces are better suited to withstand the passing of time, but finding archival CD/DVDs is getting more and more difficult. Even if you find them, DVDs are now unsuitable (or at least inconvenient) to be used as backup media for professional photographers. I mean, my standard - smallest CF card is 4GB in space. So one CF card equals one DVD. You think Vincent Laforet burned 120 DVDs as a backup from his Olympic coverage? I don’t think so...

When it comes to media, this is what we find ourselfs in:

• Hard-drives (HD) are mechanically fragile. Heat, vibration, surface degradation error prone even with most systems. They have a relatively short lifespan (at least shorter that I like my pictures to last) and
• SSD-drives are a little unproven, but they clear most of the mechanical concerns we have over HD. We just don’t know how archival and how long would they last.
• CD/DVD - 99% of them are not archival in nature. Gold DVDs are getting harder and harder to find. Even if you find them, they are small in terms of today’s needs for storage. Blue-Ray disks are not manufactured in Gold (yet) so while BR-Disks can hold quite a bit of storage, archival BR media does not exist.
• I’m not even going to mention tape. If I address tape, I might as well address punch-cards.

So we find using what we have available today. A 1978 technique to strip data with or without parity across many disks to mitigate with device failure. Today we continue to know it as RAID. I won’t spend much time ranting as of why the world’s most critical and sensitive data in the 21 century still protected on a standard made when every one was more concern on dancing “Saturday Night Fever”. I mean, we should be using 3D crystals ala Buck Rogers... But that is what we got.

Big, fast and secure. You might only choose two... (and after you choose I will tell you how much...)

I would love to have a couple of Promise VTrak E-Class RAID Subsystem with a SAN and run ZFS RAID-Z2+0 to get it over with. Equivalent systems are the dream system of many prolific photographers such as Laforet or Chase Jarvis - but I can’t justify the cost given the rate at which I produce work (not to mention that ZFS is not available in OS X).

So my rant is.... where is the new storage technology? Lets face it, disks are too old of a technology with too many problems - most of them still present. SSD drives should had been here much earlier. Even so - the most sensible way to back things up are to double up on storage? Yeah - that makes sense. Lets buy twice as much disks in the case a disk fails. We are all buying more disks and using more disk as a backup medium. While computing has seen some fantastic innovations storage has somehow stagnated. It is the area of computing with the least amount of innovation. Re-packagaing and re-branding has work very well for a long time its seems. I remember the days of reading articles on new holographic devices made by IBM and other mediums... I wonder what ever happened to those. I’m just surprised that when I look at new storage solutions I see nothing new in the last 20 years. Same magnetic disks, same RAIDS (any DBA would tell you RAID 5 is terrible and RAID 10 which is the most logical but the most costly solution), same FileSystems. I mean, it’s not until recently that someone created an updated FileSystem with the hopes to fix many of the problems of management, volume partition, storage growth, redundancy and error prone devices as disks. Still, ZFS is the only one of its kind in the last 22 years.

So that is what we have today.

What do I currently use? Well, I host my main Aperture library on an external eSATA RAID 1+0 and use a pair of external FireWire drives for my vaults. But after the weekend incident and my growing storage needs I might have to look at a larger solution... The joys of computing...

This is a weird one... A filming permit (and yes, photography is filming) is needed in most (if not all cities). Before I get into my weird story lets recap when a shooting permit is required...

A photographer can photograph, from a public place anything (s)he likes. There are very few exemptions (military installations or sensible areas). But generally you can shoot both private as well as public subjects as long as you are standing in a public space. As soon as you pull a tripod... well - you need a permit. You might get away with it - but if a police sees you, he might ask - where is your permit? and you will have to retrieve somewhere. Because I use more than just a tripod (lighting stands, MUA, Hair etc) I don’t get away with it. I try to get a permit from my local authorities whenever I can.

This means a quick call to my City of Toronto office (416) 392-8188 and promptly speak with the person who will ask you for your insurance certificate ($2,000,000 in the name of the City of Toronto) as well as the location. There might be a fee associated to the space. This takes almost no time to do.

But something weird happened just a couple of days ago. I’m shooting some ads for a designer friend as she is presenting at the Montreal Fashion Week event. I had booked the location for the shoot and everything was set. The permit is needed to make sure the space is usable and blocked for the activity. Then I got a call. It was the city. A was told that I had been “displaced” by a wedding photographer. “Displaced?” I asked - well, apparently wedding photographers have priority over commercial photographers. “How is this possible?” I asked. There are 7 models, 5 MUAs and 3 Hair stylist, not counting my assistant, stylist and my gear ready to go shoot at this location. I have already done the list of frames we are shooting. There will even be a videographer taking raw footage for a clip that will be used as part of the show. Its all planned - its all ready to go. What do you mean displaced?

Well - to all other non-famous photographers out there.... read this. On weekends, in Toronto, wedding photographers have priority. Particularly in parks (which this location was). Commercially could shoot for free on that particular location Mon-Frid as long as I have my insurance certificate. But not weekends which was the scheduled day for the shoot.

Apparently, weekends are golden to the wedding industry.

Not really complaining - but who knew? It kind of makes sense but displacement? Again - who knew?

This is where it really pays to be prepared. I had a plan “B” in case of rain/weather. So it was easy to just make a call, make sure the second location was still ok and now with my permit in hand I’m back to the preparation of the shoot. Always have a plan “B” at hand.

While he is not a lawyer, photographer Tyler Hutcheon did compile a nice set of rules/laws and definitions that applies to the Canadian legal landscape. Quoting the rules, summarizing copyright and not much interpretation witch is nice. But remember, he is not a lawyer and neither are you (unless you really are one) - so use it as background information only.

"As it was assumed, the EULA users agree on when uploading images to Photoshop Express is going to be re-written at some point as it granted Adobe a wide range of rights to any photos that were made available on the site. "

More from Slashdot

This is a hard one... from all angles and all perspectives. Photographs can be considered by many as an art medium, and I do mean all forms of photography. I mean, lets face it... when Magnum is selling a large number of images to be framed and hanged in public and private spaces due to their composition, feel and visual merits as much as the content the images depict - then you know that even war photography has a place in the arts market.

But not every one can shoot for Magnum - and in fact not every one produces good images. Problem with bad images is that, the moment you take a shot at it in terms of a comment - people will call it... well... art... Photographers have used the "arts" excuse all the time... "not sharp? call it art", "not levelled, not composed etc... call it art..." But some times even that has its problems... There IS such thing as bad art...

I'm not saying that all photographs need to make sense... but when you have exceptional photographers, with a large equipment inventory, celebrities as subjects, makeup, hair, props and end up with a photograph that when seen you end up scratching your head and thinking.... "what were they thinking?"


(above image: photographer unknown (to me) )

Its not like we are talking about Terry Richardson who is often the subject of great/bad photography and style arguments. Terry is controversial on subject selection as well as style (making use of point and shoots with on-camera-flash). While I don't personally like much of his work, I can appreciate the change of perspective he gave the industry a while back. I see the above image and ask my self - so photographer asks the beautiful Gisele to just lay on the floor - fix the hair, hands - place a necklace and gel the lights - click, and we are done? are we not trying any more? No - wait... its Gisele - and she is butt naked. That should count for something right? There are just no ways around it. The market bears what the market bears - and bad photography with a naked butt can still be chosen to go on print. There are photo editors and then there ARE photo editors....

Don't get me wrong - I'm not really one to be judgemental, but one thing should always be clear... even great photographers make terrible pictures.