For those of you who are interested in the business and technology side of things, here’s an interesting 45-minute interview in which Digg founder Kevin Rose chats with Instagram founder Kevin Systrom:

They chat about Systrom’s growing up with computers, his time spent at Stanford, and landing an internship at a startup destined to be worth billions. This ultimately led to launching Instagram which is now 15 million users strong and one of the fastest growing social networks on the planet!

(via Laughing Squid)

Here are five interesting interview excerpts with renowned street photographers. They’re from Everybody Street, a documentary on NYC street photographers that recently finished raising funds through Kickstarter. The video above features Bruce Gilden.

Ricky Powell

Bruce Davidson

Mary Ellen Mark

Joel Meyerowitz

You can learn more about the film here.

Here’s an inspiring and educational video in which Marc Silber sits down to chat with photographer Michael Zagaris — a man who has had a career as the official shooter for both rock bands (e.g. Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin) and sports teams (e.g. San Francisco 49ers, Oakland A’s).

PetaPixel: Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?

John Sypal: I had a very typical middle class and middle American childhood. A semester followed by a year abroad at a university in Japan led me to the place I am today, namely a suburb just outside of Tokyo. I’ve been interested in photography since high school and upon studying and living in Japan have been enjoying the photographic scene of Tokyo and the people who make it all possible. In 2008 I was taking part in a weeklong photography festival and asked a guy if I could take a picture of his camera. And since there were lots of people around with film cameras at this event I asked a few more. I had just seen my first tumblr a week earlier, and so after getting a few more pictures Tokyo Camera Style was born.

PP: How did you first get into photography?

JS: I took it as a course in high school, and then as a requirement for my Art major in college. Darkroom work was fun and all, but looking back now it was the interaction with people that photography allows that interested me. Photography for me isn’t anything more than a way to go through life- I don’t have a political agenda or anything. It’s a chance to learn more about where I am and hopefully who I am as well.

PP: What was your first camera?

JS: I found a Minolta XG-1 at a garage sale with a Cosina 28mm lens and one of those 1980’s cartoonish consumer zooms in 1995 or so. I shot with this through high school and graduated to an XE-7. Later I picked up a Nikon F2 and did the Nikon SLR thing for a while, adding an F3 and F4 to my collection. During my year abroad in Japan in 2002 I fell for an olive green Bessa R2 in the window of a camera shop in Shinjuku and promptly traded off all large Nikons (except for the F2) and bought the Bessa. But of once you go Rangefinder the path often leads to Leica.

PP: What equipment do you shoot with nowadays?

JS: I don’t leave my house without my Leica MP, Contax T3, and Ricoh GRDII in my Domke F3 bag. You can see a picture of this kit here.

I enjoy each of these cameras for their simplicity. I started out as a “28mm guy” but with my Summicron on the MP and the T3 I have found the 35mm focal length to be just about perfect. Recently I have been trying to figure out how to shoot a 50mm lens. Each length has its own challenges, and I am interested in the difference in visual compression that the 50 gives over the 35 or a 28. For my black and white work I shoot Fuji Presto 400 in 35mm which I develop and print at home.

As much as Tokyo Camera Style is a celebration of analog cameras and gear, I honestly have a lot of love for the GRD. They’re about $250 used in Tokyo so after one wears out it isn’t too hard to go pick up another one.

PP: How would you describe Tokyo Camera Style to someone who has never visited the site?

JS: Most succinctly it’s a website featuring photographs of analog cameras in the hands of their owners on the streets of Tokyo. I create content by seeing these people on the street with their gear and approaching them to ask to snap a photo of their camera. While in each image the camera is centered, sharing the frame are other little details about the owner which give the viewer clues about the person photographed. I think that getting to see shoes, clothing, rings, watches, and bags allow the viewer to see that these are real people with their own individualities.

Save for a few rare occasions, I don’t photograph the owners faces since it’s a lot easier to ask “Can I take a picture of your camera for my blog” than “Can I take a picture of you for my blog”

I’d like to say the site is accessible in that there’s no lengthy Mission Statement full of art-speak to deal with. The quotes I have to the side sum up my feelings rather well. It is a site celebrating these particular photographic tools which people enjoy.

PP: What’s something interesting you’ve learned through running the site?

JS: The biggest surprise I’ve found is just how happy the site seems to make people all over the world. Especially film shooters. I get messages from people saying that they feel camaraderie in seeing that there are other people out there shooting film and enjoying analog photography. The internet is a fantastic vehicle for sharing information but the tactility of an analog experience is by nature of digital transmission, missing. People respond to seeing this chronicle of cameras and tell me they are happy to not feel so alone, so to speak. It would be great if TCS gets a few people into film photography again or for the first time.

There’s been lots of other little things I’ve learned as well. The fact that so many of the people who appear not he site are under 25 is interesting. The fact that many are women is another. Also the blog is somewhat serialized in the monthly magazine Nippon Camera here in Japan, and being recognized when I talk to a camera owner on the street is always kind of funny. “Oh hey, you’re THAT guy.”

PP: What camera do you usually use to photograph cameras?

JS: The first several months of the site was done with my first digital camera, a small, and very red, Casio Exilm S20 with zone focusing and a hit and miss macro mode. A friend of mine, an engineer in Sony’s camera department had a Ricoh GRDII which, as you can imagine, he didn’t use much and offered to sell it to me cheap. I immediately took to this camera due to its programmable mode selector. On my GRD the “MY1″ is set for “Tokyo Camera Style Mode” i.e. 3MP Macro shots. It’s kind of funny — as soon as I see someone with a film camera on the street my hand automatically goes to the GRD in my pocket and immediately switches dial to MY1. Kind oflike Han Solo and his blaster safety, I guess. Except that I am dealing with Japanese camera enthusiasts and not intergalactic bounty hunters.

I’m on my second GRDII at the moment and it is likely that my next digital camera will be a used GRDIII once the IV comes out or the II dies. Whichever is sooner.

PP: Why film over digital?

JS: Allow me to answer this question a few different ways.

For the personal photography which I exhibit in shows, the groove of the analog process is something that I find comfort in — both in the aesthetics of the final print and the path it takes to get to that point. It is a part of me which I don’t ever want to give up.

For Tokyo Camera Style, I shoot digital because the immediacy of this medium matches the web-log experience. The fact that I can upload the pictures once I get home that same day keeps things interesting for viewers. I understand that a smart phone would be even quicker for this but I like my GRDII.

Now, as to why I feature film cameras over digital ones on TCS, this is due to a variety of reasons. A lot of it is due to how many cameras are beautiful examples of industrial design. There’s nothing wrong with appreciating cameras as art. That said, I personally don’t find many current digital cameras to be all that attractive or interesting. As good of a camera the Nikon D7000 may be, is going to look a lot like any other D7000 out there. Does this affect the photography made with these cameras? Probably not. But there’s this aspect of how people can customize their analog cameras to essentially express their own private sense of style. The ways a Leica or Pentax Spotmatic can be altered or accessorized by the owner is essentially endless and each compilation expresses something about the person who uses it.

For the record, I am well aware of the irony in using a digital camera for a site on analog cameras.

You can’t always tell from the photos on the site, but a majority of people I meet with a film camera also have at least one compact digital on them. Now in 2011 it’s less of Digital vs. Film and more about Digital AND Film. They both have their places in the workflow and experience of being a photographer.

PP: What’s the coolest camera customization/personalization you’ve ever seen?

JS: The most popular photos on Tokyo Camera Style have been Micho Yamauchi’s well used Nikon FM3a, a wooden homemade medium format camera with a 360 degree lens, and while not actually a real camera, my friend’s Leica Summilux wedding rings. My own personal favorites are all of the chrome Leica Ms on the site.

PP: Is photography your full time job?

JS: Nope. But I am fine with this.

PP: Do you walk around on streets with the sole purpose of finding cameras for your blog, or are you usually headed somewhere?

JS: The only times I am specifically out to photograph cameras are for the monthly shoots for my feature in Nippon Camera. Other than that they are mostly (95%) random encounters with strangers. There are places where film shooters tend to be — Shinjuku, Ginza, Yanaka, but I’ve met people in trains, restaurants, stores, movie theaters… pretty much everywhere you can imagine. Sometimes I’ll meet a person and begin my brief introduction about the site only to be told that they’ve met me before with a different camera in hand. The Nippon Camera thing has increased the number of times I hear “Oh hey you’re that guy” when meeting new people.

PP: Where do you see analog photography headed?

JS: I remember back in 2001 when the Yodobashi camera in Shinjuku had a basement full of film- they literally had a long cooler that went around two sides of the room stocked with film from top to bottom. It was glorious. As nice of an image that is to fondly recall, those days are not coming back. But I do think we’ll see 35mm and 120 film stick around for a while still. One thing that the Impossible Project showed us all is that if that many talented and driven people are willing to take a chance and save a very particular type of photographic image making, chances are 35mm with its far broader fan base will survive in some way. I think that people see it as film AND digital now in a way that they didn’t in the past decade. The number of young men and women I meet who have taken up film photography is encouraging as well. People I’ve talked to who run rental darkrooms say that there has been an increase in people learning how to print.

PP: Who are your favorite photographers?

JS: Winogrand, Friedlander, Frank, Eggleston, and all those other Szarkowski all-stars reign supreme on my photobook shelf. I also like work by “Anonymous”. Snapshots by unknown (to us) photographers can be some of the weirdest most interesting pictures you’ll ever see.

Japan-side, Nobuyoshi Araki, Iesei Suda, Mitsugu Onishi, Jun Abe, Mikiko Hara, Michio Yamauchi, Shinya Arimoto, Hiromi Tsuchida, Seiji Kurata – oh man, this list could get quite long so I’ll leave it at that. The non-pro photographer scene in Tokyo is really interesting. I recently joined Twitter and use it to share a Japanese photographer’s website each day.

PP: Anything else you’d like to say to PetaPixel readers?

JS: Sure — If you see something you like on TCS, my pal Bellamy Hunt can probably get it for you. He provides photo equipment sourcing from Japan via his site Japan Camera Hunter. I get a emails from people asking where to get certain cameras they see on the site and I send them to him. He knows his stuff.

But as for Tokyo Camera Style, it’s always fun to see the positive vibe that it has created. I didn’t set out to create anything that would garner the following that it has. It’s kind of funny, I have a portfolio site with work I have exhibited in galleries but a link to my camera bag and its contents on flickr gets more hits in a day than my site does in weeks. It’s all good though. Photography is a dialogue and getting to contribute in these different ways has been quite educational.
Finally, I’m always glad to hear from people saying that they’ve started a “________ Camera Style” site for their own town. This sense of community that analog photography enjoys online will be what keeps the spirit and craft alive. I’m glad if Tokyo Camera Style helps out in some way.

P.S. If any of you have any questions for John, leave a comment and he’ll respond to them!

PetaPixel: Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?

Ryan McGinnis: I am a storm chaser and photographer who lives in Nebraska; I have no formal training in photography outside of all the books I’ve read and the thousands of rolls of film I’ve blown through (and terabytes of drives I’ve filled up) over the years. I’ve had a life-long love affair with the weather; from as young as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with storms and for most of my childhood I dreamed of one day chasing tornadoes. Living in this part of the country makes storm chasing less of a chore than if I had to drive here from, say, Virginia, but storm chasing here still requires lots of driving — on average around 600 miles per chase. These days I tend to storm chase around 15,000 miles a year, mostly in May and June. In 2008 and 2009 I was fortunate enough to get to tag along with and photographically document Project Vortex 2, a $12M science mission to learn how tornadoes tick, which was probably one of the best freelance investments of time and money I’ve ever made.

When I’m not shooting storms, my favorite subjects are candids and urban panoramas.

PP: How did you first get into photography?

RM: I first really got into photography after I got my first SLR, an old manual Olympus, back in around 1999. Before that I tinkered with point and shoots, but had little idea what I was doing. After that I bought an EOS-3 from my good friend Josh and went to work for my University’s student newspaper, and blew through more rolls of film than my pocketbook wants to remember. It wasn’t until 2003 or so that something in my head clicked and I realized that I could try to blend my passion for the weather with my passion for photography; to me, good photography is mostly about subject, with technical aspects running a distant second — and a good supercellular thunderstorm on the great plains is an incredible subject to photograph. When I started to see the photographic results I was getting back from my storm chases, I was hooked — I look at most of my storm pictures these days and think “wait, did I really take that?”

PP: How would you describe your photography to someone who has never seen it?

RM: Honestly, with storm photography, what I’m trying to do is capture an aspect of nature that most people don’t get to experience. Even those, like me, who do get to experience it, have a really hard time explaining to someone who doesn’t live in this part of the country just how spectacular the sky can be. In my storm photos, the sky is the main subject; the rule of thirds is irrelevant — if anything, for me it’s more like the rule of fifths, as in one part ground, four parts sky. :) Which, really, in this part of the country where the ground is steam-ironed flat and the sky hovers overhead like an enormous ocean, is how most people experience reality, anyway.

PP: What was your first camera?

RM: My first camera was a blue Fisher Price 110 camera for kids that I had when I was around five years old — I remember my parents strongly encouraging natural light photography, as the flash cubes for that thing were outrageously expensive! :) It looked just like this:

PP: What equipment do you use these days?

RM: These days I shoot with a whole slew of cameras; on the digital side I use a 50D and a 20D, with a Tokina 11-16 2.8, a nifty 50 1.8, a 70-200 2.8IS, a 1.4TC, and a 580EX flash. On the film side, I have an old EOS 1N, an Argus C3 brick, and a Kodak Tourist 620 camera that I like to shoot with. And of course a sturdy Manfrotto aluminium tripod with a ball head and a cheap radio controlled remoter shutter release to keep me from getting fried by lightning.

PP: How does a storm-chasing photographer like yourself earn a living?

RM: It’s primarily from licensing. Storm photography only makes up part of my licensing, though; while it’s a big chunk, the rest is filled in with travel imagery, a bit of lifestyle, etc. It’s not so much that the demand for storm imagery is exceptionally strong, but rather that it’s one of those niches that is so difficult to pull off well that there isn’t much supply. Thus when a textbook or an ad agency needs a powerful storm image to use as an illustration for a chapter or a backdrop for an automotive ad campaign, there are only a handful of sources to turn to.

PP: How do you go about deciding how much to charge for a particular photograph?

RM: For licensing that comes in via personal inquiries, I usually use software called “Fotoquote”, which is somewhat industry standard. There is often a bit of wheeling and dealing involved depending on budgets and desired use (clients will sometimes ask for much more usage rights than they actually need, and the price can come down quite a bit once you figure out what they *really* need), but Fotoquote is a good starting point. My online portal, which is run by Photoshelter, also uses Fotoquote to come up with prices. A large number of my images are also available via various agencies (AGE Fotostock, Getty Images, and Alamy), and the agencies get to set their own prices on these images. Getty Images is the strongest performer for me, despite (sadly) giving me the smallest cut of revenue. Getty does tremendous volume.

PP: How close do you try to get to tornadoes before pulling out your camera?

RM: Generally, I don’t get terribly close at all — if I get within a mile, I figure I’m getting too close. The best storm photos are generally taken from further back, anyway — back where you can see the overall structure of the storm. Tornado photos are somewhat played out and are relatively easy to get compared to photos that show a giant storm hovering over the landscape like some kind of alien assault craft. Probably the closest that I’ve been is half a mile, and that was too close for comfort as that particular tornado was headed right for me. I value my life too much to take stupid risks — and besides that, if I ever died in a tornado, my wife would kill me!

PP: What’s something unique about photographing storms that other types of photographers don’t have to deal with?

RM: There are several things that are somewhat unique — the largest of them being the sheer amount of driving. An average chase starts at 7AM and runs 600 miles or more before ending well after sundown. Most of that time and distance, however, is boring — storm chasing is hours upon hours of evaluating weather conditions, driving, waiting, and driving some more for perhaps the occasional fifteen minutes of excitement and terror. It’s a bit like nature photography, except my car is the blind and the animals can pick my blind up and throw it a few hundred yards if the animal sneaks up on me. Another issue to deal with is protection of equipment — camera gear doesn’t like water, for example, and cars don’t like softball-sized hail. (I had a Honda Civic totaled out by softballs back in 2002.) My cameras will sometimes have DIY rain protectors made out of clear trash bags over them if I anticipate being in rain, and a photographer has to understand a lot about how storms tick in order to stay away from big hail. And, of course, storm photographers have to learn a ton about storms and weather forecasting to be successful — finding a good storm is much, much harder than you’d think, and getting in position to intercept it at just the right time with just the right foreground is as much luck as it is skill.

PP: What advice do you have for shooting storms?

RM: The most important thing is to learn as much as you can about storms before giving it a go. Storms can go from looking pretty to smashing the heck out of all your vehicle’s windows in less than a minute. If you know what to watch for and know how storms are structured, you can safely avoid big hail or being in the path of an unexpected tornado. If you don’t, you’re relying on luck, which will run out sooner or later. One of the better places to learn about how to safely and successfully chase storms (which is required for good storm photography) is a web forum called “Storm Track“. A lot of good chasers hang out there and talk shop, and you can learn a lot by being a fly on the wall. It’s also useful to have a program that shows you live radar data. For a PC laptop, the program you are looking for is called “GRLevel3“. For your iPhone, the best program is an app called “Radarscope”. Both will show you live updating radar with a little GPS blip showing your current position (assuming your laptop or your iDevice has GPS). These programs are invaluable to me, as they allow me to see what a storm is doing even when visibility is obscured. Lastly, when it comes to equipment, I find the most important bit of kit for storm photography is a decent superwide lens. 16mm or 17mm on a fullframe, or 10mm / 11mm on a crop body. Storms are huge and take up so much of the sky that anything other than a superwide is only going to see a small slice of the storm.

PP: How much post-processing do you do with your photos?

RM: It depends on the application and how it was shot. My panoramas for example have to be stitched together, which is in itself pretty heavy lifting for a post processing program when you’re talking about blending 10 to 15 images. For general storm shots, my post processing usually revolves around fixing the dynamic range limitations of the sensor — for example brightening up the ground so that it’s not a black hole (our eyes don’t perceive a black hole, so neither should the picture!) and adding a bit of contrast. A good sample of what I generally do for post processing is here. I suppose I could probably use split density filters (and I know that another really good storm photographer, Jim Reed, swears by them), but I guess I don’t want to have to fuss with adjusting them every time I change composition.

PP: What’s the favorite photo you’ve made so far, and the story behind it?

RM: My favorite photo so far is this one:

This was a shot I got while documenting Project Vortex 2, a two year science mission to study tornadoes. I like this shot because it’s one of those few photos where you can really perceive that the storm is spinning like a top. I like it, too, because it’s a testament to not giving up — this storm developed near Dodge City, Kansas on a day when conditions for supercellular storms were marginal at best in that area. Had I been chasing on my own and not following Vortex 2, I likely would have gone east to Missouri that day, where the odds looked better. But Vortex 2 had some of the best forecasters in the world working with them (you know the guys in Norman Oklahoma who issue the tornado watches? Those guys) and after a lot of sitting around and waiting at the target area, to my utter surprise it actually paid off. A beautiful supercell formed over perfect territory (flat, flat, flat — as far as the eye could see), and slowly marched towards us. This photo was taken just before we had to leave, as the rotating area of the storm was only about four minutes from being directly overhead.

PP: Who are your favorite photographers?

RM: One of my favorites is probably one of my biggest competitors — a man by the name of Mike Hollingshead who also lives in Nebraska. He’s a guy who could trip and fall down an open manhole and end up taking award-winning photos on his way down. To be candid, a lot of what’s influenced my photography has actually come from motion pictures — I’m a big fan of Ron Fricke’s cinematography, with Koyaanisqatsi being his magnum opus. I’m also pretty heavily enamored with the wide-angle symmetrical style employed in most Kubrick films.

PP: Is there anything else you’d like to say to PetaPixel readers?

RM: Only to re-emphasize that if you plan to ever go out and take photographs of storms it is absolutely crucial that you first learn about storms — how they are structured, and how to avoid unexpected encounters potentially fatal hazards. Storm chasing is actually a much, much safer activity than it appears to be, but only if you approach it cautiously and with knowledge.

Image credit: Fisher Price 110 camera by electric.porcupine [bmazz.tumblr.com]. All other photos by Ryan McGinnis and used with permission

Haje Jan Kamps is the entrepreneur behind the Triggertrap and the blogger behind Photocritic.org.

PetaPixel: Can you tell quickly describe the Triggertrap for people who haven’t heard of it yet?

Haje Jan Kamps: Triggertrap is an universal camera trigger. It’s “universal”, because it’s designed to connect just about any trigger source to nearly any camera. Right now, we’re supporting more than a hundred camera models, but we’re adding new cameras to our Supported Cameras list all the time.

The device has a sound and light sensor built in, and it can do linear and non-linear time-lapses. I’m most excited about the auxiliary port, though, which enables users to connect nearly anything they want to the device. One reader suggested connecting it to the final buzzer they use at basketball games, to take a photo of the state of play just when the buzzer sounds — what a great idea!

PP: How did you come up with the idea?

HJK: I’ve been building photography gadgets with my Arduino for years, and just decided to kick it up a notch — creating my first ever retail product.

PP: Why did you choose to fund the project through Kickstarter?

HJK: Over the past few months, I was talking to a few possible investors, and whilst I did get a fair bit of interest, nobody was able to give me an offer that sounded particularly like what I was looking for.

Kickstarter is a much better proposition all around: They do take a 5% cut of the money (and Amazon, who deal with the payments, take a similar chunk of money), but there’s something awesomely Web 2.0 and grassroots about this type of funding. Because people believe in the product, they are happy to take a small risk by pre-ordering one — and the money I receive for the pre-orders is enough to tool up the production line to get the Triggertraps made. It’s a perfect way of getting things started!

PP: Did the amount of attention you got exceed your expectations?

HJK: Oh definitely. The media — spearheaded by PetaPixel — went nuts over the product, and it was featured in Wired, Gizmodo, Engadget, and dozens of other gadget and photo blogs. It’s really quite extraordinary!

PP: What are the next steps now that you’ve secured more than enough funding?

HJK: Well, I have my good friend Michael working on the final tweaks to the prototype — we discovered that the sound sensor wasn’t quite sensitive enough, so we’re replacing it with a microphone and amplifier, which also means updating the PCB we had designed, so there’s still some design tweaks to do here and there. We’re also in the middle of writing the software for it, and we’re implementing a few of the suggestions that were made by Kickstarter backers.

For example, somebody suggested a ‘manual’ mode: press one of the buttons to take a photo. It’s really obvious, of course, but we hadn’t even thought of that some people might want to use their Triggertrap as a ‘normal’ wired or wireless remote. So Manual Mode is the fifth main operating mode we are including (in addition to sound, laser, timelapse and Aux).

In addition, we had a lot of other good suggestions for tweaks and people’s wishlists, so we’re implementing more of those things as well. After that, it’s another round of prototyping. If it starts looking good, the real excitement begins: production!

PP: What are the most challenging aspects of bringing this product to market?

HJK: So far, the most challenging thing has been getting the budgets to line up. I’ll be honest with you: it may have been a mistake to list the Triggertrap at only $75, and it’s not looking like I’ll make any money off the Kickstarter project. But that doesn’t really matter: Kickstarter was never about making money — it was about getting the required start-up capital to be able to manufacture the first batch of the Triggertrap — and that seems to be going really well. Now I just hope that I won’t lose too much money on the first batch of the device — and that people will continue buying the Triggertrap after it launches properly to the greater, non-Kickstarter public.

I think the real challenge is that I don’t have a lot of experience with this sort of thing — I don’t know the costs of manufacturing, so there has been a lot of research and getting additional quotes for everything I’ve done. If someone tells me that it costs $15,000 to make an enclosure, then I just blink in disbelief — but because I have no frame of reference, I have no idea whether I’m getting the bargain of a lifetime, or if I’m about to be seriously ripped off. Getting multiple quotes helps for that.

For a while, I had a bit of a panic about money, and came very close to cancelling the whole Kickstarter project: It looked as if Triggertrap and Amazon would take 10%, the US government would tax it for 15%, that I would have to pay 28.25% taxes to get the devices exported from the manufacturer to the UK, and another 25% on any profits I make. When you plug those numbers into a spreadsheet, basically there’s no way you could build the Triggertraps and break even. I found a good tax and import/export advisor, and paid them a fair amount of money to sort it all out, and it became viable again once they worked their magic on the numbers.

It’s a pretty unnerving experience, but I think I can safely say that I’ve learned a hell of a lot over the past few months — and it’s thrilling to see how excited people are about the Triggertrap. That makes it all worth it, I think.

PP: How many people are involved in the project, and what are your responsibilities?

HJK: At the moment, there are four of us. I’m the brains of the operation (forgive me for adding a ‘lol’ to that statement). In addition there’s Noah, who’s our resident code warrior, and Michael, who’s my hardware expert. Together, they are NoMi design, and they’re absolutely fantastic. Without them, Triggertrap wouldn’t have happened. Finally, there’s Ziah, who is helping out with some of the writing for Triggertrap.com, and she helped make the pitch video for Triggertrap as well.

PP: What’s your own background in this kind of thing?

HJK: I’m a relatively competent programmer, and I’ve been hacking together photo gadgets based on Arduino for many years now. Most of the time, I build a one-off device using a breadboard and a rapid prototyping approach, use the device in my photography projects, and then dismantle it. I figured that this time, I just wanted to build something a little bit more permanent.

I do have a background in project manangement, though — I was the launch editor on T3.com (which still haven’t covered the Triggertrap — scoundrels!) — and I launched fwd.five.tv, the website for The Gadget Show and the Fifth Gear TV programmes here in the UK.

I suppose my main role in all of this is having ‘domain knowledge’ — i.e. I know and understand photography — and to project-manage the whole thing to fruition, including dealing with the money side of things, planning, and doing a lot of banging my head against the wall in confusion.

Ultimately, though, as I’ve said, it’s a thrill to see how it’s all coming together. As I’m writing this, 463 Triggertraps have been sold to more than 430 different people. I know that my books are printed in tens of thousands of copies, and that probably many more people have heard of me that way than via Triggertrap, but there’s something much more ‘real’ about the people buying Triggertraps, for some reason: They have names, wishes, and excitement that I’m able to interact with, and that’s a very different way of perceiving my audience than a number on the royalty statements from my publishers.

PP: What have you learned about entrepreneurship so far?

HJK: That it’s a hell of a lot more work than you’d dream of. I think Triggertrap has taken up 100% of my time over the past few months — much to the chagrin of my publisher, I might add. But also, that you’ve never truly felt alive unless you’ve created something awesome. :)

PP: If you could start over, is there anything you’d do differently?

HJK: I think I would get more advice from people who have been through the process before. I eventually got someone to talk me through the whole process from start to finish, and that little bit of additional perspective helped a lot.

Also, I think I would have done more detailed budgets before I would have launched it on Kickstarter.

PP: What advice do you have for people with ideas that they want to turn into a product?

HJK: Balls to the wall: do it. It’s an incredible experience, and the Interwebs loves a good idea — you just have to be passionate and prepare to lose a lot of sleep!

PP: Anything else you want to say to PetaPixel readers?

HJK: Well, in 2 weeks, when the Triggertrap funds on Kickstarter, the price is going to jump from $75 to $125 — so here’s your chance to get a Triggertrap at a 40% discount!

PetaPixel: Can you tell me a little about yourself and your background?

Oleg Gutsol: Ian and I met during our university years at Ryerson, around 2004. He was in business and finance program and I was in computer science. We both liked photography, travel and motorcycles, so there were some common points of interest. I think we both shared a passion for working on something meaningful, and although then we were not working together, we both were exploring opportunities to start our own business.

PP: What is 500px? Can you tell us the story of how the service came about?

OG: 500px started as a LiveJournal community in 2003. The rules of the community were simple: you could submit a photo for review and a) it had to artistic, b) it had to be 500 pixels wide. The monitors in 2003 were much smaller size and 500 pixels was a good width for a photo. The community gained some popularity and Ian decided to launch a separate website with the same rules, and in early 2006 he did. The website was interesting, but the model did not seem very scalable — it relied on a manual review of all submitted photos, which was difficult to do with any meaningful volume. It was also hard for Ian develop the site, since he is not a software developer.

In early 2008 we talked about collaboration and decided to change how 500px worked and open it to everybody to be able to upload photos. The challenge was — how do we keep the same quality of the photos if we allow everyone to upload whatever they like? We though about it for some time, playing with different options, but in the end we though this: let the community decide which photos are good. So we developed algorithms that would rely on user feedback and interactions. In the process, we scrapped the old system and built the new one from scratch. We relaunched the new site on Halloween night 2009 — I still have a photo of us coding next to the pumpkin head.

From that time we kept adding some features and fixing bugs as the community grew. In the middle of the summer of 2010 we moved all images to the cloud, since we ran out of storage on our server in Toronto. By the end of 2010 we started having problems with server resources and in Jan 2011 I moved the site to the could completely. Since launch 1.5 years ago we grew from 20,000 monthly visitors to 2 million monthly visitors and traffic keeps growing.

PP: What advantages does 500px have over its competitors?

OG: I think the main advantage is the quality of our photos. We also have a strong community of very talented photographers. In terms of products we offer — everybody can build their own portfolio on our platform, and it is very easy to do. Also, you can sell prints of your photos on our site, just turn on the store in the settings.

PP: How large is the company at this point?

OG: Up until a month it was just Ian and myself working on 500px. Recently, we got a salesperson and a mobile developer, we are planning to add two more developers in the next couple of months. We are a small, but dedicated team.

PP: Where is your headquarters located?

OG: We are located in Toronto, Canada. Our office is in the heart of Toronto @ Dundas Square.

PP: How are you funded?

OG: The company is bootstrapped from the very beginning, we cover all the business expenses ourselves. Quoting one of my friends: “Our investments strategy is to take money from customers. Because they don’t expect it back”

PP: What’s your own background in photography?

OG: Both Ian and I like photography, both of us used to do photography professionally for a bit, but both of us are not doing it professionally any more. We like to go on photo trips and shoot with a group of people. You can take a look at some of our photo works on my site and Ian’s site. Some of my latest photo trips were in the jungle of Peru and Ian’s latest photo trip was in California.

PP: What equipment do you use these days?

OG: If you are talking about professional photo equipment, I use a Nikon system and Ian uses a Canon system. I like animal photography, so I use a 70-200 telephoto for this, and a 500mm sometimes. But lately, iPhones and Instagram is our photo equipment for everyday photography. We are both pretty active Instagram users and you can follow us (@cyberguss, @iansobolev) to see what we are up to day-to-day.

PP: How many register members do you currently have, and how many are registering per day?

OG: We have 80K users and we have almost 1000 users joining us daily now. We have doubled the number of users in the past two month.

PP: What are your goals with the service, and where do you see it headed?

OG: We always wanted to create the best photo website, with the best photos and the best services for photographers. This is what we are working towards. We want 500px to be the place for the best photography in the world.

PP: What are your thoughts on copyrights, and do you offer Creative Commons licenses?

OG: I think copyright is great, I think photographers want to keep the copyright to their work, regardless of where they want to share it. Unlike some services online, we do not claim any copyright to our users’ work, it is up to the user to determine how his or her work can be used. Regarding creative commons — we explored this issue and believe that it does not add any value to our users, since it is not enforceable in any country yet. If this changes — we will definitely consider a CC licence.

PP: How is 500px capitalizing on the recent boom in cell phone photography?

OG: In short — we currently do not. But we have a number of mobile apps planned, some will be coming this summer, so stay tuned. Also, we saw several 500px user profiles with photos from Instagram and the like, and those photos looked really great, so mobile photography is something we definitely will explore.

PP: Do you know if a large portion of your new users are coming from other photo sharing services?

OG: Most of our users have accounts with other photo sharing web services. A lot of the talk happens around comparison of our features to Flickr.

PP: Why did you decide to price your upgrade at $50 when other sites are cheaper?

OG: The calculation was simple — our premium portfolios provide a fast and easy way to create your own personal website. Most of the photographers need a way to display there work and have a way for their visitors to contact them. If you were to get the cheapest hosting plan — it would cost you $5/month. On top of that you would need to design, code and maintain your website. So, for less than the price of the hosting plan, we will provide tools to manage your personal photo portfolio. This let’s the photographers focus on their main activity — taking great photos.

PP: How many photographs are uploaded every day at this point, and how much data are you storing?

OG: Currently, we see about 4000-5000 photos uploaded daily. We are storing approximately 750,000 photos and serving around 250GB of photos per day.

PP: Who do you consider your closest competitors?

OG: Our closes competitors in terms of portfolio services are Carbonmade and Virb, and also sites like SmugMug, Photoshelter and, of course, Flickr.

PP: Anything else you’d like to say to PetaPixel readers?

OG: We love PetaPixel — it is a great resource for anybody interested in photography. If any of you PetaPixel readers would like to try 500px and have any suggestions or comments about the site — please let us know on our twitter or by email.

PetaPixel: Could you tell us a little about yourself and your background?

Jonathan Blaustein: I’m a photographer, writer, and professor based in Taos, New Mexico, originally from New Jersey (who isn’t?). In addition to my career as a photographer, I’m also a correspondent for the photo industry blog A Photo Editor. My family and I live in a little horse pasture at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, far from everywhere. I’m pretty fortunate, as Northern New Mexico has a really vibrant photography scene, and of course our light is legendary. As far as my background goes, I first studied History and Economics at Duke University, but returned to school to study photography, and I have an MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. I’ve been a practicing artist for the last 15 years, and my work has been exhibited in galleries, alternative spaces and museums around the United States.

PP: How did you first get started in photography, and what was your first camera?

JB: It’s kind of silly, but I began taking pictures for the most random of reasons. It was December of 1996, and I’d just finished working on a film production in New York called “Devil’s Advocate” with Al Pacino (crappy crew job, and I got fired). Anyway, I was headed out on a big solo cross-country drive to move back to New Mexico. I had the idea to buy a few rolls of black and white film for a cheap little automatic 35mm point-and-shoot that I’d been given for my high school graduation. To this day, I still don’t know where the motivation came from, as I’d never been into photography before. I started shooting as I got into the car, and was totally overwhelmed by the experience. The camera allowed me to see the world in a much deeper, more interesting way. By the time I got to Texas, I was sure that I’d found my passion and career path. Shortly thereafter, I returned to school at UNM in Albuquerque, and worked with a manual, 35mm Minolta for a couple of years before switching to an Olympus OM-1.

PP: What equipment do you shoot with nowadays?

JB: Brand loyalty is a funny thing. I still shoot with Olympus, but now it’s a digital SLR. “The Value of a Dollar” was shot with an Olympus E-3 and a Panasonic-Leica 25mm 1.4 lens. Razor sharp. I also recently got an Olympus EPL-1 with an adapter to use the same lens for video, which is something I’m excited about experimenting with in the future.

PP: How would you describe your photography to someone who has never seen it?

JB: Well, I’m interested in making photographs that have ideas, meaning and a conceptual structure embedded within. I try hard to balance the power of aesthetics with the power of ideas. I like to mash-up the beautiful with the grotesque, because I believe in creating juxtaposition and relationships between images. “The Value of a Dollar” photographs are simple and clean, but that structure allows a viewer to really focus on the objects themselves, and way food can symbolize issues like class, poverty, globalization, and America’s obesity epidemic. I’m currently working on a new project that will tackle another pressing issue in 21st Century society, which I’ll be releasing later this year.

PP: How did your “Value of a Dollar” project come about, and what was the process like?

JB: I tend to get an idea and let it gestate for a while before I begin making photographs. In this case, in the fall of 2007, I began thinking about the way photography is used to sell food. Out here in the West, we have billboards and semi-trucks that will depict 20′ high fast food cheeseburgers that bear no resemblance to the real thing. Everyone knows that the pictures don’t show what the food looks like, but the images are so powerful that they entice people to buy toxic crap that has led to an epidemic of obesity and diabetes in this country. So I started to wonder what the food actually looks like, as opposed to what they display in advertising imagery.

I began shopping for food in the spring of 2008, as the economy was really tanking. Shopping, consuming, is the heart of the American culture and economy, so it seemed like the right way to make art. I’d shop for food in my local area, and look for items that I thought were both visually and symbolically interesting. I wanted each photograph to represent a dollar so that each image would be the commodified equivalent of every other image. I shot everything as is, with only natural lighting in my studio. I’ve got a white table and white walls, so the picture style was pretty straightforward. As I built the series, I was able to tackle a slew of issues, and learn more about the global supply chain for food in the 21st Century.

PP: How did you spread the word about your project?

JB: It began pretty conventionally. I debuted the pictures in the Biennial Southwest ’08 art exhibition at the Albuquerque Museum, and then showed a few more in a gallery in Santa Fe. I attended the Review Santa Fe portfolio review in the summer of 2009, and several of my fellow attendees began to blog about the work. Andy Adams at Flak Photo also published one image, which then popped up on a few more blogs around the world. It was a slow build from there, until the New York Times published the project on the Lens Blog in the fall of 2010. Within hours all hell broke loose.

PP: What was it like for the project to go viral?

JB: Even seven months later, it’s still hard to process. Being in the NY Times was such a huge honor, but I really never thought it would go much beyond that. Almost immediately, the pictures were everywhere. I didn’t even think to check my stats counter until a few days later, and the hits were off the charts. 500,000 hits within the first week to my site alone. The requests for interviews came in from a few foreign press organizations, but mostly regular people were using Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr to tell and show their friends. A wise advisor of mine recommended that I document the process through screen grabs, so I now have almost 400 images of my photographs published in like 15 languages. They were showing up in such a wide range of websites: humor, hunger, politics, economics, style, fashion, design, architecture, art, food, photography. Totally insane. To date, the photos have been seen by more than a million people in 128 countries.

But what was it like? Gratifying and confusing at the same time. Most people weren’t asking permission, and some aggregator sites were clearly making money off of posting the work. I’m a pretty digitally literate guy, so I accepted that it was a function of our Internet-based world, and tried to enjoy the ride. Seeing average people engage with contemporary art was thrilling. On the flip side, everyone kept asking me how I was going to “monetize” it, which became tiresome. Lo and behold, six months later, all the attention led to these acquisitions.

PP: Can you tell us about the experience of having your work acquired by the State of New Mexico?

JB: I’m fortunate to live in a State that publicly supports the arts, though of course such programs are now being threatened. I saw an online Call for Entries for an acquisition program, and planned to submit some pictures. A friend had received a public commission through the same organization, New Mexico Arts, and she suggested I email a few people there directly to introduce myself. So I did, and then I added them to my email list. After the NY Times piece went viral, I sent out an email about the story and the viral sensation. (Which also led to an interview on American Public Media’s “Marketplace.”) The program manager from NM Arts responded to my email blast and said he’d like to get together to discuss an acquisition. I’ve learned over time that one has to be really patient with such things, so it ended up taking four months or so to get a meeting. The entire staff was familiar with my work by then, but the prints are pretty special, and after showing them a unique portfolio that I’d made, they let me know they’d like to buy the entire lot. I kept a cool head, and we negotiated a deal pretty quickly and easily. After shaking hands, I had one of the biggest serotonin rushes of my life. It was just awesome.

PP: How about being acquired by the Library of Congress?

JB: I met one of the photography curators, Verna Curtis, at the Review Santa Fe portfolio review last June.

We had a great conversation, and she was very taken with the project. She told me on the spot that she’d like to acquire the work for their collection, and I was thrilled. But she also said that she couldn’t be sure if she could get the funding, and that regardless she wouldn’t know until the Fall, when the fiscal year turned over. Ms. Curtis asked me to follow up with her in late September, which I did. It took many months of emailing back and forth from there, but again, I remained patient. I got word that the acquisition had been given final approval quite recently.

PP: How do you go about setting a price tag on a collection of photographs?

JB: Most fine artists have a price set for images that they’re offering within an edition. So that’s already established beforehand, in most cases. These two deals were a bit irregular, though. The State of New Mexico wanted to buy my master set of prints, which were in a different size, and one-of-a-kind. I’d made them to submit to a very important fellowship, (which I didn’t receive), and the prints were really gorgeous and perfect. I made it clear that as they were unique, the price would have to be high, and the NM Arts folks were OK with that. I came up with a number that I thought was fair, and in line with my current market prices, and they came up with the same number. So we were done.

With the Library of Congress, it was made clear to me that their budget was severely limited, as we all know the Federal Government is in a huge fiscal crisis right now. The LoC also wanted prints from an edition of 10, which I’ve just begun to sell. I’m a fairly patriotic guy, and the prospect of having my work deemed worthy of the historical archive of the United States was pretty mind-blowing, so I gave them the best deal I possibly could. They accepted the offer a few months later.

PP: What are the main lessons you learned from your experience with “The Value of a Dollar”?

JB: That’s an interesting question. I’d say that I’ve been most impressed with the fact that the Internet really is the perfect vehicle for information dissemination. Pictures can get out into the world and be seen by almost everyone, everywhere. Sometimes simultaneously. I also learned that there is a hunger for art and imagery that conveys ideas, challenges convention, and communicates information clearly. “The Value of a Dollar” photos don’t really need much text, so they prove that visual communication is ever more important in the 21st Century. No Google translation algorithm necessary.

Finally, I’d say that it’s smart to try to get to a good idea before everyone else. I made work about food because it’s a huge, huge part of my life. (I know we all have to eat, which is part of the point, but some do take the process more seriously than others.) I was also aware that I’d never seen photographs like the ones I was making, and that beyond traditional still lives, I hadn’t seen food addressed as a major subject in contemporary art. So the work was already made and battle-tested before food became such a hot topic within global culture.

Lastly, I’d say that I learned that the New York Times is definitely on to something with the Lens Blog. Time recently came out with a similar concept, Lightbox. It’s true that they don’t pay, which some find unfortunate, but when the biggest news organizations in the word throw their weight behind photography, over the Internet, the reach is limitless.

PP: What advice do you have for aspiring photographers?

JB: Look at great art as often as possible. Find your voice. Take risks. Don’t try to make photographs that look exactly like all the photographs you’ve seen before. Dig deep into your own personal narrative, your vision, your community, your culture. We’re all unique, but the deeper we search into our own individuality, the more likely we are to hit what Jung called the Collective Unconscious: the universal part of the human condition that everyone can relate to. Also, don’t be afraid to be honest about how you perceive the world, politically or otherwise.

I’d also recommend going to school, but only if it’s affordable. And building a community and network of friends and peers. That’s huge. No one gets better without practice, help and constructive criticism.

PP: Who are your favorite photographers, and where do you get inspiration from?

JB: My list of favorite photographers is really long. Off the top of my head, I’d say August Sander, Robert Frank, Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Stephen Shore, Cristina Garcia Rodero, Thomas Demand, Taryn Simon, Julia Margaret Cameron, John Baldessari, some of Thomas Struth’s early work, Richard Misrach, the Bechers. I’m sure I’m forgetting some big ones.

With respect to inspiration, I try to look at as many different kinds of art as possible, both contemporary and historical, and film as well. Through the years, I’ve been hugely influenced by old-school artists like Caravaggio, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Duchamp, Mondrian, Picasso, Velázquez, and Andy Warhol. “The Value of a Dollar” was primarily inspired by Warhol, and Southern Song Chinese Landscape painting from the 12th & 13th Century. I studied a lot of Non-Western art in graduate school, and at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and I’d certainly recommend it.

Right now, I’m loving some of the great long-form narrative that’s being done on American television. Netflix is so great for that. Matthew Weiner’s “Mad Men” and David Simon’s “The Wire” and “Treme” are definitely inspirational to me. There’s just so much great work being made around the world in so many ways, I try to stay engaged as much as possible. Speaking of which, Free Ai Weiwei.

Here’s a neat behind-the-scenes video by Samsung featuring short interviews with the developers and engineers behind its NX lenses. One of the things I found interesting was how the engineers are constantly working to overcome the prejudice that Korean-made lenses are inferior to those crafted in Japan or Germany. The video also briefly shows a Samsung 300mm f2.8 XF ED lens — a lens that doesn’t officially exist.

(via 1001 Noisy Cameras)

PetaPixel: Could you tell us a little about yourself and your background?

Yuri Arcurs: I was born in 1976 in Aarhus, Denmark, where I still live with my fiance, Cecilie, and our dog, Maff. As a child I spent some years in the U.S. but I returned to Denmark and joined the army, and later on I continued with my studies in Psychology at Aarhus Univerity. These days I feel like I’m not doing much else besides stock photography, but when I do have time for other things I really enjoy a good work-out. I have always been a very active person, which was probably one of the reasons I joined the army when I was younger, but right now I try to focus all of my energy on stock. So, unfortunately, marathons and the likes will have to wait!

PP: How did you first get into photography?

YA: I have always been into photography. I got my first camera when I was in the sixth grade, and ever since that day I have loved it. At first, I didn’t see it as more than a hobby, but as digital photography became accessible and a lot of the means of production became easier, I started seeing it as having the potential to be more than just a hobby.

PP: What was your first camera?

YA: My first camera (not counting the one I had as a child) was a Canon Powershot G7. It seems very old fashioned today but it was actually a very good camera. It is a simple point and shoot camera which I bought in 2004, but I only used it for about 3 months. During that time I made around 100 stock images and by selling these I could afford a new camera: A Canon Digital Rebel XTi D5. But I actually really like my first camera. In general, I really like the Canon Powershot cameras. I can still look at some of those old images shot with the G7 and feel proud.

PP: What are the primary cameras and lenses you use now?

YA: I use my Nikon 3DX for almost everything I shoot, and for that I use a AF-S NIKKOR 85mm f/1.4G lens most of the time. It’s brilliant for portraits as it gives a very nice blurry background.

For wide normal perspective I use a NIKON AF-S 50mm 1.4G Ø58, and sometimes I use an AF NIKKOR 14mm f/2.8D ED for ultra wide.

I use my Canon 5D and the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, and when shooting with Canon I usually use my Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM Autofocus Lens. It’s the fastest glass in its class, and it’s fantastic for portraits as it gives the same kind of blurry background as the AF-S NIKKOR first mentioned. For wide normal perspective I use a Canon EF 50 mm/1.4 USM Ø58.

On top of that I use my Hasselblad on 40% of all my shoots because of the resolution and the unbelievablly sharp images I get.

PP: How did you first get into stock photography?

YA: While studying for my bachelor degree in Psychology at Aarhus University here in Denmark, I discovered stock photography. I started shooting stock images at campus using my friends as models. It was only fun and games at first, but I soon saw a great potential in what I had first seen as only a hobby. After having researched a lot of the issues concerning stock, I started setting up more specific shoots. I planned in great detail every aspect of the shoot based on what worked for selling images: Specific types of models, certain setups, body language, themes…. And soon my images started selling very well. :)

PP: How difficult is it to get into microstock and do well?

YA: Getting into microstock today is very hard. I really wish I could be more optimistic but I can’t if I have to be completely honest. I’m not sure that I would have been able to break into the business today like I did it 5 years ago. It really is an exceptionally competitive business right now.

If you have to do well in the business today you’ll have to focus on two major things: First, youl’ll have to shoot things that you have easy access to. Your network becomes very important in this way. If you know a doctor and can get easy access to medical facilities or anything like this. Anyone you know who might be involved in something which can make up a great shoot location and who can provide you with props for free. Basically, you’ll have to focus on doing shoots at very low costs and which do not involve you taking risks.

Second, you should shoot stuff you know a lot about. If, for instance, you’re interested in, lets say, air acrobatics on bicycles you’ll be able to shoot this much better than any photographer who just takes this on as another job. You have easy access to it and you’ll be able to get all the details exactly right.

But even complying to these two major issues, it’s not going to be easy at all getting into the industry.

PP: What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned so far in your photographic career?

YA: Being humble and calm trumps a thousand arguments. I’ve never been a screamer on the forums, and I’ve never gone completely crazy. I put a lot of thoughts into what I write, and I think that a lot of the credibility I’m given in the community is due to me thinking before I write anything.

I’ve also come to learn how it’s like to be a public person. Everybody weighs every single word you utter, and everything can be used against you. Whatever you say will be twisted and turned, and it will be analyzed in much greater detail than you yourself have time to do. This I’ve come to learn the hard way, and I think even more carefully about what I say now than ever before.

PP: What are the biggest mistakes you see microstock photographers making?

YA: I see a lot of photographers shooting the same stuff over and over again. They really need to shoot new material, but they stick to what they know.

I also see a lot of photographers forgetting to shoot stuff that is in high demand. They shoot what they want to shoot and what they feel like shooting, but that’s not going to sell. They pursue their hearts and passions when they should pursue the sales.

PP: What does a typical workday look like for you?

YA: If I’m not shooting, I usually get into the office at 9am. Then I have meetings until 12. Meetings regarding shoot plans, meeting with the audio team, the creative team, the programming team… Then I have lunch at noon, and after lunch I’ll typically review and edit some images. I’ll usually spend some time researching inspiration, planning video blogs, normal blog posts and different kinds of marketing. I’ll acquire new gear, look at new gear, pack some gear. I often spend some time sorting finances with my CFO as well, and around 5pm or a little later I’ll go home.

If I’m shooting, my day will look a lot different. I get up early as shoot starts at 9am. The models will be ready at 9am as well. Then I’ll be shooting until noon, and we’ll all have lunch. After lunch we’ll shoot for another 4 or 5 hours, and then I might have a beer or two with the crew, and we’ll talk about the day. We’ll go out and eat some great food, and after that I’ll look at images and upload them. I’ll reflect on mistakes made during the day and think of possible improvements, and finally we’ll have a team meeting in order to plan the next day.

PP: What is the process you go through for finding models for your shoots, and how do you choose between them?

YA: I usually call my favorite model agencies and ask for castings. I am relatively critical when it comes to choosing models.

I do have a few favorites. It has taken a lot of time to find these favorites, but now I hire them again and again as they are absolutely great.

Many models I also contact directly. Especially if they are very well paid super models.

PP: What are some hot subjects for stock photography that are currently in demand?

YA: Right now a lot of political subjects seem to be in high demand… Environmental issues, Japan crises, freedom symbols, religious symbols. It changes a lot, and it changes fast. You have to constantly keep up.

PP: What are some main things that help a stock photograph sell well?

YA: The most important thing is really to understand what you are shooting for. Many people just duplicate a shot but do not really understand why the shot sells. They are just firing in the blind. You have to understand exactly why the shot sells so that you can do it better, newer and different, but still maintain what it is that makes it sell well.

PP: What changes have you seen in the stock photography industry, and where do you see things headed?

YA: The industry has become exceptionally competitive. When I started out it really was not competitive at all, but today it is enormously competitive, and I think we will see even more competitiveness in the future. There are so many stock photographers now, and many of them are extremely skilled. It is always difficult to see where things are heading, but I think it is safe to say that making a living of stock photography will be something only a few people will be able to do in the future. You really have to know what you are doing. Especially because in many shoots you actually start out with a minus. Before you even start the actual shoot, you will have paid a lot of money — to the models, for the locations, the stylist…. Because of this, it becomes quite risky to even do a real shoot if you do not know what you are doing.

PP: Who are some of your favorite photographers?

YA: There are simply so many that I do not know where to start.

I think that a lot of my new competitors are very good. I often think that some of them are even better than me. But no one mentioned, no one forgotten. :)

PP: Is there anything else you would like to say to PetaPixel readers?

YA: Keep the spirit high. Don’t be another angry photographer with hurt feelings as we have plenty of those. Learn from your mistakes and love them because they make you better than you were before you made them.

I seek out people who are exceptionally critical, and I make sure that I have them close by me at all times so that things which I see as being great get hammered to the ground. I do this intentionally, and I actually pay for it.