model release form

Most of my portrait photography to this point has been of people I know well. For that reason, I've never bothered with model releases. Now that I'm stretching my boundaries a little for the SoFoBoMo project (see earlier posts)... I'm forced to start thinking about the tactical approach.

I've been following a number of blogs on photography rights in the public and have come to learn that a) people in the public may be photographed without consent, but they may give you a very hard time about it b)some social engineering skills are an essential part of the street photographer's toolkit (more on that in a future post) c) a simple non-threatening MRF signed can be a great thing.

Here's a page of mini cards I made based on verbage from online sample Model Releases. Credit to CARFAC and www.lawdepot.com for their free online help.

If you'd like a copy of my format below as a Word document, just drop me an email and I'll be happy to send it to you.

Model Release Mini-card

Publish at Scribd or explore others: How-to-Guides & Manu legal form

Do you see what I see?

This weekend I was reminded that monitors vary wildly and produce very different colour saturation levels as well as different exposure levels for images depending on calibration and use of brightness controls.     I seldom use a laptop for photo work, but when I do, my brightness is cranked up because of the lighting conditions around laptop displays.

When producing high-key and low-key work for online consuption...  there's a big problem in conveying the intended exposures.

I use an LG 30" S-IPS monitor Spyder calibrated every 60 days in a controlled light room.  When viewing from another place, I first check  http://www.displaycalibration.com/brightness_contrast.html

A simple way to check colours in a pinch is the M&Ms test.

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

what can be said... in a word

Tina helped me discover the theme of my book... in a word.

Each model will be asked to write a single word to describe themselves and this will be the caption of their photo.

I plan to have a list of adjectives handy to choose from, but hoping for some originality here.

In response to the question, "how would you describe yourself in a word"...  my 9 year old daughter responded after only a second of reflection... "colourful!"     ...this is going to be fun for me!

High-Key

This is the high-key format I'll be trying to use for my first photobook.

In my opinion, High-Key strips out a lot of unnecessary pixels and leaves only a bare statement on the page, which I really like. It makes me think back to my education on essay writing. The best advice I ever got was to read through and take out as many words as possible without affecting the message of the text.

High-Key is to photography as Haikus are to poetry.

SoFoBoMo is coming!

I've started preparing for SoFoBoMo 2009. Although the rules say all the work has to be done in a 31 day window... I've been experimenting with processing techniques to achieve a consistent look. Having a specific goal is a great motivator.


http://www.sofobomo.org/2009/