Posted by Bob Steele on October 16, 2007 at 12:25 PM
National Geographic Books Birding Essentials, by Jonathan Alderfer and Jon Dunn, will be released very soon. This book should be an essential reference for anyone wanting to improve their birding skills. Improving your skills in identification, better understanding status and distribution, and just knowing more about your intended subject will improve your bird photography skills in general.
I worked as photo researcher/editor for this project. It was my first book project in this capacity and a great experience. A few notes and comments may be of interest:
First, hearty congratulations to Dave Hemmings for the outstanding Snowy Owl image we used as the cover.
You’ll see a number of great images in this book, including many from NPN regulars: Brian Small, Jim Zipp, Paul Fusco, Garth McElroy, Bob Royse, Jim Neiger, Glenn Bartley, Wayne Nicholas, Mike Danzenbaker, and Christina Evans.
Each photo was selected for a specific purpose to illustrate an identification, trait, or behavior. We used personal web sites, want lists, internet searches, and NPN PhotoPortfolios to find these images. Don’t think your portfolio and web site images don’t get looked at by editors, researchers, and authors – they do.
A couple of personal notes I’d like to share, just for information. Take what you wish from this. First of all, web sites built solely on Flash technology drove me nuts. I typically avoided those sites. Also, if right-click downloading of photos was disabled, a photo may have been passed over for something else unless it was very unique. I know this is a controversial topic, but I’m here to tell you that editors and researchers need to be able to use small jpegs as comps in layouts. Time constraints often will not allow contacting a photographer for a comp version of an image. Finally, put your best work out there on your website and portfolio for buyers to see. Keep your heavily cropped images out of your portfolios unless it’s really, really unique. There’s nothing worse for a researcher than finding a great image only to find out there’s not enough pixels to use it.
Thanks to all of you who helped me out with images for this project. It was a lot of fun, and I hope we can do it again soon!
Posted by Jim Erhardt on October 16, 2007 at 2:03 PM
Bob, that is great info and congratulations on being a part of this project!
Posted by Ralph Wolfe on October 17, 2007 at 9:43 AM
Thank you for the great tips They will be of great help to this beginer
Thanks again
Ralph Wolfe
Posted by Nate Chappell on October 22, 2007 at 1:56 AM
Bob, thanks for the advice here. I have a question-at what point would you consider an image heavily cropped for publishing purposes? For example is a horizontal that is cropped to full frame vertical heavily cropped? Thanks
Posted by Bob Steele on October 22, 2007 at 12:30 PM
Nate, I think my comment was more general in nature than the example you provide. For most things, a crop like yours will not be an issue. It's when you have a photo that is cropped 70 or 80% or more, which I've definitely seen posted in the galleries, there is a problem. This assumes the person putting the image in their portfolio is interested in selling their work. That may not always be the case.
Discussion
4 repliesI worked as photo researcher/editor for this project. It was my first book project in this capacity and a great experience. A few notes and comments may be of interest:
First, hearty congratulations to Dave Hemmings for the outstanding Snowy Owl image we used as the cover.
You’ll see a number of great images in this book, including many from NPN regulars: Brian Small, Jim Zipp, Paul Fusco, Garth McElroy, Bob Royse, Jim Neiger, Glenn Bartley, Wayne Nicholas, Mike Danzenbaker, and Christina Evans.
Each photo was selected for a specific purpose to illustrate an identification, trait, or behavior. We used personal web sites, want lists, internet searches, and NPN PhotoPortfolios to find these images. Don’t think your portfolio and web site images don’t get looked at by editors, researchers, and authors – they do.
A couple of personal notes I’d like to share, just for information. Take what you wish from this. First of all, web sites built solely on Flash technology drove me nuts. I typically avoided those sites. Also, if right-click downloading of photos was disabled, a photo may have been passed over for something else unless it was very unique. I know this is a controversial topic, but I’m here to tell you that editors and researchers need to be able to use small jpegs as comps in layouts. Time constraints often will not allow contacting a photographer for a comp version of an image. Finally, put your best work out there on your website and portfolio for buyers to see. Keep your heavily cropped images out of your portfolios unless it’s really, really unique. There’s nothing worse for a researcher than finding a great image only to find out there’s not enough pixels to use it.
Here's a link to the press release
And a link to the book cover
Thanks to all of you who helped me out with images for this project. It was a lot of fun, and I hope we can do it again soon!
Thanks again
Ralph Wolfe