That is one of the questions posed by the Crowdsourcing author Jeff Howe. His recent book is an expansion of his original Wired Magazine feature that included me in the role of a coalmine canary.

I was the first known example of a professional, commercial photographer losing out on licensing a group of photos to the National Health Museum (NHM)  in Washington, DC. to the world of microstock photography. The project manager on an interactive kiosk called and first tried to impress me with the prime D.C. Mall Location, the building designed by a famous architect and the style of the interactive display by a leading Australian design firm. She then proceeded to inform me that their budget had been spent on all of these other impressive features and perhaps I would be honored to be included in their inaugural displays at two science museums.

I’m always happy to be involved with worthy projects when everyone else if donating their time. But when I’m the only one doing the donating I’m less inclined. In this case a new source was available and now cheap stock photos were available from amateur photographers to fill up the custom designed displays.

The microstock crowd love to talk about how their cheap source of photography simply opens up a new market for images. They talk about uses that could be right for the low $1-3 fee for using the photo like a school report or a church bulletin. But with no restrictions on the use for only those small projects any normal commercial user could also pull from the same pool of images. The NHM experience was an example that someone more concerned about their marketing budget then their return would go for the cheap fix instead of meaningful communications.

As a member of an international group of professional stock photographers that I helped form, called the Stock Artist Alliance (SAA). I posted my experience our email group seeing if this was becoming a trend or simple an odd customer interaction.

Months later when Jeff Howe called the SAA’s Executive Director Betsy Reid about what he saw as an example of the new trend of Crowdsourcing she recalled my post and I became the poster boy for the feature.

The original phone call from the NHM occurred almost four years ago, since that time the NHM is still a dream looking for a reality – now in Atlanta instead of the Washington Mall. There is still talk of a famous architect and interactive designer and they still use bad and perhaps cheap photography.

The major stock photo outlets, led by Getty Images decided that it was better to join the emerging trend instead of fighting for their market. They bought the main supplier of cheap photos and watched their stock price collapse along with the fees that can be charged now for a stock photograph.

Medical researcher in an islet cell lab. 

I still create and send a number of my photos out to my stock photo outlets, but I now wonder if it even worth the investment of my time to even caption and keyword the images for distribution. More of my time is now spent connecting with clients directly that share my vision in the assignment world instead of relying on an agent that believe that photographs are a mere widget in their investment banking inspired business plan.

Scott Fincher also gets credit for starting me on the quest for “quality light” (see previous post). At first I had no idea what this meant. I could though see that there was something extraordinary about two of his photos. When I asked what made these two images so special he answered with the cryptic quality light explanation.

I may have nodded my head as acted as if I understood what he meant when in reality I didn’t have a clue.

We have recently reconnected and Scott reveals his lighting source and his process of making these two photos.

‘About the light: In the truncated legs photo the source was intense midday light reflected into a structure where the young woman sought shade. It was made in Mississippi when I took a long road trip with a hundred rolls of Tri-X and destinations pulled out of a hat on the news desk of the Sun-Times.

The other pic, which I call “Iago” after the character in Shakespeare’s “Othello,” was shot under strong afternoon daylight. I had been swimming and was walking home. At that time, I always carried a camera (Leica M4). There were some kids who had been to the snake house at Lincoln Park Zoo and acquired the skin shed by a growing snake. We bantered, and I shot. I can’t say that at the moment I consciously recognized the relationship of forms and textures. I was just “into it.” The kids were having a grand time flipping the shedded skin. I was having a grand time shooting it. Texture was and is an important thing to me. Timing counts too and perhaps is everything.” 

 At that time I was still struggling with the supplying the correct quantity of light to the film. Remember this was the days of film; there was no digital preview. I was lucky to have a camera with a new fangled, built-in light meter.

Much like Robert Pirsig in his classic quest for quality in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. My mission was to discover what quality of light was and how learn how to find it and later create the light.

What once was an exercise of learning the difference between front-light and backlight, sunlight and shade I slowly learned to look for the catch-light in the eye of the model on magazine covers for clues. I later started to watch movies and TV shows with an eye for how the stars were lit as much for the plot.

In this night-time photo of a USC cheerleader you can see both the catch light in her eyes as well as the strong backlight of the stadium lights on the opposite side of the field.

One way to see low and high quality lighting is to quickly switch between a daytime soap opera (especially the Spanish language ones) and a movie channel. The soaps are stuck in time and have short shooting schedules that don’t allow for the refinement of lighting on the set. Whereas most movies have both the action and lighting crafted around one camera and possess the luxury of time, crew and tools to perfect the light.

The lone photographer working alone in the world needs to learn how to see quality light in the wild. Ernst Haas believed that he could find good light at any part of the day “ he didn’t need to shoot only at sunrise and sunset. He had the ability to follow the light. He could shoot indoors or in open shade at high noon or backlit in mid-morning and afternoon. Different color temperatures and harsh or soft light in his hand “were all part of the effect” as he would say.

Ernst Haas leading a seminar I attended in Los Angeles in 1982.

Once you learn to see the light, you can them move to the next step of making quality light with hot light or studio strobes. I teach a class on this from time to time at the Julia Dean Photo Workshops. We take a field trip to the multi-angled Frank Gehry designed Disney Hall where just about every background is spectacular and the lighting formula changes every time you turn the corner.  You can sign up for the weekend if you’re in Los Angeles in November, or just visit Disney Hall yourself. The exterior and most of the interior is a public space.

Disney Hall bathed in special opening night lighting.

NPR has a wonderful feature on how “The Americans” change photography.

There will be many deserved celebrations on the 50^th anniversary of the publishing of Robert Frank’s seminal book “The Americans”. For me I will be celebrated the 31^st year that seeing the book changed my life.

I was still in college and visiting Chicago, supposedly to walk into an amazing internship with successful studio photographer Gus Gregory. Another student, one of my photography/quantum mechanics teacher, Paul Corneil, had started the internship, and this was my chance to continue the tradition.

What disrupted the plan was seeing a copy of The Americans the night before.

This was the end of a summer where I was playing Charles Kuralt with a still camera on a bike. I rode with my friend Jim around Western Michigan looking for the quirky out of the way stories that The Grand Rapids Press didn’t normally cover. The film and our attempts at writing a story were mailed back and converted into features that normally ran in the Sunday magazine. We featured an Olympic bicycle coach that was running an early, successful mail-order business of racing bike supplies out of Cadillac, witnessed the home-town President Jerry Ford, being upstaged in a Traverse City cherry-blossom parade by Ronald McDonald and the Hambugler, and were one of the few audience members to see Chubby Checkers twist the night away in a Cheboygan High School gymnasium that was nearly empty because of two weddings in town that were scheduled the same night.

Our first feature on Olympic bicycle coach Gene Portuesi.

On the final story we covered, a magician’s conclave, I met Chicago Sun-Times staffer Scott Fincher taking photos as well. A conclave is a gathering in of magicians and magic fans that happened every year in Colon, the home of Abbott Magic Company. Famed magician Harry Blackstone founded Abbott, and Scott was covering the conclave for the Sunday magazine of his paper. I was mostly in awe of meeting a real staffer from the big city and he was being kind to a young upstart. I mentioned the upcoming trip to Chicago and he volunteered his place as a crash pad.

In addition to being a news photographer, Scott is also a very fine street photographer that was busy preparing a fine art show of his personal work. As we were talking about his photos he mentioned a reference to Robert Frank and after noticing that I was clueless promptly produced a copy of The Americans.

Jack Kerouac has as the most poetic description of how Frank managed to suck “a sad poem right out of America onto film”. I wanted to run out and look for every 50′s jukebox and diner I could find. I had discovered my muse.

Still high on the experienced I biked my way to the studio of Gus Gregory and was given the grand tour of the studio and was showed the results of the recent jobs of shooting hot rollers and stereo speakers. I now appreciate the expertise in both landing these national advertising jobs and the skill involved in lighting these difficult products.

Hot rollers similar to what I saw in Gus Gregory’s studio.

With out the introduction to Robert Frank the night before, I might have been justifiably impressed; instead I’m afraid I came off as under whelmed. Instead I followed the siren song of the street and the printed page.

Echos of the cover of “The Americans” from a GR Press feature on photographers.