Pet portraits and new competition

Photography News that's Fit to Blog (This Week)
by Kerry Raminiak

For those in the know... we dig deep in the interwebbings for good stuff regarding our industry and inspirational stories to get us going. Enjoy this week's post featuring pet photography and some buzz that has caught our eye...

Did you know that Newsweek has officially pulled out of the White House photo pool?

I got a lot of Tweets about this article last week with the sensational headline: Photography in NY no longer illegal! Cute?... Yes. Interesting?... Well, you be the judge. (In case you just want the dirt, it’s an April 2009 memo to NYPD officers reminding them that taking photos and videos in and around NYC is not illegal).

Both the NY Times and Resolve Community featured articles on pet portraits. Each spotlight popular photographers – The Times features Li Ware while Resolve interviews Sarah Zemunski – while asking them tips and tricks for getting the right picture with notoriously difficult models. Both are interesting on completely different levels while being quick and inspiring reads for any kind of portrait photographer.

Household printing gets a new capability. According to the recent PMA Data Watch (they put out good stuff, if you didn’t know, well worth the price if you are interested in the topic, btw), “High income households, those with children present and those with high speed internet access are [nearly twice as likely] to purchase photo-quality printers.” Add the new Epson inkjet (retailed at under 100 bucks) that enables CD/DVD printing provides just a little bit more generalized concern that the general public is stepping more and more into the territory of the pro photographer. Therefore, we should all be asking… if our clients have pretty good cameras, decent 4x6 printing capabilities, and personalized disk writing production… how are we going to stand out?!? Our answer, of course, is do it better than they ever could.