For comparison purposes I thought I’d share a panoramic version of the previous post’s abandoned mobile home. (Click on the image for a slightly larger version.)

Five photos were combined to make this 3:1 aspect ratio panorama. The final stitched image is pretty big: 11952 x 3984 pixels and 133 Mb file size. That works out to a 10″ x 30″ image at 398 dpi.

Note that for this image I used a wide angle zoom setting on my little G9 (the same as in the 3-image stitch in the previous post). Using a longer focal length, and moving my vantage point back would have helped minimize the distortion in this panoramic version.

This morning I took this photo of a vacant mobile home near where I live. Not a “pretty” picture, to be sure, but I think it has some connotations that are relevant.

Tech notes

The image is a composite of three Canon G9 exposures, and the resolution of the resulting image is about 6000×4000 pixels. (Click on the above image to view a slightly larger, 720×480 pixel version.)

I’ve been experimenting with stitching images together. While I’ve made a few 180° panoramas that I find interesting, I find it difficult to get really excited about pano’s. They have their place, such as for web page headers (see above), or spreads in newspapers, magazines and books. But panoramas typically have distinctive distortions, and it’s a little more challenging to display them as fine art prints. Plus, they can take a long time to render and can consume vast quantities of disk space.

Less extreme panoramas are a little more interesting, though. They let me create higher resolution images that can have a normal aspect ratio — 3:2, 4:3, 5:4, or 1:1 — and they can be printed significantly larger without having to upsize (and degrade) the image. Probably the main appeal, though, is that I don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on new, high-resolution camera equipment! Yes, I’m cheap.

The downside? More disk space is required to combine images. And it takes some time to stitch them together. Plus, I find that to get optimum results, especially with small-sensor cameras, you have to be very careful with respect to camera technique — sturdy tripod, properly adjusted & leveled pano head, consistent focus and exposure, and RAW capture. I also find that I spend more time processing small-sensor images to remove noise, minimize chromatic aberration and fine-tune the sharpening

Today I came across another rather disturbing photographers’ rights article. This one was on the Daily Telegraph web site: “Has our increasingly paranoid society declared war on the humble ‘weekend snapper’?“.

Most of these recent articles have recounted photographers being harassed when photographing in a location that someone thinks could be a terrorist target, or if any young children happen to be in the vicinity.

My big confrontation

I haven’t experienced any police harassment yet, but I was reminded of a minor confrontation I had about a year ago while photographing. I had stopped for about 10 minutes by the side of the road on a Saturday morning to take the above two (unremarkable) photos of some vacant farmland in town.

As I finished and was folding up my tripod to leave, the property owner came running out of his house across the street behind me. He jogged across the road and demanded to know why I was taking pictures of his empty field, and what I was going to do with the photos. His questions weren’t unreasonable, but his aggressive manner and shouting were. Though my initial reaction was to yell back, I smiled and asked him if this were his property. His response: “You answer my question, first.”

OK, so much for the friendly dialogue approach. After a pause, I decided just to defuse the situation, and calmly explained that I was taking the photos for my personal use and they wouldn’t be used for commercial purposes. He wasn’t really satisfied, but turned and walked back home, telling me to stay off his property. He then watched carefully from across the road as I packed up and drove away.

Frequently in situations like this I offer to send the property owner a print, but this unfriendly guy didn’t deserve a thank-you.

I can only guess at his underlying reason for being concerned about my photographing his empty land.

As an example, here’s a recent posting I came across on Craig’s List:

The [company name] Design Challenge
Attention Designers: We’re looking for someone to create an updated look for [company name]!

After more than 25 years of success in [the industry], based in part on highly recognizable signage which features the [company name] logo, it is time to give our image a facelift…and we’re seeking the right designer for the job.

The task is simple: create a clean, contemporary, cohesive look for all [company name] marketing materials, from staff bios to flyers to the web site to company collateral sheets, etc. The ultimate goal of the project is to develop a design template that can be applied to any future types of materials we develop. Requirements are:

• No aspect of the [company name] logo can be changed, and it should preferably be positioned in the lower left hand corner of all materials
• An “Arial-esque” font must be used–no serif fonts
• [company name] red is PMS 185, although other colors may also be used
• Templates must be created in Adobe InDesign, PC only. (Candidates must have their own software.)
• Other than that, the sky is the limit. For questions, or to submit samples of your work, contact …

I know, “design challenge” in the heading should have been a clue that this was some sort of thinly-disguised contest. Plus, it was on Craig’s List, which has a lot of sketchy postings, and they specified a lot of constraints. But a “design challenge” is part of most marketing projects I work on, it’s a local company, there are always constraints, and the posting read like it might be a legitimate search for someone to help solve their specific business problems.

So, I responded. I sent a friendly introduction, a link to my online portfolio, and requested that we meet and discuss their business needs in more detail. Their prompt response:

The responses we have received to our post for a designer have been tremendous….many talented folks who’d love to have a crack at redesigning [company name’s] corporate materials. Because designers all bring their own unique flair and creativity to the table, however, it would be difficult for us to select among the respondents without first getting a good sense of how they would approach our specific materials. So as a next step, you are receiving this challenge:

I will forward to you, via yousendit.com, samples of some of our current brochures. Keeping in mind that [company name] red is PMS 185, that the logo cannot change, and that no serif fonts may be used, how would YOU redesign it?  Take a stab and let us take a look. If we like what we see, we’ll have you in to discuss the entire scope of the project.. (this is a soup-to-nuts plan…..everything needs an overhaul, from the web site to presentation materials, etc).

Thanks again for your interest—I look forward to seeing what you’ve got. Please let me know if you have any questions.

It was pretty obvious to me that the odds were rather slim that any designer they selected would ever become a long-term, respected business partner. Out of curiosity, though, and since I wasn’t familiar with YouSendIt, I downloaded their InDesign files — all 37 Mb worth.

At this point I informed them that I was excusing myself from this “design challenge.” Here are the three reasons I gave them about why a contest like this is a bad business idea:

1) Designers solve problems. Since you’re asking prospective designers to GUESS at your business problems without discussing things with you, you’re reducing the likelihood of getting an optimal solution.

2) To ensure a consistent look for all your promotional materials, the redesign for your brochure(s) should be done in the context of understanding ALL of your promotional needs. Otherwise, your brochure may need to be redesigned yet again — essentially wasting the designer’s up-front time.

3) If you aren’t looking to establish a long-term business relationship with a designer, you might want to hire a part-time student intern or a desperate-for-a-job recent design school grad. But if you’re looking for a long-term creative services partner, a better idea is for you to meet with some established design professionals. Look at their web sites. View their existing work samples to “see what they’ve got.” Assess their design style, work ethics and personal communication skills. And then decide whether there’s any chemistry — i.e., are they someone you’ll want to work with over the long term?

As a customer, I select service vendors based not just on price, but on whether they do consistently good work, do it in a timely fashion and have professional business practices. And whether I enjoy working with them.

As a vendor, I want to work with clients whose selection criteria are similar to those. There’s really no excuse for a business to treat any service provider unprofessionally. It’s as unreasonable to dangle the “do free work now to get future business” carrot in front of designers as it is to do so with printers, plumbers, lawyers, accountants and other service providers. In my experience, that future business carrot is frequently dried out and shriveled up, if, in fact, you can ever grab it.

The bottom line is that designers — actually, all service providers — should refuse to do spec work. And they owe it to their profession to help educate prospective customers about why spec work is a bad business practice.

Visit the No!Spec site for lots of additional information.

Naming a blog is akin to choosing a domain name. Ideally, it should relate to what the blog is about and be unique. I searched Technorati and Google, and found virtually all the “good” names already taken.

While I was thinking about blog naming, I realized that, like most people, my life revolves around projects like this blog. And many of my projects, like this one, seem to be perpetually “almost done”. Then I recalled a relevant phrase that I haven’t used for awhile. When asked about how a project is progressing, I’ve been known to wisecrack, “It’s asymptotically approaching completion.” (For those of you who don’t remember geometry, asymptotes are those imaginary lines that curves like a hyperbola approach, but never actually touch.)

“Asymptotically approaching completion” may be a little long, but it seems an appropriate name for a blog that will discuss marketing, design and artistic projects. And, of course, which itself is an ongoing project. What do you think?

So, that’s that. I have a name for my blog. All I have left to do is to decide what to write about. And then spend time actually writing about what I want to write about. In other words, the hard part.

Hmm, maybe I should tweak the layout a little bit more, or add another photo. And I bet I’ll find some problems with this post tomorrow.