Serge’s Photo Safari

Serge van Neck Serge van Neck

So you’ve decided to license your photos — Part 2

In the first installment of this series, I described my workflow for selecting and categorizing images for commercial and/or editorial licensing. Here we’ll examine what kinds of licensing options you might consider offering, and what specific permissions you are granting with each.

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Serge van Neck Serge van Neck

“I saw you taking photos, can we get copies?”

Even when I’m not being hired to take photos, I often bring a camera to events that I’m attending, and event organizers sometimes approach me afterwards to ask if I’d be willing to share them. I usually accede to that request. However, I do set some healthy boundaries.

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Serge van Neck Serge van Neck

My problem with Unsplash

I used to upload stock photography to Unsplash. Some of my images got millions of views and over a hundred thousand downloads. I deleted my account.

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Film Serge van Neck Film Serge van Neck

Why do I have so many film cameras?

I own nearly a dozen film cameras. What is it about film cameras that makes people like me want to collect them? Do I actually use all of them, or are they just decorations sitting on a shelf? What does each of these cameras bring to the table that not only makes me want to own it, but shoot with it as well?

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Serge van Neck Serge van Neck

On “standard” frame sizes

Except for a very few dedicated souls perpetuating the art, photographers have not used 8”x10” or 4”x5” large format cameras for at least half a century. So why are the vast majority of off-the-shelf frames made for that aspect ratio?

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Serge van Neck Serge van Neck

So you’ve decided to license your photos — Part 1

One of the ways a photographer can earn passive income from their work is to offer images for licensing. However, there is something that every photographer should do before considering licensing any of their images.

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Serge van Neck Serge van Neck

The Godox Lux Jr. made me love manual exposure again

When I first started photography as a serious hobby after buying a Nikon DSLR, I shot almost exclusively in manual mode. All that changed when I got into Fujifilm mirrorless cameras. But having to pay more attention to exposure settings when shooting with the Lux Jr. has done something special: it has rekindled my love for shooting in full manual mode.

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Film, Review Serge van Neck Film, Review Serge van Neck

Review: The TTArtisan light meter

If you’re into film photography like me, you most likely have at least one vintage camera that either doesn’t have a built-in light meter, or it has one that doesn’t work properly. Here I review the TTArtisan light meter as an alternative to the Sunny 16 rule or handheld light meters.

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Film Serge van Neck Film Serge van Neck

Wherefore Film?

Two decades after Canon released its last professional film camera, film photography is anything but dead; in fact, it’s experiencing a renaissance. The used market in vintage cameras and lenses is vibrant, and although a few beloved film emulsions are now sadly extinct, many other favorites are still in production. So what is driving this revival of what many consider an inferior and obsolete technology?

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Street Photography Serge van Neck Street Photography Serge van Neck

What is street photography?

Few things are more ambiguous or hotly contested than the definition of street photography. Do all pictures have to be taken on a street? Do they have to have people in them? Do they have to be candid? Should you ask people's permission to take their picture before you take it, after you take it, or not at all? Should you shoot stealthily from a distance or get right in people's faces?

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Review Serge van Neck Review Serge van Neck

Fun with the Zonlai 22mm f/1.8

The 35mm focal length is supposed to be the sweet spot for street photography. Fujifilm has a compact 23mm f/2 (35mm full-frame equivalent) prime lens that gets rave reviews, has almost instant autofocus, and is weather resistant to boot. But what if you don’t need autofocus, or you don’t have $450 burning a hole in your pocket? Third-party manual focus primes can be a great low-cost alternative, and depending on your needs, the Zonlai 22mm f/1.8 might just fit the bill.

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