Shock! Alamy expel contributor...

See http://www.stockphototalk.com/the_stock_photo_industry_/2008/02/alamy-contract.html
According to the Alamy Blog "his response was that he hadn't got a release but was maybe hoping to track the person down later"

Now I know that within the collection are several virtual CDs from big name agencies who have ticked the Model Released boxes where there can be no model releases and the Property Released box where there can be no property release. I wonder if they are to be thrown out too? A plea of ignorance does not wash here, it's simply an attempt to get images seen in searches when they should not be coming up at all.

Photography as Art at Kingston Hospital

Last summer I was commissioned by Kingston upon Thames Hospital to produce artworks to decorate the new wing. Another photographer, Dominic Pote, also produced a selection of works and with him I returned to the hospital yesterday to put titles on the images.

Here is Dominic looking happy that his images printed on Aluminium are finally in place on the corridor connecting the Surgical Wing to the operating theatres. His work was chosen for this area because of the soothing effect that it might have on stressed patients being wheeled to meet the knife...

The labels were Letraset - that Dominic had organised - but these transfers are oh-so-delicate and letters were disappearing or (worse still) being accidentally transferred to the wall in places that they were no meant to go.

Having dealt with the images elsewhere, in the Physiotherapy department I was confronted with local officialdom and stopped from doing anything so I will have to go back. It would have been nice to have someone say "It's lovely to have these here to brighten our corridors" but the bureaucracy of the PFI scheme meant that there was a blanket ban on any markings or posters (blue tack = sack) on the walls...

I'll have to go back. Maybe.

Anyway, here's some more images, this time my work (as is any without Dominic's sunny face), or as the label says on several, "Scott Hortop and Meeyoung Son" ('Son' works with me as an assistant or co-photographer on some of my assignments).

Focus on Imaging at Birmingham NEC

So today was the annual trip to Brum to check out whether the ratio of beards worn by photographers still is three times the national average - and yes it is!

Aside from this vital observation I trotted around getting lost several times, always somehow finishing up at the Nikon stand (is someone trying to tell me comething?).

Mulling about in my brain is the issue of where to go with the mainstay of my equipment - the DSLR. Already possessing a Pentax K10D and a Canon EOS5D it may seem strange to be considering scrapping the lot and buying a Nikon D300 (I must write more on this soon) but at least I was using the show to help me make big decisions (OK, I normally just go to take candids of the models....)
Just what was going on with all those laptops anyway?

My day was interrupted by a surprise call from a friend who works in big deals at a big city bank calling to let me know that Getty Images had just been bought by a Private Equity group. Who knows what this means but perhaps a good time to get my images in before Getty reinvents itself ("I submitted to Getty in the good old days before they accepted images from riff raff with any old camera"). After all I bought the EOS5D to fit in with them and I will be heartily pissed off if new owners open things up to the likes of me (before I owned the EOS5D, that is).

Back to the Nikon stand where a couple of guys were explaining to a couple of hundred people about the wonders of wireless TTL flash. Strangely it was pitched as if this was something Nikon had just discovered and that the audience had never heard of. Strange to a Pentax user anyway whose cameras have had this technology for 10 years now but whose marketing team have felt it appropriate to keep it all very quiet....

I'm rambling now.

Photoshelter videos (and how to impress a commissioning editor...)

Via the AlamyPro Yahoo group I today found a link to a whole slew of videos from various promotional talks set up by Photoshelter.

I have just 'listened' to this one (I have it on in the background while doing other work) and it gives a nice insight into selling into a commissioning editor...




More videos here:

http://www.brightcove.tv/channel.jsp?channel=307708987

Painting with light

Last year I put together images for an art installation at Kingston Hospital. Photographer Dominic Pote contributed images too - very different to mine.

Dominic is this guy who uses long time exposures on moving 120 film while also waving the camera through the air. It may all seem mad, but the results are often surreal and just a little bit beautiful.

See his new website here.

My images at Photoshelter

Here is a new offering from the nice people at Photoshelter....

Starting again!

My writing here has been really sporadic but I'm going to turn my attention to it again to coincide with launching a new brand for me - on advice of friends and a little nagging doubt in my own mind about the use of 'ScottyH', I've decided to go for a touchy-feely branding in the shape of....

Light Touch

"Recording Light, to Touch the emotions"

or perhaps

"A photographer with a Light Touch"

and the domain is LightTouchImages.co.uk

This is of course my commercial photography outlet. The site's a mess right now but it helps to have it there for the search engines to pick it up. I'll be sending people to the old Scotty H photography site until I've sorted out the design but I'm going to push on now and look to get some real marketing going in a month or so.

It's all quite exciting for me;