Happy New Year 1 Out of 3

Thailand has 3 New Years, this one that just occurred is celebrated the least. Still there were some fireworks and drunkenness to usher in 2009.

I actually stayed up until 12:30am on the 1st, a rarity for me. Chalk it up to an amazing Batman Dark Knight. I was not expecting to be entertained in the least as I thought all the Batmans sucked up to this point. This one was directed by Christopher Nolan. Isn’t that the guy that did MEMENTO and FOLLOWING?

I think so - if not, no worries. Whoever did this did a great job. I rarely get into fantasy type stuff - and this one was good.

I’ve got good things in store for my online projects for the new year. At last count I have 19 websites/blogs. Recently there was a Google Pagerank update and I have many sites with Pagerank 3’s and a 4, a 5 and even a 6 at my blogs - more about that at a later post.

I’ve been focusing a lot on my Youtube Thailand Travel Channel lately. I think producing tons of videos people can watch is interesting - more so than writing, and I’m already writing more places than I’d care to. As luck has it - my PR 4-6 blogs are going to see the most attention.

If you have a blog focused on Thailand that is well made (wordpress or other high-level format) and you aren’t blanketing your site in advertisements I may link to your site from my Thailand PR 6 and PR 5 sites. Just send me an email and tell me about your site.

I wish everyone a great new year… If you blog - put up lots of great content.

Notebook Computer, Phones, Video Recorder for Sale

We’re selling some electronics we have. Everything is in great shape… if you’re interested just write: TryThaiFood@gmail.com

Perfect Motorola Moto Q Gsm QWERTY Mobile Phone: 8900 6900b, used 2 mths.

Great Nokia 3110c Classic Mobile Phone with EDGE, GPRS: 3700b 1900b, used 10 mths.

Great Compaq Notebook Computer 1.7Ghz, 80GB hdd, WIFI, Bluetooth 18,700b 12,900b, used 10 mths.

Perfect Samsung Video Recorder optimized for YouTube SC-MX10A with 4GB internal flash drive, record 3 hours of video and upload very easily to YT. 8,900b 6,900b, used 1 mth.

Payment through ATM transfer. Mailing with EMS Thailand system.

iPhone 3G Unlocked Video

Does this work for iPhones in Thailand with any SIM??

iPhone unlocked video

Woman Partner + iPhone = You Need This

A friend sent me the link to this site and at first I was a bit weirded out… but then it started to make a lot of sense. This guy sells software for the iPhone that alerts you with red, yellow and green zones corresponding to when your girlfriend or wife, etc, is having her monthly menstrual cycle.

Admittedly a bit weird, but I KNOW someone can use this…

iPhone Software >

Thailand FAQ

I’ve been meaning to do a Thailand FAQ for a long time. There are many questions visitors and expats alike have about Thailand and most visitors I’m sure end up using a TH FAQ before coming to LOS. I wanted to make one that’s useful and that combines not only my knowledge but other resources as well.

Thailand FAQ is a pool of information from a number of sites - and I’ll be adding to it over today and tomorrow as well. There are many subjects that deserve a whole FAQ for themselves. The Full Moon Party was one of them.

If you have written a FAQ about some part of Thailand - the culture, attractions, anything really - shoot me a link and let me see if it will fit with this Thailand FAQ collection.

Need a Small Notebook Computer? Hp Mini 1001tu in Thailand

We bought this HP computer about 2 weeks ago now. It’s quite amazing - but the screen just a bit small for my g/f’s bad eyes, which I wasn’t considering when I bought it for her… Now we’ll sell it at a good discount.

Here’s many pics and details:

Hp Mini 1001TU Netbook (Notebook) Computer >

re: Last Couple Photography Posts

As of this morning I had over 30 comments about the posts on photographers that I did. The posts were meant to be a private joke - just mine. I wanted to see how far I could turn up the volume on the few idiots posting comments about a story they didn’t have all the facts about. These commenters were like emotional balloons waiting to pop. They reacted with bizarre, and usually anonymous comments that really showed their anger at what’s becoming the sad state of pro photgraphy over the last 20 years.

I’ll address a couple things that came up in comments:

I wanted the photo in the sense that - I saw it. It would work at 200 pixels wide when I shrunk it. I asked. I was rejected. I thought I’d give her another chance because I could easily choose another photo from any of 10 different sources that wouldn’t have a link to her site and a mention of her business name. She still didn’t get it. It took me about 15 seconds to read her last email and that was it. I dropped it and went on to the next option. I looked at Getty, Dreamstime, and Flickr Creative Commons licensed photos.

Some of you made it seem like I was dying for this mediocre photo and that wasn’t the case. Did you SEE the photo? I didn’t ask her for a high resolution image - it was a 72 pixel shot on the site. It wasn’t a fantastic shot to begin with. It was convenient and I could have helped the girl out by using it. When she chose to charge for use of the photo to advertise her own business I found another business and another photo.

Who shoots themselves in the foot by charging someone to do something good for their own business? Apparently I know someone that does now.

It wasn’t a huge issue to me - but to all of you that latched on to a piece of the story, whatever piece you heard - you became reactive and posted some ridiculous comments.

I understand the frustration of being a photographer and competing with stock agencies. For about a year I considered returning to pro photography. Eventually I realized, the world is fast moving away from commissioned / assignment photos. There will always be successful photographers doing it - but the percentage of photographers making a living creating images that sell for more than even $20 each has really fallen off over the last decade or two.

I chose the easy way… shoot whatever I want, whenever I want - with a slant toward producing photos that would sell well in stock agencies and forget about trying to convince people to hire me as an advertising or travel photographer. I don’t enjoy that side of photography much, the business side. Stock makes it easy to dump my good photos somewhere and make a few pennies. Photography is a hobby now. It’s very difficult to make a go of it as a profession.

There are photographers that are making a living shooting stock photography. It’s a horrible way to go about life, cranking out a couple thousand photos a year, editing, tagging them, uploading them - only to see a percentage never even get past the screeners that don’t seem to have a clue sometimes. Now the stock agencies are getting very competitive. When I joined Dreamstime they had 1.7 million photos I think. Now they have more than 4 million. I’m surprised my images are still selling, but what about when they get 10 million? 100? It will get to that, and this is just one agency - not even the biggest.

It would be way too frustrating for me to keep chasing the dream of being a shoot on assignment photographer, and I don’t think it’s a good option for myself. Some of you might be doing it now - living the dream. I know it doesn’t feel very secure where you are and you’re afraid of the dream turning horror-show. I think that must be the reason for the tone behind the comments.

It’s depressing as hell that photography has come to this for most people. If you’re sticking it out and trying desperately to eek out a living as a pro photographer I wish you luck. It’s a much harder existence than it used to be when the majority of the world’s children and adults didn’t know how to go full-manual with their film cameras. Now the camera takes care of everything with shooting modes they can choose. A flower means macro. Depth of field preview is instant. Years ago the common person didn’t know where to develop or sell their photos, now they don’t have to develop them and they know where to sell them - though for just a couple dollars for rights.

I was disappointed in a way when the whole world became able to produce good photos. I knew it was a matter of time before the value of a photo would drop like a lead Leica.

A career in photography is still possible for those that bust their ass to make it work. You’ve gotta love it more than anything else though because there are trying times ahead even for those at the top. Is it going to get easier for professional photographers to continue doing what they love as a career?

Only more difficult. Everything is changing. Some photographers will adapt and continue creating photos that are in demand and charging high prices. They will always be there. Someone must be producing new photos that the world wants. Graphic designers are cranking out the most amazing images at Dreamstime.com for instance. Some of them sell better than camera-taken photos. What’s next? Taking photos with pieces of the photo animated and the rest static? I don’t know what’s next, but for most pro photographers the road will get much more difficult. Is it time to be realistic and start looking at alternative careers or ways to adapt to the trends?

By the comments I received there are still a lot of you out there trying to make it work. Good for you, I hope you do. Really - the last two posts about photography were meant to be funny. The latest was meant to egg-on the first couple idiots that commented - anonymously of course. I knew I could really fuel the fire by posting again and not letting anyone comment.

I’ll go back through the comments and try to verify email addresses and urls - to see if there is anyone that didn’t post anonymously. If I find some, I’ll approve the comments.

To the rest of the anonymous commenters - why would you waste the time to write something as a response to a post you disagreed with and then not use your name and real email address? Everyone knows my name. I’m not anonymous.

Do you think you’re going to post anonymously on my blog so I can let you rip me a new one? Do I owe you a forum to spread your nonsense? This is my forum. I spread my nonsense here. If you disagree with something I say - use your name and email and post a comment. If you resort to calling me a name - do you think I’ll post your comment? The mentality of some people posting comments approaches that of a spider monkey. Don’t bother to comment if you can’t say anything someone wants to hear. Don’t read this blog if you don’t like it. You won’t be missed.

Why Are Professional Photographers Becoming Useless?

The more I think about it - the more I think I’m on to something with this.

Technology has killed the professional photographer’s novelty and usefulness. Virtually anyway.

There was a time when photographers were able to command disgustingly high fees for taking photos. I know, I worked in New York City for a number of professional photographers in the late 80’s and early 90’s. It was true back then that even a nimrod that could hold his pointy-finger on the shutter button in brief 8-second bursts and produce photos that were bought by nationwide catalogs.

One particularly successful photographer I worked for whose name I’ll limit to “Tony L.” was a coke head and couldn’t go more than an hour without a darkroom break with the art directors and models on the shoot. They’d come out blitzed on coke and Tony would continue the shoot laughing like a jackass, hardly able to find the camera on the tripod in front of him and continue on as if nothing happened. Nothing needed to be different. I had already set up the lighting, the cameras, everything. He held his finger on the trigger and did an Austin Powers… Yes, yes… ok, good. Yes, good. Great, that’s great. Ok. Yes… He could be annihilated on coke and still shoot photos good enough to print worldwide.

I worked with Tony for about 6 months before I got accepted to be an assistant with up and coming professional advertising photographer, Steven Wilkes who was a nephew of the ‘great’ Jay Maisel. Jay was or is worldwide famous for his photos but you know what? He had a fishbowl - very large just full of 100,000 slides that weren’t good enough to sell or do anything with. They were junk. He shot 100,000 slides of junk.

What does that tell you?

It tells me something. It tells me that someone considered at the top of his field as an advertising photographer isn’t skillful enough to shoot just a few photos and call it a day, secure in the knowlege that he is skillful enough to have got the shots he needed.

Professional photographers in NYC typically shot 12 to 30 rolls of Hasselblad film for one shoot consisting of maybe 4 changes of clothes. I was loading film so fast for Tony that it was like a joke. Was this guy really making $2400 for each day of this circus? It was ludicrous. Maybe it still is. I’ve been out of that scene for many years now.

Now the world has changed. Anyone and a spider monkey can pick up a new Nikon D300 or better and produce some wicked cool photos. Put that person in a paradise like Hawaii or Thailand and you’d have to almost try NOT to take a good photo. I’ve seen children produce amazing photography over the last couple years. You know why?

It’s kind of like - if you had every monkey on the face of the planet tapping on a keyboard from the time they were born until they died eventually it is said that one monkey would produce the works of Shakespeare, perfectly written.

Is that a possibility? Nah, not in my lifetime.

You know what is possible though? A six year old child can point a good camera at a scene in Thailand and take as good or better a photo than any one that calls him or herself a professional photographer. It’s possible.

Good writers aren’t born of luck. You can’t possibly luck out and write 1000 words that changes the world. You could take a ‘great’ photo that does that by pointing your camera out the window at Rodney King receiving an unjustified beating in the streets of LA at the hand of the police.

Photographers are quick becoming a useless commodity. Technology has given us the capability to see in real time whether we got the shot. No more shooting polaroids and guessing whether the lighting was perfect.

Metering capabilities on today’s new digital cameras is astounding. It’s getting hard to beat them even using all manual settings and bracketing. The camera will bracket for you too.

Technology has given us complete control over the lighting so that even if we shoot a bad digital image - underexposing a bit, we can still create an amazing shot in Photoshop or other graphics program.

In the past a photographer could shoot 30 rolls of film in a day and the charge to develop all that film into slides would be hundreds of dollars. Today - memory sticks give us the freedom to shoot ten times that amount if we wanted. One needn’t be skilled much at all to produce outstanding photographs.

I hate to see it happening, but you know what? I’m not fighting it. What’s the point? Taking one look at the extent of Flickr’s library of photgraphs from everywhere on the planet is really humbling. There are many OUTSTANDING photographs there that are licensed under creative commons and available to use. Dreamstime.com has over 4,000,000 high quality images taken by almost 50,000 photographers. Fotolia, IStock, Getty, and other stock agencies are bringing professional level photos to anyone that wants them for hundreds less than what photographers used to get for them. Is this a good thing? For me it is. For the photographers that want to make a living? Yes and no.

The world is changing. It’s not changing in favor of being a pro digital photographer. Wedding photographers are invited TO the wedding to watch it - not photograph it. A friend of the bride with a couple years experience shooting for free is doing the wedding now, and is entirely capable at it. Who is going to pay a wedding photographer a couple hundred dollars to do it?

Newspapers are hiring journalists that can also take photos. It isn’t brain surgery. One manipulates a few settings, frames the shot and takes it. Then takes 1,000 more if it’s important to get a good one to publish. Why pay a photographer’s day rate to get a photo that’s only marginally better?

I don’t know if anyone’s noticed but the market is wide open for anyone with a digital camera and a few thousand bucks to spend on creating photo calendars, books, coffee cups, t-shirts, stickers, and other fluff that they’ll never make bank with. Photographers used to have skills that nobody else did. That edge is becoming soft. In 2 months someone serious about photography can learn the basics enough to shoot what a professional is shooting and almost as good. If the difference is between $3 and $300 guess what the person needing the photo is going to pay? Don’t kid yourself to believe there’s a $300 difference between the photos you take and the ones that are available on stock agencies shot by some of the greatest photographers on the planet.

It’s time for digital photographers to go out and get themselves some real skills. Digital video is one such area that they should be pursuing. It takes a lot of skill to shoot digital videos well. The market for digital videos that are of high quality will be around a lot longer than the market for outrageously priced photos. The photographer’s market is going away. The world is welcoming $2-4 dollar stock photos and free creative commons licensed photos.

Professional photographers, if they haven’t already shouldn’t be afraid to go out and get themselves some real skills that will set them apart from the monkeys hitting the shutter. The days are over when I could shoot a photo of Woody Allen in the window of his apartment watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and get $1000 for a 1/4 page in People Magazine. The days are gone when a 2 photo set of John F Kennedy, Jr. losing his bike lock key at lunch brought me $3750. Now - everyone has a camera and the variety of photos is getting much better.

My next post will compare the vast difference in skill levels necessary between being a good writer and a good photographer. Let’s put a camera in everyone’s hands, but not a keyboard… Am I making any sense to you people?

Cheers.

Your Digital Photos Aren’t Worth ANYTHING

I had a weird experience the last couple days and it got weirder today.

I wrote a small company on a very small island and told them I liked one of their photos they use on their site. I also told them I was writing an article about the island and would mention their small business favorably and put a link in the article linking to their site AND another link on the photo with credit to them and a link back to their site if they would allow me to feature the photo in the article.

This was not for ThaiPulse incidentally, but no matter - could have been for any site.

The girl co-owner, a Brit, writes back that she couldn’t let the photo be used without charging for it.

I thought she didn’t understand so I wrote again to clarify everything. It’s in the best interests of her business to be mentioned - didn’t she “get it”?

She got it, at least she thought she did - but, in the next email back she wrote again - that the article is worth more with a photo and she’d need to charge for it.

Let me explain further. The shot has nice color. That’s about it. It is only about 400pixels by 250 and not high resolution by any means. Anyone or a monkey could have taken the photo - it’s just that the perspective seen is from high above the ground.

I have access to Getty images for free. I have credits at Dreamstime.com enough for hundreds of photos - basically free. Or, if you equate credit to dollars - I have the $3 it would take to get a photo of the island from the same or much better perspective.

I like to help small Thai businesses that I like, that I believe in. For free. I don’t make any extra money writing this article, I’m paid a salary at the place I was writing for. It’s not freelance… anyway…

Your digital photos (and mine) are not worth squat in today’s market. Everyone and their kids has a digital camera and are capable of turning out remarkable photos. Gone are the days when I worked in New York City as a photographer and spent hours prepping a scene or a model to take photos that were worth something more than $3 at Dreamstime. Those days are WAY gone.

Apparently someone is still telling the world they can make money with their digital photos. It’s a novice way to enter into online sales of some sort. Something everyone can do to have a business online. Everyone wants the easy money online.

There isn’t any easy money in digital photos. Not even if you put together 100 photos that make people fall down semi-comatose and suck wind for 10 minutes because they can’t wrap their minds around what they just saw.

I have 700+ photos online at stock photo agencies. I know how to shoot a photo. I have some good photos. I was a professional at one time. I make about a dollar a sale on my photos - high resolution shot with amazing care and precision.

A dollar.

The best photographers in the entire world are putting billions of photos online at stock agencies because that’s where the buyers are. Not NYC, not Chicago and L.A. They are online and they want a photo for about 3 dollars.

The best chance anyone has for making money on digital photography these days is to make all of your photos “Creative Commons” licensed (see flickr’s CC info) and put your credit in the form of a URL directly on your photos so that some people will come back to your site.

That’s about it. There’s too many calendars. There’s too many coffee mugs with photos. You’re aren’t anything special unless they’re naked people doing weird stuff. Even then, there is such a glut of por—-n online that those photos too are dropping down to the couple dollars a shot rate.

Digital video is another story. Creating something unique digitally is another story. Writing stories - is another story.

Digital image money making is dead.

If someone writes you to say they are writing an article about your town and they are mentioning your business in the article - favorably, and with a link back to your site from the article, and the writer would like to use one of YOUR photos in the article WITH a link back to your site. Count them - that’s 2 links.

You should: (multiple choice)

A.) Tell the writer your photos are not free and you will charge him for them.

B.) Understand that you are getting free advertising and offer the writer 25 more photos you have that you haven’t posted online yet.

C.) Tell the writer you have enough people coming to your small business, but thanks for the thought.

D.) Write back as fast as you can, “YES, USE MY PHOTOS, THANK YOU FOR THE LINK AND MENTION!” and quickly invite the writer to use your service gratis for a 2-day stay if he’ll write 2 more articles about your business over the next couple weeks.

E.) Go back to watching Thai soap operas and thinking about how to make your skin whiter.

DTAC Mobile Phone / Internet Services

I’ve been meaning to write this up about DTAC “Happy” for about two years now.

I’ve used DTAC over the past couple years and usually it’s because they have a little better voice connection where I am - or a faster connection on the internet, or a data (GRPS/EGPRS) tower where AIS doesn’t. It just works out that DTAC is what I use. I’ve used AIS in the past - the first 18 months I was in Thailand and they weren’t half bad either.

I thought I’d let you know about some services DTAC has that can help you out during  your visit or stay in Thailand. Most expats that live here know about some of these but maybe there are some you didn’t know about.

1. I got an SMS a month ago that told me to dial 004 before international calls and get them for 4 or 5 baht per minute.

For USA I dial: 004 + 1 + area code + 7 digit number. That’s quite a discount off the 9 baht I usually am charged so I wanted to pass this on. I’ve used it on 2 different SIM cards so the offer wasn’t just because I used a lot of minutes on the one SIM and they were giving me some special deal. I think everyone has the same deal until Dec 31, 2008.

2. Have you ever needed a translator in Thailand and not had one available? Me too - first 2 years. DTAC has a service where you dial *1021[call button] and a translator will answer the phone. Tell them what you want to say to the person beside you. Then, hand the person beside you the phone. This helps quite a bit for taxis, in department stores, with your girlfriend, misunderstandings or whatever. There is no extra charge but you pay regular per minute rates - depending which plan you’re on.

3. Need to add baht to your phone and don’t want to run to 7-11? Ask your friend to transfer baht from their phone number to yours. Simply dial:

*112*[10 digit recipient's phone number] * [amount of baht to transfer] *9#[call button]

Recipient and sending phone get SMS confirmations of the transfer. You can do this with 20-200 baht up to twice per day. Limit of 400 baht per month. Length of validity (date) does not change because of transfer. 2 baht charge for SMS confirmations.

4. Need to add baht to your phone and don’t have enough baht to call or SMS your friend to tell them to transfer baht to your phone?

Emergency call back service will send emergency SMS to the destination number of any mobile network in Thailand (AIS, TRUE, etc) to ask that your friend call you back.

Dial:  *114*[10 digit friend phone number]*9#[call button]

I think this is free. Can use up to 30 times in a month.

5. Want to borrow 30 baht from DTAC’s Happy Network?

Dial: *110*9#[call button]

You pay it back on your next refill. If you don’t refill… well, what are they going to do? Just buy another 49 baht SIM if you don’t want to keep that SIM. There are many criteria for this to work. SIM needs activated longer than 90 days or you’ve used >200b. You have at least 1 day of validity and 0-20 baht credit. They charge you 2 baht for the service.

6. SIM card validity expired? You can increase it up to a year for 2 baht for 1 month.

Dial: *113*[number of days to request extension for]*9#[call button]

7. Need internet minutes on your phone so you can check email or surf the web? You can connect as long as you have baht. I think the default charge is 1 baht per minute. However, there are other GPRS (data) packages available for much cheaper. I use the 41 baht daily charge where I can use it for unlimited minutes and it seems faster than the 100 hours, 50 hours, 7 day rate, or other packages.

Call: 1678 and push “7″ I think it is for English. Tell them you want 1 day GPRS or ask them what promotions they have for internet minutes. They’ll send you SMS confirmation when the money is taken from your account and when you are live with the new GPRS service. Cost for call to 1678 is 3 baht per call.

Other common mobile phone services DTAC provides…

- Check balance: *101*9#[call button]

- Check internet (GPRS/EGPRS) minutes: *101*4*9#[call button]

- Refill your credit balance through your Thailand bank ATM. Apply at your bank. Works with these banks:

• Bangkok
• Krung Thai
• Bank of Ayudhya
• Kasikorn
• TMB
• Siam Commercial
• United Overseas
• AEON Thana Sinsap
• Bank Thai
• Siam City Bank

You can also choose to prepay for service and you get access to some other promotions. You can package together MMS, SMS, long distance, local use, GPRS and everything else for good rates. I think best to stop in at a DTAC store if you can find one and have them show you the promotions and set your phone up to use them. Probably you can just pre-pay your month through the ATM of your bank.

All of this information I took from the small Happy “User’s Manual” that comes with th 49baht SIM cards you can get anywhere they sell mobile phones. If you don’t want to print my post out and carry it around - get one of those little manuals and rip out the pages you need. Half is in English. Remarkably.

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