According to Cantor everybody is allowed to participate. Yeah! I always wanted to bet on movies. I am  bored betting on horses and little white balls at the casino on the roulette table. Even people that are close to the movie can participate. This is where it actually becomes interesting  … for the producer or the distributor.

Movies are tested before a producer/distributor commits millions of dollars to a campaign. So, if you know from the test screening that you have a flop on your hands the production company could shorten the futures to hedge their investment in the movie.  If the movie then tanks as predicted you can buy the paper cheap to fulfill. Or if the movie is being received better that expected, the producer/distributor then can decided if the upside in ticket sales is bigger then the futures loss and stay in the theater or just pull the movie. Hmmm … let me think …. wouldn’t that be called insider trading? And that’s just one scamming option.

So far this betting parlor still needs approval from the government agency CFTC. Cantor is hoping to open the market on April 20th.

It is hard enough as is to find financing for films these days. Linking theatrical releases and betting might actually make it more difficult to raise money for films.

And should this ever get approved I can’t wait for my financial advisor to try to introduce me to this incredible investment opportunity. This definitely would make me change my brokerage.

I ran into biracy.com a few days ago. The Biracy Project is using social media to finance and distribute films. The interesting part is not so much the fund raising process via micro payments and crowd scourcing. If the “experiment” works as planned biracy.com can fill an important space in the independent film distribution landscape. Check it out. And should you want to join you can use “stefanradtke” as the biracy ID to sign up.

According to Chris Anderson’s book there are 3 free strategies:

Free as a direct cross-subsidy

Give away the product to sell a service. Think of phone companies who give away the phone to sell the plan. Yep, we love those. Those are the companies with the lowest customer satisfaction, followed by the ones who give us free checking.

Free as a three party market where one customer class subsidizes another

Give away content and sell access to the audience. Think of Google with its web search, selling targeted advertising spots. Or think of YouTube allowing free video sharing and still trying to figure out who will pay for it. Well, Google does right now with roughly 490 million US$ a year according to Credit Suisse.  Ouch! Or just a simple blog about photography selling ad space to support the labor of love.

Free as a freemium where some customers subsidize the others

Give away a basic version and sell the full version.  Think of lite software versions in the iPhone app store and full version in the pay section.

Let’s dress it up however we want, but what it comes down to is, that free is pricing and pricing is part of the marketing mix.  So for an editorial, commercial or art photographer these 3 free models have a few things in common. They are all part of a marketing strategy and specifically a strategy to push a brand or a product, to create good karma, to grow a company fast and to disguise the real costs of the product.

And I think that’s where the free has its relevance in photography.

For a start I was thinking of

• give away a small print  and charge for larger sizes.
• give away images  for limited use to create awareness
• personal projects.
• shoot a job for free (or at cost) to gain access to a client
• leave behinds

Unfortunately despite the ubiquitous digital bits and bytes this all comes to the photographer at a price. As a friend yesterday said. “Its all free, but it is still going to cost you.”

Could we work for free completely? Being able to create and to just give away. Let’s look here at the poster children of the free-conomy. The Flickrs, Facebooks, Twitters, Diggs and YouTubes. They all exist for half a century now because of deep-pocketed investors who are putting up the tab of hundred millions of dollars they are burning through every year. OK, Flickr supposedly makes a little money. They are all struggling to find a way to monetize free and their investors are sitting by the sidelines keeping them afloat hoping for the big exit.  Can photographers have equity partners / investors? Why not? We could then create without economic restraints as well. Think of the painter Vincent van Gogh who would not have existed as an artist if he hadn’t been sponsored by his brother. Vincent van Gogh basically painted for free. Let’s create a sponsor pool for photography and make the images free for its members. Could that be a solution?

To me free has to be seen under the larger important aspect of “give and get”. You have to give in order to get and that is where free comes in today.  So is it radical? No. Is it the future? Yes, but it has always existed and is nothing new at all.

Just a last, a bit philosophical thought on free. I think free in its pure form incorporates some destructiveness. Our society is called free, but at the same time we found it necessary to limit our freedom to be able to exist. Reducing the free to a sustainable version of free. This would be a crazy place if it were totally free. And free in one society isn’t the same as it is  next door. Look at imagery in media in different countries.  Nudity in European media is not a problem. And then think of the earth shattering Nipplegate a few years back at the Superbowl.  Free isn’t free at all in its true meaning and free is being defined differently wherever you go.

Free is marketing. Make use of it if it pays.

you can sign up at their webpage at www.unclesyms.com. there are some deadlines. go check out the details and possibly get decked out for your next interview. go get them ….

the campaign is a take off on the classic uncle sam and rosie the riveter image. thanks for trusting a german with these icons of american culture.

besides being able to do something positive with my work it was also a logistical challenge. first it all had to be digital of course. then i had only 10 minutes for each person. not more, not less. initially i thought I would be able to capture about 60 shots per subject. reality showed that it was more around 40 images. some people were more at ease in front of the camera than others. of the 36 bookings 7 canceled last minute which gave me a few more minutes with some people.

lighting had to be simple. I wanted to keep it in one position. just 1 single strobe light in a big softbox on a boom. depending on the subject i also used a large reflector right bellow to open up shadows. i was either shooting with the strobe right above the camera or right next to it. everybody sat on the same posing chair. the softbox was around 5 feet away from the subject, slightly above the head.

another challenge was to get some variety into the set-up. I didn’t want to end up with all the same look and feel. the shots were taken in a fairly large assembly hall at a local church. the advantage was that by changing the shooting angle i could make use of a soft butterfly-like lighting against the white backdrop (far enough away to render grey) or if i positioned the camera at a different angle (position 2) the light would be more in a 45 degrees position and due to the depth of the room render the background black. the difference between the two shots in this post is only the camera position (and of course it is another person), but both were sitting in the same spot. all that changed was the camera position. well, not quite. I had to move the subject about two feet back from position 2 to have the light hit at a better angle.

all images were delivered on CD  in color and b&w, after some color correction and cropping. the people have started using their images and I hope they all find the jobs they are looking for. if you have a job send me an email and i will gladly pass the offer on.

since nobody probably understood what I meant with the different camera positions, I did a little diagram of the setup. that might make it a bit clearer.

and for the ones who want to know it all: nikon d3, 105mm lens, f3.2 @ 1/160 ISO 160 , the strobe was set 3 stops higher, so i used a 3 stop nd filter on the lens. I used ISO 160 because I was toying with the idea to do some shots on my medium format film camera. i gave up on that very early. there was just no time for switching gear around during 10 minutes. f3.2 because I wanted the smallest depth of field possible with that lens.

in the meantime I heard that other communities in new york are offering similar services for people in transition.

it is officially the end of my web procrastination  …  i am updating/upgrading my blog  … during the upgrade the previous posts have gone to digital heaven … lichterwald 2.0 is coming, bigger, better, cleaner, more concise, you’ll love it … by the end of next week I should be up and posting again.

subscribe to stefan and you will be the first to know.

in case you might wonder. the image above is not digitally altered.  the pool was in France, at the beginning of the summer season and the water was slime green. a small complaint,  a few pounds of chemicals and 5 days later – voila – the pool had its natural – chemical enhanced – light blue color again. I somehow preferred using the pool after it got chemically nuked, but maybe I shouldn’t have.

enjoy the day,

stefan