Photo Equipment Backpacks Part I: Avoid choosing the wrong backpack

I've found that serious photographers understand the importance of careful, meticulous, product research, before they purchase new photo equipment. It's not surprising, considering the cost photo gear these days.
For backpacks, photographers seem to typically investigate capacity, flexibility, zippers, flap pockets, tripod mounts, rain protection, axillary handles, security, and other features.

Unfortunately, by the end of the first day using their new backpacks, despite their research, far too many photographers, immediately relegate them to a closet, learning the hard way, the one attribute they never considered was whether the backpack would fit them well, allowing them to comfortably carry their gear hour after hour, day after day.

Regardless of its capacity and feature set, a photo equipment backpack has to fit the photographer's body well. A poorly fitted backpack, will result in sore shoulders, and/or a sore back. It can turn a great photo hike/walk into misery and exhaustion.

A photo equipment backpack, first and foremost, must be designed as a great backpack, with a well designed harness, and must fit its user properly.

Copyright Alliance issues challenge after revealing major corporations unknowingly support copyright piracy

The Copyright Alliance has sent an open letter to the CEO's of major companies advertising on Internet ad-networks, which use network and server hosting companies, that distribute pirated creative content of independent artists, authors, small businesses, and others, asking them to immediately halt such advertising.

If these legitimate companies would stop advertising via these pirates, the pirate companies' income stream, keeping them in business, would be seriously reduced, and therefore, their ability to continue to pirate the hard work of authors, artists, photographers, and even the casual work of ordinary people writing in personal blogs, or posting their wonderful vacation images, would be seriously impaired or halted.

The Copyright Alliance is asking these legitimate companies to stop “turning a blind eye” to the pirate companies' illegal activities.

Camera Gear, Tripods, TSA, and the Airlines

TSA's (US Transportation Security Administration) website used to state, “You may carry on one (1) bag of photographic equipment in addition to one (1) carry-on and one (1) personal item through the screening checkpoint. The additional bag must conform to your air carrier’s carry-on restriction for size and weight.”

The problem is, since TSA was created, that was never true, nor is it today.

On both US domestic and international scheduled commercial flights, you are allowed no more than one carry-on and one personal item. The airlines haven't, nor do they expect to in the future, permit a third carry-on.

National Press Photographers gravely concerned about "orphan works" - copyright proposal

The National Press Photographer’s Association (NPPA) has submitted comments on the issue of orphan works and mass digitalization, with the US Copyright Office, to advise Congress on how to address current issues involving copyrights and orphan works.

The comments, written by NPPA attorneys Mickey Osterreicher and Alicia Calzada, with contributions from others at NPPA, discuss the myriad of issues currently facing visual journalists regarding their copyrighted images, and offer proposed solutions for creating a system which would treat copyright holders and users of orphaned works fairly and efficiently.

NPPA stated in its comments that it “is gravely concerned that in seeking to address the frustration of ‘good faith users’ of Orphan Works in order to cure their potential liability and ‘gridlock in the digital marketplace,’ the Copyright Office may create a far more serious problem for authors/owners of visual works.”

Advanced Long Lens Techniques

More and more travelers, including travel photographers, are choosing destinations to see wildlife. They're interested in conservation, the environment, along with viewing and photographing wildlife in their natural habitat.

At some of these locations a good DSLR, with a telephoto lens having a focal length of 200mm will suffice, as you can get fairly close to the animals, but generally you'll need a 300mm lens or longer, and 400mm or longer could be a real help.

I found that even in the Galapagos Islands, off the coast of Ecuador, which Charles Darwin's book, “Origin of Species,” made famous, where many of the birds and other wildlife have a small “circle of fear,” you often need a lens with a 400mm focal length.

The “Circle of Fear” is the distance from an animal, inside of which, the animal has discomfort or distress from the photographer's or observer's presence, which may cause the animal to flee.

In other locations, such as an African safari, or a hike in Denali, a super-telephoto focal length of 500mm or more is virtually a “must.”

Smartphone Apps for Photography: iBird Explorer Pro (updated 2012)

One of my photographic passions is wildlife photography. More and more travelers are choosing destinations throughout the world, specifically because they wish to observe and photograph wildlife. I'm one of those photographers.

When home, you'll generally find me visiting the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge for a number of hours each week.

An important part of wildlife photography is properly identifying the wildlife you encounter, both flora and fauna. Sometimes, especially if you've not visited a location before, identification isn't easy. I'm often visiting wildlife locations with well studied wildlife enthusiasts, or wildlife experts, and they are very helpful in identifying wildlife, but sometimes I'm out alone and need some help.

How do I register my image's copyright and what can I do if it's violated?

In Part I of my copyright series, “I'm not a "Pro." Why should I worry about copyrighting my photos?” I discussed why both professional and amateur photographers, and even weekend vacationers should seriously consider taking measures to raise the level of their copyright and other protection for their photographs.

In Part II of the series, “What do photographers need to do to protect and document their copyright?” I discussed practical suggestions to protect your photos and establish your copyright firmly.

In this last article of the series, I discuss copyright registration in the US, how and when you can, and why you should, register your photographs, and if your copyright is violated, what remedies registration extends to you, that you otherwise wouldn't have.

You can submit your photographs to the US Copyright Office, part of the US Library of Congress, via postal mail, or online. If you register your photographs by postal mail you don't have to print each image, but can submit them on CD. You can register your photographs whether already published, or still unpublished. Your photographs are eligible to have their copyrights registered the moment you make them.

FBI Anti-Piracy Warning Seal now available to photographers to protect image copyrights

There is a new tool available in the Photographer's arsenal to fight copyright infringement of images, the Anti-Piracy Warning Seal (APWS), shown on the left.
The APWS is the official insignia of the FBI and the US Department of Justice. It was designed to help detect and deter criminal violations of US intellectual property laws through public education of the laws and the FBI's authority to enforce them.

You might have noticed this seal before on DVD movies, and some software, for example. In the past, the use of this seal was only available to the entertainment and software industries. Now, in the US, all copyright owners may use the seal, as long as they follow the appropriate regulations for the seal's use, which can be found in 41 CFR Section 128-1.5009.

NSL Photography and the NSL Photography Blog are back up!

Hi All,

Update: Scott Wagner, GoDaddy's interim CEO said in the afternoon of September 11th, in an emailed statement, "It was not a 'hack' and it was not a denial of service attack (DDoS). We have determined the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables."

I wish GoDaddy would get their story straight.

Whether hackers took down the site or not, hackers which do take down websites, or make public the private accounts of individuals, for any reason are criminals, and must be dealt with by our court system to bring them to justice for their criminal behavior which affects ordinary people everywhere.

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On September 10, 2012, my registrar and intermediate URL host of my NSL Photography galleries, GoDaddy, went down at 10:20am. They returned to operation fully about 9 hours later.

Some weren't able to access my galleries at all, or this blog. I'm sorry for the inconvenience that caused some of my visitors.

They were apparently taken down by a single hacker group, Anonymous, as they have taken credit for the event, over their stance against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) which GoDaddy initially supported, but eventually pulled back from that support. Apparently it wasn't enough for Anonymous who has taken the law into their own hands as they have decided to be prosecutor, judge and jury.

While I disagreed with GoDaddy's support of the Acts, and publicly said so, I am outraged by the callous disregard for the law, and for the millions of innocent customers of GoDaddy, including me, that Anonymous has put out of business. We depend on our websites being operational. I believe that GoDaddy's support of these Acts was a poor choice, but they had the right to do so, and as one who believes in the US Constitution, I support that right, and the rule of law.

People will never be free unless they support the rights of others to also be free, even when they disagree strongly.

The hacker group who took down GoDaddy is nothing more than a common criminal who deserve serious prison time.

Thanks for bearing with me during this outage.

Ned