MARQUETTE, Mich. (WLUC) – A photography exhibition called Extracting History: Mining and Marquette County opened at the Beaumier U.P. Heritage Center Friday.

Most of the displayed images are by photographer Lexie Belles. The exhibition is the visual show for the completion of her Master’s of Fine Arts degree at Northern Michigan University. Belles said her main areas of focus are Old Town Negaunee and the Cliffs Shaft Mine Museum in Ishpeming.

“This is probably two-and-a-half, three years’ worth of work and a lot of help from many different individuals,” Belles said. ”And working with great people from the community… A completion of something that has been a long time coming.”

Belles said her theme explores how the mining industry impacted the community’s culture. The exhibition runs through March 1.

Copyright 2024 WLUC. All rights reserved.

CHARLOTTE — Volunteer Christi Neal has been coming to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s Animal Care and Control shelter once a week to take photos of their newest residents.

She typically takes the second photo, after the initial intake photo, when the dogs are often scared, stressed, and a little wild.

Neal said she does this in hopes of getting them back out the door into their forever homes.

“There are so many unwanted dogs, especially in the Charlotte area, and it’s so sad to have a negative outcome,” she explained.

She said the goal is to capture their face and size clearly, as well as make them feel comfortable.

>> Why Neal feels her photos can make the difference between a dog getting adopted or not, in the video at the top of the page.

Every day, there are people across the Carolinas doing extraordinary things. They’re giving back, they’re helping each other, and they’re making a real difference. We’re highlighting the best in our community in our series, Carolina Strong.

Know somebody who’s making a positive impact? Let us know here.

VIDEO: Carolina Strong: Sending love to lonely seniors in nursing homes

Carolina Strong: Sending love to lonely seniors in nursing homes

©2024 Cox Media Group

Cam’ron is being ordered to pay a photographer $50,000 after he used a copyrighted photo of himself on Dipset clothing without permission.

Cam’ron Ordered to Pay Photographer $50,000 for Using Copyrighted Photo

On Thursday (Feb. 15), Federal Judge William Martini ruled that a picture Cam’ron had used on Dipset merch constituted copyright infringement, according to court documents obtained by XXL. The photo in question is the famous picture of Cam wearing a pink fur coat and headband while holding a matching flip phone.

The ruling comes after photographer Djamilla Cochran sued the rapper and his company, Dipset Couture, for using the picture on merch without her permission back in April of 2023.

“The court finds that a statutory damages award of seven times the licensing fee is sufficient to compensate the plaintiff for the infringement of her copyright and to deter future infringements by punishing the defendants,” the judge ruled.

As a result, Cam must pay $51,221.50. Of this amount, $40,530 is being paid in “statutory damages” and $10,691 is being paid to support Cochran’s legal fees. The ruling comes as no surprise considering Cam never responded to the lawsuit or offered any defenses.

Read More: Mase Gifts Cam’ron $20,000 to Make Up For the 20 Years They Weren’t Speaking

Cam’ron Sued for Using Famous Pink Fur Photo

The photo was taken at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in February of 2003. It’s arguably the most recognizable image of the Dipset MC and one of the most memorable hip-hop pictures from the early 2000s. In the years since the photo was taken, Cam has displayed it across a ton of merchandise including shower curtains, socks, beach towels, jewelry, hoodies, bikinis and more. The items have all been promoted via the Purple Haze rapper’s own Instagram page.

Read More: Cam’ron Wears Jeans With Melyssa Ford’s Face on Crotch Area

See Rappers’ Most Wildest Insults They’ve Said During Beefs

If you’re not familiar with photographer George Platt Lynes, his gorgeous body of work includes plenty of erotic, stark, and stylized portraits of the male body—in all its glory.

In sharp black-and-white, strikingly composed, and tastefully nude, many of these photos would look right at home in any contemporary art museum.

And, with one look at Platt Lynes’ subjects—devastatingly handsome men unafraid to flaunt their muscles, body hair, and other stunning features—you could also imagine his work getting some attention at a Tom Of Finland art show!

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Here, see some of it for yourself…

Very cool, very sexy, and very of-the-moment, right?

But the thing is, most of these photographs? They’re nearly a century old!

George Platt Lynes was an American fashion and commercial photographer whose career flourished in the 1930s and ’40s. Much of his work—like that seen above—was radically intimate and explicit, clearly capturing the male form through the queer gaze. Decades before the gay rights movement, mind you!

He was undoubtedly ahead of his time, and is now considered to be the “archetype for an out, gay American artist.”

However, it’s only recently that the breadth of his work has come into focus. He made his money working on commission for magazine like Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country, but in private amassed a head-spinning collection of nudes and homoerotic art—frequently photographing his friends, models, and performers (including screen idol Yul Brenner) in the buff.

When he died in 1955 from lung cancer (he was only 48), it was reported that Platt Lynes had destroyed his personal archive. But it later came to light that he had left that work to the Kinsey Institute, where his friend Dr. Alfred Kinsey was doing groundbreaking research on homosexuality.

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Now, a documentary aims to shed light on some of this long-forgotten work, uncovering the true life of the artist that so few knew about, and celebrating his truly revolutionary vision.

Assembled by art director Sam Shahid, Hidden Master: The Legacy Of George Platt Lynes gives the groundbreaking photographer the spotlight moment he’s always deserved.

The retrospective film premiered last year and has since traveled to LGBTQ+ film festivals around the world. Next stop? The BFI Flare festival in London—if you’re in town, tickets will be available soon! And, if you’re not, good news: Recently, Greenwich Entertainment picked up the doc for U.S. distribution and, per Deadline, ‘plans to release the documentary this spring in theaters and on home entertainment platforms.”

You can follow the film’s official Instagram page for more updates, and check out a brief teaser clip below:

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There is a lot of bad advice online on how to make money as a photographer. Truth be told, I followed much of it and made a big fat zero. This is not because such advice is wrong, but rather because it is out of touch with what the market is in 2024. In this article, I will shed light on one of the worst ways to make money with your work.

Perhaps one of the most popular pieces of advice when it comes to making money that I keep hearing is, of course, stock photography. This is a genre that has been popularized by some people on YouTube, and as a result, there are a number of photographers wasting time trying to sell their images online. Usually, it doesn’t work, and they are left wondering why their great work is not making them passive income. A baffling predicament to find oneself in, indeed. The truth is, stock photography, no matter the genre or level, is a niche that doesn’t have that much money in it anymore.

Classic Stock Photography Sells Images Cheaply

Living in the age of social media, every brand, no matter how big or small, always needs content for their marketing purposes. Images, video, and everything in between. This is great for photographers as it means that there is now more work than ever. With that in mind, the business-savvy creators will think the following: Why not shoot a ton of generic images and license them out to companies that need content fast and don’t want to spend tons of money on hiring a photographer? The brand will use the image for a period of time, you will get your money, and life is good. Sounds like a viable business model. Except that it isn’t.

Stock photography sites pay anywhere from a few cents to a few dozen dollars per image depending on usage rights, client, and content. And they have clients; we at Fstoppers have bought stock images for our articles in the past. This is a very common practice in many institutions worldwide. The demand for stock photos is there.

If the demand is there, why can’t you make a profit on doing stock photography alone? Well, because the supply is astronomically high. Anyone can register on a stock photography website and go on to make money with it. I uploaded a ton of images to a few stock websites back in the day, and having had them up for a number of years, I ended up with zero, zip, zilch, nada. Not because the work was bad, or that I didn’t use a ton of keywords and tags for it, simply because there is already so much of it on stock websites, nobody sees it anymore.

If you go look for stock images of a dog, you will find hundreds of thousands of images ready for you to license. Chances are, the first fifty search results will be more than enough to satisfy you, and you will end up buying one of these images. How does one get their work in the top 50? Well, they should’ve started uploading to stock websites at least a decade ago. If you are starting out now and want to try out stock photography, your work will automatically end up at the bottom. As far as I know, stock websites show images that have been sold before or were uploaded by profitable users. This makes perfect sense. As a business, a stock website wants to minimize the time the user spends searching for an image. If they need to scroll through thousands of new images which are bad, they will not buy something and go look elsewhere. It’s sort of like when Instagram shows you more popular posts first. Same with YouTube. Even if the content is great, but the user is new, their videos won’t be shown to you.

If you are planning, or already uploading to stock websites, I strongly suggest you put your efforts elsewhere as this is not a profitable path. The 1% of users on stock websites who pioneered stock photography back in the day are making a somewhat sustainable income. For the rest of us who were late to the party, we need to go elsewhere. Not because the opportunity is not there, but because nobody will see your work or buy it.

Licensing

A more bespoke way of doing stock photography is licensing. Say you shot a celebrity and a few magazines are looking to run that image as part of a story they will be doing. They can pay you in the hundreds to low thousands range. Typically not more than $500, though. This all depends on what sort of image it is. Of course, if you are a paparazzi and have captured a unique shot of Matt Damon kicking a pigeon, you might have luck selling it to Fox News for a lot more than that. Mind you, being a paparazzi is by far the least respected career path in photography. With licensing, however, you need to be aware that it’s yet again hard to get into. There are several syndication/licensing websites that handpick the roster of photographers they represent. Typically the work has to be commercially or editorially viable. I would not expect anyone with less than five years of experience being a full-time photographer and fewer than a dozen high-profile jobs to have such opportunities. Even then, syndication is not a very profitable way either. It is rare that companies that have the budget to license work will not just go ahead and schedule a production and pay a photographer.

In the end, it all comes down to my favorite advice: it is better to do two $500 jobs than ten $50 jobs. As such, you will have better clients, more fun on set, and be a lot more profitable by the end of it. You will also create images, which is arguably way more fun than just trying to sell existing work.

Over to you! What is your experience with stock photography? Have you made money selling your images online?

A plane that crashed into water in rural Tuscaloosa County Friday morning is registered to a local aerial photographer, according to data from a public flight tracking website.

As the Thread first reported, multiple public safety agencies responded to a small plane crashing into a tributary creek feeding the Black Warrior River east of Adger Friday morning.

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The plane is reportedly a four-seat single-engine Cessna Skyhawk registered to Tuscaloosa’s Todd Media Incorporated.

The company, founded and run by Edward Todd, has provided aerial photography to clients in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa for more than a decade.

The plane departed the Tuscaloosa National Airport at 9:11 Friday morning and flew into Jefferson County, where it made several loops over spots in Hoover before turning southwest and flying back towards Tuscaloosa.

Tracking data for the flight ends at 10:16 a.m., and the Tuscaloosa Fire Rescue Service said the first calls about the crash came in around 10:30 a.m.

The FAA’s extremely preliminary report said the aircraft crashed after striking a power pole. 

Rescue crews and a dive team from multiple local and state agencies were dispatched to the scene Friday morning.

This remains a breaking and still-developing story, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread for more as it comes in.

The new issue of Digital Photographer is out now!

Subscribe today to get DP delivered to your door and device.

This month we have another amazing issue for you, featuring professional tips, reviews, and practical how-to guides. Here’s a sneak peek of what’s inside!

Improve your image quality

In our first techniques feature this issue, we explore how to shoot and edit your best-ever digital files by understanding how to make your gear perform at its very best! From p24, we discuss how to improve the quality of your shots by learning how to identify when your gear is performing at its peak and the secret steps you can take to squeeze every ounce of detail from any camera and lens.

Snap the streets

Get into position, observe and press the shutter – street photography sounds simple, but there’s an art to capturing images with a lasting impression. Starting on p36 of the magazine, we explore this exciting genre with pro photographer Jamie Canning, covering everything from using your lenses to approaching subjects, arranging compositions on the fly and focusing to perfection.  

Capture incredible urban panoramas

Real-estate photography often requires working in busy streets, providing challenges for wide-angle imaging and pano blending. In our creative project this issue, we show you how to capture panoramic images in confined locations and how to overcome the problems of repeating patterns and optical distortions. 

TPS special: Scott Kelby on his favourite things to see at The Photography and Video Show

TPS special: Bella Kotak on her fairytale images

Bella’s images are instantly recognisable for their beauty and delicate colours. Starting on p76, Bella gives us a fascinating glimpse into her creative process and her upcoming talk at The Photography and Video Show on 16th March in Birmingham. 

Pro advice: buying second hand gear

Clash of the mirrorless titans!

Finally, it’s the clash of the pro camera titans as the mighty Canon EOS R3 and Nikon Z 9 do battle in our exclusive Head-to-Head test. If you’re into sports or wildlife photography, make sure you turn to page 96 to find out which one takes the crown!

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Plus we’ve got the usual tutorials, interviews, insight and opinion, from a range of experienced pro photographers from across the industry. 

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