A photographer () is a person who makes photographs. A ''professional photographer'' uses photography to earn money whilst amateur photographers take photographs for pleasure and to record an event, emotion, place, or person.

A professional photographer may be an employee, for example of a newspaper, or may contract to cover a particular event such as a wedding or graduation, or to illustrate an advertisement. Others, including paparazzi and fine art photographers, are freelancers, first making a picture and then offering it for sale or display. Some workers, such as policemen, estate agents, journalists and scientists, make photographs as part of other work. Photographers who produce moving rather than still pictures are often called cinematographers, videographers or camera operators, depending on the commercial context.

Photographers are also categorized based on the subjects they photograph. Some photographers explore subjects typical of paintings such as landscape, still life, and portraiture. Other photographers specialize in subjects unique to photography, including street photography, documentary photography, fashion photography, wedding photography, war photography, photojournalism, and commercial photography.

Selling photographs

The exclusive right of photographers to copy and use their products is protected by copyright. Countless industries purchase photographs for use in publications and on products. The photographs seen on magazine covers, in television advertising, on greeting cards or calendars, on websites, or on products and packages, have generally been purchased for this use, either directly from the photographer or through an agency that represents the photographer. A photographer uses a contract to sell the "license" or use of his or her photograph with exact controls regarding how often the photograph will be used, in what territory it will be used (for example U.S. or U.K. or other), and exactly for which products. This is usually referred to as usage fee and is used to distinguish from production fees (payment for the actual creation of a photograph or photographs). An additional contract and royalty would apply for each additional use of the photograph. For example, the photographer may sell the use of one photograph to different companies for use on calendars, cereal boxes, magazines, greeting cards, or many other products, in many countries.

The time duration of the contract may be for one year or other duration. The photographer usually charges a royalty as well as a one-time fee, which may or may not then be deducted from the royalties, depending on the terms of the contract. The contract may be for non-exclusive use of the photograph (meaning the photographer can sell the same photograph for more than one use during the same year) or for exclusive use of the photograph (i.e. only that company may use the photograph during the term). For example, a contract may stipulate non-exclusive use of the photograph on print greeting cards for one year within the United States with a certain up front fee and royalty per unit printed. The contract can also stipulate that the photographer is entitled to audit the company for determination of royalty payments. Royalties vary depending on the industry buying the photograph and the use, for example, royalties for a photograph used on a poster or in television advertising may be higher than the royalty for use on a limited run of brochures. A royalty is also often based on the size the photo will be used in a magazine or book, for example, if it is used as a quarter or half-page photo or full page. Cover photos usually command higher fees than photos used elsewhere in a book or magazine. In rare instances, corporations have funded teams of photographers by contract to cover a subject for purposes of publicity; for example, in 1947, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey hired a team of professional photographers including Gordon Parks and John Vachon and Todd Webb to make a documentary about how "there is a drop of oil in the life of everyone." According to the ''New York Times'', the team was "given amazingly free rein by its corporate sponsor" to produce the oil documentary, but such contracts are rare.

Photos taken by a photographer while working on assignment for a magazine or other publication or company often belong to the company or publication, rather than to the photographer, unless stipulated otherwise by contract. Professional portrait and wedding photographers often stipulate by contract that they retain the copyright on wedding photos or portrait photos, so that only they can sell further prints of the photographs to the consumer, rather than the customer reproducing the photos by other means. If the customer wishes to be able to reproduce the photos themselves, they may discuss an alternative contract with the photographer in advance before the pictures are taken, in which a larger up front fee may be paid in exchange for reprint rights passing to the customer.

Even amateur photographers need not give their photos away for free if they are of marketable value. Information about licensing and marketing your photographs, and photo licensing contracts, is available online and in libraries. One can gain an understanding of the business of licensing and protecting photographs by consulting a variety of books and online resources on photograph licensing, and/or by contacting a lawyer who specialises in licensing/royalties, particularly of artwork and photography.

There are major companies who have maintained catalogues of stock photography and images for decades, such as Getty Images and others. Since the turn of the 21st century many online stock photography catalogues have appeared which invite photographers to sell their photos online easily and quickly, but often for very little money, without a royalty, and without control over the use of the photo, the market it will be used in, the products it will be used on, time duration, etc. These online catalogues or the industries using the photograph may then profit from the photo with the photographer making little to no money for his photograph. Because of the difficulty in controlling the use of the photograph after it is passed on the internet, the photographer may never be able to license the photograph again for future use or regain ownership of his photograph.

Photo sharing

Many people upload their photographs to social networking websites and other websites, in order to share them with a particular group or with the general public. Those interested in legal precision may explicitly release them to the public domain or under a free content license. Some sites, including Wikimedia Commons, are punctilious about licenses and only accept pictures with clear information about permitted use.

Some photographers may be concerned that a website can share, distribute, or sell these photographs, and/or that other users may download them for further publication or use. Thus, personal photographs on a social website page may wind up in stockpiles or catalogues containing thousands of images where they are purchased and used without your knowledge. The profit from the photographs then goes to someone else, and no credit to the photographer. This may be especially disturbing in the case of photos that have family and sentimental value, or other photos which the photographer intended to share but not to give away or sell.

Likewise with photos sent in to contests in magazines or websites. Amateur photographers may submit them, giving their name and story about the pictures and be happy for the photo to be printed free of charge in a particular magazine. But the hundreds or thousands of photos that come into the company's ownership in this way will eventually usually be passed on for other uses either in print or on the internet, with the photographer receiving no payment, notice or credit. Only a contract can protect the photographer's rights.

Photographers with such concerns must also research individual companies and publishers before selling their photographs, even with a contract, to ensure that the company has a good record and is in good business standing.

References

Category:Photography Category:Media occupations

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Vivian Maier (February 1, 1926 – April 21, 2009) was an American amateur street photographer who was born in New York but grew up in France, and after returning to the U.S., worked for about forty years as a nanny in Chicago. During those years she took about 100,000 photographs, primarily of people and cityscapes most often in Chicago, although she traveled and photographed worldwide.

Her photographs remained unknown and mostly undeveloped until they were discovered by a local historian, John Maloof, in 2007. Following Maier's death her work began to receive critical acclaim. Her photographs have appeared in newspapers in Italy, Argentina, and England, and have been exhibited alongside other artists' work in Denmark and Norway.

Personal life

Many of the details of Maier's life are still being uncovered. Initial impressions about her life indicated that she was born in France, but further searching revealed that she was born in New York, the daughter of Maria Jaussaud, who was French, and Charles Maier, who was Austrian. Vivian moved between the U.S. and France several times during her childhood, although where in France she lived is unknown. Her father seems to have left the family for unknown reasons by 1930. During the census that year, the head of the household was listed as award-winning portrait photographer Jeanne Bertrand, who knew the founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

In 1951, at 25 years old, Vivian Maier moved from France to New York, where she worked for some time in a sweatshop. She made her way to the Chicago area's North Shore in 1956 and became a nanny on and off for about 40 years, staying with one family for 14 of them. She was, in the accounts of the families for whom she worked, very private, spending her days off walking the streets of Chicago and taking photographs, most often with a Rolleiflex camera.

John Maloof, curator of Maier's collection of photographs, summarizes the way the children she nannied would later describe her:

Between 1959 and 1960, Maier traveled to Los Angeles, Manila, Bangkok, Beijing, Egypt, Italy, and the American Southwest, taking pictures in each location. The trip was probably financed by the sale of a family farm in Alsace. For a brief period in the 1970s, Maier worked as a nanny for Phil Donahue's children. As she got older, she collected more boxes of belongings, bringing them with her to each new post. At one employer's house she stored 200 boxes of materials. Most were photographs or negatives, but Maier collected other objects, such as newspapers, and sometimes recorded audiotapes of conversations she had with the people she photographed.

Towards the end of her life, Maier may have been homeless for some time. She lived on Social Security and may have had another source of income, but the children she had taken care of in the early 1950s bought her an apartment and paid her bills. In 2008, she slipped on ice and hit her head. She did not fully recover and died in 2009 at the age of 83.

Photography

Maier's images depict street scenes in Chicago and New York in the 1950s and 1960s. An article in ''The Independent'' characterizes her photographs thus:

Maier's photographic legacy, in the form of some 100,000 negatives – a large portion in the form of undeveloped rolls – was discovered by 26-year-old real estate agent John Maloof, also president of the Jefferson Park Historical Society in Chicago. While working on a book about the Chicago neighborhood of Portage Park, Maloof bought 30,000 prints and negatives from an auction house that had acquired the photographs from a storage locker that had been sold off when Maier was no longer able to pay her fees. After purchasing the first collection of Maier photographs in 2007, Maloof acquired more from another buyer at the same auction. John Maloof who runs the Maloof Collection owns 100,000 to 150,000 negatives, over 3,000 vintage prints, hundreds of rolls of film, home movies, audio tape interviews, original cameras of Vivian Maier, documents and various other items, representing roughly 90 percent of Vivian's work. Maloof discovered Maier's name at an early stage of his discovery, but was unable to find out more about her until just after her death, when he found an obituary notice in the ''Chicago Tribune''. Her work was first published on the internet in July 2008 by Ron Slattery who had also purchased some of her work at the auction. In the spring of 2010, Chicago art collector Jeffrey Goldstein acquired a portion of the Vivian Maier collection from one of the original buyers. Since Goldstein's original purchase, his collection has grown to include 15,000 negatives, 1,000 prints, 30 homemade movies, and numerous slides. His collection is known as Vivian Maier Prints Inc. In 2009, Maloof started to post some of Maier's photographs on a blog, and later he announced his intention to publish a photo book of Maier's photography. The book ''Vivian Maier: Street Photographer'' is scheduled to be published by powerHouse Books on November 1, 2011, and a feature-length documentary film about Maier and Maloof's discovery of her work, titled ''Finding Vivian Maier'', is scheduled for release in 2012.

Maier's photographs, and the way they were discovered, received international attention in mainstream media.

Exhibitions

''Finding Vivian Maier'', November 18 - December 4, 2010 at The Apartment 02:, Oslo, Norway March 15 - April 30, 2010 at Bruun's Galleri, Århus, Denmark ''Finding Vivian Maier: Chicago Street Photographer'', January 7 - April 3, 2011 at Chicago Cultural Center ''Twinkle, twinkle, little star...'', January 27 - April 28, 2011 at Galerie Hilaneh von Kories, Hamburg, Germany ''Vivian Maier, Photographer'', April 15 - June 18, 2011 at Russell Bowman Art Advisory, Chicago, USA ''Vivian Maier - A Life Uncovered'', July 1 - July 24, 2011 at the London Street Photography Festival, London, Great Britain ''Vivian Maier, Photographer'', July 18, 2011 - January 28, 2012 at Hearst Gallery, New York, USA ''Vivian Maier - A Life Uncovered'', July 29 - September 16, 2011 at Photofusion Gallery, London, Great Britain December 15, 2011 - January 28, 2012 at Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, USA ''Vivian Maier - Hosted by Tim Roth'', December 17, 2011 - January 28, 2012 at Merry Karnowsky Gallery, Los Angeles, USA

References

External links

www.VivianMaier.com, The official website of photographer Vivian Maier. Showcasing photography portfolios, information about exhibitions, print sales, the book and documentary film. This site is run by the Maloof Collection.

Vivian Maier Prints Inc. website showcasing Maier's images from the Jeffrey Goldstein collection. Also showcasing photography portfolios, exhibition information and gallery representation in Chicago and New York.

Vivian Maier, Street Photographer article on Vivian Maier at The Discerning Photographer

Howard Greenberg Gallery, The Howard Greenberg Gallery handles all Vivian Maier print sales for the Maloof Collection.

Russell Bowman Art Advisory website representing Maier's images from her first private gallery exhibition in Chicago

Vivian Maier Facebook Page, The official Facebook page of photographer Vivian Maier. Run by the Maloof Collection.

Category:1926 births Category:2009 deaths Category:French photographers Category:American photographers Category:Women photographers Category:Street photographers Category:French expatriates in the United States Category:Nannies Category:People from Chicago, Illinois Category:Culture of Chicago, Illinois

de:Vivian Maier es:Vivian Maier fr:Vivian Maier hu:Vivian Maier no:Vivian Maier ro:Vivian Maier ru:Майер, Вивиан zh:薇薇安·迈尔

Jimmy Chin was born and raised in Mankato, Minnesota and is an accomplished climber, mountaineer, skier and photographer. He has organized and participated in numerous climbing, ski-mountaineering and exploratory expeditions to Tibet, China, Pakistan, Nepal, Tanzania, Mali, South Africa and Argentina.

His achievements include climbing first ascents of big walls and alpine towers in the Karakoram Mountains of Pakistan; crossing the Chang Tang Plateau in north-western Tibet on foot; and attempting the direct North face of Mount Everest, alpine style.

In October 2006, Jimmy achieved the first successful autumn Everest summit attempt in four years with Kit DesLauriers, skiing back down the mountain. Jimmy has been featured in numerous publications, including ‘National Geographic’, ‘Outside’ and ‘Men’s Journal’, and has been voted as one of the world’s most eligible bachelors by ‘People’ magazine.

In May 2007, he joined the Altitude Everest Expedition as a climber and expedition photographer in an attempt to retrace George Mallory and Sandy Irvine's fateful last journey up the North face of Everest.

External links

Jimmy Chin's website

Jimmy Chin on the North Face website

Altitude Everest Expedition 2007

The Accidental Career of Photographer Jimmy Chin

Category:American mountain climbers Category:Summiters of Mount Everest Category:Living people Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Climbing biography stubs

Coordinates	51°43′″N94°27′″N
name	Rube Goldberg
birth name	Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg
birth date	July 04, 1883
birth place	San Francisco, California, United States
death date	December 07, 1970
resting place	Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Hawthorne in Hawthorne, New York
known for	Rube Goldberg machines
occupation	Cartoonist, inventor }}

Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970) was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor.

He is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complex gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. These devices, now known as Rube Goldberg machines, are similar to those drawn by W. Heath Robinson in the UK and Storm P in Denmark. Goldberg received many honors in his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize for his political cartooning in 1948 and the Banshees' Silver Lady Award 1959.

Goldberg was a founding member and the first president of the National Cartoonists Society, and he is the namesake of the Reuben Award, which the organization awards to the Cartoonist of the Year. He is the inspiration for various international competitions, known as Rube Goldberg Machine Contests, which challenge participants to make a complex machine to perform a simple task.

Life

Goldberg was born July 4, 1883, in San Francisco, California, to Jewish parents Max and Hannah Goldberg. He was the second of four children (older brother Garrett, younger brother Walter, and younger sister Lillian). Rube married Irma Seeman in 1916. They lived at 88 Central Park West in New York City and had two sons named Thomas and George. Goldberg did not share a surname with his children because of the amount of hate mail he received during World War II from the political nature of his cartoons. He ordered his sons to change their names from Goldberg for safety reasons. Both of his sons chose the last name of George, wanting to keep a sense of family cohesiveness. Thomas and George's children now run a company called RGI (Rube Goldberg Incorporated) to maintain the Goldberg name. John George (Thomas's son) is assisted by his cousin Jennifer George (George's daughter) and John's son Joshua George to keep the family name alive. Reuben died in 1970 at the age of 87, while his widow, Irma, died 20 years later on April 26, 1990 at the age of 95.

Career

Goldberg's father was a San Francisco police and fire commissioner, who encouraged the young Reuben to pursue a career in engineering. Rube graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1904 with a College of Mining degree and was hired by the city of San Francisco as an engineer for the Water and Sewers Department. After six months he resigned his position with the city to join the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' where he became a sports cartoonist. The following year, he took a job with the ''San Francisco Bulletin'', where he remained until he moved to New York City in 1907.

Goldberg drew cartoons for five newspapers, including the ''New York Evening Journal'' and the ''New York Evening Mail''. His work entered syndication in 1915, beginning his nationwide popularity. He was syndicated by the McNaught Syndicate from 1922 until 1934.

A prolific artist, Goldberg produced several cartoon series simultaneously, including ''Mike and Ike (They Look Alike)'', ''Boob McNutt'', ''Foolish Questions'', ''Lala Palooza'' and ''The Weekly Meeting of the Tuesday Women's Club''. The cartoons that brought him lasting fame involved a character named Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts. In that series, Goldberg drew labeled schematics of the comical "inventions" that would later bear his name.

Cultural legacy

right|thumb|450px|This postcard book, ''Rube Goldberg's Inventions!'', was compiled by Maynard Frank Wolfe from the Rube Goldberg Archives. The cover illustration shows Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin. The "Self-Operating Napkin" is activated when the soup spoon (A) is raised to mouth, pulling string (B) and thereby jerking ladle (C), which throws cracker (D) past parrot (E). Parrot jumps after cracker and perch (F) tilts, upsetting seeds (G) into pail (H). Extra weight in pail pulls cord (I), which opens and lights automatic lighter (J), setting off skyrocket (K), which causes sickle (L) to cut string (M) and allow the pendulum with the attached napkin to swing back and forth, thereby wiping chin.

In 1931 the Merriam-Webster dictionary adopted the word "Rube Goldberg" as an adjective defined as accomplishing something simple through complex means.

Predating Goldberg, the corresponding term in the U.K. was, and still is, "Heath Robinson", after the English illustrator with an equal devotion to odd machinery (although Heath Robinson's creations did not have the same emphasis on the sequential or chain reaction element).

Goldberg's work was commemorated posthumously in 1995 with the inclusion of ''Rube Goldberg's Inventions'', depicting Professor Butts' "Self-Operating Napkin" in the Comic Strip Classics series of U.S. postage stamps.

Film and television

Rube Goldberg wrote a feature film featuring his machines and sculptures called ''Soup to Nuts'', which was released in 1930 and starred Ted Healy and The Three Stooges.

In the 1962 John Wayne movie ''Hatari!,'' an invention to catch monkeys by character Pockets, played by Red Buttons, is described as a "Rube Goldberg."

Various other films and cartoons have included highly complex machines that perform simple tasks. Among these are ''Flåklypa Grand Prix'', ''Looney Tunes'', ''Tom and Jerry'', ''Wallace and Gromit'', ''Pee-wee's Big Adventure'', ''The Way Things Go'', ''Edward Scissorhands'', ''Back to the Future'', ''Honey, I Shrunk the Kids'', ''The Goonies'', ''Gremlins'', the ''Saw'' film series, ''Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'', ''The Cat from Outer Space'', ''Malcolm'', ''Family Guy'', and ''Waiting...''

Also in the ''Final Destination'' film series the characters often die in Rube Goldberg-esque ways. In the film ''The Great Mouse Detective'', the villain Ratigan attempts to kill the film's heroes, Basil of Baker Street and David Q. Dawson, with a Rube Goldberg style device. The classic video in this genre was done by the artist duo Peter Fischli & David Weiss in 1987 with their 30 minute video "Der Lauf der Dinge" or "The Way Things Go".

Honda produced a video in 2003 called "The Cog" using many of the same principles that Fischli and Weiss had done in 1987.

In 2005, the American indie/alternative rock band The Bravery released a video for their debut single, "An Honest Mistake," which features the band performing the song in the middle of a Rube Goldberg machine.

In 1999, an episode of ''The X-Files'' was titled "The Goldberg Variation". The episode intertwined characters FBI agents Mulder and Scully, a simple apartment super, Henry Weems (Willie Garson) and an ailing young boy, Ritchie Lupone (Shia LaBeouf) in a real-life Goldberg device.

The 2010 music video "This Too Shall Pass - RGM Version" by the rock band OK Go features a machine that, after four minutes of kinetic activity, shoots the band members in the face with paint. "RGM" presumably stands for Rube Goldberg Machine.

In 2011, Toronto based photography studio 2D Photography created a machine for taking two portraits.

Games

The popular 1963 board game ''Mouse Trap'', as well as its sequels ''Crazy Clock'' (1964), and ''Fish Bait'' (1965) are based on Rube Goldberg machines. Some examples of Goldberg-inspired videogames are ''Incredibots'', ''LittleBigPlanet 2'', the 1990s-era series of ''The Incredible Machine'' games, and ''Crazy Machines''. It is also possible to construct a Rube Goldberg Machine by using Garrys Mod, a game mod for Half Life 2 and other computer video games that use the Source game engine by Valve.

See also

Chindōgu

Deathtrap (plot device)

Domino effect

Frederick Roland Emett

Jean Tinguely, Swiss artist who created Rube Goldberg-like sculptures

''Mickey One''

PythagoraSwitch

Robert Storm Petersen (Storm P.), a Danish contemporary artist who drew "inventions" similar to Rube Goldberg's

Steampunk

William Heath Robinson, English cartoonist and illustrator best known for drawings of eccentric machines.

References

External links

Toonopedia entry

Smithsonian Archives of American Art: Oral History Interview, 1970

Annual National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest

NCS Awards

Rube Goldberg in 'Creative Contraptions'

IMDB biography

Rube Goldberg Honda Commercial, "Cog", at Snopes.com

Guide to the Rube Goldberg Papers at The Bancroft Library

10 Viral Rube Goldberg clips at Salon.com

Category:1883 births Category:1970 deaths Category:American cartoonists Category:American comic strip cartoonists Category:American engineers Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:American humorists Category:American journalists Category:People from New York City Category:People from San Francisco, California Category:Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning winners Category:Reuben Award winners Category:American Jews Category:Archives of American Art related

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