Will Robb Photography

Lonely Planet just emailed the other day with a list of recent images I sent them which they have accepted and uploaded to their stock site.

My last submission was Japan only images, I had been to Hong Kong but there were enough images from that trip to form a submission in itself. I am supposed to submit 500 images every three months, quite a tall order when I take other work into account, but at the same time it’s not as hard as it seems. Anytime I go anywhere I can get some stock shots really. A photograph of a lunch I ate or passengers on a train I took can end up being viable stock images. Although these type of images can end up as a small photo to illustrate a point in a guidebook or the likes, they are never going to feature prominently anywhere so I always make a point of getting to photograph something interesting to beef up my submissions. The amount of great festivals here in Japan provide a large source of material for my submissions and I also get to a few museums and art galleries and obtain signed permssion to shoot, otherwise it’s hard for anywhere to use the images without fear of legal reprisals. Sometimes a brilliant shot will get rejected if there is no permission, so if I don’t have it I won’t shoot it.

Shooting the submissions is actually they easiest part. The edits have strict guidelines, I can’t sharpen the images, only very slight cropping is permitted, white balance must be adjusted, there is a limited amount of shadow brightening or highlight reduction I can perform, all dust spots must be removed, so each image edited takes a fair bit of time.

I have a large screen mac desktop which helps immensely, whist out and about I use an old 13 inch MacBook and editing is a pain, so all my big edits are done at home. I always start with each image at it’s actual size, then I can easily identify any small dust spots, make sure there is enough sharpness when fully enlarged, make sure there isn’t going to be loss of detail in the shadows or highlights and the colours are OK after White balance correction and exposure compensation. If anything doesn’t sit right with me I reject it outright. I’ve learned to be strict on myself, if it’s not good I don’t submit. It’s the same for all my jobs, no point sending a mag 15 great images and 5 middle of the road ones, editors tend to remember the crap, so best to leave it out.

Once the editing is done I have to write captions and exif data. Each shot must have the date taken, the city, state and country info filled in, information on property or personal permission given for each shot (with the actual signed permission slips being included, I have to send each submission by post). I find the captioning takes time, the first time I submitted I went a bit overboard and gave too much info, historical background, peoples names and ages etc which I thought would get me brownie points but instead got me a ticking off. For example, I would submit something along the lines of “Mrs Ono (54), the owner of the maple tea house on Shinjuku Dori, Shinjuku Tokyo, serves tea in her 135 year old establishment to a salaryman customer.” This would be changed to “tea being poured in a tea house in Shinjuku.” We all learn by our mistakes. This time the editors were very happy with my images and captions which was pleasing. I have found that some clients in the past have required the long flowery captions, but then someone else wants shirt and precise, you have to just find out what each client wants and give it to them.

Anyway, here are a few of the accepted images.

First up is an example of a page from the PDF files I get sent with low res images and file numbers of accepted images.

Then there are some photos where I had to get permissions for, at Issey Miyake Design sight 21 21, The National Art Center Tokyo and Tokyo midtown.

Then an image from the Mitama Matsuri (soul festival) in Yakukuni Shrine.

A street scene from Center Gai.

A man in a demon dog mask at the Hachioji festival.