Consultant Bobbi Wendt questions the notion that photographers must have their own studios.

As long as there has been a photography industry, commercial photographers have required studios to create and print their images. However, in today’s economic climate, the wisdom of this convention is being questioned.

I can speak from experience. Early on in my career in the photography business, I worked as an in-house artist agent and executive producer for a successful photo studio in Denver. The environment was stunning. It was a remodeled, 5,000-square-foot movie theater with a 17-foot tin ceiling and four large skylights that allowed us to go from bright and sunny to pitch-black in a couple of minutes. It was studio heaven.

To meet the needs of a new digital market, some studios are offering clients a full-service package, providing assistance from concept to print.

It’s no secret that over the last two decades digital technology has sparked a revolution in the way printed materials are made. That change has now swept into the high-volume photography studio, and it involves a lot more than just buying and using a different kind of camera.

Even when an image is captured on film instead of in bytes, sooner or later (and these days it’s usually sooner) it enters the digital world through scanning. That’s when the real changes kick in...

It was the last weekend in July when I received a phone call from a photographer on a cell phone in Alaska. He was out in the wild, but wanted to follow up on a conversation we’d had three weeks earlier, that time on his cell phone from the wilds of Montana. I was in the early stages of planning World in Focus, an event designed to bring together some of the industry’s foremost photographers of nature and endangered cultures. Including him in the mix of presenters seemed like a no-brainer. I had attended one of his seminars years before and considered him one of the most inspirational speakers on the circuit.

It was more than five years since his last visit to Seattle. Not only was he excited about the event and being a part of it, he was looking forward to the chance to reconnect with the many friends...

J.P. Pappis, a 22-year industry veteran, has launched Polaris Images, a new agency based in New York City. Pappis is the former executive editor of Sygma Photo News and Corbis Sygma, and also served as editor-in-chief of Gamma Press USA.

Polaris will represent photographers to magazines, newspapers and television, cover major news events, produce feature stories, market special celebrity shoots and seek corporate assignments. The agency’s stable of photographers includes...

Before you transmit that digital image, are you using the right file format?

Whether you are creating a brochure, a fine-art print on watercolor paper, a web page or a PowerPoint presentation, a variety of image display options are available to you as a digital photographer. Yet before your image is ready for display, there are many technical considerations to understand to make sure that the intended audience views the intended image...

Brian Storm has left MSNBC.com to accept a position as vice president of news and editorial photography at Corbis, a digital media agency owned by Bill Gates.

In his new endeavor, Storm will be working with photographers and editing teams in New York, Los Angeles, Paris and London. He will be responsible for defining and implementing a global strategy for the production of editorial photography that offers clients worldwide the best possible selection of images. He will also lead the company’s efforts to...

Photographer Dave Waag takes you on a tour of the Northwest’s nerve center for outdoor recreation. Perhaps best known as a windsurfing mecca and home to Oregon’s largest pear orchards, the Hood River Valley is also a growing hub for recreation junkies. Located in the heart of the Columbia Gorge Scenic Area, Hood River and the surrounding peaks of Mount Hood and Mount Adams are a worthy photographic destination.

Los Angeles photographer Robert Glenn Ketchum is traveling in Germany this autumn and will be the featured speaker at the Internationales Naturfoto-Festival 2002 in Lunen, Germany, on Oct. 6. In addition, an exhibition of Ketchum’s work, “Changing Perspective,” will be held at the festival from Oct. 4 through Nov. 16, at Lunen’s Hilpert Theater.

On the cover: In photographer Gerald Bybee’s self-styled “photo-cubist” world, people can be two- or three-faced — literally — as can be seen here in “Cosima Blue,” created for a trade advertisement for client Micr0Com. 

Cover Photo: © Gerald Bybee

In July, Wolfgang Kaehler of Bellevue, Wash., traveled to Iceland to photograph the country’s landscapes and wildlife. After his return, he spent time on the East Coast documenting historic and scenic views. In October, he will do an extensive cruise through the South Pacific visiting Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, the Cook Islands and French Polynesia, followed by a journey to France, Spain, Tunisia, Sicily, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Malta in November.