About

If you’re looking for prints for purchase, I’ve got tons available in my photo galleries. I encourage use of my photos as much as possible. I’ve had thousands of my photos in magazines, newspapers, blogs, brochures, school projects, TV shows, invitations, catalogs, and museums. You can find around 7,000 of my photos posted on Flickr, Smugmug, 500px, Google Plus, and many other websites, but I also have over a million other photos stored on my server that are not public on the web. So if you’re looking for something similar to what I have published, I may have it available. Just ask.

Blog and Website Use (Commercial and Non-Commercial)

You may reproduce and publish any photo(s) found in the public-facing side of this site, my Flickr photos, or 500px photos as long as you provide photo credit to Shawn Clover and link back to any page on shawnclover.com. You can grab yourself a good web-sized resolution photo from my photo galleries.

Non-Commercial Print Use

Many of my photos are Attribution-NonCommercial Creative Commons which means I encourage you to use my photos for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide photo credit to “Shawn Clover” and/or “shawnclover.com” If you would like to publish one of my photos in print, I also ask you send me a copy of the finished publication. I try to provide licensing information wherever I post a photo online to keep things simple. All of my images on Flickr are Attribution-NonCommercial Creative Commons. Other photos like sports photos and portraits fall under standard copyright rules. When in doubt, just ask me using the contact form below.

Commercial Print Use

I frequently provide images for commercial use. Please contact me with the title of the photo you’d like (contact form is below). For publications, I will often give you the photo in exchange for photo credit and a copy of the publication. For private commercial use (company brochures, websites, stockholder reports, and the like) I will give you a cost estimate. I handle all digital-download sales through Smugmug. I usually charge a flat $200 per image, depending on the use of the photo. No photo credit is necessary in this case. With a commercial image purchase, I will grant you a perpetual, non-exclusive, non-transferable, worldwide license to use the image(s) for permitted commercial purposes, including advertising, promotion, brochures, packaging, as part of a commercial website for promotional purposes use, prints, posters, flyers, tearsheets for promotional purposes (not for resale), prints, posters, other commercial display of Media, magazines, books, newspapers, other printed publications, video, broadcast, or theatrical. The image may not be resold, relicensed, or redistributed and I will retain all rights, license, copyright, title and ownership of the image.

I Use Digimarc

You may have landed on this page via Digimarc’s embedded watermark link function. I track use of my photos through the Digimarc service, which means even if you alter my image, Digimarc will crawl the web to track it down and send me a report when my images pop up online. This is not a problem unless you are using my photos without credit.

If You Use My Photos Without Credit

I will generally send one notification to websites commercially using my image(s) without credit. I do collect damages when websites do not comply with my simple policy of providing credit.

Gear

Here’s what I use: 4 Canon digital bodies including my workhorse 5D mkii, Canon 14mm f/2.8L II, Canon TS-E 17mm f/4L, Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L II, Canon 85mm f/1.2L, Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L, Canon 17-40mm f/4L, Canon Extender EF 2x III, Canon macro tube, Lee filters, Canon 580EXii Speedlites, B800 Alien Bees studio strobes, shoot-through umbrellas, reflector umbrellas, several softboxes, five carbon fiber tripods and monopods including the huge RRS masterpiece of a tripod, and too many bags by Lowepro, Crumpler, and Chrome. I’ve got a bunch of old collector film cameras but I don’t spend time using them.

My Workflow

Every day I line up used CF cards and load everything in via Lightroom import. I’m a huge fan of Lightroom and it’s the first stop for everything. I try to keep my Lightroom catalogs under 200k photos each, so I break things up into events, portraits, etc. I process 90% of my photos in Lightroom and the rest in Photoshop which land back in Lightroom after processing. Linux is my operating system of choice but I use a Mac for photo editing because Adobe refuses to make their stuff work on Linux. Stupid Adobe. I use a fully-loaded iMac with three huge, meticulously color-calibrated monitors mounted on reticulated arms and a Wacom pen tablet, magic mouse, and touchpad. I use a Macbook Pro Retina on the go. I keep everything in sync using SpiderOak. I don’t like traditional desks because I bang my knees into the drawers, so I work on a nice clean steel tabletop. I press a button to raise or lower it to standing/sitting positions. I spend most of my computer time standing. Sitting is bad.

Storage

Storing a million photos is a challenge. I shoot 100% in raw format which tends to push 20MB per photo. An HDR photo can have 9 raw exposures and 5 tif versions in editing, which means that some of my photos take up an entire GB apiece. I’ve gone through several builds of rack-mounted Linux servers to store photos, but in 2013 I switched to the Drobo 5N packed with 4TB drives. I keep triple-redundant backups of everything offsite that rotate into a safe deposit box and several other places around town. My Lightroom catalogs back themselves up to the cloud multiple times per day. I’ve never lost a single photo and I never will. Unless a massive geomagnetic storm comes. But then who cares if I lose my photos.

The New Site!

Welcome to version 9.0 of shawnclover.com, which I rolled out June 21, 2013.

For the first time, I have built everything 100% hosted within my site with no more reliance on Flickr or other 3rd party websites for photo displays. Everything is tablet/mobile-friendly, so go ahead and swipe away. I use a ton of HTML5 and AJAX. The site auto-cripples itself in an attempt to display on IE, but hopefully you’re using a real browser. I use responsive web design and I’m retina-compliant (or whatever we’re calling it these days). I decided to go with super-high resolution photos in all my blog posts and photo galleries–they display huge on 27″ monitors and downsize for smaller displays. My apologies if you’re on a slower connection.

Traffic has been skyrocketing around here ever since my 1906+Today earthquake photos went viral in August 2012. My sleepy little site suddenly surged to over 20,000 unique visitors per day from 162 countries. I’ve been seeing heavy traffic ever since. To handle the workload, my new site is now on a dynamically load-balancing database server and have all my photos spread around a worldwide high-speed content delivery network.

And no, I won’t litter my site with ads to make a few extra bucks, so there’s no need to send me constant messages trying to convince me to join whatever ad network you’re trying to sell me.

Since this site is heavy into photography, I’ll focus on that. I’ve loved taking pictures since I was a lad. I entered my first photo contest when I was 11. I didn’t win. I took some photography classes in college and those developer chemicals must have gotten in my blood. I won a photo contest. Then a few more. I started winning digital SLR camera bodies and even a $2500 lens. I couldn’t believe the gear I was being given as prizes. I was hooked. I travel every chance I get. Bringing the camera isn’t always possible because I say I’ll just bring one camera and that one camera turns into a 45 pound bag of gear. It’s too much sometimes. But when I travel alone it’s game-on… an entire fleet of lenses and equipment comes along. I take way more pictures than I have time to edit or publish. The problem is that I sometimes spend hours editing a single photo.

Between work, family, and everything else, I’m working on a book Fade to 1906. Check it out, I think it will be good, even if you’ve never had interest in San Francisco history. I’m a city-dweller in San Francisco, still my favorite city in the world. You can find me walking around town with an SLR attached to the lens-of-the-day slung across my shoulder. Sometimes a 14mm prime and sometimes a hefty 70-200mm f/2.8. You see things differently when you force a certain lens upon yourself. People sometimes ask me where I’m from because they assume only tourists take pictures. I always tell them I’m from Homerville, GA and they give an approving nod and go about their business. My goal is to explore every street in San Francisco and try a burrito from every taqueria, but such lofty goals can take a lifetime to achieve.

I tend to annoy everyone when I bring a camera, so sometimes I need to find alone time for photo-taking adventures. I climb into abandoned buildings, sneak onto building rooftops, and constantly get into it with poorly-trained security guards. I’m into all things related to San Francisco history. I am a proud Top 20 member of the Guess Where SF game and belong to the SF Historical Society and a bunch of museums.

I work in San Francisco too. I lead a web application development team for a large company. In my spare time run a few micro dot coms. I’m retired from bike racing and muay thai boxing. Bike racing is one of the most grueling and competitive amateur sports around. You really need to dedicate your life to it to be competitive and I just couldn’t put in the hours anymore. And losing skin on asphalt is a major drag. I not only raced but also spent years photographing bike races and I’ve amassed a collection of around 75,000 bike racing photos. I still ride. And run, hike, kayak, lift weights, fly airplanes, and sail on the bay.

You can contact me here for more information about photo use, interview requests, etc. Please understand that between my family, full-time job, and book writing it’s not usually possible for me to do custom photo shoots right now. I wish I had more time for that. You can also leave blog comments or @ reply me on Twitter. To sign up for my book’s mailing list, please see the Fade To 1906 page.

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