Matthew W. Phillips

51 minutes ago, Chance Shirley said:

I can’t speak for Phil or Uli, but yes I am saying using religion to justify bigotry is a cop out.

And if you don’t think that people will just make up a religion to justify bigotry, you should read up on the origin of the Southern Baptists in America.

Thank you for your honestly. In this case, I will just agree to disagree with you.

15 minutes ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

Yes, but as far as I can understand, legitimate discrimination goes in one direction only. I can't discriminate against you for your faith, but I can for the sake of mine, so to speak.

One of Jehovah's Witnesses can refuse to make you a custom birthday cake, because Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in birthdays, as they see it as an artefact of paganism (but then, much of the world is, so what can you do). But they can't refuse to sell you a can of beans if they were a cashier at a supermarket if you were openly pagan.

At the end of the day, free market economics makes all this redundant, and provides a bottom-up solution. If one baker won't bake you a cake, another one will, and they will probably get free and positive publicity for it. My personal take is for people to stop making themselves victims. Of course now I'm going beyond the OP.

I agree with your post but I think (I dont want to misquote so correct me if I am wrong) that Chance, Phil, and Uli are implying is that religion is a "cop out" or a way to legally justify bigotry. I am not sure how they come to this conclusion since the tenets of the major religions are widely available for all to view on the interwebs and these tenets largely predate modern institutions like photography, legalized gay weddings, or even the United States of America. But I cannot begrudge a person of the right to their opinion.

In preproduction of a short that I will be shooting on the BMPCC 4k and looking into lens selection.

For my budget, I am looking at the Meike Cine prime set or the Fujinon 18-55mm zoom for starters. I have seen some footage with the p4k paired with the Meike Cine primes but I couldnt find any clips of the p4k paired with the zoom.

Has anyone used this lens? What are the pros/cons? Would it be a better/worst option that the low cost cine primes set? I guess for the same price, I could rent a Zeiss prime if I kept it to one focal length for the whole shoot. This seems limiting but who knows?

What do you all think?

Thanks in advance.

Matthew

8 hours ago, Travis Shannon said:

This really could have been posted in Off-Topic, Daniel.

Off Topic says "No politics or religion, please" so I doubt it would last.

4 minutes ago, Chance Shirley said:

But it would also be discriminatory for said artist to turn down a customer because of race, religion, etc. Yes, the artist could just say he is too busy for the job. But if he actually explains/admits to the customer that he is discriminating... I dunno, maybe that opens up a legal can of worms.

Maybe it will be like this legally. That should terrify people though. Discrimination is just a negative take on the word "discernment". If people in service jobs aren't allowed to discern the work they take then I worry that we will end up with a talent shortage in said fields.

I see a talent shortage already happening in academia due to too much regulation by government. People will opt out of certain fields if they believe the government is getting in their business too much. This hurts the economy as a whole. Not sure how things are where you are at but where I am at (Northern California), we have such a shortage of labor willing to take work that some businesses are shutting down just because they cannot find employees to do it. Not sure how they are supporting themselves but I admire anyone who will not be bullied into taking work they don't want.

Obviously, the easiest way around this is to not offer blanket types of work and negotiate everything by job. The photographer should ask first about the nature of the job and, instead of declining outright, ask about when they need it done. If they don't want to do the work, play coy and say "sorry, I am booked up at that time."

3 minutes ago, Chance Shirley said:

I get it. The product in this case is “pictures of a wedding.” The photographer is taking pictures of a wedding. Unless that wedding is for a gay couple. Sale of the product is denied to gay people.

Maybe if you go into a store and see "Wedding" on the menu. But I assumed most businesses of this nature tend to contract by job? If so, the idea is pitched to the photographer and they decided whether to take it or not. Just like Karim said about the cake. If you have a cake that says "Happy Birthday" sitting in your bakery, sure, you must sell it to whomever comes through the door. But if you are asking someone for a custom job, I cannot imagine that they are legally required to honor your request.

2 hours ago, Robin Phillips said:

thats fair. Personally I do prefer its grain generation and have found its halation tool fairly intuitive, hence suggesting it. I think a spot on colorist can probably do the work with either set of tools and yield a solid result, but you do need a colorist who really knows film to get best results.

The grain is...well, I believe it was Steve Yedlin that already pointed out in one of his "rants" that grain can be algorithmic or it can be filmed and it pretty much is just as valid either way since the grain structure is random and not tied to any particular thing as some people tend to think. I think Dehancer using that argument that grain is somehow "baked in" or specific to the image. There is no justification for this in the actual science as far as I can tell.

As for halation, I don't get why this is so desirable. Most people associate the "film look" or "movie look" with Kodak since most motion pictures have been shot on their stock. Yet Kodak has had an Anti-halation layer for decades. Unless you want to emulate a niche stock then I don't see the appeal of it.

As for bloom, that is pretty much just a wrapper for the Resolve "Glow" tool. And their film stock selection is just a guesstimation based on the tint of different film stocks. You can get your own tint by shooting a roll of still film of the type to emulate on a grey card and then pixel peep the color to check the RGB values. Then you can use the Offset Resolve tool in a node to get that tint by adjusting those values. It is how I do BW emulation since BW film (Kodak 7222) is not pure R = G  = B but has a slight Red shift with a slightly higher Green shift.

12 minutes ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

I propose that there is a difference between products offered and requests for special products.

This is what Chance doesn't seem to get. When I was a teenager, I worked at McDonalds. We had this 39 cent cheeseburger day and we would offset the cost of the cheap cheeseburgers by making them up in huge batches when things were slow so we could quickly get them out when things were busy.

Some savvy customers figured out that the cheeseburgers were not "made to order" and started to request special orders to get fresh ones made. Things like cheeseburger with no cheese, or no onions were common. Thing is, the manager said "no, we wont do that." Customers were angry as though they had a right to exactly what they wanted. That is when the manager said "this isn't Burger King; you don't get it your way. You take the cheeseburger as we made it or you go somewhere else"

53 minutes ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

It's a human right to be able to access a path to employment, not to demand a job. It's not relevant to me whether there was or wasn't a lawsuit. It's the principle of the matter, which is that nobody has a right to your labour.

This times one million. No one has given a compelling reason for why anyone is entitled to anything from another person. 

2 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

...other than that religion in general is a bad idea that doesn't help anyone. In most first-world countries, people in general are becoming less religious, and that can only be a good thing.

P

The first half of your comment was great and I agree completely. This part; not so much. Imagine taking all of the teachings of all world religions and reducing them to this ridiculous comment. It comes off as exceptionally arrogant but not surprising.

Edit: Most "first-world countries" wouldn't even be civilized the way they are today without the influence of religion over time. It is fashionable these days to talk about systems of oppression, intolerance, and injustice from the comfy confines of countries with due process and some level of freedom of speech. Do you think the non-religious regime in North Korea provides the same outlets?

2 hours ago, Uli Meyer said:

In which case you are running the risk of being called intolerant towards the beliefs of the intolerant for wishing that people were more tolerant.

I imagine this line sounded better in your head.

7 minutes ago, Uli Meyer said:

Apparently there wasn't a law suit. It was the photographer who went out of his way to sue for something that hasn't happened.

HER way. Since you like to be precise, I thought you would not want to misgender the photographer.

4 minutes ago, Uli Meyer said:

You are digressing. Nobody has forced anyone to take pornographic pictures.

You were making a reductionist argument and I refuted it. Homosexual weddings are just as forbidden in some faiths as pornography is. You are making a qualitative judgment based on your ethics; not the beliefs of others.

4 minutes ago, Uli Meyer said:

But that is exactly what is happening here. Not sure what your argument is.

My argument is that people who offer services should have some level of autonomy to determine what they are comfortable with. Despite the fact that this case was photography, the law is broad and will affect all industries. If such a thing were at the federal level, can you imagine a woman in a brothel being compelled to have sex with a man she didn't feel comfortable sharing her body with? So much for my body, my choice. The law sounds far too broad and sweeping. That is my argument.

1 minute ago, Uli Meyer said:

Matthew, taking photographs is not a forbidden action in anyone's religion.

 

Using that logic, it would not be against any religion to photograph pornographic images. That is not the prevailing opinion in most interpretations. Obviously, most religions predate modern photography so these philosophical questions are subject to some level of judgment.

I am not defending using religion as a crutch to not serve someone. I am more in the camp that, religion or not, people should have the freedom to work on projects that they feel like working on. I don't care if you refuse someone just because you think they look like a jerk, why would anyone have the right to force someone until penalty of law to work with people who they don't want to?

Imagine Hollywood studios being sued if they discriminated against certain body type, etc. It sets a bad precedent but I guess some people have to go down the rabbit hole to see where it leads.

5 minutes ago, Chance Shirley said:

Yeah, a Jewish catering business won’t offer shellfish to anybody. Just like I imagine there are vegan catering companies that don’t prepare meat dishes for anybody.

Cool...so does that means that photographers can take "gay wedding" off the menu?

8 minutes ago, Uli Meyer said:

Sorry Matthew, but that argument doesn't work. A Jewish catering business won't offer shellfish.

I see that you completely missed the point. The point isnt whether they offer shellfish or not. The point is that there is a difference between the person asking you to do something and the action they are asking you to perform.

Most of the "big three" religions in the world have things that are forbidden for the adherents to partake in; sometimes even being associated with the forbidden act is deemed as partly culpable. 

Just now, Chance Shirley said:

But it is fine if the independent caterer refuses to serve a gay man?

I don't believe it is fine to refuse to serve a person because they are gay. But I have no idea why you cannot separate the concept of person vs action. The only way to explain to you the difference is in using a stark example...

Say you had an atheist come into an Orthodox Jewish catering business and demand shellfish for their gathering. The caterer refuses...not because the guy is an atheist but because the action of working with, touching, and preparing shellfish violates Torah. Are they being discriminatory because the guy happens to be atheist?

3 minutes ago, Chance Shirley said:

So you are saying if you run a restaurant, you can refuse to serve a meal to people of color? Like they used to do back in the segregation days?

I am not saying that. I am saying that the rules that apply to businesses apply to work for hire also. An independent caterer cannot refuse to serve a black man, for instance, either. (Assuming that the only reason for not serving them is because they are black)

1 minute ago, Chance Shirley said:

But, again, am I hiring a photographer, or am I paying a business that provides a service (wedding photography) to provide that service?

One would hope that a large scale wedding photography business would have at least one person on staff who wouldn't mind offering services for a gay wedding. Maybe that is a good job interview question?

2 minutes ago, Chance Shirley said:

If there is only one bakery in town and they refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding, does a gay couple have to order a cake from out of town? Do they have to go to a different town to get married if none of the wedding venues will rent to a gay wedding?

I don't know anyone who gets married without having all of their "ducks in a row" months ahead of time. Discrimination aside, it could be as easy to foil a last minute wedding as realizing that the venues are all booked, the caterer got the flu, supply chain issues with fabric for the wedding garments, etc, etc. I cannot imagine that any serious wedding would not plan an important event like this well ahead of time.

4 minutes ago, Chance Shirley said:

So, again, the photographer case boils down (to me, at least) to whether the photographer is a worker-for-hire or whether he is a business providing a service to customers.

I don't think the law works like that.

3 minutes ago, Uli Meyer said:

I very much doubt that the photographer who lost the case was forced to do any work. This is about discrimination not about forcing anyone to work against their will.

 

From reading the article, it was more of a "presumptive" lawsuit from the photographer against the law but there was no actual same-sex couple that asked for work. However, the striking down of the photographer's lawsuit is telling other service-based providers that if you deny a potential customer based on these facts that you can be fined $100,000. That is essentially forcing people into taking the work (and it is unclear from the article what standard the photographer would have for denying work; if any)

I am concerned that this will turn into a situation where the burden of proof is on the photographer to establish that what they did was not discrimination as opposed to the burden being on the potential client to prove that it is.

2 minutes ago, Chance Shirley said:

Regardless, it’s easy enough to say “just hire a different photographer.” I just wonder at what point that approach puts an undue burden on people who want photos of their wedding. Probably not a big deal in a big city with hundreds of photographers. But maybe a problem in a small town with only a handful of photographers.

I have a question for you...would you want to hire someone for something important who didnt really want to be there? Would you want to eat a cake prepared by someone who dislikes your lifestyle?

Who in the hell are these people who want to pay for services from people who don't want to serve them? It seems like you will not like the results.

42 minutes ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

But, as I said, my philosophy is simple: STFU and take the cash. Or, decline the job if you must, and don't say why. 

I agree with this completely. If I don't want to do something, I wont do it. But I will not tell you the reason why. I can simply make up any excuse to circumvent the situation. If people don't believe my reasons, that is their business. Never give anyone anything that they can use to cause a problem for you.

58 minutes ago, Chance Shirley said:

DPs, actors, etc. choosing what work to go out for... that’s different than a business refusing to serve someone.

It sounds to me like you are making qualitative judgments that give yourself an out while making others do something they arent comfortable with. It isn't "different." People either have the right to perform their job in a way that they can live with or they don't.

I hope this doesn't get me in trouble for saying but Hollywood has shown in recent years that many in power are hypocrites and preach a certain standard that they cannot live by. I am not "part of the industry" down there so I can view it from the eyes of the average American. People are tired of being preached to about certain progressive causes only to find out that the same industry that has been shoving it down their throats cannot live up to their own standard.

26 minutes ago, Chance Shirley said:

I don’t see how the photography business is any different.

I think the difference lies in what you are forced to be a part of vs who you are serving. What if, as a photographer, you were forced to photograph porn because the client asked it of you? Do you not get the right to a moral (or occupational) objection?

Anyone has the right to service based on who they are; but not all content should be compelled. 

Had the gay couple came in asking for a cake that reads "Happy 5th birthday, Timothy" for their younger brother, I doubt anyone would refuse service to them because they are gay. By making the content of the cake related to the same sex marriage, some may feel that they are endorsing the union by participating in the process. I, personally, wouldn't care about a cake even if I were against same sex marriages as a cake seems harmless to me but everyone has their line they don't wish to cross.

I do wish to ask you if you believe DPs, Actors, etc should be forced to take any work that they are offered provided the rate is paid? Do you think that they have no right to refuse based on morality or ethics? Do female actors have a right to refuse nude roles even? Or does being in a service industry mean that we sell our autonomy and freedom?