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Archive for February 2007

State of the Circulation in the USA

February 13, 2007 by pmelcher.

News magazines continue to take a plunge as celebrity magazine continue to rise. According to a Reuters Headline, the latest numbers published by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) for 2006 show a decline in both weekly news and business magazine, while entertainment based magazine seem to continue to grow.

Obviously, this has a huge impact on the photo industry as it guides, or at least should guide, what type of images are offered by agencies and photographers.

Posted in TIME | Print | No Comments »

The great depression of 2007

February 12, 2007 by pmelcher.

There are too many images available in the editorial market these days. The pressure has been such that the prices of images are going down, following one the basic rules of economy: When supply exceeds demand, the prices drop. And like 1929, it could lead to dramatic results for the stock photo industry business.

A few years back, a small agency, based in Washington DC, called Newsmakers launched royalty free editorial images. The idea was quite simple: they put numerous head shots of famous politicians on a CD which you could buy for a flat fee and use them as many times as you wanted. Under pressures of their peers and because they were later bought by Getty Images, it never really took off.

Flickr is about to offer a means for their users to license images. What are the choices: they could go for a simple e-commerce, royalty free approach: The easiest and most cost effective way to start capitalizing on the huge collection of images available. A “buy once, use multiple times” model, with prices being decided by users. The microstock companies will have to follow.
Flickr could also try and enter the Rights Managed market. But that would be a much more complicated, more expensive proposition because it is still far from being fully automated.Tracking usage demands a lot of resources. Regardless, without a pricing guideline, usage fees would immediately plummet.

and lets face it. A lot of images in the editorial space are not exclusive : press conference, red carpet, even some images of war are taken by a pool of photographers traveling together ( Lebanon is a good recent example) . So why are image buyers really paying for a limited right when they do not need it, and agencies cannot provide real exclusivity to most of their images.

If I were a new editorial photo agency entering the celebrity space for example, I would stop slashing prices ( space rate are lower now than they were 10 years ago). Instead, I would fix a nice flat fee for multiple usage and save money by not having to check for usage. There is nothing that looks more like a red carpet photo than the one taken by the photographer next to you. And they are up to 75 photographers at these events.

Another sign is Getty Images playing around with the “pay once, use multiple times” model. Their new licensing experience called “rights-ready” currently being tested in the commercial space could easily be transported to the editorial space. It is just a question of content. With their subscription model for editorial, copied from other wire services like AP or Reuters, Getty is not stranger to selling cheap editorial images. Furthermore, both founders, creators and operators of NewsMakers now hold extremely high position at Getty these days.

You also have the emergence of the individual portals, like Photoshelter, DigitalRailroad and other Spitfire photo pro. They add yet an additional source of images to the market by making them easier to find. While Photoshelter has, for now, taken the approach of sticking with industry rates, no one knows yet what DigitalRailroad or Spitfire Pro, will do. The independent photographers using these services will need a way to penetrate the market and since they do not have the overhead of agencies, will be highly tempted to reduce their pricing.

On the other sides, magazines, newspapers, websites, facing budget cutbacks and staff reduction, will have no problem accepting this new pricing model for editorial images. and because of the sheer amount of images available, they have leverage. Less billing, less tracking, less hassles. What is there not to like?

The price of editorial stock falling is nothing new. What will be new is the emergence of Royalty free editorial images which is going to cut a huge slice of most agencies revenues. The question that remains, is who will be the first one ?

Posted in photojournalism, flickr, newspaper, wire service, editorial, Royalty free, getty, Microstock | Print | 1 Comment »

Wires and Plugs

February 9, 2007 by pmelcher.

I came upon a cool new website today and starting playing with it. The result, if you click on “run this pipe”, is all images in Flickr that corresponds to a news item on Google News.

It is very interesting and when I have more time, I will attempt to create more pipes of this sort. You can customized the source of the news, and I believe, the source of images. I just didn’t have much time to play with it today. I haven’t figured out yet how to keep the headlines next to the images, but then again, I did this in 10 minutes.
The point of this exercise is to show that one could easily create an automated online news magazine, just using Flickr as an image source. Since it is an aggregator, and I am not a commercial user, I am assuming I am not breaking any copyright law.

Play with it and let me know.

Google News run through Flickr

Posted in yahoo, keyword, google, web 2.0, filter, news | Print | No Comments »

About the World

February 9, 2007 by pmelcher.

Like the Academy Awards of news photography, the new World Press winners are announced. A few notes of interest:

~There are a lot of black and white images. Not sure if this is a trend of how images were shot this year (2006) or the jury, looking at stories from afar, thought that the b/w images were more meaningful at the end.

~The sports section show some of the best images I have personally ever seen. Its fascinating to see that with such predictable events as sports events, happening in set location with set conditions, some photographers are still able to reinvent themselves and continue to take incredible images.

~The extreme majority of winners are with either wire services or photo agencies. Where are the independents? Where their material not good enough or did they simply did not have the time to submit their images?

~ Being at the right place at the right time just doesn’t cut it. Photojournalism, as I said before, has absolutely nothing to fear from UGC ( User Generated Content) or other “Citizenphotojournalist armed with a cell phone”

~ When will the World Press acknowledge multi media slide shows? I have seen some pretty amazing made for the web slide shows in 2006 and expect to see some more in 2007. As the internet is becoming more influential as a medium for photojournalism, the World Press organization should pave the way. And the Pulitzer for that matter.

~ No artifacts please. Like the Lensbabies for Commercial stock photographers, there has been an over use of images taken with the HOLGA. I understand that technology can be intimidating for some but I am a big believer that great images do not need any artifacts. Please, let’s stop rewarding those who rely on tricks to take images.

Otherwise, a great year for photography and congrats to all the winners and all those who were close to winning. You make my job more interesting every day.

Posted in prosumer, HOLGA, photojournalism, lensbabies, editorial, news | Print | No Comments »

NY Times publisher: Our goal is to manage the transition from print to internet

February 7, 2007 by pmelcher.

“Sulzberger says the New York Times is on a journey that will conclude the day the company decides to stop printing the paper. That will mark the end of the transition. It’s a long journey, and there will be bumps on the road, says the man at the driving wheel, but he doesn’t see a black void ahead.”

In between light and shadow

February 7, 2007 by pmelcher.

There is a funny thing about photography. It is at the same time emotional and professional. It’s art, politics, opinions, point of view, more opinions, as well as as dollar and sense. Ever since the rise of the corporations, a lot has been done to strip photography of its “feelings” and transform it into a commodity. The Image Bank was probably one of the first to try and transform this into an emotionless business, creating matrices and pie charts that would much better extricate the core value of an image and transform it into a wealthy equation. It is a revenue driven proposition.

It took a real beating when Tony Stone managed to successfully balance its ideas and re injecting talent into it. That “je ne sais quoi” that makes an image absolutely perfect.

In Europe, there is a continuous trend that barely exist in the United States. Photographers group themselves in “collectif” and shoot what they want. A “collectif” is really just a group of photographers trying and, sometimes, succeeding, in obtaining financial freedom by pooling resources together. Yes, I know, very communist thinking. Some have been very successful at it, like French collectif , L’oeil Public. Another good example, is of course, VII. Their approach is quite the opposite of the corporate world, as they try to figure out how to extract values in images, that might or might not bring some much needed revenue.

This is not another post about the Poet and the Businessman. In photography, you cannot ignore revenues. It is about the many roads that lead there. The US has a culture of “one image tells a story”, of illustration photography, that reinforces a text. In Europe, it is more about the images tells a story. The images are predominant, barely escorted by captions. In advertising, the images dwarfs the text in the majority of case. In editorial, they usually start with a double page opener, a stunning yet titillating image that leaves room for a bold title text on the top right or left, while capturing the readers attention. It is followed by full verticals, small close ups, half page horizontals, so that the readers have a 3D emotional vision of the story. European readers are trained into reading images that way and expect nothing less from their magazines.

The US culture, however, somewhere between LIFE magazine (remember the country doctor by Eugene Smith ?) and Newsweek magazine, have completely dropped that. Question of space, thus money ? Was the fall of LIFE and LOOK magazine a sign that people did not want to see such features ? Or was it a new generation of photo editors, coming from a newspaper background, badly versed in photo language, and relying solely on the one photo stores that are the wire services.

Regardless, the result is here and quite boring. Wire services have extremely talented photographers but for the most part, completely unable to tell a photo story. They are like commercial stock photographers covering news. Given a concept, they will get one very powerful image.

That was then, this is now: a new generation of image hungry photo editors are on the rise. They have web pages to fill with images. They can even add comments, music, video to still photography. Even ad banners now are filled with sound and moving “stuff”. And they can, and will, tell a story with images.

Therefore the photo industry will continue to strive thanks to those collectif who, however poor they might be, continue to charm us with incredible imagination and a wealth of fresh, unbiased images. The future of photography lies in two things. A new, intelligent breed of photo editors that can harness the wealth of possibilities the online publishing world can offer, and the continuous talent in the photo world that reinvents itself because it wants too, and it can.

Here is a list of interesting collectifs I recommend you take a look at ( I am open to more suggestions):

Tango Photo
PhrawUp
GetThepicture
Obturateur Central
l’Oeil Public

Posted in TIME, photojournalism, editorial | Print | 2 Comments »

News Snippet

February 5, 2007 by pmelcher.

Hachette USA is selling Premiere Magazine. Don’t want to brag about it and write “see, I told you so” because it is always a sad thing when a magazine closes or is sold. Premiere magazine was the number one source for celebrity portrait photographers, as they would should shoot for the magazine and then license the images elsewhere. It is a blow to agencies like CPI, Corbis Outline and the Exclusive division of Getty. New owners, if they find a buyer, will mean new photo editor, probably smaller budget and less expensive shoots. But then, how can a movie magazine survive when there are numerous websites and blogs about the movie industry ?
Apparently Lagardere, who owns Hachette, is cutting the dead branches to make the bride more beautiful.
In a related story, the world oldest living newspaper will only be available online. According to the New York Times and AP, Swedish newspaper Post och Inrikes Tidningar will also reduce its staff to one (1). This is only the beginning. Rumors are that French newspaper, Liberation, who relies heavily on photography, plans on doing the same thing. It will not surprise me, as I wrote in a earlier entry, that this trend will expand to all newspapers worldwide.

Editorial photographers should adapt their photography now, if they want to survive this evolution.

Posted in photojournalism, editorial, news, corbis, getty | Print | No Comments »

How do we globalize…or how I learned to love the world market

February 5, 2007 by pmelcher.

A little crash course in Economics:

The United States of America is a consumer based economy, driven almost entirely by the forces of consumer demand. The more people purchase, the better the economy, and thus the companies in it. Clients rule as absolute despots. The money spend on goods is then re injected, through companies back into the economy. What is offered to consumers is decided by the companies themselves, through careful analysis of consumer purchase history. GM only builds SUVs because we like to drive SUVs, regardless on how much they consume or pollute.
In most of Europe, however, things are a little more complex. Because of a heavy intervention from governments, willingly approved by the citizen, consumers have much less power, if any. Consumers are strongly encouraged to save money. It is not so much important how much is being spent then how much of the wealth created is being reinvested, through savings, into the economy.

Thus it is re-injected, through banks and other financial institutions, including taxes, back into the economy. The companies care much less what the consumer demand is and thus can survive a long time with an inadequate product. They create goods that they believe the consumer will want regardless if they want it or not. Furthermore, the state is heavily involved in putting laws, restrictions and other tariffs, that will altogether alter a product by the time it gets to the market. Renault cannot built SUVs like GM because they are too many restrictions. However, the consumer, at the end, will get an eco friendly, low MPG car. And everyone is happy.
[Bear with me for a little longer …It is related to photography ]
In the US, the consumers decide with their purchasing power and therefore can make or break a company. It puts the burden of quality of product on the companies. In Europe, because financial institutions, heavily monitored by governments, make these decisions, the consumers will take what is given to them. Up to them to make the right choice on limited options.
There is no (or little) 30 day money back guarantees in Europe. They are sales only twice a year. There is hardly anything like customer support. If you are unhappy, too bad. But products low in demand stay on the market for a long time, as they will be subsidized. If you are one of the only few that like a product, well unlike in the United States, you will be able to enjoy it for a long time, at the same price as equivalent product. For example, books in France. Like the United States, big resellers decided to start selling books, a la Barnes and Nobles or Borders. Have lots of choice, stick to the bestsellers and slash prices. The government intervened, in favor of small local bookstores and said, well, the price of books will be fixed, with a only a 5% discount margin at the most. The good ? All little boutiques with hard to find out of prints books stayed in business, fearing no competition. Big resellers could slash prices if they wanted, albeit not by much, and consumers got to keep their favorite stores, whether they liked it or not, and there was little fluctuation in pricing.
“What the hell does all that have to do with photography?”, you are now starting to say, if you have read so far. Well, as per an earlier post of mine, where I wrote, in a nutshell,” if you want be global, you have to go local“, one has to plunge a little deeper to make it on the international market.

Like the Corbis and Getty have learned the hard way, it is not by building a website with keywords translated in 150 languages that you will succeed on the international markets. Not only because of culture, but also economics. In another post of mine,”In My Face”, I was ranting about a French law that prevents publications to publish any picture of anyone without a model release, even editorial. “Ah ah !!” you say, “I get it”. “Not only do I have to make sure make images fit the local culture, but I have to be aware of all the local laws”. Well, yes and no. Here is the interesting part and then I will let you get back to work.

When the French build a photo website, because they are so involved with their own laws in culture, they will NOT post an image containing a human being lacking a model release. They will also post a limited amount of images, strongly edited, because French images buyers hate too much choice. They are just not used to it. If an American builds a photo website, they will put a huge amount of images of Joe Di Maggio, translated in 150 languages, thinking if there is a market here, there is a market everywhere. And the more they post images of the same topic, the more they have a chance to get a sale.
So what’s the answer ? Analyze your content and travel. If you cannot travel, read and surf. For an US photographer and photo agency it would be to let go the trend analysis based on usage, as it will only give you feedback on the US. For a French photo agency, for example, it would be expand the choice you offer. There is nothing ever more important these days then to escape local national mentalities and expend your understanding of the world. The world will not come to you, you have to go to it.

Posted in editorial, keyword, france, law, corbis, getty | Print | No Comments »

The massacre continues…

February 1, 2007 by pmelcher.

Might be little late, but I have not seen it anywhere else. After dumping HFP (Gamma, Rapho, Explorer, Top, Hoa Qui, Keystone, Jacana) to scavenger company Green Recovery, and washing their hands of the whole thing, rumor is that Groupe Lagardere is about to do the same with the whole Hachette Group. But I am not going to speculate on rumors.

No, what is true, is that the Industrial Specialist, “The group’s major investments concern primarily the takeover of companies in difficulty”, has named Stéphane Ledoux et Olivier Bloud, from Cité de l’Image, as the new managers. Who are these people?

Stephane Ledoux created Cite de l’Image, a photography lab, who cites Corbis as one of their clients. As most people know, the French photo business relies very much on prints, as almost every digital file is printed and brought by messenger/account executive to photo editors to be sold. Not much is being done on the Internet yet, mostly because of union laws. Instead of doing their own printing in house with extremely expensive machines, a lot of photo agencies rely on outside labs who can offer a lower cost as they increase volume. In the past, the HFP group used a competing lab Central Color (Oh !, same LOGO*) to have its prints done. Wonder what will happen now?

Olivier Bloud is a successful (?) entrepreneur in the royalty free space, creator of Iconotec (only sells 4 CDs and looks deserted) and manager of WestValley, a software company developing ASP solutions for the Photo Industry and whose only client, up to now, seems to be the content deprived Iconotec. He appears to also be working for Cite De L’image too. Seems to me that this is a takeover by Cite pour L’image, with financial backing from Green Recovery. Anyway, as we now know which labs and web solution the defunct HFP will be using ( what will be the new name, as obviously, they cannot keep Hachette Fillipacchi Photo ? Green Photo ? ), we wonder if all the collection will become Royalty Free. Olivier Bloud seems to have been a commercial stock photographer in the past, so there might be some hope he will understand the business model of Hoa Qui, Jacana, Top, and Explorer.

But what happens to Gamma, who has multiple World Press Awards winners on staff and iconic images in its collections ? And Rapho, who has some of the best photographers in the world (Edouard Boubat, Jean-Philippe Charbonnier, Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis, Hans Silvester). Under some type of Franco French decision that these image collections are part of the French “patrimoine” (cultural heritage) and therefore should never fall into dirty “foreign” hands, the successive rulers of HFP have poorly juggled incompetency with national pride, dropping financial result in the process. But what the hell, they were, and are, defending culture against corporate greed. Although, I guess, in this case, French corporate greed is better than cross Atlantic barbarians. At least the massacre will be done on French soil, by French people, with French blood. The heritage will remain beyond all, French. ( by the way, on a side note : Hans Silvester is German and I do not hear Hungary screaming for the return of Robert Capa’s images).

And seriously, how does one successfully run a photo agency these days, while running other time consuming businesses ?
However, I might be wrong and these guys might be able to turn the company around and return to its past glory. I sincerely hope so.

* Central Color is a much older photo lab than Cite de L’Image.

Posted in editorial, photojournalism, france, corbis, getty, Royalty free | Print | No Comments »

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