December 19, 2007 by pmelcher.

This is a good week for the “no sense” entry. Seems that the approaching holidays are making some of us loose a little bit of our sanity.

First, there is this basement-made German photo industry news blog that post a happy go jolly satire video about the web 2.0 bubble. It just so happens that one of the image is stolen, along with the music. Pretty good for a site that brags to be an expert on the photo industry. Support those who steal images.!!! While some cry fair use and other brandish the “community” flag, the news/blog community picks up the story and even involves pro legal expert. Opinions are posted half way across the world and everyone, it seems, is suddenly a freakin’ photo licensing expert. The battleground is separated in two, with the web 2.0, community, mashup, everything should be free, on one side, and those who rely on copyright and licenses on the other.

Last I read, the video has been stripped of the image and re uploaded. My question is why didn’t these guys (who made the video) asked for permission in the first place ? Is telephone or email not cool in the web 2.o world ? It would have avoided all this nonsense.

Today, the same basement based blog throws a story a free celebrity website, allaccesspass.com. that has just launched. The site offers bad red carpet photography for free. Since this basement blog is ran by a man who has no relations in the industry and thinks journalism is having a few hundred RSS feeds running all day and copy and pasting most of them as quickly as possible on his site, the story is not investigated. A vague WHOIS search is done and that is it.

Turns out this site is run by a Peruvian celebrity fan, based on the West Coast, who buys images from red carpet photographers for $300 and post them for free. The idea is for those pro photographers that shoot red carpet day in and day out to make more money than if they were to shoot for Getty’s meager $150.00 day rate. One pro photog has already been busted and fired by his photo agency and publicists have decided to go after anyone that submits to this site. In the mean time, the hope is that the site will generate enough traffic to make advertising advantageous. Dubious, at best.

Than there is this other industry blog, owned by a huge publishing company that tries to find out if a photographer that has been bitten by a dog actually exists. Closely followed by another famous photo magazine blog that complains that New York is not close enough to Mars. Mmm, must be a slow news week.

And finally, the SAA stormtroopers go after the poor guys who bought Index Stock. It is common knowledge in the industry that Index Stock was poorly managed by the guy who invented microstock and owed money to its contributors. Luckily, instead of filing for bankruptcy it was purchased by the Australian Photolibrary who now has to deal with late payments. The SAA finds nothing better than to harass them over an issue they are trying to solve. Hey SAA, push them to the edge and force them to shut down. That will be a success to brag about. On the other hand, the same SAA had nothing to say about Corbis releasing images to bloggers for free. Why not ? Why do they not investigate the type of payment photographers will receive ? It cannot be better than the Getty web $49

Indeed, a good week.

Posted in Search, No sense, copyright, celebrity, magazine, web 2.0, editorial, getty, Royalty free, corbis, news, law, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

December 19, 2007 by pmelcher.

It has been a rather busy year in the photography business world but let’s not forget photography itself. For all those naysayer claiming that photojournalism is dead, that photography will soon be replaced by video, and for all the others that enjoy great photography, here is the msnbc.com year in review slideshow:

As usual, very biased towards American centric news ( one day they will expand their field of vision) , it still contains my favorite image of the year : a couple stranded on a california highway after their trailer has been blowned off by extreme winds while the fires rage behind, taken by David McNew. Since I do not beleive in fair use and do not wish to pay Getty for a license, you will have to see it in the slideshow.

sit down, take your time and enjoy. Slide show here 

Posted in copyright, magazine, multimedia, photojournalism, editorial, msnbc.com, news | Print | No Comments »