February 8, 2008 by pmelcher.

The World Press awards has revealed its winners for 2008. As expected, the picture of Britney Spears having her head shaved off won for the best image of Arts and entertainment. Or wait..it did not. Once again, The World Press has shown its complete disrespect for the world of news in favor of an overly intellectualized vision of the world. A bit as if the judges, once gathered in a room, behind closed doors, had said: “lets kill photojournalism a little bit more this year”

The photojournalism intelligentsia has voted. A closed group of overly self adoring and painfully egocentric intellectuals whose vision of a news photography is closer to the likes of ICP than the masses. They look for the creative touch, the Holga/lensbaby effect, the “je ne sais quoi” that makes a news photograph a work of art. They over think photography to an excess and seem to look for the Picasso rather than the human touch. They do not believe that an news image can be good, if doesn’t carry the touch of a creative artifact.

This years big winner is a blurry image of a tired soldier. Although not taken in a combat situation, and probably because of low light, it is slightly blurry. I don’t care for such poorly taken image. What is so wrong about reality that it has to be altered and given the highest prize in photojournalism ?

Sadly enough, we see the same intelligentsia controlling most of the major prizes worldwide and spitting out the same type of winners. These judges are all friends with each other and spend the rest of the year over analyzing images as if they where reading a Kafka novel. It has to be dark, blurry, slightly incomprehensible and borderline boring.

No wonder photojournalism is dying. Once again, the sports images of this year seem to be the real winners. Amazing images of incredible situation. The rest is dark, so dark. Not just dark subjects, but simply slightly underexposed or taken with low light. The less you see, the more you can imagine. The image is good for what is not there, so you can fill in the blanks yourself. Even the Nature category is full of blood and sadness because a happy image, according to these judges, cannot be a good image.

Lets no forget that politics, for example, has no place in the World Press. We marvel at the John F Kennedy images in the Oval office yet there is not one image of world leaders in action. Between the French election last year, the changing of guards in England and the US election, you cannot tell me there was no great images.

It is a little bit as if, outside of Africa ( Kenya, mostly), Afghanistan and Iraq, the rest of the world stood still. Or, maybe it was not favorable for a nice moody b&w panoramic Holga image. You can almost hear the judges discuss the lightness of being, quoting “The human condition”, while sipping their warm cappuccinos.” This image is so Nietzscheen, isn’t it?”

Certainly not a good year for the World Press. Even more, because, once again, they refused to acknowledge multimedia, one of the most powerful tool of today’s photojournalism. Or, in a socially driven internet, they do not have a people’s choice, where image consumers could vote.

No, they prefer to remain in photojournalism Medieval ages, taking comfort in congratulating themselves for picking the least interesting images possible as to prove there is more to photojournalism than the reporting of the news. If anything, this, and other awards of it kind, are killing photojournalism. They create the false impression that this is the standard to achieve.

If you have time to waste and have really nothing else to do, here are the winners :

World Press

PS: At least I was right about John Moore’s images who, by the way, truly deserved this prize.

Posted in mediastorm, multimedia, celebrity, magazine, lens, HOLGA, TIME, slideshow, editorial, lensbabies, photojournalism, web 2.0, news | Print | 1 Comment »

February 7, 2008 by pmelcher.

It’s all about to change. Prices are going down while supply is increasing. Big retailers are suffering from the advent of easy to launch website. Quality content is being challenged by an ever increasing flow of new talents and revenues are spreading like over a high volume rather than on a few top names.

Producers are becoming their own clients by launching blogs or consumer oriented website where they by pass their own distributors in order to create a buzz. Some are even organizing free concerts in order to get a grass root movement going. Concerts ? yes, this is a description of the music industry. Sounds familiar ?

Like the music industry, which interestingly enough some photo agencies are now entering ( Jupiter, Getty), the photo industry is also affected by a lot of the same trends. Sure, there is much less stealing and copying than in the music industry, but still, the digital evolution has brought forth a new wave of unexpected challenges. No need to review them all here as we are all familiar with them.

In some countries, the music industry is shifting to new models that will soon hit the photo industry. One of the most interesting is consolidation. We are familiar with the ones that involve a buyer and a seller, but soon we will see another type.Mid size and smaller agencies, unable to compete, and mostly unable to maintain a strong enough workforce, will seek alliances and pool there resources. We will see more and more mergers with less acquisitions. Most will be trans national, at first. In order to expand in international markets, and unlike the sub agent model, agencies will start creating their own wholly owned office with other partners. For example, it would not surprise me to see an agency from France and england forming an economic alliance to open an office in the United States. less cost, less risk for each, more revenue for both.

But soon, we will see struggling mid to small size agencies seeking partnerships within their own country or territory. Especially with none competing agency. One does news, the other commercial stock : lets pool our efforts, reduce our cost of operations and proceed full sail ahead.

This year, 2008, should start seeing the beginning of these forced economic marriage. They will seem a good idea and will salvage some agencies for a while. We might even seen the birth of a 4th giant, should one of these groups successfully manage their relationships. Most will probably happen in Europe first, as some countries, like Germany and the UK seem to have reached a breaking point in the number of agencies ( 400 plus in each country). But the United States will certainly not be spared. The results will be many layoffs in the staffs, and maybe the end of some brands. Pro Photographers will have less places to choose from or to be accepted. Quality might rise, because regardless of anything else, it should.

There is no saying what the end result of the consolidation might be. All we know for sure, is that it is going to be a slow and difficult process .

Posted in Jupiter, technology, license, photojournalism, editorial, getty | Print | No Comments »

February 5, 2008 by pmelcher.

A great story out of France today. You remember the Frenchman who made the world market crash ( I know, I know, just joking), Jerome Kerviel, responsible for a 7 billion dollars loss at the Societe Generale? He has become a superstar, especially in his native country. However, he has been very illusive and only a couple of stock images of him exist.

As you can imagine, all the top photo agencies have been on his track, trying to get that “scoop”. Well, it was a guy living across the street from the French Financial police headquarter who managed to get it first. He is not a photographer but a video film producers. And he managed to film, on video, the infamous financial artist, as he was held for questioning by the authorities. Where the story becomes interesting is that, instead of selling the images directly or even going to one of the photo agencies, he want to Citizenside, a French citizen photojournalism site.

Certainly a coup for those who scream loud and far that this is the future of photojournalism. But wait, here is what happened. The image was bid upon by top native publications and Paris Match won for an estimated 100,000 Euros. Not bad. According to Philippe Checinski, CEO of Citizenside, 75% went to the videographer and they kept the rest. But they then proceeded of making a deal with AP for the video and Getty Images for the stills for any territory outside France. 50/50, says Checinski. Not sure if that split is between Citizenside and the agencies or the videographer and Citizenside.

Why would a citizen photojournalist website do a deal with photo agencies for distribution ? doesn’t that defeat the purpose ? The lucky man could have made those deals directly.

One explanation is that Citizenside is owned at 34% by French AFP. And AFP has a deal with Getty Images. Furthermore, apparently AFP gave away, for free, the video to French television channels. Ouch !!.

And it gets better. In the mean time AFP gets an exclusive portrait session with Kerviel and give that to Getty too. Priced at regular space rate, these “official” images are available on Getty’s site while the others cannot be found. Mmm… 50% of nothing doesn’t look so good anymore.

Did Kerviel’s lawyer make a deal with  AFP saying, take down those images where my client looks guilty in exchange of an exclusive interview ? And even Getty complied ? Is that journalism ? and the videographer was only used as a bargaining chip?

So, although the initial sell of the image was certainly well handled, the secondary and international rights where given away to third party distributors, making Citizenside a broker between creators and photo agencies. A middle man for the middle men. A distribution platform for redistribution. Not what I thought these sites where made. Meaning that if you send a image to Scoopt.com, Getty image will give it to AFP in France. And while each one takes a commission in the process, the creator of the image gets ripped of a little more than directly going to an agency.

What is the point then ?

Posted in web 2.0, prosumer, newspaper, license, magazine, photojournalism, finance, news, france, editorial, transaction, getty | Print | 1 Comment »

February 4, 2008 by pmelcher.

I was given an access to Picapp today, the new service for bloggers, created by the company Picscout. For those who have a short memory, Picapp was first mentioned in this blog here. Interesting enough, I only saw images from Getty Images and none from Corbis ( although CEO, Gary Shenk, had announced it on Reuters TV). I played a little bit with it and it seems rather easy to use.

The search is painfully slow, but it is still in Beta. The content is a little bit dull, but then, I am not your average photo blogger. Finally, I am not sure how or when I get paid, if I do, since there is no payment information entry.

I few questions remain : Someone will have to find advertiser for this to work. I am assuming that Picapp will either take the load or outsource it to an ad agency. If that so, it makes the low revenue split into 4 parts ( Getty, Picapp,Blogger, photographer). Not much, at the end, for the photographer.

But then again, it seems, at first look, that all images presented from Getty are wholly owned, so maybe the photographers will never see any revenue.

A few questions remain:
Is there a market for ad generated revenue for images ? Not that I doubt people will certainly use this service but can it generate enough revenue to agencies and photographers ? Since there is no possible way to control what is being written on the blog with the image, it could very well be that I could be advertising for a product or service that I have criticized repeatedly on my blog ?

Will users be able to upload images to Picapp for licensing, competing with agencies ?

On the other side, will big publisher be able to use this, instead of paying a flat fee per image, thus helping in the collapse of image pricing on the web ?

What about political ads. Do I really went to advertise a neo nazi on my website ? I didn’t see any control.

Overall, the idea is great, in so much as it introduces a new licensing model. Will it work ?

You can see the result below:

Posted in multimedia, Search, copyright, celebrity, technology, keyword, web 2.0, corbis, editorial, transaction, prosumer, getty | Print | No Comments »

February 1, 2008 by pmelcher.

It is time that the MBA’s and other “number” people leave this industry. It is time for talent, instinct, gut and artistic gutzo to regain control of an industry that doesn’t need to generate millions of $$ to be happy. Let’s face it, there is no money in the photo industry. No one will become the Google or Microsoft of photography because the market is just not there.

It is expensive to produce, it fluctuates all the time, it has no real tangible rules and it is populated by annoying photographers that can be great one day and awful the next. It cannot be quantified, boxed in, exceled and projected properly. It looks like a commodity but it is not. It looks like it can be set to follow some rules, but, in reality, it never does. And it is really not scalable either. It is not the more you produce images, the cheaper they become to produce. Furthermore, quantity isn’t even a guarantee of profitability in photography. Both in production and in sales.

Getty Images just released its 4th quarter numbers yesterday amid speculation that it had been sold for an insulting $1.5 billion dollars. Two important information came out of Jonathan Klein’s mouth :

1) For the full year, Getty’s profit fell to $125.9 million, from $130.4 million, in the year before. The company’s 2007 revenue rose to $857.6 million from $806.6 million.

2) The company is NOT for sale .

Profits are going down. By a few millions. Not a good sign. Especially when revenues are up. This doesn’t come as a surprise when one hears that, for example, Getty had 90 people covering the Sundance Film Festival. 90 ! For a festival that doesn’t even sell in stock because all the celebrities present are dressed for winter and have skin burns from the cold. A month later, you have the same celebrities, and more, parading in summer cloth and looking magnificent at the Oscars. Multiple 90 by plane tickets, hotels, meals, probably overtime, booze and you can just imagine how much money came out of Getty’s savings. Because you have to sale a lot of images to cover those costs. A lot. But how would an MBA know that? Even the great Carnegie wouldn’t have known that. It’s not business, its not science, its plain photography common sense and experience.

Getty not for sale. I believe Jonathan Klein when he says that. It written clear and simple on the Kohlberg Kravis Roberts’ website : “The firm’s investment approach, however, is fundamentally simple: KKR acquires industry-leading companies and works with management to grow and improve them and thereby create shareholder value.” Jonathan needs help, that’s all. He is at a lost on how to grow the company and is calling for external help. Not a bad thing. Even Nielsen, the company that owns PDN, is a KKR investment. “An advantage of KKR ownership is that the boards and managers of our portfolio companies need not concern themselves with the short-term perspectives of the financial markets. We are patient investors. We do not focus on quarter-to-quarter results. We focus on building businesses over the long term. Typically KKR holds investments for several years, and in some cases we have held them for more than a decade.”. Well, that must be appealing to Mr. Klein !!!

The bad year that Getty had, couple with Corbis inability to make a profit in 14 years, and JupiterImage struggle to come out of a very low trading stock is a sign that it is not an industry for the bean counters. Not an industry for Wall Streeters. It surely looked like it from afar. But the reality strikes deep. Yes, you can make a few millions if you work very hard, yes, you can consolidate some operations together and try to streamline cost. But at the end, you still make less than a restaurant chain. And you have a brand that no one knows about, besides in the very small world of licensed photography. You can’t even license it to Nikon or Canon and say, here, let’s make a Getty camera, as sure sign of quality. Photographers will buy it like crazy, consumers will go wild. But Ferrari can, and they build cars.

So what is the point, Mr. Klein, Shenk, Meckler ? Why suffer so much? For people that don’t even appreciate what are you doing? or trying to. You have talent, why waste in the photography world ? This is not a world of high finance, crazy deals and earth shattering mergers and acquisition. The only millionaires in this business, quite an irony, are those who sold their agencies to you. No one, before you came around with your checkbooks and slide rulers, had ever made that much money before. It is a land of talent, obsession, dedication, rewards, reaction, instinct, emotion ( lots of that), and pure passion. Time to leave, guys.

You will never see that in our industry and you know it : “Microsoft Offers to Buy Yahoo for $44.6 Billion“

Pack up your gear before it is too late and let us be. We would all benefit from it.

It’s time.

Posted in license, Jupiter, technology, finance, transaction, corbis, editorial, getty | Print | No Comments »