March 16, 2008 by pmelcher.

Email is dying. A slow and painful death. It used to be you would send an e mail to someone and get an answer. It was a second class way to communicate with someone, but still, a good way to get an answer. Then came Microsoft Outlook and the preview Pane.

Now common on all e mail readers, it allows you to see the content of an e mail without opening it . It made not answering easier as you do not feel you actually read the email but rather peeked at it thought the envelope. It also eliminated email much quicker from your field of vision as suddenly half your incoming messages become quickly invisible.

Before Facebook, Myspace or Linked, email was the first popularity contest. The more email you received, the more popular/important you were. But still, like letters, people answered. Even if in a negative way. Spam has little to do with this phenomena as everyone knows that not answering spam is a duty. A law. a rule.

It has more to do with people education or lack of. It is the same with voice mail by the way. More and more, you will send e mails and not get any answers. Portable email readers like Treos and Blackeberry has made it worse. You are on the go, read an email, figure it will take too long to answer on a pygmy size keyboard, figure you will answer when you get back to your computer and forget all about it a few hours later.

Newsworthy is a killer too. the most recent email receives more attention than the one you receive 2 hours ago. Even if it is not as important. It has the advantage of being new and fresh.

Some companies use and abuse email as an internal tool of communication that it becomes quite impossible for anyone to have the time to answer inquiries from the outside world. People do not move from their desks anymore. I have worked in companies where I did not have the time to do  anything else during the day than answer internal e mails .

Since we are bombarded with irrelevant emails, we find it ok not to reply. every site you visit, these days, will ask you to register and proceed in sending you completely irrelevant emails once a week. But, unlike a human being, a website automated newletter do not care if you do not reply. People do. Emails have no emotions since they are faceless, but most often, there is a person on the other side that is expecting an answer.

However, not responding to email is like turning your back to someone asking you a question. Ignoring voice mail is like walking away when someone is trying to talk to you. It is rude and impolite.

Sure, if you get a lot of emails and do not have the time to answer them, it makes you feel important. After all, all these people are asking for your attention and you can only focus on some. You are in control as you decide who you will talk to and who you will choose to ignore.

But there is no greatness in not responding. It is just either cowardice or lack of organization. You are either incapable of answering because you do not know what to answer or you have taken so much work that you cannot handle it anymore. neither of those are signs of intelligence or power.

Being disorganized or simply rude are signs of your impossibility to control yourself and your environment. Makes you look vulnerable and ignorant. Passive and overwhelmed. and also, very, very impolite. Without even mentioning that you may be passing on a very good opportunity.

Email is dying at a time when more and more of the photo industry is relying on it for everything to marketing to pricing negotiation. Mostly because voice mail died years ago . No one really pays attention to their email much more as there is no easy way to find see if it is important or not. They all come in democratically, one after another, whether from your boss or from that boring photographer who thinks it is a replacement for Instant Messaging.

Some are full of traps, especially if you work within a politically charge corporation. They are made to keep a written trace of your decisions or comments and will be used against you later on. Or for someone to cover their ass.

Nevertheless, it is dying as faxes have died. The technology cannot keep up with what is really needed . We have become imbeciles that cannot see that we have a duty to treat each other with respect. And, in a way, with email dying, it is a little bit more of us that is dying in the process, as we slowly return to the ways of the animals.

Posted in technology, No sense, transaction, editorial | Print | No Comments »

March 13, 2008 by pmelcher.

We have to take responsibility for our actions and our businesses. Once again, shields are raised and emotions are running high. The Orphan work bill has been resurrected.

In a nutshell, if passed, the Orphan Work bill would allow anyone to use a photograph, for free, after proving that a reasonable effort was made to find the copyright owner. In an earlier post, I had suggested that instead of making it free, those orphan images should be licensed properly and the money send to a central organisation that would use those funds to continue looking for the copyright owner.

At least, that way, people would continue to know that any image has to be licensed properly. Regardles of this proposition, this bill would be a good bill. For two main reasons:

- It would finally force photographers and agencies to properly credit their images with well filled IPTC fields. There are thousands of paying or free tools out there that allows anyone to enter its information. There is absolutely no reason why people continue to ignore it. Furthermore, a lot of agency website currently cut down the size of an image to display them as thumbnails, erasing all IPTC data in the process and thus creating an Orphan work. This has to stop. As content creators, artist, it is their duty to secure the information on copyright, not the buyers.

With the risk of having their images used for free, maybe, just maybe, they will pay more attention.

- It will create new technologies : there will be a whole new market to help find image copyright owner. an image search tool, for example, where you could upload a copy of the photograph you have in your possession and it will find all other usage of the same image, leading you hopefully to its legal owner.

Furthermore, other technologies will soon come available, like embedded watermarks or automated tagging directly build in the camera. It already exist in many pro cameras, but once again, no one really uses it.

It is a bit sad that this industry needs a kick to take seriously the matter of image ownership. But, fortunately, it will happen if the Orphan Works bill passes and that, my dear friends, would be a great thing.

Posted in idee, focus, technology, copyright, license, keyword, IPTC, Search, google | Print | 1 Comment »

March 11, 2008 by pmelcher.

This industry is whacked. Definitely, positively, completely and definitely. While some industry commentators are desperately trying to get attention to their new pricing guidelines in a last , useless effort to save the RM model, others have just thrown sanity up in the air.

Most commercial stock companies are still around, not because they are doing good, but because their operating cost are low. Like the store around the corner. No big revenue, but then again, no big cost. And that could last forever. Once a year, they all meet up a CEPIC, burning their hard earned savings, to congratulate each other on making it through another year, quite blissfully unaware that the storm has yet to come. It has just been bad weather up to now. The Hurricane has yet to hit.

And so, a huge amount of little store owners, more obsessed by cost saving then revenue making, gather around together for a few days, in a yearly bacchanal ritual of parties, drinking, table hopping and schmoozing, as if to give thanks to an indifferent God under some bored European sky. This year will be no different, as the island of Malta, lost somewhere in between its past glory and the Mediterranean sea, will host the secret and private gathering of the last believers.

Most have switch to RF, grant you, hoping that new fortunes will be made. Alas, too little too late. So in order to increase their offering, they exchange content, like kids with cards, or marbles. They become distributors of each others photographs, in a web of tangled relationships, trying to hide the frog in a bear’s costume.

They remain stubbornly confident that their model is the sole and only model and that new ideas are just hiccups. And so they sit in rows of chairs, listening to people who have never achieved anything in their careers, tell them how to operate their businesses hoping for redemption from these latter saint prophets.

Sure, there is fear and concern, but each one has its own “special” plan, carefully kept secretive and as powerful as a lottery ticket. It is most of the time disguise as a new website that will put the industry upside down, a miraculous search engine, or a new pricing scheme, that will revolutionize the industry forever. Most of the time, it is only just that, a lottery ticket.

“it use to be..” says the crowd, followed by a “remember when ?…” and ending as “ah well, what can you do…”. Getty and, although less and less Corbis, gets blame for everything, including if it rains on their little gathering. It is the cause of all evil, because God forbids, they are not the ones to revisit their decisions. It is the stubbornness of the assurance of things past. “It has worked so it will work” is CEPIC’s cry to the god’s of commercial stock. With a little adjusting of our pricing and a cool redesign of our website, we will see better future, better than we have ever seen.

There is more hope in these hearts and minds when they all leave to go back to the harsh reality of stagnant sales numbers. There is more conviction, because as a group, they agree. And we all know the majority is always right and that there is comfort in numbers . The election of George Bush as president of the United States is a living proof of that. There will be a huge celebration of conviction, an exciting confirmation of ideas past and the realization that change is just another word for stupid.

The imaginary gods of commercial stock photography will certainly be pleased as they wink to the new born microstock king.

Posted in Midstock, Zymmetrical, technology, prosumer, CEPIC, Royalty free, getty, corbis, Microstock | Print | 3 Comments »

March 8, 2008 by pmelcher.

I doubt I could have ever said it better myself…you will understand the reference..

Posted in Midstock, copyright, technology, prosumer, transaction, law, editorial, Microstock | Print | 1 Comment »

March 7, 2008 by pmelcher.

Make a pinhole camera: Corbis, the company we love to pick on, has posted a really nice paper project for your week end. Called the ReadyCam, It is a set of instructions that let you build your own cool pinhole camera. Someone at Corbis marketing has brains. Try it here: ( click on any image)

Give yourself a face lift: Toronto ( again, the Canadians!!) based company ModiFace, Inc. just launched a website where you can make appropriate adjustments to see how you would look after plastic surgery on your face.

Founded in 2007 by University of Toronto professor Parham Aarabi, ModiFace Inc. utilizes advanced computer vision and image processing algorithms to visualize different facial operations including plastic surgery, facial aesthetic treatments and hairstyle changes. ModiFace’s patent-pending technologies empower consumers to redefine their images by automatically visualizing face enhancements, treatments and modifications.

You can redo you face, for free, here: liftmagic

Posted in technology, lens, Canada, multimedia, prosumer, corbis | Print | No Comments »

March 5, 2008 by pmelcher.

French photo agency Gamma, now under the umbrella of Eyedea,  recently lost a judgment for the lost of 9 210 originals. Catherine Leroy, Legendary war photographer, will receive 1,381,500 €  ( that is $ 2,108,909.49). About $228 dollars an image.

Catherine Leroy died in 2006 and was represented by her mother.

Yes, you have read this correctly. That is more than twice the price company Green Recovery paid  Hachette to purchase Gamma, Rapho, Hoaqui, Jacana, Explorer and Top last year. The purchase price was rumored  to be  € 600,000.00 or $900,000.00

Sipa has also been condemned to pay € 1,200,000 ( about $1,8 Million)   to photographer Gérard Gastaud for the lost of 43,331 of his originals. ( about $42.00 per image lost)

Apparently, if you are going to have your originals lost, you are better off moving to France first.

Seriously, however, neither agency would survive if they had to pay such penalty. Both are surviving right now and certainly cannot afford to part with more than $1 million dollar. Actually, besides Corbis, I do not know of any agency that could survive such a settlement.

I am all for compensating photographers whose images have been lost or mistreated. Especially legendary photographers like Catherine Leroy . However, I will question the intelligence of a judge who puts the settlement a such a high value that it endangers the jobs of 1,000’s of innocent people. Some common sense needs to also be applied here.

Both agencies have the right to appeal, which, in this case, I am sure they will certainly do.

More on these judgments here ( In French) : Photographie.com

Posted in SIPA, newspaper, copyright, magazine, photojournalism, finance, news, law, france, editorial, corbis | Print | No Comments »

March 5, 2008 by pmelcher.

Photoshelter, the “business in a box” provider, as it brands itself, has just launched a Flickr import tool. For quite a while, many image distributors, photo agencies included, have banged their heads against their walls trying to figure out how to capitalize on the Flickr offering.

In a nutshell, this tool allows Flickr Pro users ( those are the people paying for their account on Flickr) to easily copy their images into a Photoshelter private archive and license them from their or the newly launch Photoshelter Collection. Either way, Photoshelter takes a cut.

Flickr, or rather Yahoo, soon to maybe be Microsoft, has been studying ways to moneterize the content on their site. Announced for 2007, they are, apparently, still working on it. Photoshelter has come up with a great idea. The question is : Did Flickr authorize the use of its API ?

Not long ago, kiddy site Zoomr had done the same thing, only to see Flickr turn it off. Obviously, they could not accept a tool that would easily allow people to migrate from Flickr to Zoomrrrrrr. PictureSandbox, ex Flickr Cash also tried to use the API with the same result. Flickr said no and terminated the service.

Will Photoshelter suffer the same fate? After all, without a deal, why would Flickr help its users leave the site and make money somewhere else ? Since the press release offers no official comment from anyone at Flickr/Yahoo, it is very doubtful this tool has been fully approved. Sure, Photoshelter’s tool also allows for importing into Flickr, but it is doubtful that would be enough to please the authorities.

Nevertheless, It is the first attempt by an image distributor to take control of the Flickr content and place it in front of pro buyers, with a price tag. There is a good chance Flickr might decide to use a third party to license its content and this would be a good test to see if it would work.

Furthermore, how will the pro community take the invasion of their space by amateurs with a helping hand from Photoshelter. Currently, it seems, the Collection is used by pros. Will the arrival of fresh content from “Sunday Photographers” not only hurt their ego but also their bank account ? Pro and amateurs on the same platform, side by side; doctors, lawyers and photographers sharing the same space.

What will be really interesting, because, in the end, its all that matters, is how are the image buyers going to react. They will certainly continue to purchase with no changes as for them, in this type of stock format, it is the image that matters, not the photographer. If they need an image of a sun rise, they will use the one that matches their layout, regardless of who took it.

Kudos for Photoshelter for launching this API and for continuing to innovate with unmatched brilliance. Are we witnessing the birth of Getty’s next acquisition ?

Posted in yahoo, license, technology, web 2.0, prosumer, editorial, transaction, flickr, getty | Print | No Comments »

March 1, 2008 by pmelcher.

Where is the sales director ? who is in charge of pricing at Getty ? Don’t they have a “price director” like mythical company Corbis ?

Think about it. A bit less than a year ago, they purchased Mediavast, owners of Filmagic, Wireimage and Contour for a cool $200 million. Agregated with the already existing Getty and AFP ( distributed by Getty in the USA) content, they have a hold on the best, most extensive celebrity content in the USA. And the USA is the motherland of the greatest world celebrities.

Getty and Mediavast has sole access to most and majority of all celebrity events. They have exclusive access to parties, events, and have prime location for everything else where they are not exclusive. To top it all, they have some of the best celebrity photographers ever to have walked this earth.

One would have thought that two things would have happened by now :

- A heavy increase in pricing. After all, it is almost impossible to publish a celebrity magazine or website anywhere in the world, without access to Getty’s content.

- A disappearance of its competition, at least on the red carpets of America.

None have happened. The fact that the rise in pricing has not increase is a complete mystery to me. What is the point to secure all this content and priviledge access and distribute as a common content ? I understand that selling subscriptions is what Getty is all about but what about profit ? Couldn’t they sell premium subscription for a much higher price with better content? Or, put some coverage out of the subscription and sell it individually at a premium ?

Mediavast has fought the market share battle already, bradding images in exchange for exposure. Getty does not need to brand itself anymore. So why keep to low pricing ? Or are some of the Getty executives asleep at the wheel ?

There is more photographers now at red carpet event than there has ever been. Why is that, Getty ? Shouldn’t you be in such a strong position by now that no one would even consider competing ? Its is the opposite, it has become more crowded . And every photographer, almost, is double, triple dipping, giving his material to two or three different small agencies to hopefully maximize their chances to sell.

So, again, what is going on in the heads of the corporates ? Brain freeze ? is the Corbis virus is spreading ?

Posted in celebrity, magazine, technology, license, newspaper, corbis, editorial, transaction, getty | Print | No Comments »