July 29, 2008 by pmelcher.

Genius juxtaposition of images, endearing story, human, lively, photographically compelling, wonderful storytelling, the Mediastorm team does it again .

See it now before someone tells you about it:

The only negative is the music that always seem to be the same on all multimedia these days: a  lonely piano with an echo followed by a lonely string acoustic guitar. But who cares ?  When you look at it, it seems that all the pieces were made to fit prior to assembly. It looks so easy to do. And it is not. Makes you wonder how further photography can go beyond the traditional magazine layout. This is also what photo editor should learn to do if they want to keep their job relevant.

Posted in mediastorm, magazine, technology, multimedia, newspaper, editorial, photojournalism, news | Print | No Comments »

July 29, 2008 by pmelcher.

This is not the next challenging mountain  path of the Tour de France. It is neither the now too familiar trend of the Getty stock. It is, however, the devastating path of the Jupiter Image stock.  Minus 68% in six months, for a company that is neither linked to the subprime rate or the price of oil, that is pretty bad. It looks to me, and I am not a stock market expert, that this little company is going right down the exit and is just prime for 2 fruity options : being acquired or shut down.

Insider info has also informed us of massive lay offs in New York last week, apparently kept very hush hush. As much as the numbers are unconfirmed, they are talks of maybe 100’s. As we all know, when a public company is failing, the first to be offered at the altar of the Wall Street gods are the employees. The old rituals of human sacrifice revisited for the business world.

There is no doubt in anybody’s mind that Alan Meckler and is team are doing the right thing. It is somewhere in its application by the common employee that something went wrong and thus they should be punished.

Without significant numbers, it is hard to figure out why Jupiter is having such a hard time. Guess is that they are suffering from the same effect as Getty Images : a declining rights manage market, a suffering traditional RF demand, and a microstock division not covering for the losses.  The “Call” where Alan Meckler will reveal it all  is scheduled for August 7. He is probably hoping that most people will be on vacation.

“That is obviously a bellwether of what the future brings and the fact of the creative destruction that is going to happen here.” once said Alan Meckler to PDN. I guess that was not the kind of destruction he had in mind.

Posted in Jupiter, commercial stock, finance, transaction, Royalty free, getty, Microstock | Print | No Comments »