September 30, 2008 by pmelcher.

There is no doubt about it. Photography is a people industry. Photographers take pictures of events because they want other people to see what they see. They edit their images with only one intend, to share them with others. Same goes for photo agencies. They have great pictures that they want to see published. And finally, photo editors select images that they would like their readership to see. Images are always made to be shared and this is where Flickr.com was right on the spot. Even Facebook photo sharing is probably the most used feature. On one takes or selects an image, it is always with a viewership in mind.

Thus, the best image is the one that others will also like to show. Like a rumor or news, photography is extremely social. It cannot survive without platforms that allow for their sharing and commentary. Up to now, magazines have been socially inept, as they were the termination of the dialogue. Websites have mostly changed this. It is now possible for photographers to finally see the reaction, if any to their images. And that should change the way photography is being used around the world. Few take advantage of this viral quality of photography and instead continue to edit based on a silent readership. The content continues to dominate rather than the image itself. Editors, and photographers, continue to shoot for magazines or stock with the same mind frame as 20 years ago when there was no possibility of reaction. And that is a mistake.

Rob Haggart was right when he suggested photographers need to create a fan base. I would even raise the bar and say the same for photo agencies. they need to create their own fan base and generate a demand for their images. The conversation should come full circle to a point when, like rock stars, readers would ask a publication for more images from so and so or that photo agency.While everyone is retreating in their own camp, by creating infinite company blogs about their personal success or self congratulating on little achievements, they should rather expand into becoming indispensable. They should capitalize on their talent to build stronger brands to the point that they can control the market.

Obviously, it is not easy. But it was not easy for Coca cola to create such a mighty brand either. But its part of business. And photography is this weird industry that refuses to communicate with its real customers : the readership . And in doing so, they alienate who they are and what they do by giving full control of their brand to a lazy middle man, the photo editor.

With a little more thinking and less whining, this industry could finally step out of its endless infancy and become a charming teenager ready to take on the world. Let reader and viewers play with your images, exchange them, share them. They will ask for more and that is where the success lies.

Posted in technology, commercial stock, magazine, celebrity, photojournalism, flickr, editorial | Print | No Comments »

September 24, 2008 by pmelcher.

This is a world dominated by wire service, subscription and no photo editors. Welcome to the Future.

These are a few of the US newspapers covers the day the market crashed. All AP images.  Great reporting guys !!! No wonder they are going down the drain..

from this great blog Inovation in newspapers

Posted in license, newspaper, photojournalism, wire service, editorial | Print | No Comments »

September 22, 2008 by pmelcher.

A recent press release just popped up that had me twisting. It is about blog provider PicApp and aggregator Newscom. The deal they announced is quite simple. Newscom will provide content to Picapp to license with their website tool. Simple.

Yet the whole thing doesn’t make sense. Neither company own the photograph they license. They are just both technology platform. yet, they make an agreement to license images they do not own. What is up with photo agencies these days that they have to go through two different platform to reach their clients? Let see. Newscom takes anywhere from 30 to 50% of all sales. Picapp takes an additional 20% or more of all ads placed on images that are used. What is left for the agency? Even better, what is left to the photographers ?

If one understands that the Picapp model is ad supported, one has to realize it would take a lot of the same image to be published before any substantial revenue be made. After all these commission paid, there will not be much left besides pennies. Why would anyone in their right mind participate ? It makes sense for Picapp, obviously and it does, a bit less for Newscom. But for an agency, it makes no sense at all.

Any agency can create a system like Picapp or GumGum and integrate it within their website. Why go through third party providers that have really nothing to offer ? Because photo agencies are technology challenged. Same with Newscom. Why would any agency join a third party aggregator? Why not create an agency owned portal that would cut off the middle man. No need to pay anyone any percentage. It is about time that photo agency stop being thrown around by the incoming waves of innovation and take their destiny into their own hands. Technology is not a barrier but a bridge to your customers. It should not and never be control by anyone besides yourselves.

It is time to stop being passive and be proactive. The solutions are simple and easy to implement. lets do it.

Update: Apparently Newscom has also sign a deal with Gumgum, the company that calls photography “assets” .Press release here.

Posted in magazine, technology, gumgum, license, Search, editorial, web 2.0, No sense, news | Print | No Comments »

September 19, 2008 by pmelcher.

It not really a novel idea. Ap, Reuters and AFP have done it for years. The idea is quite simple. On one side, a big company with a lot of staff photographer producing lots of images, on the other, newspapers, gobbling images by the pound on a daily business. It is not really photography that is being licensed, but information.

Comes in Getty who pushes the concept to non wire service media: Magazines, monthlies and so on. The idea is then to sell images as a service. We will create such a volume of images that you will undoubtedly find your match many times over. And the more you use us, the less it actually cost per image. On paper. For Getty, it is a great deal. Since they do not pay commissions to staffer,  they just need to match the number of subscribers to meet their photographer payroll expenses. Salvation is in the number of subscriptions sold. For the photographers, who cares. They get a salary so who cares who and where their images are being sold. For photo editors, its good and bad. Good to have cheap and alsmost endless ressource of images for cheap, not so good if they like to have a freedom of choice. Thus, the ones that are really consonscious about doing their job perfectly are not the ones who push for such scheme. But they have to deal with bean counters above them that do not care.

In most countries, magazines are run not by Editor and chief or CEO but by CFO’s. These CFO have no journalistic training, hardly open the magazine and only care about the bottom line : saving money. Unfortunately they have the power.

What happens ? Well, for one thing, the quality of the images publish drop. Because they have to edit within a pre-edited pool of images, photo editor have to rely on the best of the worst. Not that Getty have bad images, quite the opposite, but they do not always get the best. Its the nature of the beast. Regardless, readers will get to see not the best image, but something close. Not good. Take Boston.com Big Picture blog, for example. It is only wire service images they publish, thus giving the false impression that these are the best images. They are not. Its not journalism, it is deception, it’s a lie. Just to save a few bucks. This is not helping photography at all.

The competition, other photo agency, thinking it is a good idea, start jumping in the subscription scheme. Except that they forget that it is only profitable if you have a huge amount of clients. making subscription deals with 10 clients is a waste of time and money. Worse, they will do it with commissioned photographers,  forcing them to spend hours calculating who gets what at the end of the month. Ridiculous.

Getty is clearly trying to asphyxiate its competition, that is the lesser sized photo agencies, with this strategy. It doesn’t care about readership and its clients so much. Once on contract, they are stuck with their production and that is it. How many times have I heard photo editors claiming and admitting that your image is better but not being able to use it because of a Getty subscription deal made without their approval.

It is a sad situation that this industry is going through currently because the right image does not always win.And its all to the photographers lost. Because even if he/she belongs to Getty, it is sold at the same price as the next image. It never gets the value recognition it deserves, unless if it wins a prize. By averaging the pricing of all images, Getty is even hurting itself by sending a clear message that a photograph is the same as the one before and the next one to come. Well it makes sense for a big corporation trying to streamline cost and revenue, its very cheap thinking, that will, in the end, hurt the very core of our business, the photographers themselves.

The ones that really respect their work do not sign up with Getty. They go with VII, Aurora, Magnum, Cosmos, Contact and do very well. They are also treated as individuals and not “pool feeders “. Subscription deals are extremely counter productive for photographers and photo editors. They do not even benefit the readers. So why do they continue to flourish in a economy where image distribution is not even an issue anymore ? Because some MBA guy thinks that making money=saving money ? Can we all be better than that ?

PS : Gawker.com has posted a rumor that makes no sense : Getty to purchase Flickr. You can read it here.

Posted in license, magazine, technology, Magnum, newspaper, web 2.0, editorial, photojournalism, flickr, getty | Print | 1 Comment »

September 13, 2008 by pmelcher.

No black and whites, no blurry Holga cameras, no artifacts. Journalism the way it should be. The Rocky Mountain News and its incredible array of talented photographers paired with Brian Storm’s incredible team delivers a very powerful vision of what the DNC meant for Denver, and maybe the rest of the world.

Probably the best spend 20 minutes of your life…Enjoy.

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

September 12, 2008 by pmelcher.

That is messed up. Really. Is there been one year where Corbis has NOT laid of people? This company is like a slippery tunnel. In, one way, out the other. Nothing, or rather no one, sticks. They must have employed half of the US workforce by now. 175 people looking forward to a grim Holiday season because the management is incapable of …managing. Corbis needs to install mirrors, lots of them, in their headquarters. And take a deep look at themselves. The Irony of it all is that once again, they buy a company, put the acquired senior management into senior management roles within Corbis, eradicate “redundant” jobs and hope for the best.

I am sure they said, this time it will be different, like they did with Westlight, Sygma, Zefa or The Stock Market. Another agency, another shot at a black hole.Not that I wish it will happen but lets meet again here, same time,next year and see how many more will get the axed. These guys are like the groundhog day of photography. Repeating over and over the same mistakes.

On a another very sad note, Photoshelter is shutting down its collection. Quite a surprised and not such a surprise. They have a very good team and were energized at conquering some real estate in the stock market. But that is where they made their mistake. They limited themselves to the USA and only stock. And that market segment is being ravaged currently by microstock and assignments, after being trampled by Getty, Corbis and slightly Jupiter.

A marketplace of so called “independent” photographer has little or no chance of surviving because it is flawed from the start. The best photographers are with agencies already. Thus any marketplace will be filled with the medium and not so good, those that could not find a strong agent. There is no strength in volume, in this case, because only quality matters. And when you shoot quality, you do not submit your work to a marketplace, you choose a real established photo agency.

Also, the pricing was off. You have to control excellent content to fight the just war of pricing against the Dark Side. Without exclusivity, the battle is lost from the start. So long Photoshelter collection, we will miss you. You took the right side even if you took the wrong tools.

Finally, “taking on Getty” as a business model will not work. Jupiter tried that and is still picking up what is left from its stock from the ground floor of the Stock Market. Creative Destruction is an idea that has left the building. Photography and selling it cannot be an act of revenge or vengeance, but an act of passion done by selfless individuals with no aspirations for financial rewards. It is not a battleground for egos, although it does create many strong ones. It is a long and painful uphill battle with no immediate rewards besides the pleasure of seeing images you love being published and enjoyed by others..  In a word, its not a business. Not really.One thing we will not miss is the hysterical blog of that egg lady who stole images. That, we can live without.

Posted in technology, commercial stock, Jupiter, corbis, getty, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

September 10, 2008 by pmelcher.

At 20 years old, VISA pour l”Image seemed like  an old lady. This was not a celebration of years to come but a reminiscence successes past for the organizers. Not much was seen there that would make anyone looking forward for 20 more years of VISA. The exhibits where more of the same, extremely talented photographers that we have all already seen.

The first day I got there, a poor girl, 17 years of age, jumped from the top of the Castillet, committing suicide right in front of hundreds of  VISA participant, quietly sipping a beer. I just happened to be close by and got there minutes after she had jumped. Not knowing what had happened, I just first saw the  rows of pale and white faces sitting a the Terrace of the Cafe la Poste. It was quite a dramatic vision. It would somewhat set the tone for the rest of the week.

The Palais, where all the agencies set up shop, was emptier than last year. Not in visitors, but in booth. Raises in prices, general cost, not sure what was the reason. But certainly part of it is that most agencies do not really see the value of having a booth anymore. More of the same photographers showing up, lesser quality and the ability to see anyone portfolio online at anytime makes this an expensive and useless exercise. Since, over the years, less and less magazines are sending their photo editors to search for new sources of images, having a booth is becoming pointless. From many conversations, those that where there this year are strongly considering not coming back, at least with a booth.

However, the yearly show of the Corbis and Getty stands next to each other happened once again. And again, the same result. A completely empty Corbis stand next to an extremely busy Getty one, overflowing with activity, from morning to sunset. Some images would periodically fall off the wall of the Corbis stand, making their appearance even more pathetic. Finally, the announcement that they where going through yet more layoff in France and moving from the center of Paris location to the suburbs did not help.

Strangely enough, none of the photo community platforms where formally present. No Alamy, no DRR, no Photoshelter. One would think that with such a volume of photographers present, it would be a prime destination for the recruitment of new members. Either they do no believe photojournalism is important for their growth or they are just saving money. Who knows.

Apart from that, the Palais was buzzing with its usual activity of agency people catching up on trends and news, while exchanging tips about the future. A lot is going on the French market, for example, which will certainly affect other major markets. But more on that later.

Violence was certainly omnipresent. Not just in the images displayed but all around us. There was a photographer mugging, a first in my knowledge, and after that, we were constantly protected by groups of the french riot police. It did not prevent more violence to erupt, fortunately not involving VISA participant.

The best and most incredible event of this year VISA was probably the projections open to everyone, on a giant screen, in the Place de La Republique. The attendance was spectacular. It seemed that the whole city of Perpignan was there, forgetting the comfort of their homes and TV, to sit and watch great images. At a time when everyone screams the death of photojournalism, this was a nightly slap in their mouth. And it should make us wonder. If people are so hungry to see great photography, who is really killing photojournalism ? The public enjoys it, photographers are producing it, agencies are making it available, so why this slow disappearance?

Far from the argument of who is the best photographer and who should win what prizes, locals where enjoying seeing the world the way it is. And that was probably the most powerful moment of this years event. It just showed with the advent of digital, file sharing, and all these cheap yet powerful cameras, people seem to have a better understanding of how hard it is to take a great picture. And enjoying them even more.

It was a year with no great surprises. Those agencies doing well are doing very well, with or without Getty in their markets. Everyone complained about lowering prices and the ever growing threat of subscription model set forth by Getty. However, there seems to be plenty of valuable space for the agencies with imagination, brains and quality. Some agencies have seen there best year ever in 2008 and are very optimistic about the future. That is what one should remember about this years festivities. VISA might be becoming an old lady, the market, however, is just a toddler.

Some violence in VISA :

Posted in license, magazine, technology, photojournalism, slideshow, corbis, france, editorial, getty | Print | 4 Comments »