February 27, 2009 by pmelcher.

I know it has been said here that the World Press Awards 2009 was a nice selection, albeit maybe too much linked to the most important events of the year. Who is to say that a lesser known event might have had stronger images ? Regardless, ever since the results, new information has been brought to my attention that I would like to share.

<Disclaimer>  I am a big Obama fan and a huge admirer of Callie Shell’s work. This has nothing to do with either politics nor quality of work < End of Disclaimer>

This image of Obama, taken by photographer extraordinaire Callie Shell, was apparently a set up. Callie asked, or challenged, the then candidate Obama to do pull-ups while they were waiting backstage:

While it is  a great picture, it still bothers me highly that the photographer would have provoked the image. To me, a photojournalist should always remain a spectator and not an actor, and especially not a stage director. He/she is there to document an event, or a moment, without possibly affecting it. Of course, it is almost impossible because just having a photographer point a camera at an event will create some kind of  reaction. There has been many examples of images taken only because the participant in a news event saw the photographer and reacted accordingly. There not much anyone can do about this.

However, interacting with your subject should not be allowed, regardless of the situation. And it certainly should not be rewarded with a major journalistic award. This situation breaks my heart because I love this photograph, but just knowing that Obama did this knowing the photographer would create a sellable images just ruins it for me. Its almost like it was staged.

The second info I received was about those sports images:

Like you, I was very impressed with these images, considering the extremely brutal environment the sports photographers have while shooting the Olympics. These look like studio photographs that would have taken a lot of resources and time to set up. Amazing. Well, apparently, it so happened that these images did not travel like that when originally send to the EPA wire. Not at all. What you are seeing is heavily post production retouching of the original images. The background was much more visible and the drops almost impossible to see. That begs the questions : should participant of the World Press Award should submit their original images or should they be allowed to heavily retouch them ?

These images are still great, don’t take me wrong. It is just the ethics behind.

Finally, I don’t know what that is :

It got 3rd prize in the Portraits category. Is it because the Jury do not beleive the Chinese can’t do better photography than  imitating classics with puppet dolls? How does this series, that looks like a photography student Saturday afternoon exercise, win a prize ? its amusing, cute, indeed, but how is it photojournalism? Is it photojournalism on photojournalism ? Huh ?

The World Press should change the selection process a bit. For one thing, they should add multimedia. Now !!.

But also, I beleive they should have a 110  person jury that would judge images all year long as they come in, on some sort of sharing Facebook type site, where each one could add great pictures as they see them. This is the 3rd millennium and juries could easily use existing technology to post images as they see them. Other jury members could add their votes  and at year end, the votes would be tallied. Even the public could participate in one category. No need for mass CD or FTP submissions, for week-long exhausting viewings sessions of 10,000’s images in  dark rooms, or other antiquated selection process.. If they don’t do it , I will.

Posted in multimedia, magazine, technology, Aurora, web 2.0, photojournalism, editorial, slideshow, wire service, news | Print | 9 Comments »

February 26, 2009 by pmelcher.

Alan Meckler, the man behind the epic rise and fall of JupiterImages, is now back on the blogging block. His ” I have returned” entry is all about blaming the banks ( what, not the housing market ?).

On more photographic news, the White House Photographers have voted for their best of the best, and like every year, it is a delight, not only for the eyes, but for the brain. Beside being graphically beautiful,  there is a lot of intelligence behind these photographs.

see them for yourself :

Did I mention, that unlike others prizes, they have a best of multimedia ? see the winners here

Posted in Jupiter, technology, commercial stock, photojournalism, slideshow, news, editorial, getty | Print | No Comments »

February 26, 2009 by pmelcher.

Istockphoto is offering 10% off 10 free images. You can’t beat that :

Does that mean they pay you ? How does 10% of free work ?

Posted in No sense, web 2.0, transaction, getty, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

February 24, 2009 by pmelcher.

You know it’s coming…you are just not sure what to do about it. A few weeks ago, Apple released the new version of their personal DAM called Iphoto. Besides being one of the worst photo organizing application, it came out bundled with a little gadget that allows  it to recognize faces and tag them accordingly.

The technology is not really new. Picassa has offered the same, on line, for quite a while. The principle is rather simple. The computer recognizes where faces are located in a picture and asks you to tag it appropriately. After a few examples, the application takes over and continues automatically based on what it has learned from your input. It will still make some errors, which you can correct, but overall, it will be pretty efficient.

Myheritage.com, a family history website has offered the same technology for a while, with a twist. It tries to match your face with a celebrity and tells you who you look like.

Those are two consumer-oriented usage. What surprises me is that no photo agency search engine has even remotely tried to apply this technology to their work flow. Especially in the editorial world, where 95 % of the searches of people  are made with proper names. A photographer shoots Bill Gates at an event, the image is processed automatically to add his name to the IPTC field and added to the database. What a time saver !!!. Or , you finally find out the name of that woman sitting next to George Clooney at the last Miramax party. You upload her picture with the right info and hop! your whole database is updated in seconds.

Now, lets take this a step further. You just figure out what species that bird is. With the same technology, it can update any and all images with the same bird. Even better, you take a picture and it will scan the internet to find out  what species it is and automatically add it to your images. This could be done for almost anything in your images. On the search side, a user can upload a generic image of a bird for which he has forgotten the species name and the database will return all the images with the same species in it, along with its name.

Currently, photo agencies spend a fortune on key wording. Some even have in house departments that keep on growing, as they process more and more images. Others give their content to be key worded by batteries of  9 to 5 keyworders based in India or other low wage countries. No one really mentions it, but this has become one of the highest added cost of images processing since they have become digital. A whole underground world, with its tight rules and regulations , its specialized software and its priests. It has almost brought key wording, the act of adding words to an image, to a science. Or, at least they would like it to be. They have “structured” vocabulary, words you can or cannot use, “standards” and other super secret sauce that you should respect if you want to be successful. They control a broad range of scary sounding anagrams, like IPTC, XMP, Dublin core, that they spend hours discussing during closed door sessions around the world. The more complicated, the more esoteric, the more people think it is important, if not fundamental.

They usually sit next to the IT guys and exchange complicated sounding words with looks of complicity while the rest of the room looks upon them with complete blindfolded admiration.

But all this is soon going to change. Besides the new steps of auto tagging, image search is coming out of its infancy. You currently also have similar search, color search and exact image search, giving the meaning of an image its rightful place, next to its description.

Why don’t we see any of these more often ? probably because image key wording has generated its own business, and jobs, a bit like Microsoft has created help desk jobs because it crashes all the time. It has grown out of a shortcoming. It plugs in a hole between the photograph and the person looking for it. It has replaced the fame knowledgeable researcher that agencies used to have with a generic obtuse answering machine. Image Key wording has now become an evil growth on the side of the photography business, managed by  librarians who would like you to believe that they are a solution. The amusing part is none actually access you database history to see what words are actually being used by your clients and how successful the results are. For them, and the rest of the key wording industry, if a client can’t find the right image, it is because they are not using the right keyword.

A bit like stock  photo agency editors who decide what image should make it through your system without ever looking at what images are actually published, the key wording industry has absolutely no relations with actual users. Nor do they seemingly care. They believe the users should be keyword friendly, and not the opposite.

Image search is going through a long awaited evolution and is now beginning to offer the proper tools to match a need to an offer and those who will win will be the ones that understand how to apply this technology to better serve their clients.

Posted in idee, technology, commercial stock, celebrity, Search, PACA, CEPIC, keyword, editorial | Print | No Comments »

February 23, 2009 by pmelcher.

There are two basic ways to price an image:

The first requires a little bit of mathematical knowledge, which is not a given  in our industry. You need to add up all your costs of producing an image: the cost of the equipment, of course, plus the cost of your education ( if any), to which you add all other costs that you might have occurred in the past or the present. You can add part of your studio rental, or home rent, your electricity bills, you clothes, your car, your food, your water bills, your vacation, your insurance and so on… You end up with the value N ( total cost).

You then divide this number N by the number of images you expect to license throughout your career, which is A.

You thus have N/A= T. T is your average cost per image shot. Keep this number somewhere safe, as you will need it many times.

Once you have an image you want to license, you then have to estimate how many times it will sell. This is the value W.

You then divide T by W and you have your image price. T/W=P. P stands for final price and will work regardless if you license images via RF or RM.

The other way to price an image demands much less calculations. You take an image, you like it, you put it for sell. A client reaches you to purchase a license. Depending on how badly they need it, you raise the price. The price is a combination of how difficult the image was to get ( “can it be redone easily ?” is the question you should ask yourself) multiplied by how important that image is to your client final project. That final number is your price.

I see or get a lot of request on pricing images. I read about photography “experts” desperately trying to map out rules and regulations on this subject. I even see companies who are so confused, they think the photo licensing market works like Wall Street, a simple offer and demand adjustment. Finally, there are very poorly managed agencies who apply the subscription model to RM images submitted by commission-based photographers.

Like it or not, price negotiation is an indivisible  part of photography. The MBA’s of the big photo corporations just hate it and have been desperately trying to find ways to  make it disappear. The successive failure of A21 and JupiterImages, the inability of Corbis to post a profit in more than 15 years are just a few example of why it just doesn’t work. There is no sales matrix that you can apply to images, as all are different. The value of an image, as we said before, is in the eyes, and pockets, of the buyer, at the moment that he is ready to purchase that image. 3 days before or after and the value changes.

Its a skill. Like it is a skill to figure out what image will have the most value. It is a skill as much as being a good photographer. It is not a science. Sure, you can always apply the same equation to every image and come out with an average price for each, but that means you have to make a lot of images to be successful. Or you could just do a few that sale very, very well. Its a choice.

Right now, it seems the greatest majority of images are licensed at some kind of pre-approved price level defined mostly  by poorly trained executives who have read once two many times “The Long Tail”and have swallowed it sideways. If you price your images like a commodity, they will be seen as one like  a self serving prophecy. If you ignore the so called rules and play with your instinct, you might very well be extremely successful.

Posted in license, commercial stock, transaction, editorial, corbis, Royalty free | Print | No Comments »

February 17, 2009 by pmelcher.

It has been a while…

It’s been a long while since I had seen a photographer caress light with such exquisite love and passion, capturing not its essence, but its mere delicate reflection on other objects. It has been a long while since I had seen photography describe, with such passion,  the never-ending game between light and darkness, shadows and reflections, engaging in an elegant dance, bouncing off the unsuspecting elements.

It has been a long while since I had seen a photographer master his light meter with such dexterity, ease and comfort giving his subject the silhouette of eternity.

To me, photography is the mastery of capturing light as it reflects on our world . It is Plato’s Allegory of the Cave finally revealed, and this photo essay by Jeff J.Mitchell is a pure example of a master.

(click on the image below to see the slide show):

You have to hand it to the Time.com photo editors: Their slide show structure is clunky (Please fire the IT team !!) and atrocious ( full screen any time ?) but they are trying really, really hard to give photography its rightful space on the internet.

Posted in TIME, magazine, lens, commercial stock, web 2.0, photojournalism, news, editorial, slideshow, getty | Print | No Comments »

February 16, 2009 by pmelcher.

“But one of the — Google — I mean, the harsh way of just defining it, Google devalues everything it touches. Google is great for Google, but it’s terrible for content providers, because it divides that content quantitatively rather than qualitatively. And if you are going to get people to pay for content, you have to encourage them to make qualitative decisions about that content.” _Robert Thomson (managing editor of The Wall Street Journal)_

I find this quote right on the spot, for two  reasons. Google, by becoming the number one search engine on the web has  become a standard that everyone follows and copies.  Most photo agencies these days  boast the size of their archives and the speed of their search result rather than the quality of their content. It used to be that photo agencies would only represent top talent regardless of the quantity. What you would find would never be available elsewhere and clients where guarantied a certain level of quality.

These days, everyone is representing just about everyone else and most of the content can be found elsewhere. Furthermore, a search on any of these mega sites  just return a hefty volume of images, hoping that the right one will be in the pack. No effort is made to separate the quality images from the pack. Creativity is trumped by productivity. A photographer producing more has more change of being sold than one that has great talent. Nothing new here.

But the second part of this quote is much more revealing. “And if you are going to get people to pay for content, you have to encourage them to make qualitative decisions about that content.”

The more you have content, the more you say that each and every unit of that content is worthless. If you have thousands of pair of shoes, what do you care if the one you are wearing got scratched. You will probably throw them out, regardless of who the designer is. It is in human nature to associate rarity with quality. Same goes with photography : These mega sites, offering millions, if not 10 millions of images, are really just saying that their content is really not that good, but they have a lot of it. Since their search result do not even offer a quality option filter, every image is treated like the next one: The quality  is based on the lowest common denominator.

Works great for Microstock who brand themselves as cheap  discounters. No one expects to find a Cartier-Bresson in there.  Not so good for the rest of the industry, yet it is where everyone is headed, if not already there.

If you want your customers to pay, they have to feel that their are purchasing something special, if not unique. It also has to be package so that it looks unique. Photography does not escape this rule.

Posted in Search, technology, Magnum, google, web 2.0, getty, corbis, flickr, Royalty free | Print | No Comments »

February 13, 2009 by pmelcher.

No blurry Black and whites, No pictures taken with an Holga, No post dramatic moody images. The WPP 2009 is a real crop of hard core photojournalism. Indeed, there is a lot of squared shape color-enhanced images but, for some reason, they are not bothersome.

Its pure professionalism here, far, far away from the  citizen journalist snapshots and where experience is really obvious. From sports photos, always impressive in innovation and creativity, to issues the US has hardly ever mentioned, its a very balanced and informative year.

All the photographers mentioned should be proud, very proud of their work and the jury should be commended for its ability to avoid the traps of trendy pseudo psycho photojournalism. Although, it does seem that the winning image was principally chosen for the importance of the event that it represent rather then its pure photo journalistic qualities. As if the the jury had decided to reward the best images of the most importnat events of the year, rather than the best image.

Nevertheless, it;’s a great image.

We are still waiting for the multimedia award and the World Press Association to recognize it as a separate and viable entry.

see the winners here :

Posted in HOLGA, magazine, photojournalism, wire service, editorial, news | Print | No Comments »

February 12, 2009 by pmelcher.

A view of the UK magazine  market  versus the USA market here, (well, the celeb mags).

Posted in magazine, celebrity, photojournalism, finance, editorial | Print | No Comments »

February 6, 2009 by pmelcher.

I live in New York, and as such, I am a privileged human being. Because the island of Manhattan is so crowded, it is mostly occupied with tall buildings closely built together. That means that either from the street, or from another building, it is almost impossible not to see into the living room of someone you will probably never meet. If you add that night falls early in winters, after around 4 p.m. ( although we are at the same longitude as Spain where it is light late in evening, riddle me that Elmo), you get an even better view of peoples’ dwellings.

Why do I mention that ? Because it has astonished me recently how many of the these places are equipped with TV sets the size of a truck. Big black rectangular mass attached to the walls, beaming myriads of electrons in faces a 1/10 of their size. These 30/40/50 inches screens, although still over $1000 a piece, seem to have taken over entire walls where before books or pictures used to dominate.

Now, I know New York is special but I also do know human beings’ passion for their TV. It is not a luxury but a necessity, sometimes more important then food or clothes. I can imagine that this phenomena is worldwide. The interesting part, as I had mentioned before, is that none of the 100 + channels we all receive these days have any programs that take full advantage of these huge screens. Rather, they simply rebroadcast the same shows, under the HD label, just adding a few pixels here and there. You buy a very expensive item just to see the same talking heads, except you get to see their pimples much better.

In the US, most TV  programming is delivered via cable or satellite. The same connection most city dwellers use for their internet connections. We see more and more TV channels referring to their websites, to a point that is gets revolting. Everyone knows that the merging of TV and internet is very, very close. You will go from TV shows to websites from the comfort of your sofa and quite frankly, you will not see the difference. Internet on TV is still very much unused for now, as TV screen quality, up to now, have been subpar to computer screens and cannot display computer generated text as well as the screen you are currently reading this. But this is about to change.

What does all this have to do with photography ? Hold on, I am getting there. In the late 80’s, a visionary software maker had an intriguing vision. He said that soon everyone  will have big LCD panels in their house and they will need content to fill them. His name was Bill Gates and he soon created a company to fulfill this vision. After the 80, the 90 and the next millennium came and no one had any panels, beside Gates himself. Corbis couldn’t wait and decided to license photograph the old fashion way. We all know the result.

Today, a lot of people have those plasma/LCD panels. When the TV is not on, they look like someone decided to put the rock of “2001: a space odyssey” on everyone’s wall. Ominous but quite boring. These sets are all plugged in cable or satellite, remember? Parallel to that, a whole industry has risen building and selling these digital photo frame. You stick a card or better yet, hook it up to a wireless connection, and you get to see a slideshow on a rinky-dinky 7 inches screen. Finally, if you walk into the reception area of any big to medium photo agency these days, you will have at least one of these big screen projecting a slideshow of their best images. All these could be easily merged.

See where I am going with this ? If we follow the trend in publishing, which is going to  be almost fully digital very soon, to the consumers being already equipped to receive extreme size images at home, we will soon see photographs appearing on people’s wall at the size of a desk. Furthermore, unlike print, a screen is luminescent.  That is, instead of looking at a sun on a print that only reflects the light around you, it will will actually be a sun lit up. Very much like those slides we would look at when they were projected on a wall. At ten times the size and resolution !! You cannot demand a better way to view  a photograph.

The quality of detail that one will be able to get along with the vibrance of colors will be amazing. photo editors of these new “view on your big screen LCD/Plasma TV “ publications will have a field day. You add sound and you will have the most incredible photographic experience ever seen.

It will not take long for this to happen and wether through online publications or direct subscriptions to photo banks, more and more photographs will be seen on big home screens. Since the quality of  digital cameras is growing at the same speed, there is no telling how much details, richness, depth,dynamic range these images will have. Forget the boring four colors magazines currently mix to make an image. This is millions and millions of colors with infinite variations.

The only issue for editors and photographers,  at least at first, is that these screens are currently stubbornly rectangular. Photography loves the vertical ( magazines and website mostly print verticals these days) and displaying a vertical on a very rectangular screen will be a bit disappointing. But,  and if manufacturers see a market, there is no reason for them to keep that shape. One could imagine a big square screen that could fit a whole wall. You could play video games ( I am sure they can use a square screen too), watch movies, or see and read magazines that could use some or the whole available space.

All this long post to say that photography still has a long way to go before it matures into adulthood. What you are looking today is still its baby steps and a fraction of what it will be able to achieve in the near, very near future.

Posted in multimedia, web 2.0, license, magazine, technology, prosumer, flickr, france, editorial, finance, slideshow, corbis | Print | 2 Comments »