October 29, 2009 by pmelcher.

It is not what you photograph that matters anymore, it is how you photograph it. It used to be that cameras, processing,  access and mostly distribution was the privilege of a few, all nicely rewarded by a comfortable income. This closed “Boy’s Club” had many high level entry barriers . Not so much. Cameras have remain expensive tools, although currently starting to follow Moore’s law. But processing, access and mostly distribution have become so dirt cheap and easy that anyone can join. And because the pie seems to be limited, the photo industry is experiencing a Malthusian moment.

It is not clear yet if the photo licensing business has limit. Like the Universe, it could be expending and we might not be aware of it. yet. We know for a fact that microstock pricing and content, has either brought in or converted thousands upon thousands of new licensing customers. We also know that they are billions upon billions of images on the internet, mostly unlicensed, either by will of their creators or just plainly stolen. And as millions of new web pages are created every day worldwide certainly all containing at least one photograph, we can safely assume that the photo market is expanding.

We just have not, like scientists in space, found our dark matter, or it’s equivalent . How to reach and turn all these usages in paying customers. Sure, we battle  the constant threat of the evil empire take-over, also sometimes called Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier or even Google, as they try to manipulate the rules of the universe by making all these images free.

But that is not what this post is about. This is about how photography, that used to mostly about what you shot is becoming more about how you shoot it. It used to be that a news photographer only needed to take pictures of an event to see it published. Since they were practically alone, or were the only ones with a distribution channel, the images were almost guaranteed to be published. Not so much anymore as photography, like our planet, has experience an uncontrollable population growth. There are photographers everywhere, shooting everything, either with cellphones or high end Leica M9’s (who pricing, BTW, is more adequate for a lawyer or Wall Street Ceo than a pro photographer). And, in consequence, there is photogrpahy everywhere too. From Photobucket, to Flickr, via Alamy, Istockphoto, Shutterstock and many many others, the total offering of images must be in the billions. Of everything and nothing. Creating a pool of images probably ten times bigger, and expanding ten times faster, than the user pool.

So, some curiously unamusing professionals have taken to their soap boxes and have either called for rallying behind HD video, Twitter, Facebook, time lapse, HDR in a desperate and futile effort to try and recreate, or protect, what is left of that “Boy’s Club”. They have failed to understand that what is available to a pro is also available to any amateur. There is no salvation in equipment nor in fads. Unless if you sell them.

Even less amusing is how the official photography press continues to embellish this myth with a monthly passion.

So what is the solution ? POV. What was always the tool of any brilliant photographer. Point of View. That is always what any photo editor worldwide is going to look for. Not what camera, lens, or technique is being used but the Point of View of the photographer. It  is not so much the access either, as even with exceptional access, one can still make bad images. If you want to license images and make money, then shoot everything with a POV.

It is not Peter Souza’s access, White House staff photographer, that make his images brilliant. It is how he uses it. It is not Annie Liebovitz privileged access to celebrities that makes her images incredible, it’s her point of vue. We could go on and on with examples ( Think Steve McCurry, for example, or HCB, Doisneau, Ernst Haas, Willy Ronis, and so on) of photogrpahers with no privilege acces to our world who have done wonders. Without fancy cameras either, or zoom lenses with built in GPS’s.

So next time you stand in line to listen to some succesful photographers telling you that whatever he is holding in his hand is the key to that elusive “boy’s club” you all so want to be a member off, you turn around and go outside to take some picture. That, and only that will give you access to the most exclusive club on the world where no one can you chase you away from, your own POV club.

Posted in license, focus, lens, commercial stock, multimedia, google, editorial, photojournalism, flickr, Microstock | Print | 3 Comments »

October 23, 2009 by pmelcher.

Getty Images’s decision to close it’s wholly-owned production division is a clear signal to the commercial stock industry that the market has shifted forever. If producing  images that correspond to a market demand without having to pay any commissions and licensing them via the biggest distribution channel worldwide is not profitable anymore, than nothing is. Producing market research wholly-owned content was to be the new El Dorado of the commercial stock photo industry. It is now a ghost town.

Coupled with the announcement from Jonathan Klein that Istock has made $850,000 in sales in one day, then it  all becomes very clear. Even after paying commission, Istock, and thus microstock, is more profitable than traditional stock. No production fees, no market research, no  high end editing and post production generates more hard cash than all the talent of the world combined. If I had a traditional RM or RF operation right now, I would be very, very worried. If not desperate.

There not even a comfortable exit strategy for thousand of RM and RF companies worldwide. It is doubtful that any will be purchased anymore and its even too late to dump all their production into microstock. Even that is getting heavily saturated.

Getty also has a huge advantage by being able to safely mine both Istock and Flickr for new content for its traditional RM and RF offering at almost no cost. While anyone could source Flickr, no one has the time nor manpower.

From a recent internal memo released by John Harrington, Getty Images will also heavily invest in on-line automated sales in the upcoming years, taking a cue from Istock and trimming down on its operational cost. It is obvious that if RM and RF sales are going to decline both in volume and in price, it will be too expensive to have a full size sales force.

Once again here, smaller operation will not have that opportunity. They already function at minimum staff and have no room for downsizing with also losing revenue. They certainly do not have the extra cash to invest in automated sales.

From the same memo, we were told that Getty has made no overall revenue growth in 2008 and 2009 doesn’t look much better. Probably mostly because the fall in traditional RM sales was not compensated by Istock 35% growth. That is a huge statement, isn’t it ?

As for Corbis, they seem to continue their cutting cost approach to profitability. Every year now, for as far as the memory goes back, this has been their time to hit the headlines with another round of layoff. This year, London was apparently the most hit. Still no sign of profitability for the (very rich)  ugly duckling of the commercial stock industry. But as long as they are having fun, right ?

The recent melding of minds at the PACA conference in Miami should have been a funeral announcement. Most talks were oriented at escaping the commercial stock market for the hopefully more lucrative commercial footage. However, it’s more like choosing which cliff to jump from.

Finally, for those who really want to understand the current state of the industry, they HAVE to read Allen Murabayashi entry on the Photoshelter blog, it’s brilliant and right to the point.

Posted in flickr, license, commercial stock, PACA, finance, Royalty free, getty, corbis, Microstock | Print | 3 Comments »

October 20, 2009 by pmelcher.

Commercial stock photography has been walking on its head. Since its beginning, it has approached its own business space with an upside down approach.

Let me explain : At the beginning, Photographers would shoot images that ended up on  online storage system with the hope that one day there will be a demand for these images. As the number-crushing corpocrates invaded this business, past sales report became the investigative tool to predict demand. The principal is quite simple : If someone, somewhere, licensed an image then someone else, somewhere else, surely needed the same one. To predict future demand, some even hired “experts” to perform field research on trends and gather market intelligence. The result ? a quite imperfect method of prediction investigation that currently results in a very imprecise production.

Enters a company called Demand Media. Self titled “The leader in social media”, the company is a huge automated content analyst and producer.  Using a combination of sophisticated algorithms and millions of Google search entries, it delivers what keywords, or group of keywords, are, or will be, the most frequently entered. It then spits out a list of topics that it posts on freelancing websites where anyone can produce the desired results in exchange for a few dollars. It then takes the newly created content, posts it on You Tube ( They only deal with video for the time being) and sells the space to advertisers. Videographers get paid a flat fee of about $20 per video.

Since their algorithm predicts the popularity of a search query, they can guarantee a substantial level of traffic to their advertiser clients. It is working so well that Google (owner of You Tube) has signed a deal with them, too happy to finally find a way to monetize their video hosting site. The videos are mostly self-help, DIY ( Do It Yourself) and tips.

Demand Media, according to Wired magazine, posts about 4,000 new videos a day thanks to a worldwide army of freelancers pumping thousand of clips, or articles, based on what an emotionless algorithm spits out everyday. ” This year, the privately held Demand is expected to bring in about $200 million in revenue; its most recent round of financing by blue-chip investors valued the company at $1 billion.” continues Wired Magazine.

It is an industrial use of the “database of intention“. The database of intention, for those who are unfamiliar with it, is what Google made a fortune upon. It is all these search queries that are entered on Google.com every second that explicitly shows what people are looking for. While Google monetized upon it by selling ads linked to the query, Demand Media is making its income by producing content.

So what about stock photogrpahy ? Well, that is the next step for Demand Media. Already producing clips and article by the pound, they are now going to enter the photography space. Not by offering images that maybe someone somewhere might be looking for but actual response to real searches. Thus putting the industry back on its feet. Sure, the first steps will be to produce images to look at, and not to license. But it will not be long before someone ( Istock photo anyone?) will realize the huge potential of this image database and license its content. Imagine, a photo library entirely made of images that people are actually looking for. That would be a first.

The ramification of this game changer are enormous for the stock market. First, it will attract a lot of microstockers who will prefer to be paid on the shoot rather than a commission on sale. Some will actually make much more revenue than they currently do on current sites. The clientele of these microstock sites might completely shift away and use the Demand Media database since they will be sure to find what they are looking for. Finally, traditional Stock agency will finally be overwhelmed with a Ford like approach to their trade.

Demand Media has a lot of cash in its bank and a novel approach to the Stock Photography industry, cutting cost to a minimum while increasing productivity. It’s what Getty images or Corbis should have done if they had been smart, instead of wasting there time and money on “artists”. Might be too late for both. It is certainly too late for the traditional industry.

Full article on Demand Media here in Wired Magazine.

Posted in web 2.0, Midstock, technology, commercial stock, prosumer, finance, Royalty free, getty, corbis, transaction, Microstock | Print | 1 Comment »

October 15, 2009 by pmelcher.

We hadn’t heard from the PLUS coalition for a while. This loose organization of visual professional who has been tediously trying to create a standard for licensing has suddenly burst out of its silence with two important announcements:

1) The ASMP has dug into its $1,3 Million  fund it had received last year ( we hadn’t not heard of that for a while too) to retrieve $150,000 as a generous gift to PLUS. This adds up to the $85,000 ASMP had already given to the coalition. This probably makes the ASMP the biggest provider of funds to PLUS by far (usually, organizations donate around $25,000). The question is why is the ASMP so interested in PLUS as opposed to fighting Google and its book scanning initiative ? PLUS has made no headway in the last few years and although everyone agrees it could become a useful tool, it has yet to be adopted and put in practice anywhere. It is also quite evident, although never clearly announced, that the PLUS business model is to create a licensing registry that would charge for its usage.  For pennies, indeed, but with billions of licenses happening online worldwide, it can quickly becomes a huge cash cow. Maybe ASMP sees this as a long term investment.

Also, with such a heavy donor, will PLUS feel the pressure to satisfy their needs (those of ASMP)  rather than those of publishers. After all, like in politics, those who have put more in usually see the benefits first.

2) PLUS has chosen Picscout as the exclusive provider of image recognition services to the PLUS Registry . That resembles the deal that PLUS had made with ImageSpan a while back. How does a coalition that is supposed to create a standard make exclusive arrangements with private companies ? It is a bit like the IPTC deciding that the only tool for reading metadata should be made by Adobe ? Image tracking is still in its infancy but yet PLUS has decided that Picscout is not only the best, but the only one? There are companies currently working on similar, if not better solutions that I really doubt PLUS has even approached. What is behind this deal that we are not told about ?

Picscout has recently announced its  Image IRC, which is an image registry who does not to want to say its real name, and has now combine forces with PLUS, another image registry in the making, for more fire power. Both will split the huge potential revenue for access to their overgrowing databases. What will happen soon is that image creators and copyright holders will soon be held captive by these organizations that will become the forced middle man for every licensing transaction.

With investors with mysterious agendas, strange relationships ( Creative Commons), Exclusive agreements ( ImageSpan and now Picscout), it is behaving more like a secret society that keeps its operations in the shade while putting little effort in the wide spread acceptances of its offerings. Not very social.

Posted in license, copyright, Plus, technology, IPTC, google, transaction, finance, photoshop, law | Print | No Comments »

October 14, 2009 by pmelcher.

If you have a few precious minute to throw away today , you HAVE to visit http://www.livinggalapagos.org/. A school project from the University of North Carolina, it is an amazing multimedia reminiscent of MediaStorm’s Kingsley’s Crossing by Olivier Jobard.

It is refreshing to see young photojournalist taking the current tools of reporting and putting all together in a refreshing perspective. This is the type of project we would like to see more often. This one deserves to be published on MSNBC.com and other established media outlets.

Posted in mediastorm, technology, multimedia, photojournalism, editorial, msnbc.com, news | Print | No Comments »

October 13, 2009 by pmelcher.

While everyone is searching for what commercial stock might become in the future, the Chinese might have one solution and it is quite revolutionary. Researchers from TNList, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University along with a Singapore based researcher, have put together Photosketcher, previously called Sketch2Photo.

The principle is quite simple : you sketch what and how your final image image  should look like and it fetches all the elements on the internet and stitches them together for a final composite image.  Better yet, here is a visual explanation :

This would be a major breakthrough for art directors all around the world. Instead of going to hundreds of stock banks trying to locate an image that remotely looks like  the one they had in mind, they could actually build it from different bits and pieces of a variety of images. Obviously, they wouldn’t even have to hire photographers for photo shoots anymore, at least for those that have common elements in them.

But, before we get there, this is a pretty nifty tool for art directors who would like to create comps to show their clients or  the photogrpahers they are about to hire  what they have in mind.

In the paper, it is unclear where in the internet the search is performed. It seems to be  everywhere, creating a huge copyright headache. Of course, some would argue that since the end result is a composite and thus a new creation, there is no copyright due. Let’s leave the arguing to Lawheads and revue the implication of this new tool.

If the search was only applied  to Creative Common content ( Flickr)  one could probably be free of any copyright issue. Furthermore, one would have the legitimate right to register the new finished product as their own and license it. Think about it. A completely computer generated image created with bits and pieces of images from various photographers would come and take its rightful place next to work from long-time pros. Wow. And some though microstock was bad. Wait until everyone can create photographs.

Currently, the end result is very average as the selection of images does not pay any attention to light orientation and shadows. However, that could easily be an additional search parameter which would allow for extremely realistic end photographs.

What would this imply for editorial photography, especially news ? Major, major trouble. On could easily put together, in any environment, two people that have never met and look very realistic. Our news imagery could suddenly be flooded with hand-made images of events that have never taken place. Would we ever trust photography ever again ?  Doubtful. Photography will have to go through rigorous credibility checking before being branded as real news.

Finally, could this Photosketcher be a hoax ? Doubtful. Finding image via sketching is already widely operational, while automated  extracting already exist ( Adobe has a great one in Photoshop Element). Stitching, as we all know, is also very common. Thus combining all these know application together is not impossible. It is actually not too hard. The whole operation must take a pretty hefty amount of processing power but then we have no information on what type of computer these students have.

This new tool, however amazing it seems to be, has many implication for the world of photogrpahy and will have far reaching repercussions. It’s acceptance and usage will be something to monitor closely for anyone involved in photogrpahy.

See a full explanation in this video:

Sketch2Photo: Internet Image Montage from Tao Chen on Vimeo.

Posted in license, Search, copyright, technology, commercial stock, prosumer, flickr, law, news, editorial, filter, photojournalism, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

October 9, 2009 by pmelcher.

So, as it reaches $200 million dollars a year in revenue, Istockphoto is pushing the production of stock photography to its rim. The traditionally strong categories for stock imagery, like Lifestyle, Health, Parenthood, Teens, Green, Business are all being more than very well covered by the astute production of 100,000’s very smart microstock producers. For traditional photo agencies, especially Royalty Free, continuing to produce images in these categories is pure suicide.

But there is not much space at the edges of the stock photography demand. If you are specialized in photographing snails, that is great, but lets face it, the market, even worldwide, cannot be  very big. Sure, you will still be able to command your prices but probably with clients that have little or no budget. So what is the point ?

Even almighty Getty is suffering losses within its traditional stock offering and is probably thinking to shift the whole thing to its new subscription based Jupiter Unlimited model. At least, for a business representing thousands of photographers, that would make sense. What you loose on per image sales, you win on the volume. For individual photogrpahers, it’s a complete loss.

Interestingly enough, the internet has not leveled the playing field. It is as difficult as it was 10 years ago for an image buyer to find the proper images outside of the 3 or 4 top stock photo agencies.  Volume and SEO are  two principal tools for worldwide marketing, both completely unrelated to image quality. Google Image, still being seen as the primary destination to find images is  completely counter productive for professionals as it doesn’t index IPTC ( Some still think it is  a standard) while it it privileges popularity over quality. Some tools, like the new Picscout IRC, are even helping Google Image to enhance its sad dominance over stock image licensing.

If the stock photo industry had any intelligence, it would create it own replacement for Google Image based on its  clients needs. A global image search that would read IPTC and classify images according to relevancy. That would privilege quality over popularity and volume. Sure, it would be a huge project and demand a lot of cooperation from competing businesses. Sure, it would demand cooperation rather than isolation, but the results would benefit everyone. It is probably the only solution the commercial stock industry has left until it disappears under the huge weight of  mass production.

Posted in Search, IPTC, license, Jupiter, commercial stock, technology, keyword, prosumer, getty, Royalty free, transaction, finance, CEPIC, PACA, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

October 7, 2009 by pmelcher.

20 minutes to better understand what my earlier post was about. Chimamanda Adichietalks about literature but photography is as much a guilty member of this . We should no longer be the instruments of intellectual colonization.

Next time you embark on a photo shoot, think of where your story will fit in the perception of the country, continent and culture you are about to photograph.

Posted in newspaper, magazine, technology, Newsweek, TIME, photojournalism, editorial, slideshow, filter, news | Print | 2 Comments »

October 2, 2009 by pmelcher.

I was unaware of  Trent Parke until a friend pointed it out today. Maybe, and most probably, I had seen some of his images somewhere and had failed to register his credit. It happens.

Magnum in Motion, one of the best achievement of the Magnum photo agency, has just published “Minutes to Midnight”, a long but extremely well done multimedia, showing Trent, his work and his ideas. Amazing images along with an as well amazing character. A great show to discover this Week End while you catch up with the important things in life. Like looking at great talent:

Posted in technology, lens, Magnum, multimedia, web 2.0, editorial, slideshow, photojournalism, news | Print | No Comments »