August 30, 2010 by pmelcher.

So what happens, you may ask, to a collection purchased by Corbis ? Well, you might not ask that question because you don’t care, but that is another story.

We have a clue:

1997 : Corbis purchases LGI, a celebrity photo agency, for a undisclosed amount of money . Immediately moves collection of one million color slides and black and white prints to what was then the world HQ of the Bettmann Archives on Broadway.

1998 : Exactly one year later, the director of the archive, looking bored, declares the LGI archive officially scanned. Obviously not everything was scanned, only what a bunch of Bettmann Archive trained editors considered worthy. What was not scanned of Lynn Goldsmith images, who sold her images outright, was destroyed, via a pair of scissors and a trash can. Remember, this was photo editor trained in historical images that were asked to assess the value of current celebrity images at a time when Corbis’s only interest was in commercial stock photography and not editorial.

2010 : Flea Market. Lower East Side. Manhattan:

.

This is a set of 4 color slides sheet of Kool and The Gang portraits, taken by “Susan Phillips” in 1992, clearly stamped LGI. Detail here:

The photographer, “Susan Phillips”, if my memory serves me well, was an alias name ( one many) for a famous Rock photographer.

O, and by the way, the person selling those slides was a very gentle old man who had no clue and couldn’t remember ( or didn’t want to say) where he took possession of those slides.

Sure, the photographer might have taken back possession of her images and decided to dump them. That is highly doubtful :  Photographers, even if they change careers, tend to be extremely possessive about their images, even bad ones. Those are decent portrait images of Kool and the Gang and would have some value in the licensing market.

She might have given some to the little old man to sell, out of pity.  A $20 bill would have worked much better.

Corbis tried to disposed of them in a trash can as they were recently moving offices from 902 Broadway to Hudson Street..Now you are starting to make sense. Question is, what else was in that trash ?

Posted in commercial stock, Corpocrates, celebrity, license, editorial, Search, corbis | Print | 11 Comments »

August 24, 2010 by pmelcher.

As we all try to figure what sells, or could sell and for how much, one exercise that we should all rather play with is how our images are viewed and interpreted.  Maybe, just maybe, that would be the key to value.

 We are still very far from understanding perfectly how our brain interprets visual input, mostly maybe because we always thought that all our visual input was via our eyes.

We are not so sure anymore. what if colors emitted some special sounds that we hear instead of see. What about perspective ? Can we feel perspective ?

Is it possible to see without seeing? and what this does tell us about photography ? And how blue could become more blue if only we could hear it.

Seems there is much more to what we see than what plain photography can capture and we are just beginning to understand how we understand the world around us. It is becoming clearer to us that what we need to provide, as visual providers, is much more than what a lens can capture.

Posted in technology, commercial stock, multimedia, Search, filter, editorial | Print | No Comments »

August 24, 2010 by pmelcher.

I don’t know, but it seems to me that the advice in this book are good for any stock shooter, not just Microstock

If you don’t take this opportunity to find out a little bit of what Ellen Boughn knows about this industry, you are making a HUGE mistake.

Posted in license, commercial stock, Midstock, Search, Royalty free, prosumer, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

August 5, 2010 by pmelcher.

After you put on you dancing shoes and you are ready to spend some of the alcohol funneled energy you have kept for hours during the endless official ceremony, there is someone watching you very closely. Because soon, you will be offering them food for camera. That incredibly volatile moment that only he or she can capture in a millisecond flash and transform into a lifelong memory.

Sure, it’s your friends wedding party, but somehow, you are going to be the star.

It’s not that you want to take the spotlight. Someone will put you there. Despite yourself.

If you though wedding photography is that boring catalog of posed photographed in a park at sunset time, think again.  Thanks to the shifting media economy and more particularly, the demise of thousands of newspapers worldwide, the wedding photography trade has never looked better. You just don’t see it.

A multitude of jobless yet extremely talented local photojournalists have left their police scanners behind in favor of the sweeter sounds of 80’s disco inspired DJ’s to document, for  a fee, the lives of the common. The result is quite amazing :

These are the winners of the Wedding Photojournalist Association (WPJA), an international association of …well.. photojournalists turned wedding photographers. And it’s not just America, like other photo trade organization, it’s actually worldwide ( remember, photography knows no boundary ?).

Did I hear someone called the death of Photojournalism? Not so fast. I see a strong pulse  here.

It’s a peaceful organization : No endless whining, no boring tirades by old timers regretting the good old days, not talk of microstock or any kind of stock at all, no Getty images ( well, not yet), no pictures of dying Africans in B/W, no medium format photography of greenish empty parking lots ( in China, preferably), no Social Media gurus ( no Gurus at all, actually).

Just great photography…enjoy. ( click on the image above to see more).

Posted in newspaper, commercial stock, Social Media, photojournalism, slideshow, getty, news, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

August 4, 2010 by pmelcher.

From a Photo Editor job posting at Time, inc, the world’s biggest publisher of magazine in the world:

-Excellent editorial judgment and eye, must generate story ideas and identify topics to cover, must react to news.
-Edit and build various online photo galleries, notably never-seen LIFE archival content and LIFE.coms weekly feature: The Weeks Best Photos
-Oversee and perform the digital restoration of LIFE archival photos (basic retouching and color correction)
-Experience negotiating and managing usage rights and rates for digital, mobile and video content
-Assign, produce and direct original photo essays
-Liaise with Editorial, Legal, Sales and PR Teams in the execution of featured content packages
-Manage freelance staff
-Strong eye for young talent
- Must be creative in terms of doing more with less for less and must be ready and willing to do so

Revealing, isn’t it ? Especially the last phrase, which could be rewritten like this : Must be capable of getting the best images for peanuts and not complain about it. Ever.

This is symptomatic of the photo world today : Publishing companies profiting from the recession to squeeze top talent into a dilapidated photo department and forcing them to put pressure on photographers.

When will we see photo editors salaries only constituted of the money they save ?

Here is you budget. Whatever you do not use for photo purchase, you can keep for yourself.

Thus putting photo editor in direct survival competition with photographers.

As long as the publishing companies keep on treating photography as a necessary evil that needs to be crushed into “misc.” category along with other parasite expenses, nothing will change.

And, as long as there is photographers or photo agencies willing to accept this pathetic treatment , nothing will change.

O yes, if you wondered why we all had to sacrifice ourselves: 

Time Inc. Operating Profit Jumps 50%, Ad Revenue Climbs 4%

Posted in celebrity, license, magazine, Good Enough, Corpocrates, newspaper, SIPA, news, editorial, photojournalism, TIME, getty | Print | No Comments »