September 3, 2010 by pmelcher.

So while most people are getting ready to take a long 3 day weekend to bid a last farewell to summer ( at least in North America) and others are frolicking among the cafe table of Perpignan, mighty Getty images doesn’t miss a beat.

What now ?  Called the “Artist Digital Toolkit” , it is basically a plain and dirty affiliate program with a Starbucks inspired name.  You know, like when you put a link to Amazon on your website and if someone clicks on it and ends up bying something you get a cut? Well, this is the same. Except, it uses contributors to do so.

How so crowdsourcing of them.

Here is the deal : You put one of their specially branded web banners, or e mail signature, or Facebook app, or whatever they give you and if someone clicks on it and purchases an image, you get a % of the sale: 16% if it is new customer, only 7 % if it’s a returning customer, whether it’s your image or not.

Help Getty sale images and get paid to do it.

Not only you give them content to sale, but you actually help them sale it too. What else, clean the offices after hours ?

You could even increase your 30% commission on certain sales to a whopping 37%. How cool is that? I smell riches here..

You will also contribute to Getty SEO campaign by creating new links for them. But you get no penny for that. Don’t push it, ok ?

So, if you are a Getty Contributor, get your free “Artist Digital Toolkit” and watch your bank account grow…

Posted in web 2.0, prosumer, license, commercial stock, Corpocrates, flickr, photojournalism, getty, editorial, transaction, finance, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

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 | 6 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 »

July 29, 2010 by pmelcher.

This is what happens when you tweet :

Your little message in bottle that you thought was so important disappears in a sea of messages. We are not saying you shouldn’t tweet, just saying you should take pictures instead.

Posted in Social Media, Waste of time, Corpocrates, Tweet, commercial stock, No sense, multimedia, technology, web 2.0 | Print | No Comments »