In depth of fields

June 22, 2011 by pmelcher.

A new camera is about to change how we think about photography. Or is it ? This camera, called Lytro, records the light field instead of a beam of light. Let me try to explain:

Our current camera record light in one point regardless of its distance and crashes all the information in one location. The Lytro, however, records light from all direction and can take into consideration how far the light is based on its intensity. It than records and store this information so it can be retrieve at will later on.

The result. A camera that does not need to focus. By capturing all the information of a visual scene at once, including the distances, it creates a file that contains all the focus points. Thus leaving the focus decision to the viewers. Example ( click on the image) :

The result is an interactive image demanding viewer participation. No longer does the photographer control the narrative of his image, it becomes the prerogative of the consumer.

The good news is that there is no need for focusing anymore. Everything in the image is in focus when needed. Thus no waiting for cameras to find the focus point. The second advantage is since the sensor is so much more sensitive, images in very low light are not so difficult to capture anymore.

However, because there is always a However in new technology, this puts the burden of point of view on the viewer. Well, it’s not really a burden. The photographer no longer controls where he wants the viewers eyes to concentrate on. Since photography or at least great photography is all about point of view, this could not be such a welcomed tool.

It also kills depth of field . Well, it redefines how we experience depth of field. From a fix position, we can now navigate through it, revealing what used to be blurry elements. Again, we are messing with point of view and subjective perspective. A photographer uses fixed depth of field to convey a message. By allowing it to change, the message is partly, or greatly lost.

Finally, this technology is only available online. Obviously, it cannot be printed. It is not explained how an image taken by one of these cameras would look in a book, or a magazine . The assumption would be that one would need to select a point of focus and fix it in order to use the image for print, thus loosing all the novelty aspect.

“Proof is in the pudding”, as said the queen of spade, so there is no telling what the result would be until one of these cameras are put in the hands of very creative people. It will be interesting to see the results when the camera becomes available but we do not see this going much further then other trendy technologies like tilt-shift photography or lens Babies.

You can read some more and reserve your camera here

Posted in focus, technology, multimedia, filter, lensbabies, slideshow | Print | No Comments »

Waiting to Exhale

January 18, 2011 by pmelcher.

What has been the plague of social network might generate a tool that could become a standard for image licensing on the web. A German company has announced that is about to unleash a software that will automatically make an image posted on the internet inaccessible after a certain time.

The idea behind X-Pire is to allow people to post images of “that party last night” for everyone to enjoy for a month after but then make them disappear so that those incriminating pictures of you will not appear 10 years from now. We all make mistakes, don’t we ?

The system is quite simple : you drag your image via a software that tags it with a code and an expiration date . Once online, that image is linked to a database that holds this information. Once the date has expired, the image is no longer visible. Pretty straightforward.

For image licensors, like agencies or photographers, that could be a great tool. You license an image online for one month, let’s say, and after that time period, it is no longer visible. If the client wants more, he pays accordingly and you can reissue a time based license.

During the period when it can be seen, the image can be copied without the embedded key. Thus, It will not prevent the image from being used maliciously elsewhere, although they could certainly tweak the system to do so.

For now, this system, entirely geared for Social network users, is per a subscription model ( 3 months = 6.99 Euros) .

Not sure who will use it : You have to be the one posting the image in order to use it: Who really posts damaging images of themselves, even with a time limit ?

However, with a few tweaks, this could be the basis of a strong system to license images online, even automatically. A website would come to your site, select the image it needs, put it the time it needs it for and download the hi- res before posting it. In the background, your top of the line website will have inscribed the time limit key inside the image. Once the license expires, poof, the image is gone.

This could revitalize the RM  ( rights managed) model in exciting new way. Another step closer to reaching the “intelligent image“.

Posted in technology, commercial stock, Social Media, copyright, license, editorial, filter, Search, Royalty free | Print | No Comments »

I hear blue

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.

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Crowdtaste this !

July 26, 2010 by pmelcher.

So.. No idea what to shoot next ? well, why don’t you get your camera to choose?

This company has launched a prototype that can tell you if the image if the image you are about to shoot is aesthetically nice or not . The camera , in itself, is not much. It is actually a camera phone ( Nokia). However, it is linked to a website, Acquine, that permits users to rank images based on their taste. The result is a database of images ranked by “crowd taste”.

Nadia from Andrew Kupresanin on Vimeo.If you look at the result on Acquine, the “Aesthetic Quality Inference Engine” , you will not be surprised. The highest ranking images are  very predictable and …mmm.. boring.. Boats floating in front a Mediterranean looking scene, Landscapes, dull portraits, it’s like a catalog of dull images. But that is what you get when a crowd votes, isn’t it ? You will not see a World press in there.

This camera, and even just the site, is a great tool for microstocker or commercial stocker that would like to fill in the blanks of common taste . It is perfect for those who perpertuate the idea that an image has to be composed properly and well lit in order to fullfilits requirement.

However, it is a better tool for those who are to create. What to avoid. How to stay away from banality. What not to shoot. What to avoid.

Technology can sometimes bring us horrible, horrible tools : This is one of them.

Article on Wired here

Posted in Search, technology, commercial stock, No sense, web 2.0, filter, prosumer, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

Of unintended consequences

July 6, 2010 by pmelcher.

So, the French minister of Culture ( at least they have one) descends to the Arles photo festival like a conqueror and announces, probably very proud of himself, that he and his photo committee he created a while back,  will create a photo portal. A French one, in three languages ( French , English and ???).

70,000 images are supposed to be made available to the public and amateur thanks to this portal. Nothing is said about what photography, from where, edited by whom, for what purpose ? Just 70,000 images; Et Voila. Packs his stuff into his limo and goes back to take a early afternoon nap in his hot office in Paris.

And we are left to wonder: From the country that has laws banning street photography, from the country that has created  social laws responsible for the death and suffering of many photo agencies and their photographers, from the country that has banned citizen photojournalism, that is all they could come out with ?

If they really wanted to help photography, the French government would do a few things : Repel the law that forces everyone to blur faces of people in public spaces, repel the law that makes illegal to photograph a news item if you are not a professional, repel the law that makes photo agencies responsible for more than 75% of free lancer contribution to social security. This is what is killing photography in France, not the lack of a “tri langual pro/amateur photo” portal.

If they really wanted to save photography, wouldn’t they help photography live and breath instead of creating a useless on line museum that will cost millions and sit unused. France already has one huge portal of photography for professional called PixPalace. Why create a state sponsored competition ?

Why don’t they rather make an institution that gives out grants and supports young ( and not so young photographers) in their projects? Why don’t they reward websites or print magazine for their usage of photography? Why don’t they create incentives instead of museums ?

There might be a long time before this online photo portal ever sees the day of light since everything take a long time in France ( years, decades). It is just so very frustrating  to see a minister who made a movie about the Rapho agency, who contains such great  photographers as Robert Doisneau, Édouard Boubat, Denis Brihat, Jean Dieuzaide, Bill Brandt, Izis, André Kertész, Yousuf Karsh, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Janine Niépce, Willy Ronis, Emile Savitry, and Sabine Weiss, continue to support a law that would have made these photographer unable to practice their trade.

Furthermore, in a society that is about to ban the wearing of Burqa’s because it hides women’s face, it is quite ironic that they force publications to hide the face of people in photographs.

I have an idea : Let’s go on strike.

more , in French

Posted in Search, celebrity, magazine, technology, No sense, photojournalism, france, editorial, filter, law | Print | 1 Comment »

The new and the Old

May 24, 2010 by pmelcher.

When technology meets photography, handled by creative minds, this is what you get :   The Museum of London has just launched an iphone App that mixes the present with the past.

Works only in London, for now : You point your iphone camera to a location and  you can click on the “3D view” button and the app will recognize your location and overlay the historic image over the current view. See examples below. Of course they do not have an images for everywhere you go, so they give you a map where you can play with this historical enhance reality.

It’s free to download so if you are in London, and you have an Iphone, you should really try it.

Posted in technology, lens, multimedia, web 2.0, filter, photojournalism, editorial | Print | No Comments »

The unobserved Life

May 4, 2010 by pmelcher.

There has always been a major obsession in our lives. From prehistoric times to today, we have feared the same demon.  We have crafted a lot of fixes and patches but it has been really recently that we have seemingly find a cure.

A sense of definition.

This demon we live with is the constant fear that we might be living useless lives. Lives that start on a birthday that we celebrate year after year until we perish, leaving, seemingly, nothing behind. We have struggled and we are still struggling to find meaning in everything we do, however trivial. Since we are incapable of defining what a meaning would be, we leave it to others to define it. After all, what better way to give depth to something than having it seen by others. Same goes for our lives.

Enters photography : For the last 150 years, it has made many, many lives meaningful. Not only by making lives finally visible by others , but making the lives of those who photographs them, meaningful. It would have been incredibly hard for Gandhi, for example, to have made his life, and his actions meaningful without photography. His force, his presence was made a lot stronger, and effective, thanks to those photogrpahers that brought us the images of an almost naked frail old man defying the biggest empire of the time. But this is a bad examples, as Gandhi’s life and action always had a meaning.

What about the middle management, married, one kid man around the corner from your house. He is living the simple regular life, the one made of 8 hours labor days, busy house keeping week ends and sometimes  interrupted  by the common tragedies (death, unemployment, sickness, loss). Where is the meaning of that life?

Nowhere. Until it starts getting more dimensions by being photographed and seen. Photographed by friends, family, passer bys and ending up on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter. If any of these images goes viral, a simple ignored life becomes suddenly highly meaningful. Never mind that the meaning might be puerile, it is still a meaning.

Photography has put an end to the dreadful unobserved life. Probably for ever. What started as simple drawings in a cave somewhere in the South of France that said “look, I am here and I did this” has evolved to today’s ” Look at me, I learn to jet ski during my vacation” photograph ; I exist.

In between Gandhi and your neighborhood, there are thousand upon thousands of lives that suddenly spring into meaning because and only because of photogrpahy. That man in front of the tanks in Tiananmen square, the  monk that burned himself in Vietnam, that other man holding his bandage as he walked away from the London bus explosion. Or that woman who held her baby after an earthquake. or even Paris Hilton ? What would be the meaning of her life without photography ?

Fear no more the darkness of oblivion, photography is here.

In the cacophony of individuals screaming for attention and thus justification, some have even taken photography to yet another level. It is no only who they photograph who’s life become amplified, it is also themselves. Its not longer “look at me, I exist”, but rather, “Look at me  looking at others, I exist”. This has lead to everything from a variety of extremely brilliant photographers to a pool of highly pretentious narcissists.

Regardless, what we have let quietly slip into our lives has now become the primary form of “existence justification” for all of us, something unthinkable . The question now, as the cries for meaning increases, how do manage it?

Posted in celebrity, technology, flickr, photojournalism, filter, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

To kill a parasite

April 29, 2010 by pmelcher.

What is new is not always good. While everyone is trying to figure out where the world of licensed photography is going to, others are taking advantage of the void by figuring out parasitical way to profit from it.

We already do know that Google has figured out how to make money, and huge sums of it, by cashing in on others creative content. By slapping ads on the creation of others, they are the ultimate business parasite. At least, with Adsense, they have offered the creators a share of the income generated. Typical of a long tail type of business, they are, however, the only ones to really profit from it.

With a company called Pixazza, they have figured out how to feed upon the photography world. If you are not aware of it, Pixazza offers website the ability to attached on any image they publish, a pop up window that invites you to purchase the same clothes as the ones wore by the celebs in the images.

Websites that participate get a commission on every sale of clothes that is generated from their site. The photographers who took the images? nothing. Pixazza actually uses the image as a selling tool yet gives nothing back to the photogrpahers, only to the publishers. In theory, and maybe in practice, a publisher could easily purchase a license for an image and make a profit from it. Interesting no. Sure, it is not much different then what is going on in magazine or more traditional ads on website. After all, it is the business model for editorial publication to make a profit from ads attached to their articles and layouts. But in this case, instead of being a generic ad, it is actually 100 % dependent on the photograph and its content.

So now, on top of publishers making money on your images, there is this new company, who have done nothing more than create a piece of code. Do photographers see their income grow too from this added value ? nope.  Does Pixazza care? Certainly not.

It doesn’t seem like much right now for those not shooting celebrities, but it will very soon . They have just extended their offering to travel and sports images. And that is only the begging. Soon, any image will have this parasite on it. The near future, if all goes well ?

Well, why do you think Google invested in this company? Because it fits perfectly its business model. the parasite kind: Attach an ad to everything on the internet. The next step ? Well Google might decide to purchase Getty, make all the images available for free to everyone, as long as Pixazza is attached to them. Can you imagine the revenue they would get ? And the damage they would do to the photo industry?

However, they don’t even have to go that far. If Pixazza is succesful in implanting themselves on every website, they could make a huge fortune without ever paying a dime to photographers. Ever. Your images would become ad platform without you ever seeing a penny from it. Pretty cool, no ?

There is no reason for this to stop currently, as none of the photo agencies or photographers seem to mind. Some seem to think this is really great because it’s new and its Google powered, at least financially. Once they see their images licensed for editorial use hijacked into  a commercial , it is doubtful they will still be smiling . But it will be too late.

It’s not new, it’s just evil.

Posted in copyright, license, celebrity, technology, commercial stock, keyword, google, editorial, transaction, finance, filter, getty | Print | 3 Comments »

Image Search : The Future

April 5, 2010 by pmelcher.

The surf wizard. the Photo bot. Give a keyword to a bot, it comes back with the image. Better, enter a concept, or a description. it will then surf the whole wide web and return with an image. Whether from an amateur or pro, it won’t matter. Because the image matters. Like information, the image will come to you, instead of you having to got to the image. That is the future of image search.

If you are not in a rush, it could scout for days, weeks, waiting for the perfect image. It could even us knowledge base intelligence to return the exact photograph, based on thousands, millions, gazillions of queries and rejects/approvals.   It would be hard not to find the right image anymore, extremely hard.

Sure, it could use similar search, as well of graphical input. The technology exists already, it just has not been out in place.  The reason is that technology would not be profitable for anyone but a geek who could care about revenue.

Just imagine : You send a email with a photo description, and like a dog, it comes back with the right image. All you would have to do is license it properly and your done. No more webs browsing in multiple password protected photo collection, no more spending hours on Flickr, Google images or others looking at irrelevant images. You would continue your work as the bot would do the search for you.

It shouldn’t be long before we see this, or very similar product.

Posted in license, focus, technology, commercial stock, Search, keyword, filter, flickr, google, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

Google Sapiens ( Update #2)

November 24, 2009 by pmelcher.

For those who still think that Google Images is a great tool to find images and that it is somewhat the savior photography, I suggest they perform a simple search for “Michelle Obama“, the first lady of the United States, and apply a “face” filter.

This is what you get on the first page:

regardless of your political opinions, this is a revolting and pathetic search result for images. When confronted about this, Google hides behind its sanctified algorithms and claim innocence.  I am the first to praise the ability for technology to make our lives easier. However, technology without morality is violently dangerous and destructive for any society.

Freedom of speech, sure, as long as it doesn’t become freedom of insult. Robots, bots, algorithm to find the right images, sure, as long as the results are pertinent to the search. This is a good example of a world without photo editors. This is your images on Google.

UPDATE : Google refuses to acknowledge failure of it search algorithm. In an article published in the Los Angeles Times today, Google Inc. spokesman Scott Rubin said  :”It’s offensive to many people, but that alone is not a reason to remove it from our search index. We have, in general, a bias toward free speech.”.

While it is commendable for Google to support free speech, this is not the reason people are upset. The issue here is how an obviously inappropriate image of the first lady of America ends up on as the top result on a search for her name.  This is a complete failure of their search algorithm. Obviously, someone typing “Michelle Obama” and using the “Face only” filter is looking for a head shot of her, not a cruelly photo shopped image. If this type of result was offered on professional image licensing platform, like Getty, Vorbis or Alamy, clients would never come back.

Google, of course, cannot admit publicly that his search algorithm is a failure. That would send it’s stock price in the abyss as it is the core of their business. May this be a warning for those who still see Google and its image search as the perfect tool for photography.

Update 2:  Here is Google version of free speech ( apparently, its all relative) :

Posted in Search, celebrity, technology, No sense, keyword, photoshop, filter, google, news | Print | No Comments »