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 »

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 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 »

September 17, 2009 by pmelcher.

It is amusing to see that the photography world, especially those who persist in shooting for commercial stock, have yet to use the tools around them.

Up the now, the only intelligence gathering tool that has been used ad-nauseum, has been the mighty Excel sheet with pages of past sales. Does a past criminal has more change of killing again than someone who has never committed a crime ? If you answered yes, your the excel type, if you said no, read on.

Science, as we all know, has progressed by leaps and bounds. We all learned how we see light and color, something that has taken our scientists a very, very long time to understand. But then, we drop science, pick up our cameras, and rely on our spreadsheets to predict what will sell.

Why not continue to piggy back science ? How do we understand information, what are the colors that make us react, the shapes. Sure, it takes a lot of reading of different aspects of scientific discovery, but aren’t photographers humanist at heart? Well, at least those  with a heart instead of a wallet. Sociology, psychology, brain theory, history, anthropology, all those are fields which should be under heavy surveillance by all  photographers, and photo agencies agency.

For example, recent study in brain theory ( you known, the reason why our brains does what it does) suggest that our brain is entirely geared in trying to predict what will happen next. It uses our senses, plus our memory, obviously, to make an assessment of our current situation and quickly predict what to expect next. In another way, our brain dislikes surprises..

How does that affect photography? Well, here are some suggestions. If the brain constantly tries to predict, than it will quickly pass over banality ( what it considers will not change) and focuses on the unknown and /or the potentially versatile. Thus unpredictability will catch our attention much more than the obvious. Mostly because our brain functions will try to analyze and process the situation in order to figure out what will/could happen next.

Photography  should then be the art of catching the unpredictable (or suggesting it) . Not forcibly in the actual frame that is seen, but sometimes in the next one that is hinted. Thus, putting the viewers brain in a state of forced analysis of the situation it is seeing and provoking a thought. Or many. This will force the viewer to use past experiences, knowledge, memories, emotions to attempt to reconcile the photograph with a possible outcome. It can also be an emotional outcome.

Think about it. Look at the images that have striked you the most and that you like the best, and based on what you have just read above, see if it applies. Are those photographs your favorite because they provoked a sense of unpredictability that you were forced to reconcile with your knowledge of the world at that time ?

This is just an example of how current scientific advances are of tremendous help to our trade. There are many, many others. Those who are interested in perfecting their art should drop the business manuals, their keywording manuals and the SEO handbooks and should rather pick up any books related to human science.

Posted in focus, technology, commercial stock, keyword, photojournalism, finance, filter, editorial | Print | No Comments »

June 23, 2009 by pmelcher.

Google just released a white paper on image pattern recognition, yesterday, in Miami. Not really a new concept and already developped by a few companies, like Imense, in the UK, this however is a sign that Google is going beyond text tagging to retrieve images.

In brief, this technology uses the “knowledge” of Picasa, Google image and Panoramio to define, locate and “recognize” a landmark. It then clusters all similar images. In the long run, this could tell you what you are looking at ( if you are that kind of touris)

The technology has a success rate of 80% and is not ready for prime time. However, it is on track to something we have been talking about here, over and over again. The slow disappearance of text tagging in favor of image recognition. The time is not so far when search engines will index automatically the content of an image making manual keywording obsolete. It will also deeply affect  how people will search for images, using more visual search then just plain text search. While objects and scenes will be the first step, it will take much longer to recognize concepts and ideas.

More detail info on the Google blog

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

January 5, 2009 by pmelcher.

Can Photography exist outside of its current boundaries ? Is it possible for photographers to create and to sustain on a market that they create and manage directly.

Lets step back for a bit. Photography has always been accessed through gatekeepers, or otherwise called magazines. It has evolved through other forms of publications but the model has always been the same, whether it is a website or a magazine. Clients, viewers, have always been served photography through the passage of photo editors who censored and edited who, what and how images are seen. A little bit like radio and DJ for music and musicians. But the rules, they are changin’ aren’t they ?

Flickr, like Napster before, has opened up the distribution channels of photography. Like the original Napster, no one is making money with this, but mentalities are being changed drastically. Publications no longer absolutely in control of what images get to be seen by the public like record companies no longer control what music is being listened to. Of course, no photographer, today, has completely bypassed the traditional gatekeepers. There is no one that has the notoriety of an Annie Leibovitz and it does seem quite impossible to do these days without first being published in the pages of Vogue, Harper’s, Vanity Fair or other magazines.

But for how long ? Why would it not be possible for a photographer to achieve the notoriety of a Robert Frank, for example, without ever been published outside of its own website or/and Flickr. And thus generate not only a huge following but impressive revenue. After all, we all have been witness of the impressive impact of online viral marketing and social sites like Digg. It has made some images extremely popular already, so why not a photographer?  Where there is a high demand, there is a market.

So what of the gatekeepers. Can photo editors and photo agencies alike, continue to control most of the commercial photo market ?  Is there only salvation and hope only if one is part of a succesful sales platform like Getty or Alamy ? Does a photographers have to be a part of many to be seen and sold ? Does one still need the gatekeepers?

For now, yes. The photo industry, unlike music, is a self sustaining industry. Publishers buy from Agencies/established photographers. They have little or no will to go and purchase images in the wild. Although that is changing already. The question is will they ever buy or hire a photographer just because he consistently has a million hits a day although was never published anywhere? Doubtful, as that is not the training of the gatekeeper, oops sorry, the photo editor. Will a photo festival ever expose the work of someone that has never been published but yet has millions of fans online. Very doubtful.

There is no reason to believe that because the photo world has embrace digital technology before the music industry that it will not suffer from the same drastic changes. There is no reason to believe either, that because traditional publishing is dying that photography will disappear with it. Can photographers create and manage their own market ? It will not happen overnight but the answer is : Certainly.

Posted in license, multimedia, magazine, technology, commercial stock, Newsweek, yahoo, web 2.0, editorial, news, slideshow, filter, prosumer, photojournalism, getty | Print | No Comments »

December 12, 2008 by pmelcher.

It’s all in the way you search. Stock photo agencies, now having reached a point where they are all pretty much offering the same content for the same prices, are desperately trying to make themselves relevant with different search engines. After all, Google’s success is made on search and not content, so why not stock photo agencies ?

Lately, Canadian based Masterfile, recipient of the A21/Superstock legacy and its assets, has just revealed a new “paradigm shift” ( don’t you just hate that overused expression?) , called “endless media”. Surely, exactly what an image buyer wants to see after doing a search is endless results. I think not. When playing around with it, it really looks like a vague combination of Brightqube’s 2 year old mosaic display idea sprinkled with a little bit of Cooliris. No shift here, just a lot of balloon air.

Steve Pidgeon explains to Selling Stock newsletter :

“The name of this toy is Endless Media, and with good reason: the primary search results are displayed as three horizontally scrollable rows of square thumbnails, presenting a seemingly endless amount of options. The style of review is up to the user. The search engine can auto-play results by scrolling and pausing at adjustable time intervals. It also allows a buyer to move back and forth with the help of buttons familiar from early cassette-player days, drag a slider to any point between the first and last screens—or even specify a “go to” position as a percentage of total. Sizes of image thumbnails can also be adjusted based on user preference.

Hovering over any thumbnail produces a small uncropped preview, and clicking on an image is where the real fun begins: Without losing the three rows of primary results, a buyer also sees a large image preview—unwatermarked for registered customers—and a series of similars.

“You did not ask for similar images, but we gave them to you without penalizing you by losing your primary search,” explains McDonald, who stresses the importance of this never-lose-your-place functionality and the ability to work both literally and laterally at the same time.”

mmm. sounds easy and simple: early cassette player, multiple options, scroll right and left, adjustable sizes, lots of similars ..and so on. But what about the core essential result expected from doing a search ? Like, finding the right image quickly and easily? Doesn’t seem like they worked on that.

While we are on the topic of search, two new image search portals have been launched recently. One in the UK, called Imprezzeo, looks for similar based on content. Nothing new here, as other companies, like Idee, have been offering this for many years. But Idee has never offered it as a global portal but rather as a plug in to existing image database.With there latest Tineye offering, they offer even more as you can now locate the exact same image, rather than similar. Not useful for a internal database but very useful for a public search. Imprezzeo seems to tap the same market, that is photo agencies, according to their “about us” page. Funny that they would consider it a segment of the industry to invest in, considering how its about to tank.

Another one, which is a complete surprise, is Hitachi. Yes, the same Hitachi that you might have in your living room. You know that when the Japanese industry gets involved in something, they do it right. Called Gazopa, it is also a similar image search engine ( or a SISE, as we say in the connected world) with a few pluses. It has a browser plug in that allows you to search outside of their site. You can upload or draw the images you are looking for. and finally, it has a ” stream of consciousnesses” features that continue to search for similars of your similars as long as you want it to. Called “Flow”, it is more a gadget than very useful, but still interesting. Still in Beta, this service seems fully geared to the public and not to the photo industry.

Similar searches are still the exception rather than the rule in photo agencies search. No data has been made public on whether it is being used by image buyers  at all. But with all these publicly accessible image search engine using it, it will soon become another tool people will expect. It has the huge benefit on not relying on keywords anymore (those nasty little keywords) and is a more “natural” way to search for images. As usual, the photo industry is lagging way behind. Furthermore, none of these public search engine seem to index existing image database, making the professional offering invisible to casual buyers. The photo  agency industry stubbornness to keep their assets behind closely protected close doors is all to the advantage of Microstock platform who thrive on them. While each traditional agency is busy trying to enhance their local, in house, propritery search engine, they forget that less and less image buyers will come to their website but rather look for global search engines. And thus, they will loose on many sales to come.

Posted in Canada, technology, Piclens, commercial stock, idee, Search, filter, web 2.0, google, keyword, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

April 29, 2008 by pmelcher.

Google is thinking about changing its Image search algorithm. Currently it has a convoluted way to return results. As you probably already know, its a basic “text” search which looks at the file name, “alt” comments and words around the image to declare an image a valid candidate to a search. Meaning that if you search for “cat” for example and someone has named an image of a truck “cat.jpg”, has put the description in the “alt” comments as “cat, cat and more cat” all that around an article about how great his cat is, then that image of the truck will appear in your search.

Not very efficient, is it ? And as previously written here, the image could be completly out of focus and grainy, as long as it meets all the requirement for Pagerank, it will appear high up in the results.

Called “PageRank for Product Image Search” and presented at the International World Wide Web Conference in Beijing by two Google staff engineers, it is aim at becoming the new VisualRank.

Claiming to be an image recognition system and using advance object recognition, here is what it does. It scans all images and looks for patterns, regardless of what object is in the image. After a while, it will see that some images or at least part of the image have the same pattern . Those will be linked. The image or images that have the most similarities with all the others will be pushed to the surface.It gives you a result like that :

See that image in the middle ? It contains all the attributes of the others, thus its the most relevant.

If applied this will create a headache for the photo business. Since this search is really made to search for products to purchase and not for images to license, it is counter productive for our industry. It will not return the best image, the most liked or the most striking, only the most banal, the most common. Ouch !

It will favor non exclusive images, think RF and microstock, over RM images. It will enhance the most used images not the best ones. It will slowly bring IPTC kewording to obsolescence.

In order to bring traffic to its website, a photo agency or photographer will have to post  images as much as possible everywhere all the time.The same image. Thus an image with a lot of various usage will be the star, while news images, who usually have a shorter life-span, will not score well. But an image of a spoon might become a superstar. Especially if it is sold everywhere

Google hates photography. Or rather it sees  it as a tool, not as an art. Another way to index the world.It will become harder to find great images with Google and that will continue to open a door wide open for anyone looking to create a search engine for photography with a ranking system based on quality and relevancy. An image search and not a visual search.

More on the emmerging proposal at Techcrunch.

Posted in IPTC, Search, technology, keyword, google, filter, flickr, editorial | Print | No Comments »

April 24, 2008 by pmelcher.

Image details: Pope Benedict XVI Celebrates Mass At Yankee Stadium served by picapp.com

It is a blessing these days to see a company that grows by listening to its criticism. Ad supported licensing company Picapp has recently revamped its site and has made some good improvements.  First and foremost, you can decide if you want or not that little pop up figure they call picaboo. You can also choose the size of the image you want to post and what type of an animation.

Thus after selecting your image, you can select between a goofy interface to a more serious one. What the people needed.

A quick down and dirty Alexa ranking shows Picapp  ahead of competitor Gumgum in traffic. No big surprise as they started with a big bang using the Getty  trampoline.

The real question is why did neither of these companies have open their service to individuals.

Sure, it is nice to have access to images from pros, but what about the huge pool of amateurs. This licensing model would much better serve the Flickr community than anyone else. After all, it would be a great replacement to the useless Creative Common scheme. ” here, use my picture for free, in exchange for which I get a cut on ads”. Fair enough, no ?

But neither Flickr, Photobucket, Smugmug and other mass photo storage platform will allow their content to be duplicate on either the Picapp or Gumgum server. The technology has to come to them. And that is the biggest shortcoming of both companies. Because their technology is neither proprietary neither that hard to create.

The second short coming is that neither offer the publisher any income for posting these images. Even the slightest cut would make either company immediately attractive. Imagine, get paid to post images !! Someone is bound to do it.

I can foresee very soon many  agencies offering the same type of licensing model from within their own site, bypassing the “Picgum” middle man.It would not be a problem for Flickr to add that option too. So it leaves both companies in breathless race to create enough critical mass of content to become indispensable. One, Picapp, has concentrate on overall volume, while the other, GumGum, seems to concentrate on just celebrity oriented content.

Let’s see what the future brings them. Either way, a very interesting race to watch.

Photo Licensing by GumGum | © PacificCoastNews

Posted in celebrity, copyright, alexa, technology, gumgum, license, keyword, filter, editorial, flickr, prosumer, web 2.0, getty | Print | No Comments »

April 2, 2008 by pmelcher.

A new company emerged from unknown depth a few days ago, proposing free “automated” tagging, or keywording. Named Tagcow, the company does not explain how the tagging is done.

Curious, I decided to give it a spin with a couple of images including this image:

After two days, the image was finally tagged with two words: “Pool” , “Man”. I guess that is what you get for free. Furthermore, when I downloaded the image, I could not find the keywords anymore…There is nothing automated about this service. It is currently impossible for a computer to recognize  the content of an image. The most advanced systems I have seen have a 10% success rate, and then again with very contrasted and simple pictures. Tagcow uses a little known service offered by Amazon call the Mechanical Turk. With this service, anyone can put a long, painful task and offer to pay for human beings to fulfill them

“Complete simple tasks that people do better than computers. And, get paid for it”. At 0.01 cent a picture, one can get images keyworded for cheap. However, the quality is not guaranteed.

Thus it is the power of the masses used here, making more obvious why they picked a cow for their name. Not the brightest animal in the land

Posted in No sense, Search, copyright, IPTC, keyword, flickr, prosumer, web 2.0, filter | Print | 2 Comments »