June 30, 2008 by pmelcher.

Photographers used to shoot black and white because they had no other choices. Photojournalist were somewhat frustrated by their limitations of not being able to represent the world the way they saw it. Then, color became available and they jumped on it. Finally, the world could be reproduced the way it was. Sure, for a long time, because of the nature of film itself, the colors were somewhat off. But still, it was like the word processor for the reporter. Today, it seems that color has been abandoned by the photojournalists that want to be at the cutting edge of reporting. Why ?

Today, two things happened to me, simultaneously. First, the announcement of Magnum new members. All black and white shooters  (besides Alec Soth). Second, I got a copy of Dispatches, the new magazine created by Gary Knight and someone else . Again, all black and white. That would not be so bad if those black and white were different. But quite frankly, they are all from the the same school of “very dark, poorly lit, very crowded, and slightly out of focus”. Most were probably taken with Holga’s or other crappy cameras. They all feel like seeing someones  very depressed bad dreams. The only feeling that emerges from viewing them is a feeling of  “hopefully the next picture will tell me what I am looking at”. But no, like a bad dream, it keeps on. For Dispatches, it is for an obscene number of pages. For Magnum’s new members, it is probably for the rest of their lives.

I was really looking forward to seeing Dispatches. I was also really looking forward to Magnum reinventing itself by accepting some new colorful original members. Both have been very, very disappointing.

Photojournalism, at least the one promoted by the photojournalism intelligentsia,  is all about moods.   Its mood photography. And the mood right now is very dark, very depressed, very Goth. There must be another way to depict the world around us than this photographic teen age angst, no ? Goethe would have no problem finding his young Werther in these images.

Enough is enough.  Black and white is only rich if can compensate for its lack of colors. It is an handicap that should be overcome with a passion, not infinite sorrow. Sadness, unless if you have a lot of time to waste on a terrace of a Parisian cafe, if very boring. Existentialism, or at least the fashion that went along with it died long before Sartre did. This absence of being in all these empty photographs remind me of the endless conversation people used to have over how much “life sucks”. That was back when I was 15.

Don’t take me wrong. I love photojournalism. With such a passion that it rips my heart to see it abuse by bored rich kids with a camera. They reject color and digital like rich suburban kids decide to become punks and get a tattoo. Against society and to piss of their parents. To get a reaction. It is a bit if these guys were trying to hide the reality of the situation they photographs with all these artifacts. This is what this current school of photojournalism makes me think about:  A bunch of spoiled rich kids rejecting the very foundation that made photojournalism what it is.

And this is not a good time for this.

Sometimes I wonder if any of these guys even know how to take a photograph in focus anymore. This is how ridiculous it has become. I know, I know, I am not being politically correct and in acceptance of what is fashionable to like. But I will take a Natchwey anytime against a Kratochvil. A Kashi before a Pellegrini. Call me old fashion, but I love color. I love photographs that speak to me about a situation rather than a “mood”. I have an insatiable thirst for truth and knowledge and I count on photography to teach me. I count on photojournalist to help me understand my world. I really, really do not need them to add more puzzles and complication with these  “plastic camera taken at night BW photos” that Edgar Allen Poe would have taken minutes before committing suicide.

I have a mood already. Just pass me reality.

Posted in focus, Magnum, magazine, photojournalism, editorial, news | Print | 1 Comment »

May 20, 2008 by pmelcher.

I have to apologize. I really do. I usually do not do that. I respect other people’s opinion, as long as they are intelligent ones. But for a few months I have been reading the new blog launched by Photoshelter to go along their Collection. They hired a full time blogger, it seems, which is a great idea, and she has been steady at shooting out blogs at rapid fire speed.

And, as anything else related to photography, I pay attention. But after weeks on, I am still baffled. I do not understand a word she is writing and who she is talking about. Nada, zilch.

I thought I knew a little bit about photography being born in this business and spending most of my awake moments dealing with some aspect of it. I thought I had been a fortunate member of the human race because I have seen so many great pictures in my life that it would hard for anyone to compete.

But when I read her blog, I have no idea what and who she is talking about…really.. I had heard there was a “fine art” photography world out there created on Ansel Adams memory path but had never seen it so active. Didn’t know it was so intense. She even gets really excited when she sits on the laps of a photographer that takes close-ups of green stuff growing up in her garden.

See, in Europe, photography is not considered a fine art and there is no fine art school or courses. There is commercial stock and editorial, but nothing to encourage people to take pictures for wall hanging. Of course, there has been photographers like Jean Paul Sieff and others that have somewhat played around with the concept, but really, more exception than the rule.

But now I see the light. And I am baffled. Nothing against this person who appears to be a nice, smart, well educated and certainly photo enthusiast, but I am really, seriously baffled. The last shock was today when this image ( trust me, not the worst) was shown as part of her favorite :

I spend the day thinking about it and other images posted on that blog. I cannot make sense of why anyone would think it is a good, or great photograph. I might by unbashfully practical but it is a close-up of a badly cooked egg. The lighting is not exceptional, the subject is boring, there is nothing there for me to get excited. about. Not even shocked. Just plainly bored. Sure, for someone that has a big Loft in New York with a 20 Feet ceiling, this image on a really big big print my look cool for a while ( does it come with the smell ?). But to me, hooked on photography, it is just an egg.

Don’t take me wrong : I am really, really glad that there is not just one taste in photography. I understand that I might not like all that is liked by my peers. But that blog has published such a series of awful pictures, I had to say something. And, all this with an incessant name dropping of people I have never, ever heard of.

Every time I read the blog, I feel I open the wrong door and fell into the middle of a party I was not invited to. And for a good reason, I don’t know anyone.

Again, I have an incredible respect for the author of the blog. The only reason I bring it up it is because it is associated to Photoshelter, a commercial entity who is trying to  license images. I would have thought the blog would be related. But it is so off into another unknown direction that I read it with my jaw dropping thinking ” What the hell are they talking about?”.

And how long can they keep posting images of empty dark greenish fields with a dead tree somewhere in the horizon and a little paper wraps on the ground?

Is that what the Photoshelter collection is trying to sell ?

As that blog says…off they go to LOOK3… Hopefully for them they might finally make  it to Eggland !!!

Posted in focus, license, No sense, web 2.0, prosumer | Print | 2 Comments »

April 28, 2008 by pmelcher.

My youngest son, who is nine years old, and so much wiser then I am, saw me writing my blog one day. When I responded to his questions about what I was doing typing on my laptop, (after all, computers are made to play games, aren’t they?), he looked at me puzzled. He said ” are you doing this for free ?”

“yes”, I answered.

There was a short moment of silence. He then continued, after what had seemed a heavy and serious computing session in his brain .” Well, if you are helping people out and they like it, shouldn’t you charge for it?”

It was my turn to compute. “Well”, I answered, “I like helping people and I enjoy writing my blog. Isn’t that enough ?”

“True”, he said. He is a very generous guy. “But you have to pay for the website and electricity, and your time, no ?”

Ya, he’s down to earth too. That’s what a city like New York will do to a kid. “Shouldn’t you get something for it ?”

“mmm”, I said.”let me think about it”.

“sure” he replied, as he jump off the couch, “Can we go out an play now ?”

This conversation happened a bit more than 6 months ago and it has been in my mind ever since. I didn’t want to have a subscription fee or any other barriers. So I looked at was available out there and got this Paypal Donate button. Easy to set up, it allows anyone with a credit card to give something. Anytime they want and for any amount.

So there it is. It’s up to you. You decide if you want to us it or abuse it.

It would make the little guy happy.

Posted in focus, license, finance, transaction, editorial | Print | No Comments »

April 14, 2008 by pmelcher.

 Ever since I wrote the piece “orphan work is good for you”, I have been slammed with emails which all pretty much revolved around the same issue : Orphan work bill is a open door for Copyright Infringement and the legalization of free usage.

First and foremost, I keep on refering my readers to a very concise and readable link created by the Copyright Office . In no way do they propose or would facilitate free usage. It is not their intend. It is also quite admirable that they have, and will continue to hold hearings  to listen to all and everyones concerns.

But the most important, to me, is to see that Canada has had a Orphan Work bill in effect since 2005. Quite effective, it requires the potential user of an Orphan image, after proving its good faith in researching the copyright owner,  to be granted a license by the Copyright office. It has happened  only 19 since  then. Granted, Canada is not as big as the United States, but 19 is almost not worth a second look.

Furthermore, the Canadian law leaves 5 years after the license has been granted for the owner to retrieve his/her license. It is still early to see if this provision has ever been used by anyone.

The copyright office, and any all serious image licensor know very well that technology can be a very serious ally in copyright protection. Regardless of any petition and whining, the bill WILL pass.

As said before, It will be a great  incentive for everyone to respect metadata more seriously  and for the photo industry to finally grow up.

Posted in idee, Canada, focus, technology, copyright, license, web 2.0, keyword, IPTC, law | Print | No Comments »

April 7, 2008 by pmelcher.

I will never understand the publishers stubbornness in designing magazine online. They literally replicate their print edition. Not just the content, but the layout. You have a cover/front page. You have sections, you have pages and along all that, a lot and lot of text .

Scrolling, for example, is much easier online. No need to change pages when all you have to do is scroll down. Why fix a limit on how far down you can scroll, when the majority of us have a wheel and can read down for ever?

One reason is that making you change page forces the page to reload, thus displaying new ads. Good for the publisher, not for the reader.

And what is it with this obscene amount of text? Since the launch of Netscape, back in the early 90’s, the web can easily display images, yet all publication use much more text than visuals. Yet the cost is practically the same.

One would have thought that, by now, all the news could have been delivered in a multimedia format. Instead of the linear print magazine format, the web offers video, sound, graphics and of course, photography, to give the readers a more three diminutional vision of a story.

Yet few, if none, use this ability. Its like driving a ferrari at 20 MPH all the time.

Magazine publishers, as we all know, are extremely resistant to change. If anything, they will do more of the same and copy their competition before they will innovate. They mostly believe that their content is so special, it cannot be brought down by the packaging.  They should think again.

With the coming of age of the internet generation, those who grew up in the 90’s and are about to hit college, this will change fast. Right now they are busy absorbing. Absorbing Youtube, Facebook, EW online, myspace. They currently take what is being offered to them. As somewhat passive consumers. But when they hit the work force and take charge, they will certainly create a new medium and certainly affect it deeply.

Online magazine will be more web friendly, mixing text, video, voice over, photography to deliver the story. Navigation will no longer be up and down, left to right.

Interfaces will more like the one use by Brightqube who sadly currently only uses it for delivering  RF images. You will be able to slide your way through a publication that will all reside on one page. Companies like MediaStorm will be able to produce more interactive multimedia, where one would be more involved in its unfolding instead of being a passive listener.  For example, on a report on the Iraq war, one could decide between the short or long version, the unrated or family friendly version, wether to read or listen. And much, much  more.

Magazine sites currently look like scanned magazines. TV sites, look like small tv sets. News site, depending on who produced it, look like their parent. Obviously they want to maintain their brand, and they will. But like microstock to the commercial stock world, they are leaving the door wide open for someone else to steal their readership.

And they will.

Posted in magazine, mediastorm, focus, technology, Piclens, multimedia, Search, msnbc.com, editorial, photojournalism, web 2.0, newspaper, news | Print | No Comments »

April 1, 2008 by pmelcher.

A little fun exercise for the week. Taco Bell in association with Sports Illustrated have launched this interesting website :

- You pick a location

- you pick some action

You start shooting.

No, you cannot  license them .

All the fun of being a top swimsuit photographer for Sports Illustrated with none of the hassles.

try it here :  http://www.directdaniella.com/

Posted in magazine, focus, technology, lens, celebrity, license, prosumer, web 2.0, multimedia, editorial | Print | No Comments »

March 26, 2008 by pmelcher.

One reason Getty claimed revenues were not so strong was because according to them, a lot of the advertising dollars are going to purchase adwords at Google. Some companies pay upwards to $100,000 a month, if not more, to purchase the best location, based on your search terms.( I shouldn’t have to explain this).

Well, the future, at least for the photo stills department, is not looking brighter. For Getty or others. Google is already secretly beta testing Video-text ads. It will look like this:

Unobtrusive,  you will actually need to click to make the ad viewable. You can actually see a live demonstration if you do a search for “laptop” in google.com and look at the Intel entry on the right.( it doesn’t always appear. You might to do it a few times)

What does this mean for the photo industry ? Well for starters, commercial stock photographers not doing RF should really rethink their future, as well as RM only photo agencies, because between Video and RF, there will not be a lot of dollars left.

Commercial stock Photo agencies not doing video should also rethink their future.

Stock, in general, will begin to become obsolete in general, as the cost of producing a 30 second mini video will allow more and more companies to have customized work done in house .

Editorial photographers  should sit back and enjoy, because it will not affect them at all. Same for their photo agencies, if they are also only in their editorial field. However, they might want to look where the newspaper/magazine market is going if they want to survive. Hint: you need a computer to see it.

Finally, we will see ( although many exist already), a flurry of small video producing companies grow like mushrooms all over the world to respond to this new market. Some owned and operated by smart, flexible ex photographers, others by new players.

And then someday, someone will have the idea to consolidate them into one big company.

Posted in license, focus, technology, lens, multimedia, Search, web 2.0, google, newspaper, Royalty free | Print | 2 Comments »

March 17, 2008 by pmelcher.

It has been a while since I have wanted to write about a great plug in for Firefox hardly known in the photo industry. It has a lot of advantages and no defaults. For one, it is free, two, it can be installed on any image library, three, it is incredibly helpful. One can quickly and nicely browse through a lot of image, increase the interesting ones and download the best.

Zymmetrical.com is the first and only agency to currently test it live on its site and starting to get user feedback. You can see a screen shot here:

They have also added a link on their website where one can test it.

This a great example of a company leveraging technology for what it can bring to the user experience.

The Piclens plug in has been around for quite a while and works with Google Images, for example. It has gotten great reviews by everyone that has approached it. It is cross platform, easy and simple to install and to use. It is an incredibly useful tool for the image industry .

Posted in focus, technology, lens, Piclens, Zymmetrical, Midstock, web 2.0, Search, multimedia, slideshow | Print | No Comments »

March 13, 2008 by pmelcher.

We have to take responsibility for our actions and our businesses. Once again, shields are raised and emotions are running high. The Orphan work bill has been resurrected.

In a nutshell, if passed, the Orphan Work bill would allow anyone to use a photograph, for free, after proving that a reasonable effort was made to find the copyright owner. In an earlier post, I had suggested that instead of making it free, those orphan images should be licensed properly and the money send to a central organisation that would use those funds to continue looking for the copyright owner.

At least, that way, people would continue to know that any image has to be licensed properly. Regardles of this proposition, this bill would be a good bill. For two main reasons:

- It would finally force photographers and agencies to properly credit their images with well filled IPTC fields. There are thousands of paying or free tools out there that allows anyone to enter its information. There is absolutely no reason why people continue to ignore it. Furthermore, a lot of agency website currently cut down the size of an image to display them as thumbnails, erasing all IPTC data in the process and thus creating an Orphan work. This has to stop. As content creators, artist, it is their duty to secure the information on copyright, not the buyers.

With the risk of having their images used for free, maybe, just maybe, they will pay more attention.

- It will create new technologies : there will be a whole new market to help find image copyright owner. an image search tool, for example, where you could upload a copy of the photograph you have in your possession and it will find all other usage of the same image, leading you hopefully to its legal owner.

Furthermore, other technologies will soon come available, like embedded watermarks or automated tagging directly build in the camera. It already exist in many pro cameras, but once again, no one really uses it.

It is a bit sad that this industry needs a kick to take seriously the matter of image ownership. But, fortunately, it will happen if the Orphan Works bill passes and that, my dear friends, would be a great thing.

Posted in idee, focus, technology, copyright, license, keyword, IPTC, Search, google | Print | 1 Comment »

January 22, 2008 by pmelcher.

This is what you get when you mix the talent of Brian Storm and his team and the incredible dedication and eyesight of Marcus Bleasdale, new member of VII photo agency :

If only everyone had a camera…with a conscience. Like Marcus.

Posted in digg, magazine, focus, lens, mediastorm, multimedia, editorial, slideshow, wire service, photojournalism, news | Print | No Comments »