March 5, 2010 by pmelcher.

The Gamma/ Eyedea sinking ship saga continues : 4 companies/ projects have  filed to be considered for the reprisal of the almost defunct Company. French Number one photo agency, ABACA Press, Verdoso Media, Frank Ullman and a pair of ex bosses of Gamma. No Getty ( for once) , No Corbis.

The buying price ? A symbolic 100,000 to 150,00 Euros. Hachette Filipacchi Photo, ex owner of this group of photo agencies, had sold it to its current owners for 600,000 Euros. Not much of a profit here, if you also consider the money invested since, and lost. The main role of the court now is to figure out which of this project is the most viable. Their main focus is to see how many jobs can be saved. Out of the 60 + currently on staff, not more than 30 are expected to stay.

The good news ? There seem to be some interest by French companies to save the group of images and bring it, finally, into the 21st century. Most might be thinking that this move will get them the good favors of the French Government who will them jump in and  pour some welcome cash, or incentives. However, like everything in France, it is going to take a while for the decision to be made.

On a similar note, Retna UK, not to be confused with Retna USA, has sold, again. Now, it is to Photoshot, a agency eating company that seems to buy anything and everything hanging low from the tree. Wonder why they didn’t not bid for Eyedea/Gamma.

It’s Friday, don’t forget to look at images today…

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January 19, 2010 by pmelcher.

So you would think that with all the problems that online publications are causing to the print magazine industry, they would fight back in some manner. The print paper world would be all gang ho in trying to secure its predominance as the primary source of news and information so that the crowds would rush to purchase copies. But no.

It’s a complete lethargy. Well, at least in the USA. Take editorial photography. As much as they care if an image has been used in a competing publication, they completely ignore anything online.  They seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that they come out sometimes with the same image that has been seen previously for more than a week on numerous websites. As if no one paid attention. However, with some URL’s drawing millions of visitors , and most, the same people they also try to attract, it should be hard to ignore.

Yet, they continue to ignore the reasons for their decline. Partly to save money ( as if it is going to help) , partly because a completely blindness to the forces that are shaping their market. If I have seen an image numerous times, for free, online, I am going to be a bit upset if I see it, again, days, weeks later, in a print publication I had to pay for. If it happens once, I could ignore it. If it happens issue after issues, I would want my money back.

No other industry has this approach to its consumer. Movies only show trailers, music have just snippets ( of  course, I am not mentioning stolen material) and you pay to hear/see the full version. If all was available online  a week before they could be purchased, it is doubtful that a lot of people would pay for them.

Magazines, in some sort of oblivious superiority,  continue to publish , week after weeks, month after months the same images already seen online more than once. Maybe they think that if they ignore it, the problem might disappear. Maybe they think that by the time they come out, readers will have forgotten what they had seen just hours ago on a website. Maybe they just think that their support is so superior than the digital, no one will notice.

The second issue with this, a bit more hidden, is that photogrpahers and photo agencies provide website with a free first right  at a lesser fee than  what a print publication would pay. In other words, website get to use the same image, much sooner than print for 10% of the price that a magazine pays to use it a week later. Does it make any sense ?

In France, for example, no magazine would ever publish an image that has been used on a website previously. None. Photo agencies or photographers do not have a problem with that since website pay so little, it is not even funny. Thus, readers can be sure that will discover new image in every issue. And with just cause, they paid for that, and other privilege. They paid to purchase a  product that do not consider them like fools. They pay for originality. They pay for what they value.

In the upcoming or ongoing debate about online pay walls, how many of the newspapers, magazines and others will take the step to guarantee original photography ? Because if it is to see another slideshow made of pictures from the trilogy (Getty, AP, Reuters ) that you can see anywhere else, I doubt people will be happy. And if they are not happy, well, they won’t pay. A pay wall will only work if people want to get in. And people will want to get in if the content inside is not something seen elsewhere for free.

The war between original content ( expensive) and  cost cutting  (cheap) is raging with  cost-cutting seemingly winning most battles these days. However, creating something for cheap that no one wants to pay for is not at all a guarantee of success. Once the CFO’s and their bosses finish destroying the very nature of what made their companies successful in a rarely seen slaughterhouse of talent, there will be only a few standing. And those will not be the ones that are the cheapest to operate but those who have found the zen like balance between originality, quality, cost and timeliness.

Photography will always be here to offer  all of this and much, much more. We know it, we are just waiting for them to understand it.

Posted in license, newspaper, celebrity, magazine, Newsweek, TIME, photojournalism, editorial, transaction, finance, wire service, france | Print | No Comments »

December 24, 2009 by pmelcher.

Today should be a day to rejoice, worldwide. People all over the world close their doors, and eyes, from the surrounding world and regroup in their family cocoon to enjoy a few hours of peace and serenity. Outside, the battles still rages creating more casualties.

French newspaper le Monde just announced that collective photo agency, L’oeil Public, was filing for bankruptcy.  For those who only care about what is happening in their own country, or even backward, that might mean nothing. However, like a upcoming storm, events that will soon be over your head tend to start somewhere else. L’oeil Public was one of the most successful collective in the past ten years. Composed of a handful of very talented photogrpahers, they had managed to elevate social photojournalism to new heights. Mostly specialized in french social events, they were not afraid to tackle international events if they deemed important enough L’oeil was one of the rare few collective to have managed to cross the Atlantic successfully , getting regular assignment from US publication like Time or Newsweek.

A collective is not a photo agency. A collective is made up of like minded photographers who decide to pool some of their resource needs in order to reduce cost and help each other. It is a tad socialist concept, thus very unpopular in the USA as it might potentially lead to a communist revolution .

The reason for L’oeil’s closure is now becoming a banality : Falling prices and  lesser assignments. A declining demand for original photography thanks to a marketplace that is more eager to save money than make money. A marketplace that has become a playground for CFO’s and their armies of blindly dedicated bean counters. Where photojournalism has been replaced by coupon journalism, where photo editors recruit amateurs to submit free images and where photographer hold high and proud checks with $2 and $3 license sales while screaming ” This is Better than nothing”. It is a market place where pundits will tell you that the road to posterity is paved with Twitts, blogs and Facebook updates. That the next Google search could yield thousands if not millions of dollars and that SEO is your key to success, not photography. It is a marketplace where trade publications turn a blind eye to monopolistic behaviors and where cheap has replace talent. It is a marketplace  that now sees editorial sales fall to 8 and 11 cents a piece.

L’Oeil Public’s situation is certainly not  a fluke and should not be dismissed as extremely far and extremely irrelevant. It is what is awaiting a lot of businesses and individuals in the year to come. Prosperity in not just around the corner and the “something is better than nothing” mentality will not work.

Posted in TIME, license, magazine, Newsweek, photojournalism, finance, news, france, editorial, getty | Print | No Comments »

September 7, 2009 by pmelcher.

3 days of sounds and fury, signifying nothing. To paraphrase Shakespeare, this represent Perpignan Visa pour L’image this year. Only a quarter of the crowd of the previous year, less then half the booth of agencies, a paparazzi agency replacing Grazia Neri’s legendary location and a couple of citizen journalist agency present. As nightly projection continue to display images of dismembered human beings with more violence and gore than a Tarantino movie, the real sign of a massacre was around the agencies booths. And like those settlers being attacked by nasty Indians in those old westerns, a lot of photo agencies seem to regroup to better protect and defend themselves.

While one side the  continued to cry about the forever death of photojournalism kept on wailing, the other was counting its recent wounds : 30% drop in prices, subscriptions model by Getty pushing every country into a pathetic price war, the economy, always the economy, all were recurrent themes of conversation. But, interestingly enough, the mood was happy, jovial, optimistic . Even as the “depot de Bilan” of Gamma/Eyedea was the talk of the town and scores of major photo agencies, like Reuters, did not make it in the Palais, no one seemed quite down. Quite the opposite. Many countries are seeing photo agencies, once major competitors to each other, regrouping in co-ops, holdings, associations in order to better defeat the ravaging beast and its  Attila the Hun  inspired pricing model :  Getty images.

At the same time, many photogrpahers have seemingly dropped their photo agency and have gone solo, with quite a success.

And after deals were done, while the Palais du festival was closing under a clement sun and promises of successes to come, the photo exhibit were invaded by non professionals waiting in line to see the recent crop of images. Callie ’s images of Obama were probably the most popular, not only because they are spectacular, but certainly also because Obama himself is an object of fascination to the French population.

Consolidation, mergers, groups, holdings were certainly  the key words this year in the hallways of the Palais while optimism and creativity was the buzz word at the Cafe de La Poste, the fame location of the evening’s traditional bacchanal. Seems this Perpignan was the most lively and encouraging in many, many years.

Posted in photojournalism, license, magazine, slideshow, finance, news, france, editorial, getty | Print | No Comments »

August 9, 2009 by pmelcher.

The BBC posted, and probably aired, this video recently :

As usual with the BBC, it is full of errors and misconceptions:

1) It talks about Gamma/Eyedea yet shows only pictures from Sygma. It doesn’t say why Sygma ceased to be an active photo agency, implying it went bankrupt. Sygma was bought by Corbis ( need we say more?).

2) It explains that because of the recession, magazine are using “cheaper” celebrity images. Those who work in this industry, worldwide, know that celebrity images are not cheaper to use and license then war images. Most of the time they are much more expensive.

3) magazines using more celebrity images is not a recent economic trend brought forth by the recession, but a much longer trend, mostly created not to offend the advertisers : Magazine publisher can sign-up many more ads with celebs stories than they can with war images. They claim that’s what  people want to read. Just before shutting down.

4) Gamma, Sygma and war photographers are NOT competing  for space in publications against celebrity photographers. That is a pure fabricated lie. If celebrity photo agencies or photographers would stop shooting, magazines will not fill their pages with war images. The BBC is falling in the trap created many years ago by a poorly run photo agency claiming that if they couldn’t sell images, it was because of those cheap paparazzi shots. This fable is then supported by Agnes Gouvion St Cyr, French government’s photo spokesperson and probably the most boring person in photography.

5) There is no interview or even mention of Eyedea management team ? why ? or any management team ? Where did they go ? Couldn’t the BBC score an interview with them ? A more formal explanation would have been nice, no?

6) Claiming that the situation was brought forth by the rise of celebrity usage and not showing any management person results in “explaining” that this poor situation these agencies are facing is due to uncontrollable circumstances and are doomed. Never do they even remotely suggest that poor management could be behind the fall of these agencies. For Gamma/Eyedea, it would have taken the BBC no more than 10 minutes to figure it out.

6) Nice comment from the Corbis Sygma archive facility guy ” There is  no short term business model for this..” and yet doesn’t even explain the long term one.  Probably because like any Corbis’s business model, it is  “Bill Gates will pay for this”.

7) The only good guy to come out of this is photographer Noel Quidu who explains his predicament and how much he cares about the agency he helped build.

A much better and thorough article can be found in the New York Times today: read it here.

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July 23, 2009 by pmelcher.

Gamma, recently renamed Eyedea by its new owners, Green recovery, is closing forever. The official date will be the 28 of July, 2009. This is a very sad day for photography worldwide. The “corpocrates” have won. They have succeeded in destroying one of the most beautiful photo agency in the world.

Hopefully we will see a rebirth of Rapho and others thanks to the will power of its photographers.

 Update : an article, in French, confirming the story. More to come

Update number 2 :  “In wanting to preserve it, Hachette destroyed it ” Raymond Depardon, Founder of Gamma. Read the short interview here, along with a quick reaction by Eyedea current CEO.

Posted in photojournalism, magazine, transaction, editorial, france, news | Print | No Comments »

July 5, 2009 by pmelcher.

This is a different kind of multimedia. No, not the guy on the radio talking, but what he is talking about. A photographer and a graphic novel artist got together to create a book that mixes photographs and graphics. The graphic story is about the photographer and the photographs are taken by the photographer so that the whole narrative is essentially visual. Since very often in photojournalism, the story of the photographer is almost as important as the stories they photograph, this is a great way to embed each one into the other, with, however, a clear demarcation.
One doesn’t have to rely on text, the antithesis of photography, but rather can surf the flow of the story in a fluid visual format. Just think if magazines had thought about t this. The next step would be to bring this whole experience online.

see below :

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July 1, 2009 by pmelcher.

There should be a special site for photography’s worst offenders. Somewhere for everyone to be aware of those who steal images, those who infringe copyright on a regular basis, those who do not pay, and anyone that has their hearts set to painfully hurt our beloved profession.

Like a giant wall of shame. The photography wall of shame. A public place to denounce the dark cons of the some that just do not understand that this is a profession to be respected, if not  adored.

If such a wall existed, one of the first companies to be inscribed into it would be a French one, called Eyedea.  It is the remains of a failed merger of legendary Gamma, Rapho, Top, Explorer and other french agencies. A testament of the infinite damages of the corpocrates. A shrine to human stupidity and incompetency.

Eyedea is owned by a company called Green Recovery. No, no, it is not a self sustainable, environmentally friendly company. According to its own words, it is: “… a French industrial holding made up of independant (sic) poles of activities. The share holders of Green Recovery are business leaders. The group’s major investments concern primarily the takeover of companies in difficulty.”

The group purchased Gamma, Rapho and the others out of the hands of Hachette who was, quite frankly, on the verge of closing the whole thing down. For an alleged 600,000 Euros, much less than a years’ worth of revenue. The company was not only leaking money from its front door, but also through the windows, the faucets, the bathroom, the cracks in the ceilings…well, from everywhere.

So off they go on a new path. They fire a few people, others leave, a handful of wise photographers pack their images and escape. After a few months of promises not kept, the future becomes clear. More of the same. But it gets worse. Like a Russia unwilling to admit its failure and building walls to block  its citizen from leaving, Eyedea decides it will not let free lance photographers leave anymore. Not only that, but they sit on their commission money. As a punishment for even attempting to leave.

The perestroika in charge even refuses to acknowledge any attempts to communicate and keeps a deafening Bolshevik silence. No one knows what is happening behind the thick walls of Eyedea’s management. The case is still unresolved and the photographer is still waiting for an answer. For the past 2 years. Who knows how many are out there in the same situation?

Running a photo agency used to be a gentleman sport. You represented photographers and if, for some reason, the relationship did not work out, regardless the contract, everyone would gently part their own way .  These days, contracts are like hammers, mostly used to crush a photographer into the ground.

To add ridicule to injury, Eyedea has now just announced that they have just open their  E-commerce solution: Selling T-shirts. Those T-shirts will have Eyedea’s pictures on it, maybe even some of the above -mentioned freelance photographer. Guess if you can’t sell images to magazines, the next best thing is to stick them on T-shirts and sell those.

It is really time for shamelessly incompetent and dangerously careless people to leave this industry. There is no money to be made and no glory to be achieved.  It is only insanely long hours, an ever changing landscape, perpetually changing tools, cranky photographers and even crankier clients. Nothing is ever finished : there is always a deadline behind a deadline, like an infinite dune desert. It is a perpetual card castle that stumbles every day only to be rebuild the next morning.

There is no legacy to be left, no finger prints. If you are succesful, the photographers gets the credit, if you are not, you get the blame. You are never the winner because there will always be someone who will beat you at your own game, if it is not today, it will be tomorrow.

this business is not a job, it is an addiction to which there is no cure.

So corpocrates of the world, from France and elsewhere, take your well thought off business meetings and take them somewhere else. Take your asskissers with you, those yesmen/ yes women that plague our industry with their expensive clothes and their shameless ignorance. Go invade some other industry where you can actually make money. There is nothing to manage here, nothing that  can be translated in an Excel sheet. It is time for you to go.

Posted in copyright, celebrity, license, No sense, france, editorial, law | Print | No Comments »

May 26, 2009 by pmelcher.

This is important for many reasons ( more in a later post)  :
THE YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHERS ALLIANCE DEBUTS IN CHICAGO,
ALAMY FIRST TO PLEDGE SUPPORT

MAY 6, 2009, PAVILION, NEW YORK: The Young Photographers Alliance (YPA) (www.youngphotographersalliance.org) made its debut in Chicago at Picturehouse’s 4th annual event held on Thursday April 16, 2009 at the River East Art Center.

YPA is the creation of Jerry Tavin, co-founder of IC Worldwide (www.icworldwide.com) and Deborah Free, President of Picturehouse Marketing US/Visual Connections (www.picturehouse-us.com). Both are widely-recognized as advocates and leaders in the photography industry. Founded as an international not-for-profit educational foundation, YPA is focused on bringing disadvantaged students opportunities for advancement in photography.

With the elimination of art education in public schools and the ever-increasing cost of a college degree, these barriers are more difficult then ever to overcome. This lack of support directly affects photography students and could prove to have a long-term negative impact on the future of professional photography.

Amid these concerns, YPA was created to inspire and support the next generation of image makers through college scholarships, mentoring programs, internship opportunities and educational seminars, internationally.

“We are pleased that YPA was so well received after our announcement. The enthusiasm and support was immediate, both at the Picturehouse event and the PACA Annual Meeting held in Chicago,” said Jerry Tavin.

In addition to two scholarships already provided by Jerry Tavin and Picturehouse, Alamy (www.alamy.com), pledged a third scholarship for the 2009 recipients.

“We think the Young Photographers Alliance is a great concept, and we’re excited to be involved at this early stage.”
Alan Capel, Head of Content, Alamy

YPA is also pleased to announce the position of Erin Moroney of Axiom Photographic Agency (www.axiomphotographic.com) as their European Liaison. “I’m delighted to be part of YPA.  In this current climate, it’s very easy to be cynical about the industry.  It’s refreshing to be involved with an organization that is so committed and passionate about nurturing new, young photographic talent.”

YPA is receiving endorsements from various organizations as well. ASPP Executive Director, Cathy Sachs states, “The American Society of Picture Professionals is very pleased to add its support to this wonderful new initiative.  The mission of the Young Photographers Alliance dovetails very well with our own educational and mentoring programs.  In addition the whole photography community has an opportunity to come together to share the passion of these disadvantaged young photographers, and create a nurturing environment for them.”

In New York on October 13, 2009, the evening prior to Picturehouse, a reception to announce the first Young Photographers Alliance scholarship recipients will be held at the Metropolitan Pavilion. In addition, a Silent Auction of the work of many of the scholarship applicants as well as professional photographers will be on display. All proceeds will be divided between the scholarship funds of the students and YPA’s various projects. More information about YPA’s programs and events will be available in the coming months.

#######

Be involved or die…

Posted in commercial stock, CEPIC, PACA, editorial, france | Print | No Comments »

May 16, 2009 by pmelcher.

Corbis press release about the multimillion preservation facility recently opened in the suburbs of Paris, France. :

“The Sygma Preservation and Access Facility is a testament to our commitment to preserving the profoundly important Sygma collection,” said Gary Shenk, CEO, Corbis. “So many talented photographers have contributed to Sygma, and we are honoured ( sic)  to safeguard and make accessible these treasures for today and the future.”

 Including those 12, 680 originals from Chris Usher that were lost ?

DPP: How are rates being set today?
Getty Images: Rates are very much set by the market. It’s always our aim to maximize the revenue that we can get for any given usage.

Except when custumors are “premium subscribers”…

Getty’s own Nick Evan Lombs fights it off with a one on one against fierce Renee Martin from the mighty Corbis..Ugly stuff.

Posted in commercial stock, No sense, france, corbis, getty | Print | No Comments »