August 6, 2008 by pmelcher.

The photo agency industry continues to complain and whine about its condition, endlessly consummated by demons it has created.

For one, it has created this endless pool of incredibly mediocre photographer that has for far too long managed to make a living taking pictures. Its not amateur photography that is getting better, it is just pro photographer that are getting worse and lazier. The over reliance on a defunct principle that they were the only one to own the channels of photography sales made photo agencies indifferent to the quality of their product. After all, it was them or nothing. Even Getty, who once believed it could corner the “distribution of image” market and set it own rules got a nasty wake up call when Istock through the first kick and Flickr the second punch.

Today, the photo agencies have a lot of excess weight. Photographers they keep because of old friendship or by pure habit, endlessly submitting the same images in the hopes that the Golden age will soon return. While they wait, in absolute stubbornness, the majority have decided that playing with pricing will offer them a new opportunity.

Amidst unverified rumors that their competition is doing the same, prices are being slashed to levels that have never been seen and that defies even the law of gravity. Since print publications are not doing so well either, everyone is more than happy to comply, bringing the whole market to a spiraling absurd end. To top it all, Angelina’s twins selling for an allegely $14 million just adds more photographers in the pool, hoping that they will too, one day , hit the jackpot.

Take Florida based photo agency prphotos.com ( created by some wireimage ex pats), for example. Someone there with a brain the size of  sand has decided to offer red carpet images for web usage on a subscription basis. That wouldn’t be so bad if the prices were not so ridiculously low. Some of its offering is as low as  “Under A Penny Per Image”. At that stage, what is the point ? With what seems 5 people on staff, how do they intend to pay their bills?

Do they still believe the internet is the dumping ground of photography ? But more important, what does it say about how they value their photography ?

We haven’t seen the worst of it yet. There will be more of these whacked-cracked photo agencies popping up everywhere, one “smarter” than the other, offering waccadoodle prices in a desperate hope to become the new Google of photography.

Getty, now privately private will soon release a lot of weight ( read photographers) that will in turn compete not on quality but on sub pricing flooding of an already over saturated market with less than attractive images. It will not just hit editorial, but commercial stock as well, until only a few agencies survive. Already photographers have a hard time. If they associate themselves with foot-shooting agencies and their magic potion pricing, they will have to take other jobs to make ends meet.

There is no salvation in stupid pricing. It is just stupid.

Posted in celebrity, magazine, commercial stock, google, flickr, getty, editorial, finance, Microstock | Print | 1 Comment »

June 3, 2008 by pmelcher.

A while back, I had written about photosynth, when it just came out. Created by Microsoft, the idea is to stitch together multiple images taken by complete strangers to create a panoramic view taken from multiple vantage point. Well, Google just issued their version thought the Spanish company Panoramio. Panoramio is the company that allows you to post your images on Google Earth.

With its content, Panoramio has created its on stitches to render a full anonymous picture of a place. Using hundred of images taken by various people at different time, one can visualized a place or a monument thought a series a similar images. One image leads to another one and so on. Maybe the idea is to put together photographs of the whole world so that one could literally see every place. Google certainly has the means and the ambition. It would be a sort of social map constituted of all the images of the earth as seen by everyone.

You can see an example here

This technology, along with others of the kind, shows how terribly unique the internet is when it deals with photographs . The possibilities to create and expand are almost endless, while giving the user a richer experience.

This would be hard to be used in sport, however, but just think if you could stitch together thousands of images of the winning moment at the 100 meter final at the Olympics. A thousand views for one moment.

This technology could also be applied to commercial stock, making the  image more 3D and interactive.  Or in news, breaking the usual slide show linear model of one image after the other but all in one. Think of the New York Times readers gallery of photographs on the crane incident. This, to me, illustrate the “Future of Contemporary Photography” much more than any images of eggs, empty parking lots or thousand of sunsets ripped from their online presence to be pasted on a lonely, endless wall.

Posted in multimedia, technology, commercial stock, google, web 2.0, slideshow, flickr, prosumer, editorial | Print | No Comments »

May 27, 2008 by pmelcher.

Sometimes it is good to step out in order to better look in. In this 25 minutes video, Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google, goes over image search, segmentation and other challenges that face anyone that is trying to built a better search.  What is interesting in this is how he speaks over and over about that its all about working with the data you have and not power coding. If you analyze the data you have ( data can be replaced by images, obviously) then you get a more agile platform.

In the case of photography, we tend to add more data ( think keywords) to an already huge set of information. We wrap data with more data, which never made sense. Google, TinEye, Riya and many other companies seem to have taken the lead in a area where photo agencies should have been the precursors. It is fascinating to see how many companies will sell you a Image Database management system that is really a keyword database management with images attached to them. None even use advance text search technology and let you suffer thought metada building on your own.

On the flip side, Image Buyers are still relying on a guessing game, trying to find the right image with a varied source of words. Very archaic, isn’t it?

Take a peak at the video here :

Posted in technology, Search, keyword, google, web 2.0 | Print | No Comments »

May 23, 2008 by pmelcher.

Just imagine. Just imagine if a company like Google, or Yahoo, or even Microsoft put their hand on microstock and social photography. Not only Istockphoto projections of $171 million revenue within a few years would be pulverized into unknown heights but it would be the end of both RM and traditional RF forever.

Why ?, you might ask. Simple. Right now, the only reason Istock is not growing faster is its lack of reach compared to better known sites like Google. Given that firepower, there is absolutely no reason why the whole market not tip over into a microstock Tsunami.  Let’s face it, Rights Managed is a badly protected island. And part of its protection came from the purposely shallow amount of choice. A lack of choice is what makes  RM potentially valuable, or what others call “bleeding edge” photography. Thus, out of a pool of 10 images, it is important to secure exclusivity. Out of a pool of millions, who cares?

Furthermore, it would be so simple to “retire” an image automatically for a higher price, thus making that image exclusive by automation.

Why would anyone  consider putting their images anywhere else than on Google Stock ? Already, everyone, from photographers to photoagency are taking night courses in  SEO to pump up their ranking. Most will buy huge amounts of adwords. If Google opens the gates and starts welcoming images in order to license them, there will be no holding back. From no one. It would be an act of suicide not to be part of it.  And since microstock pricing has now set the tone for commercial usage pricing, everyone will seek the low-priced volume sale. And, besides the user generated sites, no one will survive.

RF would quickly become  standard and no one would even bother with any other of those complicated and boring licensing  models. The only way for agencies and photographers to survive will be to jump, or stay, on the assignment peak. Those who have created a market for their photography, their personal work ~ the way professional photography first started~will continue to be untouched by this whole stock mess.

Not sure this will happen ? Well, think about it. Why did Getty go private ? and more important, why do you think someone paid $2.5 billion for it ? So it can watch it grow slowly like a small pet kitten ? Not their style. And what do you think will happen when Newscorp, Google, Yahoo, AOL and others feel they have managed to control most of the channels. What will be their next target to increase their appeal to advertisers ? Content, you said ? Indeed. By having the most compelling content, eyeballs will be attracted. And who has the highest volume of well targeted eyeballs will sell the most ads. Like it used to be with the TV network. But this next battle is happening online and will include stills.

Hopefully, some will stop asking me why I think this industry has not yet seen the worst ( or best) of it. Why there is no more reasons to attend Cepic or PACA congress. The waters are retreating already and I am no fool.

Posted in google, Midstock, technology, commercial stock, web 2.0, CEPIC, Royalty free, getty, transaction, PACA, Microstock | Print | 4 Comments »

May 12, 2008 by pmelcher.

Once again, JupiterMedia has released its quarterly results. Once again they are they loosing money on the photo side ( JupiterImages). Out of the big three , Corbis, Jupiter and Getty, only one has posted profits. Corbis is notoriously a cash hungry beast with a huge appetite for cost while Jupiter seems to be on an ever growing decline. Only Getty Images has been able to pull off the acquisition/consolidation scheme. Not without hurting. No longer the aggressive growth company, it was brutally manhandled by Wall Street and had to retreat into the protective hands of an equity investment company that took it out of the public playground.

There is a lot of resentment inside Guetty these days. Photographers are unhappy : Commercial stock RM revenues are declining while there is too many celebrity photographers rubbing elbows at every event. Something has got to give and it will be a no surprise to see it reduce its snapper staff as soon as the public doors are closed. 2008 will not be a good year for the Getty staff in general.

However, what is causing these monopoly hungry corporation to fail ? A few things:

- No passion : Only Jonathan Klein seems to be passionate about photography. Do you ever see Jupiter’s CEO at any industry event ? or Corbis new CEO ? what about those A21 guys?  NEVER. They sell images like others sell socks: With a passionate disinterest. Like a bunch of accountants recently named CEO.

- A dry corporate culture. It takes dedication to take and license images. It is not a 9 to 5 job. Walk in at the office of any of these companies and you will see rows of cubicles populated by clock-watching workers spending more time surfing job sites then their own. Most of the staff in these photo factories are in a transition job, passionately looking for something else. The only passion you see, or feel, is the passion to get promoted before your colleague. Walk into small or medium agency and everyone is ready to cut their arm to make sure it will work.

- A fundamental misdirection:  Mark Getty has a long term plan that fits in a very long term perception of the world economy. The others just want to make money. Even Bill Gates’ plan was a bit more sophisticated than just making money. Money is what happens when your plan is succesful, not the opposite. I never heard Meckler or Schenk formulate a vision besides “we will be profitable one day”.

- A complete lack of risk taking: Corporation are all about control, prediction and risk management. Everything photography is not.  Spending fortunes on marketing is just not enough. You still need the content. But understanding what is the right content is not something so easily predictable. It is not, for example, because you purchase a successful brand that it will continue to be successful. Without taking risk there cannot be a succesful photo agency. Its all about being one step ahead of picture buyers who themselves are not sure where they are going before they get there.

One could continue on and on why these business structure are inadequate for the photography world. Everyone knows that Jupiter Images is for sale for lack of being successful. No one is foolish enough to believe that Corbis will ever be succesful with its current structure. They will only obtain profitability by downsizing and reducing themselves.  A21, we will not comment as its days are numbered. There is no surprises in these quarterly reports anymore and I doubt there will ever be anymore. The non performers are going to not performed as Getty Images will position itself to be acquired by one of the media giants such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft when these will realize that after owning the distribution channels they will need to control content. As Mark Getty very rightly said ” IP ( intellectual property)  is the oil of the 21th century”.

Posted in Search, Jupiter, celebrity, commercial stock, yahoo, google, getty, corbis, finance, Royalty free | 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 16, 2008 by pmelcher.

I did not pick this image. I actually have no idea what it will be before I publish this entry. Why ? because it is a sort of semi “intelligent” algorithm in the background that will do it for me. A bit like Google ads scans a whole web page for keywords and post the relevant ads, this system, delivered by Dailylife.com, does the same.

It will scan the page for keywords and post the most appropriate image. Like an automated photo editor. And because it is looking thought the feeds of Reuters, GettyImages and AP, I believe, it selects from a pool of already very tightly edited images. One could also foresee a Flickr API, a bit like I did with the yahoo pipes.

I am guaranteed a good and hopefully, relevant image . This is the future of news photo editing on the web. At least for sites that do not care so much about the image and use them as an illustration of  a written report. Why pay some guy to look at a stream of pre edited  images, download one, resize it and post when the whole thing can be automated. And better yet, computers don’t whine, do not take lunch breaks, or holidays and never, never ask for a raise. So why keep a web photo editor, if only to do some “best of the week” gallery ?

Think about it:  the biggest news source of the internet has no photo editor. It is called Google news and it selects images with a similar technology. Indeed, it relies on images previously edited by pro photo editors. For now.

The dailylife link is completely free, with no uncontrolled ads, like a Picapp or a GumGum would like you to swallow. Sure , it has a link for the site itself but the same technology could easily be applied by anyone on their own site.

Finally, Dailylife.com, still in Beta, looks like an interesting destination. It seems they want to be a new Google news but put a heavy emphasis on photography and has a much better and smoother interface. More like a magazine designed for the internet, and not the opposite. Finally.

As newspapers and magazine are suffering more layouts as ad spending is weakening, most of the photo related professional are turning to the internet. However, because of its built in automation, it just seems that some of the jobs will not be recycle but ultimately replaced by machines. We will still need great pictures, thus talented photographers. Not so sure about needing photo editors.

Posted in multimedia, Search, newspaper, digg, magazine, gumgum, technology, keyword, yahoo, editorial, news, slideshow, wire service, google, photojournalism, getty | Print | 2 Comments »

April 1, 2008 by pmelcher.

How many times will  members of this industry get together and talk about IPTC, keywording and other metadata. How many meetings, conferences, synopsis, “get togethers”, panels, parties, does it take ? Both the ASPP conference in Arizona and CEPIC in Malta have scheduled hours long conferences on this subject. Again. The one in CEPIC is 8 hours long !!!

It used to be that the IPTC was a small geeky association of nerds looking into how to standardize metadata in images. It has now become the most sought-after organization. More than the dying PLUS coalition.

The amusing part is that none of the attendants are keywording their own images. They have staff people to do that. Furthermore, none of the companies that offer this service are on the panels( JaincoTech, Keedup, OnAsia Digital, Etc) They would know better, wouldn’t they?  Instead, you have marketing managers or agencies owners sitting in stuffy rooms, vaguely writing notes while waiting for the suffering to end until they can finally get a free drink at the evening’s cocktail party.

At a time when the temple of controlled vocabulary  ( the Library of Congress) has decided to pull out from its antiquated method of keywording by putting 4,000 of its images into Flickr and ask for crowdsourcing wisdom, the photo agency world is wasting time and money into desperately trying to impose a standardized form of controlled vocabulary. Some probably spend more time and money on attending these panels than they do in a whole year of marketing.

The aim, apparently, is to define a series of code words that could be transported from one databank to another and yield the same results. Thousands of them. Same keywords. Wether they are related to the real world is irrelevant as the priority is to standardize and eventually give photo buyers a book on which word to use and how. And then what, have university offer a degree in photo researching, transforming photo buyers into bonified librarians? It is bad enough that some “photo editors” have no visual experience, it gives me the shivers to think what would become if this would happen.

There are few misconceptions here :

Language, unless dead, evolves all the time. Even dictionary publishers worldwide know  as they add and delete words every year.  Who uses “walkman” anymore ?

Keywording is not a marketing tool:  A bad or irrelevant  image well keyworded is still a bad image. It will not sell.

Controlled Vocabulary does not include local cultures. If it does, than it cannot be controlled anymore. It is arrogant, pedant and quite simply foolish to even believe that one controlled vocabulary can and will apply to the whole world.

A word is not a definition. It is only a description. It takes many words to skim the surface of what an image is. Thus keywording should be an accessory to search, not its main engine.

In the long term, keywording will die. Already, there are other emerging ways to search for images : visual, color, face recognition, similar, pattern recognition. In the text world, there is even semantic search, which allows you to search by meaning instead of exact match.

Google images, which everyone sees as the ultimate “find me tool” does not even index IPTC.

They say insanity is repeating the same thing over and over hoping for a different result. Seems to be that the photo industry is banging over and over on the same door and it will just not open.

The solutions ? Exactly what the user generated content agencies are doing. Let the keywords be offered by the source . They shoot, they keyword. And they keyword well because they are using an everyday vocabulary that the buyers are also using. A vocabulary that changes and evolves all the time. A vocabulary that is not “controlled”. Organized chaos.

Or follow the giants. Getty, which you never see at these repeated panels, as well as AP, Reuters, Corbis and others, have hired outside companies to do their keywords. Because it is not their chore business and do not feel it necessary to have a full time dedicated team of librarians. They seem to prefer selling images rather than cataloguing them.

It would be an interesting exercise to calculate how much time was wasted in “perfectly” keywording images that never sold in some of the medium or smaller agencies that seem to be obsessive about doing in house keywording .

Would it be more interesting for these congress, meetings, conference to have a panel about how to make great pictures that sale ?

Worst that could happen would be a few hours looking at great image.

Posted in keyword, Search, Plus, Zymmetrical, google, flickr, corbis, PACA, CEPIC, getty | 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 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 »