March 9, 2010 by pmelcher.

Anyone can take a picture…that is the lesson Flickr and Microstock has recently taught us with a “pie in the face” method. It doesn’t take that much skills to create images that could use for licensing by someone else. Much less then painting, writing music, writing ( properly) or any other creative activity. Furthermore, technology has really improved the ease of access. Most images that we see today, even taken by pros, could have never existed 15 years ago because cameras, lenses and everything around it was just not that good. However, as much as photography is becoming more and more accessible, great images remain an act of creative magic. And its a talent, if not a gift.

The same goes for licensing images. Everyone claims they can sell pictures. However, it is not true. let’s take a few example, if you don’t mind. Microstock shooters. Sure they can take equivalent quality pictures as your average traditional RF/RM guy. But can they sell it ? Nope. They have to rely on the savvy tech marketing magicians of microstock sites like Istock or Dreamstime to make that happen. They could start their own microstock site with only their image, priced at even lower than any competition and yet see nothing. Ok..not convinced. Well, let’s jump into photojournalism.  We are all familiar with great images that never get published. Why? Because images do not sell themselves. It’s a tragic myth.

More and more, one can see popping up all over the internet, sites build by young geeky entrepreneur offering to let photographers sell direct and cut the “middleman” or agency. They make people beleive the age old myth “if you build it they will come”.  The more independent photographers create independent selling websites ( not the portfolio kind), the more they dilute and isolate their work.

Why do you think a lot of these database site scream high and loud how many images they contain ( 15 million, 43 million, 5 petratrillion..) ? Because they understand that the promise of a wealth of content is more important to most buyers than quality. They are looking for a solution, not a great image. Something that will fit well and appropriately in that space. They couldn’t care less if it was used before, like they couldn’t care less if their care is mass produced and others have the same model with the same color.

Think selling images in a big database is the solution ? wrong again. You can try, but there is no guarantee. Furthermore, the bigger the collection, the more chance your images have to be ignored . Great IPTC info ? Depends on what you call great: what you put in or what those guys in  Bangalore put in ? Or those so self proclaimed expert? Mmm.

So what is it ? Great marketing ? Sure…but do you know what that is ? and how to achieve it ? Probably not. If you did, you would not be reading this but instead, be enjoying a nice coktail on the porch of your summer house looking at the sunset dip into a deep blue sea.

Admit it. You don’t know. You have no idea how to sell images. It takes talent, like shooting great images. Whether learned or natural, it’s not something most photographer have. Great athletes have agents, great actor have agents, why do you think photographers don’t need any ?

Because building a searchable website with a shopping cart is easy, and cheap ? And that, with a kick-ass SEO strategy will make them millionaires? Well, let’s think of who have succeeded up to now…What? no names come to mind? However, photographers with crappy websites ( or none at all) that are doing very, very well…many.

So, next time someone comes to you with a turn key solution that promises to cut the middle man and make you truly independent, you can beleive them, because that is exactly what it will do for you. And nothing else.

Posted in Search, IPTC, license, magazine, commercial stock, technology, keyword, flickr, editorial, Royalty free, transaction, finance, photojournalism, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

February 22, 2010 by pmelcher.

      Tired of Orphan works endless discussion ? Fed up about Microstrock, Getty and Google treating photography as a garbage dump ? Bored of reading self-proclaimed photo gurus telling you that “posterity is right around the corner “? Tired of spending gazillions hard earned dollars ( or pesos, or Euros, or Krons ?) on far away workshop with cynical and decadent reporters who need a new camera and couldn’t give a crap what your name is ? Or are you just loosing your eyesight on another overpriced piece of software supposedly made to enhance your workflow but actually puts you that much further from delivering your images on time ?

Well, if you have a Facebook account ( which, by the way, you should by now), head of to “L’apero du premier Jeudi du mois“. Apparently created by a group of French photographers who just like to have fun, and a drink, once a month  ( on the first Thursday of the month) , it is becoming the place to hang out. Why ? because they have just launched their first photo contest.And unlike PDN or other self righteous photo publication, it is free and fun.

Here are, in a nutshell, the rules.  5 images, coherent, on one topic, which is a pun in French : ” Aperitif: Contact Glasses” . You know, in France, when they go out for drinks, before dinner, they have a beer, or a Kir, or a Ricard, and they wish each other a good health ( “as ta sante”, or “a la votre”) before hitting their glasses together and slipping it away. A good way to push away a bad day and a great way to start an evening. The short photo essay for the contest that runs from March 1 to May 5, should illustrate that.  Simple enough ?

The prizes ? O yes, of course, this is what you win ( if you win):

1 prize : a Camenbert

2nd prize: a bottle of Zubrowska

3rd; Pize : a Ricoh camera

The jury ? : everyone. the images will be posted on Facebook and anyone can vote for their favorite . In June, the winner will be announce. So next time you sit down for drinks with your friends after a long boring day and let your thoughts drift into the friendship space, grab a camera and photograph this precious moment . Who knows, you might win a camenbert.

All info ( in French, for now) at the Facebook page here.

Posted in license, IPTC, copyright, magazine, technology, keyword, web 2.0, editorial, finance, slideshow, photojournalism, getty | Print | No Comments »

January 18, 2010 by pmelcher.

When smart people are combined with top end technology, something magical happens. Spiderpic is such a example. Brainchild of Ginipic, who had already launch a multiple database desktop application, Spiderpic is not only an image search portal but also serves as a price comparison site.

To top it all, it is very simple to use : enter a search parameter and hit enter. You will be offered a variety of images  from different sources. Up to now, nothing really revolutionary. However, once you decide which image is right for you, you can click on it and there it will show you its price on different site. Same image, same size, all the  different prices. Thus, you can make the right choice and purchase it at the lowest licensing cost.

Of course, SpiderPic only works with microstock companies for now. but it works extremely well. The implication of such a deal are multiple. First, if widely used ( it is in Beta for now), it will drive the microstock companies into a price war that might leave many on the floor. It might also convince more users to go exclusive with one provider, as too avoid a drop in their revenue. Finally, it will put a full stop at the slowly growing cost of microstock.

Since about 90% of the microstock content is available on different competing sites, price shopping, especially with such a great application, will certainly be the new microstock sport very quickly.  The company, Spiderpic, will make its income via the referral programs of the  providers. The more usage, the richer they will get. Furthermore, since the hole process is automated, they can run it with as low as two people.

Some microstock companies might be tempted to block access to their database to hide their prices. Not a good idea if and when Spiderpic becomes popular. They might just be ignored by image buyers altogether. Others might decide to make their pricing less obvious, by having a very low call price, enhance at download time by “hidden” fees. Finally, others might require more obstinate memberships ( Shutterstock, subscriptions, etc) in order to keep their current customer base.

Regardless, this tool will put the microstock industry in a tale spin, forcing  marketing department to find other means to attract buyers than just low pricing . It will also make very difficult for  any company wishing to increase their prices to do so without loosing a lot of customers. Finally, its ironic, that the microstock industry finds itself pin down to their original appeal at time when they all thought they could slowly and discreetly increase their rate.

Regardless, this is a great tool. Now, if it could also do traditional RF and maybe one day, RM, that would be great. In the mean time, I very highly recommend you try it..and use it.

Posted in Midstock, license, technology, commercial stock, Search, keyword, Royalty free, transaction, prosumer, Microstock | Print | 4 Comments »

December 10, 2009 by pmelcher.

It is just a question of time. Not years but probably months. Already a lot of desktop consumer based application are offering a glimpse of its power : Image recognition. Google has recently taken it a step further. Search with Image recognition.

“The concept of Google Goggles is dead simple- a user snaps a photo of an object around them, be it a book, building, text or any other object, and the app will return a search result tailored to for that object” explains mobilemarketingwatch.com.

Say you walk in front of a building and would like more info, just snap a picture of it, submit to Google Goggles and voila. Same goes for CD’s , Books, paintings and maybe photographs too. Still in its infancy, Google Goggles , when launched live, will mark the debut of image recognition  as a replacement of text search. For now, the Goggles project is limited to objects. Soon, once the Google lawyers can figure how to get around privacy laws, it will also work with people too. Meet someone new. Take a snap and in 5 seconds, you will know there whole history. Well, at least the one available online.

What does it mean to the photo industry ? Many, many changes. First, a new way to search. All database will soon be able to also offer such a search to their clients. Google tends to create standards. It is nit a bad thing, except for the technophiles out there. Just imagine: Your metadata could be incorrect and image would still be found.  A few companies already offer this technology but not as deep as Google. LTU tech or Idee, for example, will do image matching . That is, if images look similar, regardless of what is in the image. Goggles recognizes what is in the image and looks for that, and not similar images.

Google new visual search will mainly be a huge help for image key wording. Since its inception, it has been notorious for offering free API’s ( that’s a little backdoor that lets two applications talk together) to its technologies. That will allow savvy programmers to tie an image database to Goggles and have all its image indexed automatically. Those microstock will be all over this technology.  While certainly incapable to add emotion or concepts, it will however facilitate a lot of the tedious work of recognizing content.

Companies like Imense who is currently offering similar technology will certainly take a huge hit. Same goes with Idee and its CD or book Iphone apps.

While there is nothing dramatically new in this technology, it is the shear power of Google already indexed document that will make this a success. They will be hardly any images that will not return a result, besides maybe those “artistic” ones.

If you have an android phone, you can try it now : Google Goggles.

Posted in idee, technology, commercial stock, celebrity, keyword, web 2.0, google, editorial | Print | No Comments »

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 9, 2009 by pmelcher.

So, as it reaches $200 million dollars a year in revenue, Istockphoto is pushing the production of stock photography to its rim. The traditionally strong categories for stock imagery, like Lifestyle, Health, Parenthood, Teens, Green, Business are all being more than very well covered by the astute production of 100,000’s very smart microstock producers. For traditional photo agencies, especially Royalty Free, continuing to produce images in these categories is pure suicide.

But there is not much space at the edges of the stock photography demand. If you are specialized in photographing snails, that is great, but lets face it, the market, even worldwide, cannot be  very big. Sure, you will still be able to command your prices but probably with clients that have little or no budget. So what is the point ?

Even almighty Getty is suffering losses within its traditional stock offering and is probably thinking to shift the whole thing to its new subscription based Jupiter Unlimited model. At least, for a business representing thousands of photographers, that would make sense. What you loose on per image sales, you win on the volume. For individual photogrpahers, it’s a complete loss.

Interestingly enough, the internet has not leveled the playing field. It is as difficult as it was 10 years ago for an image buyer to find the proper images outside of the 3 or 4 top stock photo agencies.  Volume and SEO are  two principal tools for worldwide marketing, both completely unrelated to image quality. Google Image, still being seen as the primary destination to find images is  completely counter productive for professionals as it doesn’t index IPTC ( Some still think it is  a standard) while it it privileges popularity over quality. Some tools, like the new Picscout IRC, are even helping Google Image to enhance its sad dominance over stock image licensing.

If the stock photo industry had any intelligence, it would create it own replacement for Google Image based on its  clients needs. A global image search that would read IPTC and classify images according to relevancy. That would privilege quality over popularity and volume. Sure, it would be a huge project and demand a lot of cooperation from competing businesses. Sure, it would demand cooperation rather than isolation, but the results would benefit everyone. It is probably the only solution the commercial stock industry has left until it disappears under the huge weight of  mass production.

Posted in Search, IPTC, license, Jupiter, commercial stock, technology, keyword, prosumer, getty, Royalty free, transaction, finance, CEPIC, PACA, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

September 29, 2009 by pmelcher.

So the big buzz these days is all about social media. It started roughly with MySpace , followed by Flickr and now it’s all about  Twitter and Facebook.  A bit like the “Long Tail” theory has been improperly swallowed by a  lot of photography professionals, social media is all but properly understood.

It used to be that, after creating a blog, you had to have a page on Myspace. And then it was you HAD to have a gallery on Flickr. Now, it has shifted to Facebook and Twitter. There is even a scheduled talk at the upcoming Photoplus expo on how to master Twitter for photographers.  I wonder if, at the time, they had a “how to master CB radio for photographers” and how well that worked.

Social media is a critical tool if you are in the B2C market, directly selling your products, or services, to the general public. However, photography is much more ( besides wedding photogrpahers) then a simple B2B product and service. A bit like raw oil. Try and sell raw oil to general public. No one would buy as they wouldn’t know what to do with it.

So, having a business Twitter  account and spending hours a day updating it in the hope of closing a major assignment or licensing deal is like walking your neighborhood doing door to door marketing. A shot in the dark. A completely useless exercise in futility with the added bonus of wasting your time and concentration. No one cares if you just came back from a photo shoot or finished editing 341 images in less than one hour thanks to Aperture. And you could Twipic your “best of” until you are  blue in the face, all they care about is funny cat pictures.

Facebook has, for photography, pretty much the same marketing value as Twitter . Unless you are already friends with a photo editor, no one will search Facebook to find you or hire you. Might as well use your account to post funny videos. That, people will like.

The fascinating part of all this is that there  are now so called self proclaim experts in these “marketing photography via social media ” who claim they can take your business from zero to millions thanks to “secrets” they have found. If that was true, wouldn’t they rather be enjoying there money somewhere on exotic beach instead of trying to sell you their useless approach ?

It is somewhat pathetic to see how so much of the photography community falls, year after years, into these marketing dead ends and forget that the number 1 rule remains always the same : Shoot meaningful images. Or, in other words ” It’s the content, stupid”. Nothing else, nothing more.

Sure, you might even be succesful in getting thousand upon millions of hits on your website thanks to you mastering social media. Still doesn’t mean you will convert any of these into a sale. Actually, all this traffic might even block actual buyers to get to your site.

After hours and hours updating your blog, Facebook account, Myspace page , Flickr account and Tweeting about all this, when does one find time to actually work on photography ? Don’t we spend already too much time online  ? Are does really successful in creating a huge following on social media selling any images ?

Social media for photography is only good for one thing : make your clients talk about you to your next potential clients. For them to rave about your photography and your incredible customer support. Your exquisite sense of professionalism and your impeccable delivery.  And to accomplish that, you need to stop Twitering and start shooting.

Posted in Photoplus, license, technology, commercial stock, No sense, keyword, photojournalism, flickr, web 2.0, 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 »

August 18, 2009 by pmelcher.

Some photo agencies want to play with the big boys with no understanding of the fundamentals of business. Take Miami based photo agency PR photos. Right on the heals of the Getty Images announcement that they would charge $5 per image for cell phone usage on images of a certain very low size, that “agency in the sun” decided to replicate:

Unlike Getty, PRphoto doesn’t have staff photographers. According to their photographer’s five years contract, its a 50% share. Thus, each photographer gets $2.50 per image sold. Ouch! The photographer also has the obligation to submit images regularly , edit them, caption them, allow the agency to crop them, use them for promotional use for 10 years, and not complain if they loose anything.(welcome back, slavery !!).

How cool is that ?

Wait, it gets better. They also have a subscription plan:

Yes, you read it right. It starts at $1 an image and goes as low as pennies ( $1000 a month / unlimited downloads). And people are worried about Microstock ? what about Megamadness? Who let these people out ?

The funny part of all this is that, besides them, everyone knows this model will fail. It would take a huge critical mass of regular clients to make this viable. Huge. And with the type of content  they offer, in celebrity, news and sport, they will never achieve it.

Hopefully everyone involve in this company has a side job to sustain them and this is just a hobby. Or a bad dream. or both. Why would any photographer submit themselves to such a treatment is beyond any understanding.

You can browse and see more of the work of PR Photos here:

Posted in celebrity, magazine, Newsweek, keyword, transaction, getty, editorial, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

July 29, 2009 by pmelcher.

One of the hardest and most lucrative task in photography, is editing.

It is hard because it is not a science with clear established rules. Trends, fashion, moods, seasons, local culture, a lot can interfere in the process of finding the best image.

It is lucrative, not because it’s a profession that pays well (some, like photographers, do not get paid to find their best images in a shoot), but because it can find the gold nugget in an incessant photo stream.

While it is extremely subjective  exercise, we do all seem to agree on the majority of the basic foundation : composition, lighting, subject, contrast, focus, all have to be balanced in a coordinated resonance. And it seems to work since the greatest we all seem to agree on the majority of good to great images. We all like them.

Regardless, it is a time consuming, labor intensive activity. In the microstock, RF or Commercial Stock world, it is the only non automated, high cost division. A editor can kill or save a shoot. Not unlike book editors.

Enters science and computers: How can we automate editing ? How do we teach a computer to learn what is a good image from a bad one? How do we make such a subjective task into one that a computer can understand?

Since 2005, professors at Penn State University have been working on that task, with some limited but interesting success. It is called Acquine, and its an automated photo editing engine.  To simplify the process to its extreme, the system will not judge an image based on its cultural significance, nor by the beauty of the human subject. It is purely a “dumb” editing that seems to only worry about colors, light, form, contrast, rather than any identification of object or person in an image.

It will not be judging the World Press images anytime soon.

On the foreground, it is very simple . Upload an image and it will grade it anywhere from 1 to 100. The rules applied are not divulged publicly. The result is then publicly shown with a tool for a human being to also rate the image. The assumption is that this information is then retrieved to compare the computer and human reaction to an image and adjust the algorithm.

It is a slow and long process. The results are somewhat predictable. For example, the computer seems to give high ratings to photographs with a frame . Why? because people like the delimitation of a frame. It is a known fact. It also seem to appreciate Black and White images over color, probably because it easier to analyse and simpler in contrast and definition. A lot of computer assisted object recognition cameras only work in B/W for the same reason. Finally, it seems to prefer simple compositions with not too much content and color variations. I wouldn’t be surprised if object shots would get a high rating.

This is a very new and unexplored field. After computer assisted keywording with content recognition,  automated editing is another el dorado of the photography workflow. Imagine if all you had to do was shoot and leave the process of keywording and editing to a computer that would automatically select your best images for upload. The time and the reduction of cost, specially for photo agencies who deal with a large volume of images, would be tremendous.

In searches, it could quickly retrieve the “right” images in libraries of millions of images. In fact, one of the professors has been hired by Google. It could help during a shoot, by telling a photographer if the image they are seeing is even worth taking. Here again, another professor from this project has been hired by Kodak. It could be embedded in a program like photoshop to not only select the best images, but alsio advise on the changes that could be done to make the image more perfect.

We are still a very long way to see this applied in our daily lives as it is still very much in its infancy, but make no mistake about it, it’s coming our way. You can see and play with Acquine here. And you can learn more about it here.

Posted in Search, technology, commercial stock, keyword, google, Royalty free, flickr, Microstock | Print | No Comments »