August 8, 2008 by pmelcher.

 There are more and more photo business news websites yet:

- London Features International, a photo agency that has been in business for more than 20 years, crashes and burns and hardly no one even mentions it or comments on it.

- ASMP gets $1,3 million dollars LAST YEAR and only reveals it now (and only because PDN was spilling the beans). They are “not sure” what they will do with it yet. Guess they need more time to think. Is it just me or someone is fooling someone ?

- If I had half of a brain and was somewhat concerned about the Orphan Work legislation, I would look into this Copyright Clearance Center who apparently does collect money for usage. There just might be an interesting answer there, no ?

- Jupiter Images finally reveals its revenues for the last quarter and it is worse than anyone could have ever imagined. They are in negative growth with a stock price close to being under the limit.  The corporations are hurting badly, what does it say about  the rest of the industry ?

-  Microsoft Pro Summit invited spoiled little kid Thomas Hawk ( not his real name) to its Pro Summit. Anyone care to react ? The guy is a neon light loving Flickr happy rich kid with nothing else to do than blog hours on about his iphone and media center and he is considered a pro by Microsoft ? Anyone feel insulted here ? ASMP guys ?

- Its August 8 and the Digital journalist website is still in July ? Does anyone worry or care  anymore ?  ( Ok, they are always late)

- Brian Storm and his team are also moving to Brooklyn . Who in the photography world can still afford Manhattan ? Besides Corbis, obviously. Does anyone know ?

These are all important questions and no one seems to take them seriously. Someone needs to be in charge here. any suggestions ?

Posted in Jupiter, celebrity, magazine, mediastorm, web 2.0, editorial, flickr, corbis | Print | 1 Comment »

July 29, 2008 by pmelcher.

Genius juxtaposition of images, endearing story, human, lively, photographically compelling, wonderful storytelling, the Mediastorm team does it again .

See it now before someone tells you about it:

The only negative is the music that always seem to be the same on all multimedia these days: a  lonely piano with an echo followed by a lonely string acoustic guitar. But who cares ?  When you look at it, it seems that all the pieces were made to fit prior to assembly. It looks so easy to do. And it is not. Makes you wonder how further photography can go beyond the traditional magazine layout. This is also what photo editor should learn to do if they want to keep their job relevant.

Posted in mediastorm, magazine, technology, multimedia, newspaper, editorial, photojournalism, news | Print | No Comments »

June 19, 2008 by pmelcher.

When Brian Storm speaks, the world of photojournalism learns. The Poynter Institute, a journalistic school, has a 26 minute long interview with the founder of Mediastorm. The interview, being held in front of a boring backdrop by a girl who obviously needs some more courses in broadcast interviews could have used some visual pointers to go along Storm’s amazing insight.

Posted in multimedia, mediastorm, magazine, technology, newspaper, photojournalism, news, editorial, msnbc.com, corbis | Print | No Comments »

June 17, 2008 by pmelcher.

- A useful blog. With some delay but with quite a bang, Photoshelter finally launches a very useful blog for its users and beyond. Full of tips, info, rules and dynamism, it could very well become a very helpful resources for stock photographers who take photography seriously. Does that mean they plan to close the other useless egg hugging blog who rips off hundreds of valuable images for free under the cover of ‘fair use” ? Go ahead, shoot that blog

more on School of Stock here:

- Multimedia continues to rule : Ed Kashi  has launched a wonderful website entirely dedicated to his work on Nigeria delta. Curse of the black gold, offers, among other option, a great multimedia who has all the attributes of a Mediastorm production. A must see, keeping in mind that Kashi was briefly captured and jailed to bring this issue to the world.

Multimedia here:

Update : June 19, 2008 : this article on MSNBC :

Nigerian oil field shut after U.S. worker seized

- Geolocation without GPS: Geolocation is the ability to pinpoint the location, on a map, of where an image was taken. Carnegie Mellon University took millions of  already geographically tagged  images from Flickr as a tool to identify the location of an image, any image. Works a bit like this. You upload an image which compared to millions of Flickr set. By recognizing attributes, it can almost accurately find out, by itself, where the image was taken. Using the same principle, one can easily see how automated keywording could benefit from this crowdsourcing approach. More details here

- Getty’s latest set of numbers: Funny how no one noticed how the Wireimage brand took a huge beating after being purchased by Getty. According to Getty’s published number, Wireimage went from  + $ 3 million a quarter, to a few hundred thousands the next full quarters. What happen ? Did the Wireimage staff just stopped working ? Furthermore, PumpAudio seemed to have also fallen to zero revenue for two quarters after acquisition.

Posted in mediastorm, celebrity, technology, commercial stock, multimedia, Search, slideshow, flickr, web 2.0, keyword, getty | 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 »

February 21, 2008 by pmelcher.

For those who always to know more about Mediastorm and couldn’t quite say it, blog rocketboom.com offers a small two part video you could watch here.

or part one here:

and part 2 here :
If that format doesn’t work for you, you can view more option here

Posted in mediastorm, multimedia, photojournalism, editorial, news | Print | No Comments »

February 8, 2008 by pmelcher.

The World Press awards has revealed its winners for 2008. As expected, the picture of Britney Spears having her head shaved off won for the best image of Arts and entertainment. Or wait..it did not. Once again, The World Press has shown its complete disrespect for the world of news in favor of an overly intellectualized vision of the world. A bit as if the judges, once gathered in a room, behind closed doors, had said: “lets kill photojournalism a little bit more this year”

The photojournalism intelligentsia has voted. A closed group of overly self adoring and painfully egocentric intellectuals whose vision of a news photography is closer to the likes of ICP than the masses. They look for the creative touch, the Holga/lensbaby effect, the “je ne sais quoi” that makes a news photograph a work of art. They over think photography to an excess and seem to look for the Picasso rather than the human touch. They do not believe that an news image can be good, if doesn’t carry the touch of a creative artifact.

This years big winner is a blurry image of a tired soldier. Although not taken in a combat situation, and probably because of low light, it is slightly blurry. I don’t care for such poorly taken image. What is so wrong about reality that it has to be altered and given the highest prize in photojournalism ?

Sadly enough, we see the same intelligentsia controlling most of the major prizes worldwide and spitting out the same type of winners. These judges are all friends with each other and spend the rest of the year over analyzing images as if they where reading a Kafka novel. It has to be dark, blurry, slightly incomprehensible and borderline boring.

No wonder photojournalism is dying. Once again, the sports images of this year seem to be the real winners. Amazing images of incredible situation. The rest is dark, so dark. Not just dark subjects, but simply slightly underexposed or taken with low light. The less you see, the more you can imagine. The image is good for what is not there, so you can fill in the blanks yourself. Even the Nature category is full of blood and sadness because a happy image, according to these judges, cannot be a good image.

Lets no forget that politics, for example, has no place in the World Press. We marvel at the John F Kennedy images in the Oval office yet there is not one image of world leaders in action. Between the French election last year, the changing of guards in England and the US election, you cannot tell me there was no great images.

It is a little bit as if, outside of Africa ( Kenya, mostly), Afghanistan and Iraq, the rest of the world stood still. Or, maybe it was not favorable for a nice moody b&w panoramic Holga image. You can almost hear the judges discuss the lightness of being, quoting “The human condition”, while sipping their warm cappuccinos.” This image is so Nietzscheen, isn’t it?”

Certainly not a good year for the World Press. Even more, because, once again, they refused to acknowledge multimedia, one of the most powerful tool of today’s photojournalism. Or, in a socially driven internet, they do not have a people’s choice, where image consumers could vote.

No, they prefer to remain in photojournalism Medieval ages, taking comfort in congratulating themselves for picking the least interesting images possible as to prove there is more to photojournalism than the reporting of the news. If anything, this, and other awards of it kind, are killing photojournalism. They create the false impression that this is the standard to achieve.

If you have time to waste and have really nothing else to do, here are the winners :

World Press

PS: At least I was right about John Moore’s images who, by the way, truly deserved this prize.

Posted in mediastorm, multimedia, celebrity, magazine, lens, HOLGA, TIME, slideshow, editorial, lensbabies, photojournalism, web 2.0, news | 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 »

December 18, 2007 by pmelcher.

From Canada, again. Seems like every thing good or innovative in photography these days is coming from Canada (istockphoto, Veer, Idee, Zymmetrical, ….) . The TV channel and website CBC ( Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ) has posted an interview of uber-humanitarian and extremely talented photographer Marcus Bleadsale.

You can, and you should ( it’s an order ),  view it here:

Marcus, for those who might not know, is the new member of the VII photo agency and recipient of many, many awards. However, as much as he appreciates the attention of his peers,  he would much rather people do something about the situation he photographs. In a way, he would love being out of a job.

I had written an entry about Marcus a while back.

Via Mediastorm’s blog ( another site you have to visit)

Posted in idee, magazine, Canada, mediastorm, multimedia, editorial, photojournalism, news | Print | No Comments »

December 12, 2007 by pmelcher.

Do no evil, they said. Google is one of the worst tool for photography ever to appear on the internet.

Think about it. It makes a mockery of IPTC standards by completely ignoring it . Instead of searching within the carefully inputed metatags of images, Google images only displays image results based on the text and links surrounding an image. It ignores images that have been correctly keyworded, allowing for a better introduction of an effective Orphan legislation. These thumbnails you see, generated by Google, not only rip all metadata but also destroys the original file name of the photograph, creating an orphan duplicate. Instead of being a catalyst for even better informed images, it does quite the opposite by showing that it is more than ok to ignore relevant information.

With this process, it has pushed to the surface some of the worst images I have personally seen. Since there is no quality control, we suddenly see photography at its worst, with the top images challenging each other for the most horrible composition to the most appealing quality. It is as if someone had pushed the dirt out of the bottom of a lake to make it reach the surface.

It has helped the concept of stealing. With no enforcement of copyright information, and being an unofficial infringer itself, Google perpetuates the idea that images are for free and can be used with no regards to copyrights. It literally grabs images from other sites, properly licensed or not and displays as is, with no regards to where and how to contact its owner.

It doesn’t even search the thousand of professional image database worldwide from photo agencies or photographers, completely ignoring the best of the best. Search for Corbis, Getty Images or any photo agency and you see for yourself. For an untrained individual, it seems that this is it, the whole offering of image on a particular subject.

It is not an agent of discovery but an agent of banality. Since it ranks images the same way it ranks website, by looking at how many time an image has been linked too, thus seen, it bubbles the images most used, not the best. For someone looking to find some creative novelty, there is no inspiration. Quality, in Google engine eyes, is a factor of longevity and popularity. Quite the opposite of what a good photo editor should look for.

Finally, a photograph, for Google, is the same as graphics, logo or anything saved as a jpeg. A 5 year old drawing could easily compete with great photography. Or some banner. Terrifying.

The scariest part is that most photo editors will admit they use Google image to find images. It pushes photo professional to twist and bend their websites to be Google friendly while not being so much people friendly. It makes our industry’s effort to have intelligent search engines producing the strongest relevancy almost meaningless. And it spits in the face of creative photographers by putting their work next to unqualified snappers.

Although there is no law against misrepresenting an art or profession, Google should however be summoned to question its usefulness and purpose. Who and what really benefits from the Google Image search. Because it is certainly not the photo industry.

A big unrelated PS : Brian Storm and Jessica Dimmock have created one of the strongest multimedia yet. When two great talent collide. Not easy to watch but impossible to ever forget . see it here

Posted in mediastorm, multimedia, Search, keyword, google | Print | No Comments »