January 25, 2012 by pmelcher.

Just like the music industry, with which it shares many similarities, the photo licensing world is ripe to be iTuned.

The industry landscape is dispersed and confused. None of the photo licensing companies know what to do. From the Getty images to the small mom and pops that have been around for 5,000 years ( it seems) , everyone is playing the wait and see game. Some try various solutions in the hopes it will lead to a new golden age but none innovate.

Furthermore, even with the Getty/ Corbis consolidations, it is still a very disparate world with deep resentments and personal conflicts. From one company to the other, there is suspicion, continuous poaching, and overall despise.

• Illegal copying is rampant. Copyright images are being stolen at a rate never experienced before. As much as 85% of images used on the internet are done so without permission. While bigger companies have seen this as an opportunity for new revenue by throwing crowds of lawyers on the issue, most are just bleeding files like the worst days of Napster. It is not going away. Even as the marketplace gets more educated, there is little or no incentives, or risks, not to continue. While some technology have tried to alleviate the issue, it is getting worse, not better.

• People are lazy. They like simple because it is easy, not because it is simple. They want to be able to find images quickly and use them immediately. While Royalty Free and more recently microstock have greatly facilitated the image purchasing process, their content is too generic to satisfy the increasing demanding need for personalization.

• RM is too complicated. And obsolete. With its complicated rules, it is a deterrent. For users to find the price of an image based on at least 6 different variables ( territory, circulation, placement, length, language and type of publication) is a nightmarish headache. Furthermore, it doesn’t make sense to an uneducated market. It makes those who can afford more, pay more. For the same image, a successful publication will pay more than the poor, just because they have been successful in bringing in traffic. Not specially fair. Furthermore, a fee based on final usage doesn’t make sense: It is a bit as if at the check out of a supermarket, they would ask you what you plan to do with those raw potatoes before charging you accordingly. Finally, It is also out of tune with the current market conditions that demand the possibility of using the same image for the same purpose on different support.

• Exclusivity is dead. Well, almost. Withe the huge amount of images available, the risk of using the same image as your competitor is nullified. Still, if absolute exclusivity is a requirement, assignment photography is now cheap enough, especially with all the unemployed photographers on the market. Furthermore, unless if you are a huge brand, in which case you will not use stock photography, having the same exact image does not seem to matter much.

• The market is expending. While some companies have done a great job at controlling the traditional sales channel, they cannot control the incessant increase of new customers, especially online. New blogs, brands, businesses appear everyday with photography needs and with no idea where to purchase images.

• Trained Photo editors are disappearing. While purchasing photography was the responsibility of a few very well educated professionals, it is no longer the case. As the old timers are being laid off, they are being replaced by younger, uneducated people who purchase images among many other duties. They don’t know, nor do they care and are asked to purchase based on price.

• Photography is begging to be free. Just like news on the internet is begging to be free. Taking photograph has become such an easy process that no one believes they should pay to use one. With billions of easily available images online, it has all the aspect of an endless commodity. Barriers between professionals and amateurs have been blown away and even high end commercial sites like CNN.com are more and more relying on free crowd sourced images. If CNN doesn’t pay for images, why should anyone else ?

In other words, professionally licensed photography is breaking from all direction. A bit like the music industry was before a tech company ( Apple) took over the distribution.

Since photography and the internet is a marriage made in heaven, there no shortage of very smart, tech savvy entrepreneur ready to spend the funds of a smart VC . The challenge ?

Replace the antiquated, print based licensing model by an effective, flexible process. A platform a la iTune.

Not that replicating iTune for photography would work. Countless of RF or Microstock aggregators have come and gone leaving no trace of success behind them.

The iTune for photography will come from somewhere else, from a tech company that will approach the photo licensing industry from a consumer end. Not from what licensors want but from what consumers need. They will make it simple, easy and cost effective to purchase images and use them, wether it comes from Getty Images or your cousin Fred. The solution, using technology wisely, will be so obvious that it will sweep the photo industry of it’s already febrile grounds and make impossible to live outside of it.

Posted in license, Search, Cnn, technology, commercial stock, web 2.0, finance, getty, Royalty free, corbis, news, editorial, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

October 25, 2011 by pmelcher.

Picture yourself, if you will, at a baseball game ( or soccer, or basketball). Imagine that each player, from each team has a HD video camera following his every move throughout the entire game. A few seconds after the game is finished, 5 of the best frames from all the video feeds are send to to publications worldwide.

Just like that.

How is this possible you say ? It is not. At least not yet. But it is coming soon.

Researcher at the University of Washington are currently working on what could be called “machine based photo editing”

Using videos of people speaking at a camera, they can teach a computer to extract the best frames that would make perfect portraits.

How do they do it ? Simple. They first use real people to select the best faces in a feed. They then teach the computer the elements that make a good portrait, like a visible smile, an expression, open eyes, etc and that’s it. They compare the machine edit with the real people edit and see if they have a perfect match. when they do, they know that they no longer need humans.

This wouldn’t have to be limited to sports photography. The same could be done for movie premieres, press conferences, political rallies and so on. In the amateur field, this would be perfect to cover parties, weddings or any family/friends events. Imagine, you are filming and you camera could automatically pick the best images and post them to Facebook.

Harder would be coverages of wars or any brutally unexpected events.

The push for machine based editing is already happening. Microstock companies, for example, would be delighted to get rid of the thousands of free lance photo editors that comb through their millions of submissions and give it to a 24/7/365 machine that would never ask for a raise.

Most photo agencies would certainly also be  delighted. Since the advent of digital and with the continuous drop in prices of cards, they have seen the volume of images submitted to them increase dramatically. Being able to instruct a computer on how to pick the best frames would cut costs dramatically.

The possibility of quickly and reliably edit from a video feed will soon open up the doors to impeccable photo coverage without the need of ever using a photographer. When ? in the next 5 year. And you thought that declining space rate prices was a challenge.

Posted in technology, commercial stock, celebrity, wire service, editorial, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

September 25, 2011 by pmelcher.

The real story behind the evolution of photography is its pauperization.

In its early days, photography was for the wealthy and educated. The equipment needed was expensive and the skills involved needed formal education. Furthermore, the financial risks involved in being a photographer - variable income- meant you had to have some other resources.

Even if they weren’t rich themselves, they were rich kids. And for a long time, it remained unchanged. Until rather recently when colliding advancement in technology - all pretty much unrelated to photography- open the door to lesser financially fortunate people from around the world.

- The internet, at first, made all the connections possible. It took a while to grow, mostly due to the cost of computers and connections but now, almost anywhere in the world, it’s dirt cheap.

- The dropping cost of memory, making it much cheaper to shoot digital then film.

- The cheap accessibility to market. What photo sharing companies like Flickr did, unintentionally, is connect buyers with new sellers.

-The incredibly low learning curve. No need to know anything about photography to be able to take amazing images these days: Instagram will do it for you.

Finally, automated translation has practically eliminated language barriers all over the world.

The result ? First in developed countries and then very quickly in less developed countries, more and more individuals took to their cameras as a new or additional source of income. Most pushed by a desperate need to generate income rather than an urge to express any artistic impulse. Because of their already low level of income, any revenue is good revenue. Clearly visible in microstock ( the extreme majority of participants are from emerging countries with low per capita) it is now spreading to non commercial stock areas of photography like news. They will happily accept any payment regardless if it is a fair price or not. Some publishers and photo agencies have realized the saving potential and have blissfully tap into this cheaper market.

Obviously, photographers living in developed countries, like the Western Hemisphere, have to face much high cost of living and cannot compete. Thus, they have to retreat in areas not available to rest of the world. For example, a US sport photographer can still command higher fees since his coverage cannot be done from another country. However, he is slowly being pressured downward by his local peers who have been pushed out of their market by cheaper competition.

The barriers of entry have fallen at such level that almost anyone can now pretend to be a photographer. With rising unemployment worldwide, more are stepping in the hope to generate some income, pushing aside established professional. Since in a depressed economy like ours the key differentiator is money, it’s the cheapest that wins the day.

In order for the situation to change, a few things would need to happen. First, obviously, the worldwide economy has to pick up, eliminating those who are necessity photographers by integrating them into other full time jobs. A more advanced type of photography should emerge, necessitating advanced skills to perform. Finally, a disassociation of the means of communication, wether technological or cultural. None seem likely to happen soon.

Posted in license, web 2.0, technology, commercial stock, Good Enough, Social Media, prosumer, flickr, news, Royalty free, editorial, transaction, photojournalism, finance, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

September 12, 2011 by pmelcher.

Taking a cue from the succesful microstock model here is where photojournalism is heading.  It is happening under our eyes, right now and in four steps.

The decline of traditional photojournalism.
Nothing really new here. Rising cost of living (travel, lodging, food) has made it almost impossible for current print and web publishers to send top talents on stories anymore. The profit margins are not there anymore. Although there is a bucket full of very talented photojournalist available, there is just no funds to make them do what they do best. Furthermore, with the deaths of traditional photo agencies who used to pay for half of the costs, there is just not enough financial support to keep it going. It’s not photojournalism that is dying, it’s the funding that is going dry.  Furthermore, photo editors that championed the great stories have long gone, either retired or pushed out due to corporate restructuring or cost saving measures.

The rise in volume of the me-too photojournalism.

Here again, nothing we haven’t heard or seen before. Automated cameras that can nail an image in the even poorest conditions has helped introduced a new wave of photographers that can, and will snap at anything and everything and force distribute it via every channel possible. Force distribute because we really do not want to see it but thanks to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other social media, we get to see them anyway. The poor state of our economy has not help, obviously, making this forced free lance job even more appealing to many. It also has become easier to get published, at least once, giving everyone the false impression that this is easy. Anybody can become a photojournalist these days : you just need to be where the media attention is focused upon.

The death of the photo agency.
Photo agencies used to be the gateway to the media. With trained professionals, they filtered out the bad from the good and edited the work of the talented to make it even more compelling. They would also seek out news stories and send the best photographers to cover them, not only creating the news, but partly covering  for the costs. It was a gamble, where talented journalists would scout newspapers worlwide for that snippet of information that could be turned into the major news of the week thanks to the talent of a brilliant photographer. Those editors are gone now. Gambling on stories is just not an acceptable business model in our corporate world. Photo agencies are not agencies anymore, they are image distributors.

Speed vs quality.
Thanks to digital, the key decision element for an image to be published is how fast they get to a desktop. Thus a bad photographer can very well become successful if he is the fastest.  More and more, this is what we, viewers, are being served with : the first images rather than the best. Thus the key to becoming a published photojournalist is where you are and not who you are.

Where does it lead us to:

Where everyone can be a shooter, with no money to be spend on travel, no editors acting as gatekeepers and speed as the key factor, the decision us easy;

Forget the photo agency as an agent of talented photojournalists. The key now is to have a lot of contributors worldwide and hope that one will be at the right place at the right time. With photographers everywhere chances you will get the right image at the right time will increase, like buying a lot of lottery tickets.
In the film age, the cost of film, processing, shipment was too prohibitive. Now, you can receive and store million of images for a buck or two.
This well know photo agency recently proudly claimed representing 40 photographers in Gaza only. For a territory 140 square mile ( 360 Km2), that is one photographer per 3.5 square mile.

Thus, taking a queue from the microstock model, photojournalism is now switching to the volume based model. While profitable for a photo agency, it is devastating for photojournalism and photographers themselves.

Posted in technology, magazine, Tweet, Social Media, Corpocrates, Good Enough, newspaper, TIME, editorial, getty, transaction, finance, photojournalism, wire service, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

August 2, 2011 by pmelcher.

Can the memory of a photograph be better then the image itself ? Do we tend to embellish what we have seen and liked ? Most probably so. The memory of a photograph contains , on top of the graphic visualization of the image, the sum of all the emotions and memories linked to it : The personal experience. It contains all the subjective association that we have made while looking at it, thus creating a highly personal layer that the original vision did not have. Thus, what we remember of a photograph we love is much better than the original. Are we disappointed when we see it again ? Most often not. Since it had triggered all these satisfying internal connection the first time around, it will do so again and again. Unless, if for some reason, when we had first looked at it, we misinterpreted it. Of rare occurrence, but it can happen when we are in a non typical heighten emotional state when we were first exposed to the photograph. Or our lives has taken us down a different path. A photograph you thought was great during your teenage years my not seem the same when you are a 50 years old . It can still, however, connect you back to comfortable memories. The memory of a photograph is always better than the original because of our personal input.

Thus, in pure logic, the more generic an image the better. It should serve a canvas for personal experience, right ? Well, absolutely not. because a generic image doesn’t trigger any emotions. It just stays blandly generic. in order to communicate to its viewers, a photographers needs to be as personal as possible . He should forget about trying to please everyone, everywhere. And this is where commercial stock photography has failed in the latter years. Obsessed with RPi numbers, they have flooded the market with one size fits all images empty of emotional triggers. When the miccrostockers came into the market, they brought back in the emotions that had left the industry for a while. And besides pricing obviously, they beat their pro elders on content. They just got more response to their images.

Of course, they are now doing the same mistake as the pros and relying on charts, equations and past revenues to dictate their next images. And like their predecessors, they are seeing revenue declining. No one can claim and secure photographic success. It is probably harder to maintain than to attain. However, by succeeding in ignoring the false sirens of success, one can easily navigate closer to the surface. If one continues to deliver a personal experience to its viewer, than 99% of the battle is won. The rest is marketing

Posted in license, commercial stock, Social Media, Corpocrates, Search, prosumer, Royalty free, editorial, transaction, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

February 2, 2011 by pmelcher.

I was going to write a post on how selfish people in this profession had become. How, or so it seems, that there is no such thing as a photo community or a photography brotherhood but rather masses and masses of individuals looking after their own personal lives with stubborn fierceness and dedication.

The biggest irony, was I about to write, is that most, like  news, wedding or nature photographers, are deeply  committed in documenting the world for others. So how could they be so selfish?

Well, mostly by accepting jobs for so little retribution :  Doing 4 of 5 hours of shooting, including editing, captioning and transmission for $250, often leaving on the table their right to any further license fees. Or photo agencies ( can we still call them “agencies” anymore ? Doesn’t an agent represent the best interest of the people it represents ? ) agreeing to monthly subscriptions fee that end up being a few dollars per image.

Isn’t the thought behind these agreements as simple as : “The hell with everyone, I will accept those prices so at least I can get some money” ?

That’s what I was going to write about. And then, I fell on an article where someone was quoting, or so they thought, Ralph Waldo Emerson . I paraphrase here : ” If every man acted in its own best self interest this would be Paradise on earth “. And then I realized.

This industry is not selfish enough. If it was, if everyone was acting in its own self best interest alone, then we would never see this decrepitude of pricing.

Unlike other related industries, like music or movies, the photography world has not been challenged by disruptive technologies. It embraced, for the most part, digital much faster and better than any other industry. It was not pushed around by new distribution platforms or free file sharing of the magnitude of a Napster or  Bit Torrent. Sure, stealing has been made a little easier, but so has finding stealers. Besides commercial stock, it has not been overwhelmed by crowdsourcing and probably never will. Sure, there will always a lucky citizen journalist here and there but none will end up shooting the cover of Vanity Fair magazine.

So what gives ? Why this pricing depression ?

That’s because in the process of accepting a pricing for a job or a license, each thinks not about the value of the image, the intended usage, the budget available and the consequences, but rather, they think of the Other. What  would the Other do? If I do not accept this price, will I loose the job/license to the Other that will accept it? Then shouldn’t I accept it so the Other doesn’t get it ?

The Other being, of course, the competition. As soon as the photo industry started to guessing about what the other would do, it started loosing its grip on pricing. And the sliding downhill continues. Because, like a self fulfilling prophecy, the Other did accept that price because they thought you would…So now you know they will, so you will too.

The wheel is in motion.

The buyers will not complain. They actually will play in your paranoiac game as they will tell you either : “but that’s what we always pay” or “Everyone else has accepted that price” .

This could be stopped quite easily. If everyone started publicly stating whenever they got a good price or when they refused another because it was too low. Making a clear statement : “yes, we will be undersold”. “Because pricing is not what I am/ We are about ”

You can replace less jobs/less license with more high paying ones. Quality can trump quantity. It’s a viable business model too.

But mostly, it could be stopped if everyone ceased to  think about the Other and  started to act in its own best self interest. Nothing else. If everyone priced themselves according to their value instead of what they think the Other ones value is, than this would cease.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson also said :

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Posted in license, technology, commercial stock, photojournalism, finance, news, editorial, transaction, Microstock | Print | 2 Comments »

January 24, 2011 by pmelcher.

It’s started when Royalty Free wanted to find an easier way to price images. Someone, somewhere ( history forget his/her name) suggested that images should be priced according to size. A bit like a bag of potatoes .  The bigger size, the more expensive.

Back in the late 90’s, that made perfect sense. To use a photograph in print, you needed a bigger size than for web usage.  And , since websites were poor experiments, that was fine.

Fast forward to 2011 :  Microstock , the irreverent child of Royalty free, has full embraced it’s elder’s pricing structure. A small file size is cheaper than a big file size.

That would be fine if the market had remained the same; But , it hasn’t.  With more than 14 million units sold in 2010, the Ipad has kicked wide open the door of publishing. At the recent CES ( Consumer Electronic Show), no less than 80 different tablets were announced. In the mean time, print is slowly choking under the combined weight of its rising costs and  growing irrelevancy. Websites are now starting to suck all available resources, including budgets.

In other words, the market for images is going 100 % digital. Which means that publishers, advertisers, designers need much smaller files. For example, an Ipad image needs to be 1028 pixels on the large size, at 130 dpi. No more. That means the markets is going to need more and more of the smaller files. You know, those that cost the less. To the point that the larger files, the XXL’s, might never get sold anymore.

Since Royalty Free ( microstock included) has made the wrong assumption that smaller image files were always going to be a marginal market, they are entering this new market totally under priced. They are practicality giving away the small file sizes in order to attract visitors.

If they were smart, they should reverse their pricing scheme. Make the large files the cheapest. But, for various reasons, that would never work. One of the most obvious reason would be that no one would understand why bigger is cheaper ( or smaller is more expensive). That is just not the way we think.

The second irony  is that cameras are also producing larger and larger files  while the market for images needs smaller and smaller files.

It is just a mistake to beleive that only editorial images are being affected by this shift to digital usage. Advertising will follow where publishers are going , as well as brochures, books and practically  everything else. Even billboards will end up fully digital. It is just a question of time.

The challenge of the next five years will be how to re invent the pricing structure in order to take full adavantage of this new demand, not only in pricing but delivery methods.

Posted in technology, commercial stock, E Reader, magazine, license, Royalty free, editorial, finance, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

January 13, 2011 by pmelcher.

Strangely enough, the future of photography is in curation. With the onslaught of images invading the web in an ever growing pace, the task of finding the right image is becoming more and more arduous.

Strangely, because it is mostly in the editing department that companies are making cuts (pun intended) . The recent trend has been to let go of talented photo editors and curators, in favor of poorly designed algorithms , crowd-controlled selections or freshly out-of-internship semi-volunteers.

One would think that for website boasting millions of images, the ability to get to the right one would be a priority. But, because of the sheer volume, it has become  almost impossible to  have it done by human. While sites like Flick ( billions of images) rely on a sophisticated secret sauce of “rules” that allow certain images to bubble up, others, like microstock companies, rely on penny paid armies of humans spread out across the world. Still, the results is overwhelming.

For now, the burden is on the searchers. They are now the curators forced to push their way past irrelevant images to find the right one. It can be paralyzing .

Thus, the next step is to deliver the right image to the right person without them having  to cut through pages and pages of sub par or irrelevant images.Because the volumes have become inhuman, the solutions offered are also inhuman : Each company are intensively trying to develop their own Google like algorithm  that will  magically extract the correct result. Is it working ? no. will it work, maybe.  None, however, has thought to hire professional photo editors that could create a highly edited collection of perfectly selected images : The best of breed.

However, that would solve a lot of problems. Sure, there would be less choice. However, there would be much, much better results. See, the “Long Tail’ theory has polluted the photo industry in making people think that the more you offer, the more chance you have to be successful. A bit as if your local supermarket decided to carry everything ever made. Sure it could be appealing but could you imagine the size? Even Walmart decides what to carry and what not to carry.

Algorithms can not only be beaten, ( Google is constantly changing theirs) but they tend to create averages. Actually, they look for conformity. Thus promoting more of the same .Crowd sourcing ? well, that is also a source of average conformity. Crowd photo editing site like Fotopedia or Acquine  are a good example of the results you get :  Middle of the road images that everybody likes or that no one hates. Not really the curation that is so badly needed.

In order to different itself from the masses of camera crazy photo enthusiast, the photo industry needs to stop trying to compete with Flickr and its offering and start heavily editing its content for perfect results. It needs to reach out to those incredibly knowledgeable photo editors that the publishing industry has dropped and tell them to work their magic.

The future of photography business lies in its ability to continue to be a medium of excellence . For that, it needs to shed its goodenough branches in favor of its prettiest blossoms .

Posted in magazine, license, technology, commercial stock, Good Enough, Social Media, Search, web 2.0, editorial, Royalty free, photojournalism, flickr, prosumer, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

December 31, 2010 by pmelcher.

Feel small ?

From Gerald Holubowicz  Ebook : Sortir du Cadre (Think Wider) – Future of photojournalism.

(* for 2010)

Posted in magazine, license, technology, commercial stock, Social Media, web 2.0, prosumer, getty, corbis, editorial, flickr, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

December 24, 2010 by pmelcher.

So you lost your job at a fancy newspaper and wedding photography is not you thing. Or you spend years behind a photo desk editing others’ pictures and you want in on the action. War is too far and too dangerous. Studio is expensive and tedious. Microstock is just that : micro. what’s left ? Well you heard over and over that the big dough is in celebrity so why not try that. Well, here is a little “how to become a paparazzi” DIY kit.

First, head on to California, where most of the celebrities live, at least the most notorious ones. Once you are settle, book a tour with ” Rolling With the Paparazzi”

as the website says :

Individuals have the opportunity to run with, rather than from the paparazzi, and see celebrities they otherwise wouldn’t have access to.  The new Rolling with the Paparazzi Tour takes you all around the city by car, so that as the tips come in, you can get there much faster than by running.

In the Rolling With the Paparazzi Tour, up to three people are teamed up with Rick Mendoza, a real-life paparazzi, for the Hollywood experience of a lifetime.

 “Rolling with the Paparazzi is available as a stand-alone tour for $150 per person for up to two people and $400 for three.The Rolling with the Paparazzi Tour is offered daily, with three-hour segments beginning at 8:00AM all the way until 10:00PM.”

After those 3 hours of basic lessons, you should have  a good idea on what to do. If still unsure, you still go to You tube and hit one of the hundreds of videos of paparazzi chasing celebs.

next, you should get a map of the stars and figure out where most live and hang out. Those maps are sold in the street of hollywood and for those who are map reading impaired, tours are organized that will actually show you where everyone lives . Some websites can be useful too.

Now, you need to know who is where when. Nottaproblema : website like Just spotted.com can help you with that . Using a combination of users tips and website searches, it delivers the recent location of whom you would like to search. You can also, if you like, just follow your target star’s Twitter feed. They sometimes reveal their location real time.

Finally, once you are all set up, you need to figure out how to price your images. Here to help you is a real quote from a top Pap agency :

……………………………………………………………….
100 Non + Exclusive Pics: $500/ month ($5/pic)
100 Non Excl ONLY: $400/ month ($4/pic)
250 Non + Exclusive : $750/ month ($3/pic)
250 Non Excl Only: $500/ month ($2/pic)
Unlimited Non + Exclusive: $2000/ month
Unlimited Non Excl Only: $1500/ month

 …………………………………………………………….

Now, go ahead , make millions !!

Posted in magazine, Tweet, Waste of time, celebrity, license, editorial, No sense, Microstock | Print | No Comments »