August 12, 2008 by pmelcher.

- Misconception No1: Photojournalism is not being killed by celebrity photographers. In fact, photographers that cover the celebrity scene, weather red carpet or street photographer have the same ratio of good to bad photographers than in news. It takes some of the same skills to cover news and celebrity. Regardless. Time or Newsweek have not increased their celebrity photography coverage. They just have just lessened their news coverage.

- Misconception No2 : Editorial photography is dying. What is dying are the daily and weekly print publications. Newspapers, magazines, and old brands. They cannot compete with the speed of  news anymore. What is dying is the image that is formatted for a print support with a rectangular format. What is dying is the photography taught in school and colleges today. There is a new medium for editorial photography that has never existed before, that knows no boundaries will it be in size, amount, artifact and pricing ( the Internet). What really is dying here is an old mentality.

- Misconception No3:  Video will replace stills. Take a look at the amount of video images coming out of the Olympics. Hours and hours of footage. Now, tell me who will sit down and edit film pumped out at 25 frames per seconds to find the right image ?While you think, look at this great gallery done by Stern magazine and see what can photographers can do.

- Misconception No4: Anybody can shoot great images these days. Why would anyone say that when pro photographers have always used the same equipment as amateurs. This is not like dentistry or chemistry where the tools are hard to find, let alone the knowledge. Photography has always been easy to learn and the equipment always available to anyone. The only part that has changed is how easier it is these days to share. But really good images created by amateurs have always been around. Not as accessible, that is all. Its not the equipment that matters in great photography, it is the person holding it

- Misconception No5 : If you produce a lot of images, you can make a living with your photography. A rule of thumb more in the stock photography world than in the editorial one. It was true for a while when it was expensive to distribute images to clients. Today, it is a dangerous thought. Quantity will slowly be replaced by quality as the market will no longer be able to support myriads of photographers hoping to make a living. Image buyers will no longer be capable of keeping up with offer and start closing doors.

- Misconception No6: A photo editor knows a lot about photography. A photo editor only knows a lot about the photography used in their publication. He or she works, breath and sleeps in a very confined universe. Their ability to make one publication look great almost never  translate in making any and all publications look great.  That is why very successful photo editors never leave the publication they work for. They grow into them.

- Misconception No7 : Blogs about photography are useful. Besides posting press release they never read or repeating something they read elsewhere, they actually do not help much. Only a very few escape the ego narcissistic trip of the popularity contest and give out extremely valuable insight. They are extremely rare. The rest are operated by hit counters.

- Misconception No8: Every Magnum / VII photographer is a great photo editor. Why do thousand of photographers flock to have their portfolio edited by another photographer? It would vaguely make sense if one would want to be that photographer or replace him/her. And even so, photographers are the worst editors of their own work. But what makes a successful photographer a better editor than a non photographer ? If anything, if they see a great portfolio, wouldn’t they  try to dissuade that person from stealing their job?

- Misconception No9 : There is still room for a news agency. With AP, AFP, Reuters, Getty, EPA, DPA and other wire services employing some of the best photographers in the world while controlling most of the sales channel, it does seem obvious. There is no more oxygen. The best one can hope to do is represent a small pool of extremely talented photographers and help them get assignments, but even that is not a given. If they are extremely talented, they really do need much help. So what makes all these agencies try to cover events like the Olympics with 1/10 of the resources the others have with medium to mediocre photographers( crumb photographers)? Hope ?

- Misconception No10: Free photography will save the world. or a new pricing.or a association of good willing people. There is only one thing that will save photography, if it actually needs saving. It’s photography. great photography

Posted in magazine, celebrity, Magnum, Newsweek, commercial stock, newspaper, TIME, news, editorial, wire service, photojournalism, getty | Print | 4 Comments »

August 4, 2008 by pmelcher.

let them eat cake, she had said. As the eyes of the world are turning toward China and the upcoming Olympics, this is a good time to reflect on how photography is evolving. Not as a medium, but as a media.

Getty images licenses a series of exclusive images to People and Hello! for a reported $14 million. No one questions this. furthermore, no one seems to believe that the number is just plainly insane. On one side of the spectrum, images sell at a buck a piece and on the other, at double digit millions of dollars.  Doesn’t make much sense. And I will tell you why : Image pricing was a combination factor of quality/difficulty/usability. The more an image was going to be used, or seen, the more it would cost. The better, or rather, the more relevant the images were, the more its price would go up. Finally, the more an image was hard to get, the more the price would go up. If you look at the RF microstock model, none of the above is true anymore. Does the Jolie twins bring so much value that they will reep sales above $7 million ( assuming People paid half the bill ?) . lets see : Angelina first baby picture sold for $4million. People sold 2.2 million copies at a cover price of 3.95. That is roughly  $ 8.8 million if you complitely ignore the subscribers. If they raised their advertising space rate, they should have broken even. At $7 million, it becomes more of a problem. After all , it is not because she had twins that there will be double the readership, is it ?

Actually, these images have become a story by themselves. They were priced way before Angelina even had the babies. And by whom ? The media. Rumors, speculation, interviews, opinions were running  like a mountain stream in Spring, finally settling around anywhere from $11 million to $14 million.

Interesting thus, that Getty sold these images for the same price as people assume someone would sell these images. Did the  megastar couple take the hint from the crowdsourcing pricing or is it just hype ? After all, the crowd will be more eager to see images that are worth $14 million dollars than a few bucks. Thus both Getty, People and Hello ! profit from screaming that those images were sold for $14 million. It benefits everyone, even the couple who gets to give even more money to charity.

Furthermore, does anyone who has been in this industry for a while really think that competing magazine USweekly or IN TOUCH  stop bidding at 13,999,999 .00 and said we give up ? Or that if the National enquirer had bid $15 million, it would have been in their latest issue ? Publicists and stars want to be in People magazine, not in tabloids.

Who cares if it is not true, really. What matters here is that these images  got a celebrity status, even before they were even taken.

The second incident is the revelation by Newsweek DP that the Olympics will be mostly a .com event. Ex-photography director, Mary Ann Golon had told me that TIME will be doing the same a few months back . Seems that this Olympic season will be online with additional reporting in print. The slow decay of the paper support is becoming more apparent as it cannot compete with the feeding frenzy. Photography becomes free at last of the written word and regains a position of strength. It can live, breath and exist by itself  on an online slideshow that doesn’t need much explanation. This will only continue to erode the news weeklies here and worldwide. It will also put much more pressure on the photographers to fully report with images and not just be an accompaniment to the text. Its good news.

Posted in license, TIME, celebrity, magazine, Newsweek, photojournalism, slideshow, Royalty free, getty, editorial, transaction, Microstock | Print | 4 Comments »

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 »

July 27, 2008 by pmelcher.

Who said that editorial photography doesn’t pay ? Dave Hogan, or “Hogie” for those who know him well, is hosting the British prime minister in his 1.2 million pounds house for the summer.

I have had the pleasure of working with Hogie for many years while at ImageDirect and can reassure everyone that he deserves every penny that he has ever made. His talent is only matched by his friendliness and  his ease to work with.

read the full article here

Posted in celebrity, magazine, photojournalism, finance, transaction, editorial | Print | 1 Comment »

July 19, 2008 by pmelcher.

It is not the usage but the image. A flew of photo agencies, including recently Alamy, have come out with special pricing plans for blogs ( non commercial ones).  It appears to be specially arranged  to compete against  microstock, as the prices are very, very low.

Which begs the question and realization that more and more, these days, images are sold based on usage and never on content.  Since the value of an image can vary immensely from one person to another, corporations, like Corbis or Getty have just decided to ignore it in their budgets. It is a known fact that corporations hate variables. So they take a whole sloosh of images and apply the same pricing. All of these over there are RF, these are Rights Ready, and those are too old. Furthermore, they believe that an image only has a value when it is used and that value is only quantified by the way it used.

As much as simplicity is appealing, as much as it doesn’t reflect the real value of an image. As we all know, some are really easy to get ( the Eiffel tower, for example) and some are really hard ( Angelina Jolie posing with her newborn twins) . One would never apply the same pricing rules to those 2 images, if one was a little versed in photography sales. But it doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. In between these two images, exist a whole range of pictures that are either more or less easy to take and also, have added value created by the photographers themselves ( the Eiffel tower taken by a National geographic photographer).

Example:

let say I take a nice image of the Eiffel Tower.  Nothing special. I license this image to a blog. I get 5 cents. Same image, I license it to Microsoft worlwide 10 years unlimited rights desktop usage. $60,000.  Hmmm… what is the value of my image? 5 cents or $60,000?

But more important, is it really the usage of my image that defines its value ? Shouldn’t be the image itself ? More like a painting ? You will buy a Picasso for millions of dollars regardless you put in a closet or decide to attach it on the walls of the British Museum.

Aaaaah, but photography is not art, you will say. You cannot compare. Well, my friend, why would an Angelina  Jolie and Twins go for a cool $11 million ?

Well, it is not the photographer that matters here, it is the subject, you will argue.

Absolutly !!! my point exactly. Photography is even more wicked that its value is not even obvious by who took the image, but what is on it. Sure you have the Masters who commend a certain price. But the bulk load of images are taken by complete unknowns that will remain so. But some of their image will command huge prices.

Because of how they are used? Or because of their content?

At this point you have to agree with me.

While editorial agencies are very aware of the statue and value of their image, stock couldn’t care less. Here, you can have all these images for a penny an image, because after all, no one comes and visits your site. Well, that is terribly wrong and reinforce the idea to clients that photography is a commodity. If someone doesn’t have the budget to pay for a great image, too bad, blog or no blog.

There is value in some images and client should pay for that value.

On another completely unrelated note:  Rumors are spreading that Getty and other wire service are asking their news  photographers to shoot  events with commercial stock resale in mind. Meaning that those  photojournalists no longer shoot what they see but try to , for example, to purposelessly blur peoples faces in order not to need a model release later. To maximize the lifetime potential for an image. As much as it make sense for the agency, as much as it is digging a little bit more in the wound of photojournalism, making it less and less credible every day.

We will probably see more and more denature photographs of world events as photographers will try to cover them on a more “stocky” way .

Posted in photojournalism, license, celebrity, commercial stock, transaction, editorial, Royalty free, getty, corbis, news, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

July 16, 2008 by pmelcher.

“NEW YORK, Jul 15, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — AOL announced the launch of PIXCETERA, http://www.pixcetera.com, a new site focused exclusively on top-quality photography. The site features thousands of professional images and galleries from across the AOL Network for users to browse, rate and review. In addition, AOL’s photo editors blog on trends in photography, as well as ways that readers can take better pictures.”

Double kudos to AOL for doing this !! It is the most exciting photo related website launch in years.Too bad its only wire service images. When will they learn to look elsewhere ?

Discover for yourself :

Posted in magazine, technology, web 2.0, photojournalism, slideshow, wire service, editorial | Print | No Comments »

July 15, 2008 by pmelcher.

Outside of the beaten path of wire services endlessly pouring at the same endless flow of images, there are islands of beauty. One of those, untouched by endless years of relentless competition, is photo agency Aurora. True to their initial vision, Aurora keeps on showing the world that true and great photojournalism can co-exist with a selfish capitalistic world. The images are beautiful, the topics not always made for easy viewing and the passion and dedication of the photographers almost medieval.

For those who were not at Look3 in Charlottesville last June 2008 as well as for anyone who believes and think that photojournalism is dead or dying, here is a little clip Aurora did on 9 of their photographers :

Posted in magazine, lens, Aurora, multimedia, photojournalism, slideshow, wire service, editorial | Print | No Comments »

July 3, 2008 by pmelcher.

You should interrupt everything you are doing right now and head immediately to aurora@15.com. Jose Azel and his team invite you to a year long birthday celebration !!. Based on the Surrealist’s “Cadavres Exquis” ( exquisite corpse) game, the rules are quite simple : one random photographer shoots an image and post it on the site. Once posted, a randomly selected photographer has 48 hours to post another image related in some ways to the previous one. And so on.

Called Action/Reaction, it will go until the end of the year.

It could have used a comment box or some other way for viewers to interact but it is still an exciting exercise. Go on now, go check it out :