March 2, 2010 by pmelcher.

You know there is a problem when a company selling you a service treats you with superiority and disdain. Somewhere in the sale cycle, someone hates the fact that they should be at the client service and not the opposite.

Take software solution companies, for example. They usually work in a vacuum creating  some software solution that they decide is very cool and once finished, look around to see if there is a market for it. There’s usually a market for everything. Once they find the market, they approach the “non software” people in a attempt to sell it. Because they usually fall on non technical people who have no clue on how difficult it has been to design and implement what they are trying to sell, they are quickly branded as “idiots”, “retards”, or “useless”. Nevertheless, the software company still needs to make money to cover the costs of creating and maintaining there operation. So they reluctantly continue  selling their product/services to the “incompetent idiots” that are not understanding the genius behind the applications they are buying.

The software companies stay very very close to their software peers in order to compensate and gather as much praises from them. After all, a praises from a peer is so much better than one from your clients. They couldn’t care less what their customers say about their products and what improvement they would like to see, as they see them as inferior that are only there to pay their bills. Like monkeys trying to explain to you how to operate your car. They come to really disdain this relationship whereby they have to take money from “idiots”. All they want is to be recognized as the new Google, get millions in funding and be admired by other programmers.

There is no love in a application creator/client relationship. We have seen it and we still see it in the photo industry. Since going digital, and especially after the billions spend by Yahoo for Flickr, a little flock of software companies, mostly start ups, have knocked on the doors of this market. And reluctantly did so. From database management to image recognition, they have found and develop some interesting tools for this market. However, they disdain the fact that they have to rely on poorly technology educated photo people to make a living.

What are the signs of such companies ? Well, first and foremost, very poor communications skills. Do not return emails or phone calls or take a very, very long time doing so. Would you answer quickly to someone you despise ? They certainly don’t.

Poor or in existent sales team. Usually handled by an entry level person that has absolutely no power. He/she is obviously at the bottom of the pole at this company, and while usually very nice and understanding, a complete waste of time to communicate with.

No training or well thought out documentation. You either get it, like they do, or you are a complete moron that wouldn’t even understand a step by step instruction, so why bother ?

They want you to come to them. Since their creation is so genius, you should be begging to use it, not the opposite.

Finally, and probably the most important, they turn their creation into a “Solution”. Although they have develop an application that they thought was challenging enough to do, they will come to you as if they have found a cure to your problems. They will take the high road and declare: “we are here to save photography”. They take a superior stand to any seasoned professional and explain with a condescending air of ultimate superiority that they know what is wrong with the Photography business and that their software/app/service is THE solution. All like little messiah, they have a greater purpose than selling their companies services. They are here to save you from yourselves.

Let’s be realist. They are all in it to make money. Lots and lots of money. Nothing more and nothing less. They hide there real intention behind a mask of fake benevolence. Most have this annoying unsaid little scheme that if they can corner the market, they can turn around, raise prices, and get a choking stronghold on this universe. In the mean time they rack millions in investors money with this promise.

While technology is certainly a tool for growth, it is also full of the worst snake oil sellers one can ever meet. Their efforts are not as pure as they say. All of them are trying to make a profit , and as large as possible. So next time they ring at your door, think about their business model. How do they intend to get rich on your back. Sure, everyone deserves to be paid. But, is it worth it for your business ?.How tied up will you find yourself if they succeed in cornering the market ? Who will benefit the most ? You, or them ?

Most importantly, if they then do not respond promptly to your emails ( remember, these guys are on their computers/ smartphones 24/7 ), then you know that they could care less about you. And it’s time to move on.

Posted in technology, idee, picturemaxx, gumgum, commercial stock, copyright, license, finance, photoshop, flickr, web 2.0, transaction | 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 15, 2009 by pmelcher.

We hadn’t heard from the PLUS coalition for a while. This loose organization of visual professional who has been tediously trying to create a standard for licensing has suddenly burst out of its silence with two important announcements:

1) The ASMP has dug into its $1,3 Million  fund it had received last year ( we hadn’t not heard of that for a while too) to retrieve $150,000 as a generous gift to PLUS. This adds up to the $85,000 ASMP had already given to the coalition. This probably makes the ASMP the biggest provider of funds to PLUS by far (usually, organizations donate around $25,000). The question is why is the ASMP so interested in PLUS as opposed to fighting Google and its book scanning initiative ? PLUS has made no headway in the last few years and although everyone agrees it could become a useful tool, it has yet to be adopted and put in practice anywhere. It is also quite evident, although never clearly announced, that the PLUS business model is to create a licensing registry that would charge for its usage.  For pennies, indeed, but with billions of licenses happening online worldwide, it can quickly becomes a huge cash cow. Maybe ASMP sees this as a long term investment.

Also, with such a heavy donor, will PLUS feel the pressure to satisfy their needs (those of ASMP)  rather than those of publishers. After all, like in politics, those who have put more in usually see the benefits first.

2) PLUS has chosen Picscout as the exclusive provider of image recognition services to the PLUS Registry . That resembles the deal that PLUS had made with ImageSpan a while back. How does a coalition that is supposed to create a standard make exclusive arrangements with private companies ? It is a bit like the IPTC deciding that the only tool for reading metadata should be made by Adobe ? Image tracking is still in its infancy but yet PLUS has decided that Picscout is not only the best, but the only one? There are companies currently working on similar, if not better solutions that I really doubt PLUS has even approached. What is behind this deal that we are not told about ?

Picscout has recently announced its  Image IRC, which is an image registry who does not to want to say its real name, and has now combine forces with PLUS, another image registry in the making, for more fire power. Both will split the huge potential revenue for access to their overgrowing databases. What will happen soon is that image creators and copyright holders will soon be held captive by these organizations that will become the forced middle man for every licensing transaction.

With investors with mysterious agendas, strange relationships ( Creative Commons), Exclusive agreements ( ImageSpan and now Picscout), it is behaving more like a secret society that keeps its operations in the shade while putting little effort in the wide spread acceptances of its offerings. Not very social.

Posted in license, copyright, Plus, technology, IPTC, google, transaction, finance, photoshop, law | Print | No Comments »

May 29, 2009 by pmelcher.

Here are a few of the most revolting persistent aspect of the photo Industry:

- Blogs that get people fired

- Blogs or magazines written by people that have never ever worked in the Photo Industry yet consider themselves experts on all it’s aspects.

- Photo agencies that do not pay their photographers.

- Photo Agencies that license images under cover of a “Research or Service Fee”.  They simply take images, usually offered for free, and sell them with absolutely no right to do so.

- People that confuse easy to copy with free. It’s not because you can download an image easily that you can use it for free.

- People that use images without asking first.

- Geeks that launch microstock companies every minutes because they can.

- Hackers that spend their days breaking in photo agencies databases and stealing hundreds, if not thousands of images.

- Photographers that think they are photographers because they learned how to properly light a scene.

- Photographers that think they are good because they have been in business for a long time. Persistence is not a measure of quality.

- Photo agencies and photographers that price their images with their feet. The photography business is like driving a car, if you don’t know what you are doing, you are a danger for the rest of us. Please step out.

- Corporations that beleive they can control everything. They can’t.

- Corporations that hire non photo people and bring them in this industry. They wouldn’t survive a minute, and they don’t, if they were not working for these companies.

- Companies that have been loosing money for 20 years and are still in business. Why not use the money for useful purposes instead of feeding useless “corpocrates” ( that is an invented word for : Corporate and Bureaucrats).

- Photographer and Agencies that beleive in Say’s Law : production does not automatically create demand. Quantity is not the motor of success. The Photo agency business is not a freakin Lottery.

- Photo consultants that tell you they have the key to success and tell you to take better pictures and charge you for that. Duh !!

- Big Companies threatening photographers if they work for a competing agency.

- Photo Festivals that are just an excuse for someone to cash in some nice sponsorship money and have their hands kissed like a G~d for a week.

- Those endless photo competitions that are really just an excuse for a company to make money.

- Slides shows online that don’t work or are badly done.

- Websites from Big Publishing companies  that say they have no budget for photos.

- People that say ” Well, everyone else has accepted that price”. I really couldn’t care less how dumb other people can be. And, last thing I want to do is be associated with them.

- Photo Associations that rack up as many members as they can so they can get sponsorship money. Yet, they do absolutely nothing to help their members.

- Organizations that try to create standards and end up creating extremely useless and complicated monsters. They never use what they preach on a daily basis , so why would they care?

- Photo Galleries that exhibit the same photographers or photographs over and over again.

- People that beleive that Google will save them.

- Software that are not even compatible with each other.

- Iphone Apps. Enough already. Not everything needs to end up as an Iphone App. It’s just not that cool anymore.

- Geeks that think they know better.

- Exact Image Search websites that return no result for images, although you have seen the image a  hundred times. And they don’t even crawl photo agencies, which could be useful for people looking to license an image.

and finally, I have to stop somewhere, those photographers that pollute our visual space with their crap.

Posted in license, IPTC, idee, Plus, commercial stock, technology, keyword, google, editorial, corbis, finance, PACA, photoshop, slideshow, getty | Print | No Comments »

April 28, 2009 by pmelcher.

There is something amusing about photography. You can see it mostly in “fine art” ( why is it called “fine”, BTW?.. as opposed to what “brute” art ?). It goes something like this. Take a seat and read on.

If you shoot something ( it can really be anything) either over a long period of time or at different location, or both, then people are marveled. As long as it is the same exact thing.

Let’s use an example. A long time ago,when I was a kid, my dad brought me to a photo exhibit at the Kodak Gallery. You have to remember that in those days, Kodak was like the Mount Olympus ( like the Greeks, not the camera maker) of photography. If they decided to showcase a photographer, then he must have be blessed with a natural talent gift from the Gods themselves. Little did we know.

The pictures were a series of images of a big old red sofa that the photographer had transported at multiple places in the USA. You could see it in the Grand Canyon, in New York, in potato fields..I don’t really remember. Along with the images was a lengthy explanation of how the photographer had traveled all through America iconic places, with his giant red sofa and had taken pictures of it. I am sure there was also an explanation of the deeper sense of it all. I remember thinking that it must have been such a pain to drag that sofa around and it made me think of how much time some people have. That old red sofa. Needless to say my love of photography was badly shambled and my trust in Kodak’s taste heavily questioned. One could say I lost my religion, that day.

( sorry, couldn’t find the work on Google)

Ever since this life changing experience, I have seen many, many equivalent type of works. Whether of a tree during the seasons and the course of many years, people faces as they age, or an object traveled around in different location and at different times. For some reason, this always works. People always respond favorably.

People are fascinated when they see a series. Just look at how many furniture stores will sell you these series of 3 framed pictures to hang above you wall. Not sure why that is ? Is it the need of consistency, the need for comfort, the  reassurance of a repeated item? or does that remind them of their own repetitive lives. Either way, it always works. try it, and you will see. The most boring images ( individually) become masterpieces when linked together by the same subject.

All this to say that if you fail as a photographer, you always have the opportunity to try a few well used gimmicks to get noticed, let alone appreciated. Guess this is why they call it Fine. Or not.

Posted in commercial stock, lens, license, No sense, photoshop | Print | 6 Comments »

January 23, 2008 by pmelcher.

We are all getting fat. let’s face it, we are gaining weight and it doesn’t seem like it is going to change. When we were dealing with slides and prints, we needed to physically move. We needed to get up and get the images in drawers, got to a lightboxe, compare the images, put the slide in sleeves, and get them ready for a messenger to pick up. Depending on the size of the photo agency, the traffic department was either close by or a few flights of stairs away. Even photo editors had to be “on the move” as editing required a combination of many physical steps.

Today, from the moment  we sit down in front of our computer screens with a coffee and a bagel  (or anything that will serve as a breakfast), turn on our screens, we hardly move. With a combination of tools, from phone to browsers, we hardly have to move. Thus we are getting fat. I am sure if you look down at your midsection right now, you will see a sign that you are gaining some unneeded volume. We barely move to get to a conference room where we cautioulsy sit down again to listen or talk with our peers who are also gaining weight.

Starring at the glare of our screens for more than eight hours a day, switching from e mails to photographs, news websites to blogs, our eyes are also becoming weaker. Hard to find someone working in this business who doesn’t wear glasses. Although our eyes are our weapon of mass destruction, they are slowly declining on us , as we abuse them hours on.

And of course our skins are not looking better either. We barely see daylight anymore as we hardly have any reasons to be outside. Only photographers escape this doom fate, as they still need to move to create their art. They  are, however, still constrain to the  mischievous chair and screen combination while they caption, photoshop, upload their images for hours on.

And the future doesn’t look much better. As we get more and more wirelessly freed from our offices and work more from home, we might decide not to wash so frequently, let alone take care of our forever growing  hair. We might decide that eating three times a day is not enough, thus enjoying a permanent flux of food. We might not have any need to get out of bed that often as all our necessary tools of the trade may be at arms reach.

Paca, Cepic, Asmp, APA, SAA, PLus, ASPP and all other organizations should vote for a mandatory gym membership for all employees of our industry. We should lobby our respective governments to put in place salvation laws that would require a minimum of one hour of forced exercise to all those wishing to work in the photo industry . Finally, we should  put in place motivational points of interest in our offices in order to force more activities than just going to the bathroom.

Otherwise, my dear friends, we might become instinct before we get to see the full effect of Global Warming.

Posted in IPTC, magazine, technology, keyword, web 2.0, photoshop, filter, photojournalism, editorial | Print | No Comments »

December 28, 2007 by pmelcher.

There are many ways to kill. Many different ways that we manage to find somewhere in ourselves to destroy the things we love the most. The violent murder of Benazir Bhutto earlier this week is a prime example. During a period during when most of us enjoy the comfort of our simple lives, the world continues to rip itself apart in what seems to be an incontrollable violence that goes beyond our understanding.

Like many others I am still in shock and appalled by the event in Pakistan and the brutal assassination a woman that stood for change and democracy against relentless nihilism. I took a tour, from my distant home, of the photographs taken that day, and thanks to Daryl Lang of PDN, watched the two sideshows done by the New York Times and CNN with the images of John Moore of Getty Images.At the end of the CNN slideshow, I looked at this image :

and thought to myself, how did John Moore ever think of doing a zoom effect in the middle of this commotion ? Three shots where fired, and explosion just happened, people are lying dead all around him and he still find the time to create a zoom effect. Even think about it. My second thought is that he didn’t do it on purpose and just happened to zoom out when he took the frame. Still, this image puzzled me.

Until I saw the same image on the New York Times slideshow:

And then I realized, he didn’t. And here I made a false assumption. I previously wrote :

[ Someone at CNN thought that it would be more dramatic, more intense to add that stupid zoom effect]

Thanks to avid reader Gary Gardiner who checked the Getty site, we now know that both images were taken by the same photographer. Apparently, due to his shooting with a motor drive, both images are very similar, one probably shot as he was zooming out to get a full length of the man. That will teach me to write a blog before finishing breakfast. My apologies to CNN and to those I got confused. More from Gary in the “comment” section below.

PS: I forsee a World Press photo here…

Posted in multimedia, magazine, Cnn, photojournalism, photoshop, news, editorial, getty | Print | 1 Comment »

October 19, 2007 by pmelcher.

After spending a day at Photoplus today, one aspect became really obvious. There were more internet businesses for amateurs and semi pros then I have ever seen. The web 2.0 bubble has definitely reached the traditional photo industry and one can see numerous web based solution for everything photographic. It was interesting to see, besides the traditional giants booth, like Canon, Nikon, and other Fuji or Olympus, a myriad of do it yourself, on line, community based solution for the wealthy amateur. And, a bit like the lotions that will make you a slimmer person or make your hair grow, these websites will enhance your photography to depths and lengths you had never dreamed about.

For just a small monthly fee.

Of different size and with this feel of “we are here to stay”, these stands will offer you anything from do it yourself self-published photo books that, if you listen to their sales pitch, will sell more than Annie Leibovitch ever sold, to others that will make you a seasoned pro, selling more images than Getty has in the last 10 years. So once you buy all the gear, then all the accessories, you are teased by these businesses that promise to build you a career and make you extremely wealthy with what you thought, only just about an hour ago, was a only a week-end hobby.

While Adobe or Apple have magnificent stands with pseudo preachers screaming into wireless microphones in front of a wide-eyed audience on how to turn an ordinary image into a work of pure biblical proportion, an army of recently VC-ed funded start up will grab your emerging hopes to stuff them in a community-based, crowdsource-powered “shlingalabada”.

Rows and rows of false promises with shiny teeth hiding a sharks’ appetite. A little Las Vegas strip full of a salespeople who practically beg you to join them in their fruitless gamble, in the desperate hope that you will give legitimacy to their underlying lies and insecurities.

The most interesting part is that, with purpose or not, the layout of the huge Javitz center is set up as a warning: as you enter, you have from left to right and wall to wall about three of four rows of the companies that make the foundation of this business. The giants: Nikon, Kodak, Adobe, Lexar, etc. As you venture deeper inside, you then hit the accessories guys, long time accepted parasites of the latter: lens companies, bags, lighting, etc. and then, once you escape the peddlers of tangible product, all you seem to see is computer screens. The fabulous wonderland of the virtual world. Online classes, online models, online storage, online archive, online this, online that. Some very legitimate, most, however, probably never to be seen again.

During the first dot com, the amateur world was not digital yet, so it was speared. This time, the market is perfectly rip. In a very compelling way, it is a perfect showcase of the current photo universe. What is the most troublesome is that none of the microstock where present. Why ? A fear of putting a face on the scam ? After all, Mr Corbis and Mr Istock/Getty, Dreamstime, Fotolia and Shutterstock, what better place to meet and recruit more contributors ? And when you think about it, where are the traditional agencies. After all, Photoshelter, DigitalRaiload and IPNstock are there recruiting photographers, why not them. Or is the Photoplus crowd not good enough to be accepted in their closed membership club ? One reason the traditional agencies have taken a beating from microstock is that they have snobily ignored a large part of the shooter community and yet they persist to behave like tightly restricted, invitation-only clubs.

One can see the circus of the double digit, multimillionaire VC funded carpet seller of web 2.0, live at Photoplus 2007. Two days left.

Posted in prosumer, web 2.0, Photoplus, flickr, photoshop, Royalty free, getty, corbis, Microstock | Print | 3 Comments »

May 19, 2007 by pmelcher.

I don’t understand. When images first started to appear on the internet way back in the 1990’s, photographers and agencies were up in arms about how web browser had to cache images in order to display them. It meant, and still does, that a copy of the images is downloaded into a computer, thus making everyone who sees your images, an infringer. Many tried, in vain, to find a way to display images without going through this process, even asking users to delete their cache after a visit.

That was a failed battle. Then, when Picture Search company Ditto.com launched, another segment of the photo industry raised their battle shields and even brought them to court. Obviously, when Google did the same, more people joined in. Displaying thumbnails without licensing them was, after all, a copyright infringement. Thanks to the Fair Use law, that battle was soon lost too.

Today, hundreds, if not thousands of images are continuously being stolen from either agencies or photographers’ online portfolio. Most drop their arms in despair in front of the quantity of known cases and live with this constant pain as if it was a normal part of doing business.

Yet, these are the same people asking, screaming and complaining about DRM in music. The same that downloaded free music from old Napster or the current Kazaa. They have MP3’s up the wazzoo, listening to stolen music while editing their images on hacked version of Photoshop. They cannot understand why a music company would not even let them copy ad nauseum music that they purchased legally.

There are two critical aspects at play here: one, the total lack of DRM initiative in the photo industry. Run a photo or photography DRM search in Google and you will find nothing, zero, nada, niente, zilch. There is the Plus initiative of course, but it is mostly a catalog of licensing terms, not a Digital Rights management. Maybe one day, someone, somewhere, will use it to create a photo DRM.

Second, it is the total lack group initiatives from this industry. Photographers and agencies have multiple association but not one of them has taken the initiative to start a DRM program. Everyone suffers from stolen images and ridiculous laws like Fair Use or the potential Orphan works, but yet everyone seems to believes its the others problem. Or maybe that it will fix itself.

Farmers used to go out together hunting for wolves when those came too close to their farms, yet this industry expects his neighbors to get rid of the danger. Retail stores invested a fortune into security cameras and other thief deterrent systems. Besides a hackable name and password, a visible erasable watermark, sometimes an invisible also erasable watermark, the photo industry takes little or no effort to protect their images. You would think it would be their priority number one, considering it is their livelihood.
It doesn’t make sense.

Posted in No sense, photoshop, finance | Print | No Comments »

January 12, 2007 by pmelcher.

For the upcoming week end, I thought I would share some links to a few web application I have been dying to play around with. Some are still in there infancy, others well on there way, but all our certainly a part of the evolutionary process of the FAWM project.
LightBox network : A very simple, yet efficient professional work flow management system. Mostly built for commercial stock, studio and assignment photography, this on-line application is widely used in to bridge communications between a photographer and an assigning editor. Speed, simplicity, extreme ease of use are some of the key aspect of this product that will certainly see many more releases in the future.

TrueColor: A freeware PHP based online photo editor that you can add to your website for non commercial usage. There are no specification of what you need to do to buy a license. Simple, to the point, quick, small, doesn’t replace photoshop but certainly simple and easy to use. Could be handy for a photographer on the road, using someone else’s computer, who need to do quick and simple adjustments.

Much more advanced is PIXN8 . One of the most horrible names in the industry but certainly one of the sexiest tools out there. A very advanced user interface that you can customize if you put t on your site, with a lot of option. The free trial versions has links to Flickr or Webshots to store images after you are finished, but I an sure you can change these destination to your favorite database.

FAUXTO has gone through great length to copy the user interface of Photoshop which obviously minimizes the learning curve for most users. No so sure what there business model is, if only to have an online paid version of Photoshop in the long term. again, simple, easy to use and does a what is says it will do. Nothing more, nothing less.

Thumbnail generator and Resizr : Two down and dirty simple , one function apps. Resizr can even be a firefox extension, which is useful for on the fly resizing.

One of my favorite, Myheritage.com who does a pretty good job at identifying faces. for a celebrity or spot news photographer, and with a lot of tweaks, this could be a great tool to automatically identify a subject and automatically caption an image.

All these Webdgets have one obvious drawback, is it that you have to upload your images. if you are stranded in a place with poor internet connectivity, you are all alone . Also, there might be some issues with copyright infringement as you are uploading images to some servers over which you have absolutely no control.

Finally, a great thank to one of my favorite website, Lifehacker.com who constantly post great info.

Posted in flickr, filter, photoshop, editorial | Print | No Comments »