April 19, 2010 by pmelcher.

Commercial stock photography is all about problem solving. The first is how to make a living shooting commercial stock. One way to do it, is to solve other people’s problems.

When image buyers go to a Web site, it is because they have been asked to provide a solution to a very specific problem: They have text, they have a layout, they have a concept and they have a client with a message. The task: fill in the visual space with the perfect image.

Seems easy in theory. If what’s needed is a picture of a tool, get a tool. If it is a concept, it is much harder.

A photographer’s job, one that shoots stock, is to preempt this problem and solve it. The more common the problem, the more successful the image. Potentially.

How does one figure what problems need to be solved worldwide? In a way, it is not that hard. As humans living in the 21st century, we share common experiences. We seek solutions to a lot of tasks and issues. Our lives, in a sense, are a continuous search to alleviate problems. And unbeknown to us, many are shared by our peers.

So, photographing our own problems, or at least solving them, is productive. Figuring out what the next problem will be is a better way to be a successful stock shooter. The image of the solution, however, should always be tied to the problem.

Once this is understood, that a stock photographer is a problem-solver, a big step has been made. But it is not all. A stock photographer should also know how to create meaning. And for that, we need to dive a little deeper in how the brain functions.

Our eyes, in a way, are very stupid. We receive light, and it bounces into the back of our brains, at the primary visual cortex, which only sees and recognizes basic shapes, like circles, squares, triangle, etc. However, this is not the end of how we interpret a photograph in our brains. It actually goes from there to at least 30 other different places in our brains, some of which we are still figuring out what actually they do.

Some we know:
We will skip quickly over the ventral stream, which is the “what” of our brain that recognizes what an object is and what it does. Sort of the catalog section of our brain. Photographs share this space, in the frontal lob, with words, and how we interpret them. We will also fly quickly over the dorsal stream. That part of the brain creates a map of where the object is. A sort of 3D GPS system that puts the object in perspective to its surrounding.

What is interesting is a third location where the information bounces, and that is called the limbic system. That is deep inside the middle of our brain and very old. Old in the sense that it has been with us throughout our evolution. The limbic system is the part that “feels” those basic emotions, from satisfaction to fear.

Those three parts are what create meaning for a photograph and what every single human being has in common, including your potential client.

That is what stock photographers should go after: create meaning. Images should tickle that part of our brains that recognize, put in perspective and make us feel emotions, because it also makes them valued.

When a creative director or a photo editor is looking for an image, it is not just a problem they are trying to solve, but a meaning they are trying to convey.

If you look at the stock industry, with photo libraries boasting millions upon millions of images, it is easy to see that maybe 90% will never sell. They aren’t useless; they just have no meaning to anyone.

Commercial stock photography, in order to strive, has to offer an emotionally meaningful solution.

Posted in copyright, technology, Magnum, commercial stock, license, multimedia, editorial, photojournalism, keyword, pictogram, news | Print | 1 Comment »

January 9, 2007 by pmelcher.

A favorite topic of mine this one is and a major aspect of what we do here at Melchersytem. Born from a multi national background and having traveled a lot through my (short) life, I am extremely sensitive to local cultures. What I see in the photo industry is quite disturbing. I am assuming it is because photography continues to drag this legend that it is an universal language coupled with the No Boundary internet perception.
It all started with Corbis and its first website, Corbisview. All was English ( American, that is), with American design, touch and feel and search logic. Simple enough, it was American, made by Americans and had all the money in the world therefore the whole world would use it as is. To add insult to injury, photo editors would go through the Bettmann Archive and decide which topic and image would be granted the right to be scanned and added to the Mighty collection. Quite obviously, not only the content was heavily American centric ( baseball legends for example), it would also eliminate world events that was not taught in US schools for lack of “sellability”. If I do not know what or who it is, it doesn’t exist.

Soon after, GuettyOne was launched. Because of its more commercial stock oriented content, it had some content that was interesting for non Americans, but it was more an accident than an effort. Needless to say, the design, up to the keywords, where in English.
After that, a torrent of other agencies followed suite with pale copies of their own, thinking like a New Yorker, if i can make it here (the United States), I can make it anywhere . Furthermore, the English and the Australian speak English so there you go, I am already international. This still continues to this day. American arrogance.

People do no read photography the same way all over the world. Photography is only universal when it reaches genius level. most art buyers are not looking for an Henri Cartier Bresson image. American should get over themselves. especially in the editorial field. Images are being sold for 6 figures every day in different countries in the world and they are not of Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. With the rise of reality tv shows, while the concepts are being exported, the celebrities they create cannot cross the border. But they are super mega stars in there country. I use to license a lot of images of American soap opera in Europe, Japan, South America many, many years ago, in the “slide age”, because most TV stations would translate them. Today, not only these country produce their own soaps, they export them to each other and none of the stars are American. Russia is the biggest importer of Brazilian soap operas. The same goes for politics and international news. Just ask Time, Newsweek, Business Week why they have foreign editions.
Same with websites navigation, text, keywords, appearance. While some US agencies understand that a big us corporation might have different ads concepts for the same product in different part of the country to reach local sensibilities, they do not understand that France and Germany are not the same country. or don’t want to. Green is a very popular color in Germany right now, but who in the USA would design their website in green? It’s not just about the content, the packaging matters. A lot.

And I would much prefer using a product that functions the way I think and work than me having to learn another language. Including search logic.
Yes, localization is expensive. But there is no escaping it. It will not disappear. It’s actually getting worse. The more the world is becoming a global market, the more people and sensibilities are local. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and just recently Myspace.com who just launched a French version, have understood that. But not the photo community. Because I can be seen from anyone outside my country with my website, I am international says the photo community.

There is an effort to be made. I always use the Olympics for example. The organizers have to deal with thousands of different cultures and languages ( they are more than 7,000 languages in the world) . How do they do it ? They use Pictograms, most of them that they invent themselves. The photo industry could do the same. Imagine if from website to website, it would always be the same pictogram to download an image. And just think of conceptual searches and how they differ from one culture to another. What makes an American happy is not the same as what makes a Japanese happy, or an Australian.
On the content side, instead of a filter that would block content not available for an image buyer because of contractual restriction, it should be a filter that would actually show an image Buyer images more relevant to his/her country and culture : a local tv star, a local politician or a local concept.
Yes, technology has made it easier to license an image across the world, now it is up to sensibilities to make that image sellable across the world. Using Pictogram verbs and client sensitive imagery would finally make local all photographers or agencies that would want to become global.

Posted in google, yahoo, pictogram, photojournalism, editorial, corbis, france, getty | Print | 1 Comment »