July 8, 2008 by pmelcher.

By now, you must have read all about the Getty Image/Flickr deal. In a nutshell, Flickr announced that Getty Images has the right to go through the Flickr collection and pick and choose the images that they want to distribute.

Now, seldom know that Flickr has been shopping around for the last two years for a way to license its content. They have approach many existing companies in order to investigate their options. I am not at liberty to say which but lets just say they are not your traditional mom and pops. But like with any huge company, time is not an issue and most potential, at first very excited, ended their conversations with a resentful puff and walking away with what everyone thought was a goldmine. When you looked closer, it is more like a coalmine. Lots of digging for little return. One huge issue, is that, although Flickr has a clear copyright policy, most people don’t care and upload whatever they want anyway. Since nothing is for sale, no copyright infringement lawsuit has ever surfaced, but most certainly a lot of “cease and desist” notices have circulated.

The second very important issue, is that Flickr has a beautiful facade, but behind it,  lies a dump yard of crappy snapshots. Their “Interrestingness” engine is a model of programming done with genius. Only the best images  surface, hiding the ugly muck below.

While these talks where going on, some mash up 2.0 companies tried to take advantage of Flickr’s API to lure users to shift platforms and take advantage of their licensing engines. That was a lost battle as Flickr monitored those links very closely and shut down  any one who  apparent motivation was money. No more than a little slap on the hand.

Getty, having a whole department in charge of making new deals could simply  not let go. These guys lose their job if they do not make any new deals. So they came out with this wackadoodle arrangement: Flick makes deal with Getty Images.

Wait a minute, Flickr doesn’t own, nor does it represent any of its content. It is only a sharing platform. How can they make a deal on behalf of their users ? They can advise them, yes, but certainly not make a deal for them. Getty will still have to ask each and everyone of them for permission to license their images. But be no fool, this has been going on for a long time. I do not know of any photo agency that has not already contacted users of Flick in order to represent their work. And those who didn’t are either fools  or not in the commercial stock business. This deal doesn’t change that, as Flickr cannot dictate anything to its users.

Furthermore only Getty, or its retarded companion Corbis, could afford such a deal. It will take them a huge time to edit through the content and find the pearls. And that is money spend, not received. Let’s say they do find a photographer with great talent, nothing guarantees them that he or she will sign up with them. Nothing at all. Or they have might have already signed with someone else. This is Gargantuan work for little return.

This deal is just a pack of hot air. We all know that Getty is no fool and that this is just a big PR balloon. It will fly, get some people very excited and overheated, and just disappear after a short sting.

What is however captivating is that Getty now officially announced, with this deal, that it can no longer trust its own suppliers or photographers with providing them with the right images. It is  also an admittance of the failure of both  their internal “creative research and intelligence” and in its long held belief that it had secured the right partnerships. To proactively and officially reach out to amateurs is sending a loud and clear message that their current content is not adapted anymore.

After thought : So what happens to those poor pro photographers schmucks who paid $50 dollars to get their images on Getty Images under the brand “Photographer’s Choice“? Let me get this straight : you’re an amateur and upload to Flickr, Getty images includes your images for free. You are a pro unwilling to upload to Flickr, maybe because you don’t want then stolen and you have to pay $50 per approve image ? It doesn’t compute

Posted in Search, license, technology, commercial stock, yahoo, web 2.0, corbis, finance, flickr, prosumer, getty | Print | No Comments »

June 27, 2008 by pmelcher.

“We think Corbis has the resources and patience to succeed in the long-term. We will beat them with better [commercial] execution” Gary Shenk, CEO of Corbis to the Sydney Morning Herald.

There is long term and than there is eternity. Corbis is gambling that eventually, one day, when no one is looking, for no particular reason, ( probably because there is no one left on Earth), just like that, they will “succeed” and maybe post a profit along with it.

The SMH article is  about the rise of amateur photography and  Snapvillage, the Ireland based subsidiary of Corbis that the money loosing company has build to  compete with Istockphoto and other Microstock.

Posted in Midstock, commercial stock, prosumer, finance, corbis, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

June 3, 2008 by pmelcher.

A while back, I had written about photosynth, when it just came out. Created by Microsoft, the idea is to stitch together multiple images taken by complete strangers to create a panoramic view taken from multiple vantage point. Well, Google just issued their version thought the Spanish company Panoramio. Panoramio is the company that allows you to post your images on Google Earth.

With its content, Panoramio has created its on stitches to render a full anonymous picture of a place. Using hundred of images taken by various people at different time, one can visualized a place or a monument thought a series a similar images. One image leads to another one and so on. Maybe the idea is to put together photographs of the whole world so that one could literally see every place. Google certainly has the means and the ambition. It would be a sort of social map constituted of all the images of the earth as seen by everyone.

You can see an example here

This technology, along with others of the kind, shows how terribly unique the internet is when it deals with photographs . The possibilities to create and expand are almost endless, while giving the user a richer experience.

This would be hard to be used in sport, however, but just think if you could stitch together thousands of images of the winning moment at the 100 meter final at the Olympics. A thousand views for one moment.

This technology could also be applied to commercial stock, making the  image more 3D and interactive.  Or in news, breaking the usual slide show linear model of one image after the other but all in one. Think of the New York Times readers gallery of photographs on the crane incident. This, to me, illustrate the “Future of Contemporary Photography” much more than any images of eggs, empty parking lots or thousand of sunsets ripped from their online presence to be pasted on a lonely, endless wall.

Posted in multimedia, technology, commercial stock, google, web 2.0, slideshow, flickr, prosumer, editorial | Print | No Comments »

May 20, 2008 by pmelcher.

I have to apologize. I really do. I usually do not do that. I respect other people’s opinion, as long as they are intelligent ones. But for a few months I have been reading the new blog launched by Photoshelter to go along their Collection. They hired a full time blogger, it seems, which is a great idea, and she has been steady at shooting out blogs at rapid fire speed.

And, as anything else related to photography, I pay attention. But after weeks on, I am still baffled. I do not understand a word she is writing and who she is talking about. Nada, zilch.

I thought I knew a little bit about photography being born in this business and spending most of my awake moments dealing with some aspect of it. I thought I had been a fortunate member of the human race because I have seen so many great pictures in my life that it would hard for anyone to compete.

But when I read her blog, I have no idea what and who she is talking about…really.. I had heard there was a “fine art” photography world out there created on Ansel Adams memory path but had never seen it so active. Didn’t know it was so intense. She even gets really excited when she sits on the laps of a photographer that takes close-ups of green stuff growing up in her garden.

See, in Europe, photography is not considered a fine art and there is no fine art school or courses. There is commercial stock and editorial, but nothing to encourage people to take pictures for wall hanging. Of course, there has been photographers like Jean Paul Sieff and others that have somewhat played around with the concept, but really, more exception than the rule.

But now I see the light. And I am baffled. Nothing against this person who appears to be a nice, smart, well educated and certainly photo enthusiast, but I am really, seriously baffled. The last shock was today when this image ( trust me, not the worst) was shown as part of her favorite :

I spend the day thinking about it and other images posted on that blog. I cannot make sense of why anyone would think it is a good, or great photograph. I might by unbashfully practical but it is a close-up of a badly cooked egg. The lighting is not exceptional, the subject is boring, there is nothing there for me to get excited. about. Not even shocked. Just plainly bored. Sure, for someone that has a big Loft in New York with a 20 Feet ceiling, this image on a really big big print my look cool for a while ( does it come with the smell ?). But to me, hooked on photography, it is just an egg.

Don’t take me wrong : I am really, really glad that there is not just one taste in photography. I understand that I might not like all that is liked by my peers. But that blog has published such a series of awful pictures, I had to say something. And, all this with an incessant name dropping of people I have never, ever heard of.

Every time I read the blog, I feel I open the wrong door and fell into the middle of a party I was not invited to. And for a good reason, I don’t know anyone.

Again, I have an incredible respect for the author of the blog. The only reason I bring it up it is because it is associated to Photoshelter, a commercial entity who is trying to  license images. I would have thought the blog would be related. But it is so off into another unknown direction that I read it with my jaw dropping thinking ” What the hell are they talking about?”.

And how long can they keep posting images of empty dark greenish fields with a dead tree somewhere in the horizon and a little paper wraps on the ground?

Is that what the Photoshelter collection is trying to sell ?

As that blog says…off they go to LOOK3… Hopefully for them they might finally make  it to Eggland !!!

Posted in focus, license, No sense, web 2.0, prosumer | Print | 2 Comments »

April 24, 2008 by pmelcher.

Image details: Pope Benedict XVI Celebrates Mass At Yankee Stadium served by picapp.com

It is a blessing these days to see a company that grows by listening to its criticism. Ad supported licensing company Picapp has recently revamped its site and has made some good improvements.  First and foremost, you can decide if you want or not that little pop up figure they call picaboo. You can also choose the size of the image you want to post and what type of an animation.

Thus after selecting your image, you can select between a goofy interface to a more serious one. What the people needed.

A quick down and dirty Alexa ranking shows Picapp  ahead of competitor Gumgum in traffic. No big surprise as they started with a big bang using the Getty  trampoline.

The real question is why did neither of these companies have open their service to individuals.

Sure, it is nice to have access to images from pros, but what about the huge pool of amateurs. This licensing model would much better serve the Flickr community than anyone else. After all, it would be a great replacement to the useless Creative Common scheme. ” here, use my picture for free, in exchange for which I get a cut on ads”. Fair enough, no ?

But neither Flickr, Photobucket, Smugmug and other mass photo storage platform will allow their content to be duplicate on either the Picapp or Gumgum server. The technology has to come to them. And that is the biggest shortcoming of both companies. Because their technology is neither proprietary neither that hard to create.

The second short coming is that neither offer the publisher any income for posting these images. Even the slightest cut would make either company immediately attractive. Imagine, get paid to post images !! Someone is bound to do it.

I can foresee very soon many  agencies offering the same type of licensing model from within their own site, bypassing the “Picgum” middle man.It would not be a problem for Flickr to add that option too. So it leaves both companies in breathless race to create enough critical mass of content to become indispensable. One, Picapp, has concentrate on overall volume, while the other, GumGum, seems to concentrate on just celebrity oriented content.

Let’s see what the future brings them. Either way, a very interesting race to watch.

Photo Licensing by GumGum | © PacificCoastNews

Posted in celebrity, copyright, alexa, technology, gumgum, license, keyword, filter, editorial, flickr, prosumer, web 2.0, getty | Print | No Comments »

April 2, 2008 by pmelcher.

A new company emerged from unknown depth a few days ago, proposing free “automated” tagging, or keywording. Named Tagcow, the company does not explain how the tagging is done.

Curious, I decided to give it a spin with a couple of images including this image:

After two days, the image was finally tagged with two words: “Pool” , “Man”. I guess that is what you get for free. Furthermore, when I downloaded the image, I could not find the keywords anymore…There is nothing automated about this service. It is currently impossible for a computer to recognize  the content of an image. The most advanced systems I have seen have a 10% success rate, and then again with very contrasted and simple pictures. Tagcow uses a little known service offered by Amazon call the Mechanical Turk. With this service, anyone can put a long, painful task and offer to pay for human beings to fulfill them

“Complete simple tasks that people do better than computers. And, get paid for it”. At 0.01 cent a picture, one can get images keyworded for cheap. However, the quality is not guaranteed.

Thus it is the power of the masses used here, making more obvious why they picked a cow for their name. Not the brightest animal in the land

Posted in No sense, Search, copyright, IPTC, keyword, flickr, prosumer, web 2.0, filter | Print | 2 Comments »

April 1, 2008 by pmelcher.

A little fun exercise for the week. Taco Bell in association with Sports Illustrated have launched this interesting website :

- You pick a location

- you pick some action

You start shooting.

No, you cannot  license them .

All the fun of being a top swimsuit photographer for Sports Illustrated with none of the hassles.

try it here :  http://www.directdaniella.com/

Posted in magazine, focus, technology, lens, celebrity, license, prosumer, web 2.0, multimedia, editorial | Print | No Comments »

March 19, 2008 by pmelcher.

They should have picked a closer planet. Something like MarsMedia or even MoonMedia. It would have been easier to reach. Seems like Jupiter just doesn’t cut it. Number 3 ( or two) of the big three US corporation to hold an interest in the photo world just posted their final numbers for 2007 and…surprise.. its a loss: $77.3 million, according to their press release.

Ouch!!. If we look at the numbers more closely, it hurts even more ( and its not even my money). A pathetic $2,5 Million increase in revenue from last year. And you should see how much it cost them to increase their revenue . They had to spend close to $1.50 for every dollar they made. wow !!

It is just not going well, is it. Not for the photo industry which has always been a hard place to swim in, but for the corporate 3. Getty Images had to sign off and find strategic partners before being thrown out of Nasdaq, Corbis has to shut down offices across the world and retreat in Virtual Reality and now, Mr Internet.com himself feels the pain of non-profit.

One of the interesting part is that both Getty and Jupiter own two of the top microstock properties in cyberspace, but that still does not seem to help . Take a (strong) hint Corbis !!!. Sure the market in commercial stock photography is changing, shifting but even holding one of the cannibalistic tribe doesn’t balance that shift. Lots of little images for little money doesn’t equal a few images for a lot of money.

But even so, one wonders is these microstock operations are even profitable at all. Istockphoto allegedly has 70 staffers plus 90 freelance photo editor. At an average of 80 cent per image sold, it takes a huge amount of image sold to make a profit.

So there not much hope there. Unless if they all raise the prices of microstock, which they will have to do.

According to ATI website, Alan Meckler “even went so far as to say that the high-end RF single image and CD-ROM business won’t even be around in ten years. ” Question is: Jupiter shows no sign of transforming its operation to get ready for this change. If anything, by purchasing a microstok music store, Meckler shows more signs of moving away from its photo division.

Regardless, it seems that is due time for the corporate world to leave an industry where only one has barely succeeded at huge cost ( Getty Images) and the two others seem incapable of posting a profit. And last I checked, that is the main, and the sole purpouse of a corporation.

The rest of us, well we all really really enjoy working with great photography, even if some months we have a hard time paying the bills.

For those who like to crunch : jupiter financials

Posted in prosumer, license, Jupiter, technology, finance, transaction, Royalty free, getty, corbis, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

March 11, 2008 by pmelcher.

This industry is whacked. Definitely, positively, completely and definitely. While some industry commentators are desperately trying to get attention to their new pricing guidelines in a last , useless effort to save the RM model, others have just thrown sanity up in the air.

Most commercial stock companies are still around, not because they are doing good, but because their operating cost are low. Like the store around the corner. No big revenue, but then again, no big cost. And that could last forever. Once a year, they all meet up a CEPIC, burning their hard earned savings, to congratulate each other on making it through another year, quite blissfully unaware that the storm has yet to come. It has just been bad weather up to now. The Hurricane has yet to hit.

And so, a huge amount of little store owners, more obsessed by cost saving then revenue making, gather around together for a few days, in a yearly bacchanal ritual of parties, drinking, table hopping and schmoozing, as if to give thanks to an indifferent God under some bored European sky. This year will be no different, as the island of Malta, lost somewhere in between its past glory and the Mediterranean sea, will host the secret and private gathering of the last believers.

Most have switch to RF, grant you, hoping that new fortunes will be made. Alas, too little too late. So in order to increase their offering, they exchange content, like kids with cards, or marbles. They become distributors of each others photographs, in a web of tangled relationships, trying to hide the frog in a bear’s costume.

They remain stubbornly confident that their model is the sole and only model and that new ideas are just hiccups. And so they sit in rows of chairs, listening to people who have never achieved anything in their careers, tell them how to operate their businesses hoping for redemption from these latter saint prophets.

Sure, there is fear and concern, but each one has its own “special” plan, carefully kept secretive and as powerful as a lottery ticket. It is most of the time disguise as a new website that will put the industry upside down, a miraculous search engine, or a new pricing scheme, that will revolutionize the industry forever. Most of the time, it is only just that, a lottery ticket.

“it use to be..” says the crowd, followed by a “remember when ?…” and ending as “ah well, what can you do…”. Getty and, although less and less Corbis, gets blame for everything, including if it rains on their little gathering. It is the cause of all evil, because God forbids, they are not the ones to revisit their decisions. It is the stubbornness of the assurance of things past. “It has worked so it will work” is CEPIC’s cry to the god’s of commercial stock. With a little adjusting of our pricing and a cool redesign of our website, we will see better future, better than we have ever seen.

There is more hope in these hearts and minds when they all leave to go back to the harsh reality of stagnant sales numbers. There is more conviction, because as a group, they agree. And we all know the majority is always right and that there is comfort in numbers . The election of George Bush as president of the United States is a living proof of that. There will be a huge celebration of conviction, an exciting confirmation of ideas past and the realization that change is just another word for stupid.

The imaginary gods of commercial stock photography will certainly be pleased as they wink to the new born microstock king.

Posted in Midstock, Zymmetrical, technology, prosumer, CEPIC, Royalty free, getty, corbis, Microstock | Print | 3 Comments »

March 8, 2008 by pmelcher.

I doubt I could have ever said it better myself…you will understand the reference..

Posted in Midstock, copyright, technology, prosumer, transaction, law, editorial, Microstock | Print | 1 Comment »