May 3, 2011 by pmelcher.

Up to now, images would only give you remote information in a passive way. More than often, they illustrate an accompanying article, with no more duty than to confirm what you are reading. As much as the photographer or publisher tried, it was a view and forget operation. No so anymore.

Thanks to new technology, the image has grown to becoming more intelligent, by permitting its viewers to dig deeper into it’s content. It is also now able to call home and inform on how it is being interpreted.

Thanks to a company called Stipple, photographs acquire a new dimension, an interactive layer, that finally allows viewers to communicate with them. Thanks to a mouse over generated interactive layer, small dots appear on specific parts of the images. Those dots, once selected, present the user with numerous options. They can save, share or shop for some of the items. They can also be presented with live feeds of tweets or links to additional information .

Viewers can then interact with this new set of information in ways never seen before. They can purchase the items that they like, search for local deals or even better, be presented with discounts. Last but not least, both publishers and the photography rights owners can see, in real time, how people interact with their images.

Stipple works with all images : sports, travel, celebrity, news, commercial stock. There are no limitations.

Not only Stipple adds intelligent interaction to photographs in a smart non intrusive manner, but it also engages viewers to explore photographs in innovative ways. Beyond the frustrating limitations of the IPTC caption field that can only give an overview of the content of an image, Stipple dots can easily display extremely precise information on specific areas within a photograph.

One might think that this would be hard to implement : not at all. Photo agencies need nothing else to do then send a parallel feed of their images the same way they already do to their clients, while publishers only need to add a simple javascript code. That’s it. No added workload. And it’s free.

To top it all, both publishers and photo agencies receive a commission on all transaction generated by their images. In a depressed market, this is very welcomed news.

Finally, Stipple offers a great tool against orphan work. If the metadata of an image is stripped, Stipple will automatically reunite it with rightful owner and display the original information. Even if the image has been altered.

Using some powerful technology built in house, Stipple is the first company to fully offer an intelligent image solution to both publishers and photo agencies along with a new inventive way to generate more revenue.

You can get more information on Stipple on their website at www.stippleit.com

Posted in celebrity, license, magazine, technology, Social Media, Search, SIPA, editorial, transaction, finance, web 2.0, news | Print | No Comments »

April 25, 2011 by pmelcher.

Photography has always been about Time. and Space.  When one presses on that button, both are frozen, captured and can thus be delivered elsewhere in Time and Space. That was then.

The makers of the GigaPan, a machine that takes multiple images of a scene with various focal lengths in order to reconstitute it into a massive file have now launched the Time Machine GigaPan.

The GigaPan is well known for allowing viewers to zoom in and out of a photograph without losing any definition, as well as scrolling left and right, giving users more control on how they view a photograph. Now, with the addition of time lapse, one can also travel through time.

The advantage ? A scene is no longer static and one can zoom in ( or out) at specific moments . More user control.

Is this the future of photography ? While the concept is very appealing, giving still images more depth than they could ever dream of ( yes, Stills can dream too) , the file size is already a huge drawback. Furthermore, not all subjects can be time lapsed ( and unlike the current trend, nor should they), nor that all subjects are good candidates for zoom in scrolling.

However, some can be and actually gain depth from this new technology. This is where GigaPan would love for you to help. Join in there project and discover, with them, what would work with this. Come on, when was the last time someone asked you to participate in the future ?

Posted in magazine, technology, multimedia, Search, slideshow, news | Print | No Comments »

April 12, 2011 by pmelcher.

It’s the content stupid ! well, no more.

Some time ago, if you were lucky enough to have created an image that all wanted, you could easily sit on it and wait for your phone to ring. Not really anymore. The center of the business gravity has shifted. To those who create value around the content.

The downfall of journalism is a good example. The great site of journalism are not doing as well as those who couldn’t care less about quality. The Huffingon Post beats the New York Times. Sure, traffic will tell you a different story. But, finance will not. While the NY Times is struggling to find ways to create dollar value, the Huffington Post sells for more than $300 million. Why ? Because they are in two different businesses.

One is obsessed at creating content, the other in monitizing content. And, right now, the money is in those who know how to monitize content.  In photogrpahy, the same shift has happened. You could be the greatest photographer alive, it wouldn’t matter if you didn’t know how to create value around your content. Those who have experience in doing so are the publishers.

They can take cheap text from one place , a cheap photograph from the other and voila, done. Why ? Because in the internet age of fast and free consumption, people do not expect value for their money as they do not pay. They are fine in receiving what they have paid for : not much.

Thus, why should publishers pay a premium for any photograph ? They will not retain viewers longer, nor will it guarantee  fidelity . Rather, what they focus on is the volume and the management of expectancy. As long as they deliver the little that is expected from them when it is expected from them, than they will create traction. And Dollars.

Why bother paying for an exclusive image when that image can be copied and pasted in thousands of websites within minutes ?  Why pay more for a photograph which will grab someone attention for less than a second before they move on ? It would be a waste of resources.

Rather, it makes much more financial sense to have a repeated pattern of offering over and over, with accurate consistency, the exact expected result. That is where the revenue resides. Within a context, not within the content.  Furthermore, a context can be managed, not content. That is the economy we see all around us and that is why photography, by itself, has little or no value. It is just a very small brick of a much wider context.

Photographers, photo agencies and related have no experience in building value around their images. They sell a raw material that has devaluated because the refineries, those who transform it in consumables, the publishers, only use them as small elements of their final product. They are not the product.

Can it be changed ? Maybe. No one has really tried to create a publication with exclusive or high end photography only. Mostly because those who have tried with text, like the New York Times, have spend a lot of money and failed. Up to now.

Will it change ? It will certainly if paywalls start to be successful . Because as soon as people pay for content, they expect the content to match or surpass the value they paid for it.

Thus, the future of photography, or at least the future of photography  online, depends on the success of paywalls.

Posted in celebrity, magazine, technology, license, Search, finance, photojournalism, web 2.0, editorial | Print | No Comments »

March 9, 2011 by pmelcher.

A dream come true : your image being used everywhere. A nightmare come true : you don’t get a penny while others are. A frightening true life example of what happens to your photographs in the XXI.

The Stolen Scream: A Story About Noam Galai from FStoppers on Vimeo.

The question is : was the image labeled CC on Flickr ? If so, it could have led to this worldwide free loading feeding frenzy. How can this be prevented ? how do we instruct people to, at least, ask permission before using an image?

What is interesting is the photographers’ reaction. While he is clearly unhappy about the situation, instead of suing everyone, he has resolve to using the situation to publicize himself ( see his website here : http://www.thestolenscream.com/)  and reverse claiming  ownership of his image.

Smart, very smart. He might just end up on top.

Posted in license, Social Media, Search, web 2.0, editorial, flickr, getty | Print | 2 Comments »

January 18, 2011 by pmelcher.

What has been the plague of social network might generate a tool that could become a standard for image licensing on the web. A German company has announced that is about to unleash a software that will automatically make an image posted on the internet inaccessible after a certain time.

The idea behind X-Pire is to allow people to post images of “that party last night” for everyone to enjoy for a month after but then make them disappear so that those incriminating pictures of you will not appear 10 years from now. We all make mistakes, don’t we ?

The system is quite simple : you drag your image via a software that tags it with a code and an expiration date . Once online, that image is linked to a database that holds this information. Once the date has expired, the image is no longer visible. Pretty straightforward.

For image licensors, like agencies or photographers, that could be a great tool. You license an image online for one month, let’s say, and after that time period, it is no longer visible. If the client wants more, he pays accordingly and you can reissue a time based license.

During the period when it can be seen, the image can be copied without the embedded key. Thus, It will not prevent the image from being used maliciously elsewhere, although they could certainly tweak the system to do so.

For now, this system, entirely geared for Social network users, is per a subscription model ( 3 months = 6.99 Euros) .

Not sure who will use it : You have to be the one posting the image in order to use it: Who really posts damaging images of themselves, even with a time limit ?

However, with a few tweaks, this could be the basis of a strong system to license images online, even automatically. A website would come to your site, select the image it needs, put it the time it needs it for and download the hi- res before posting it. In the background, your top of the line website will have inscribed the time limit key inside the image. Once the license expires, poof, the image is gone.

This could revitalize the RM  ( rights managed) model in exciting new way. Another step closer to reaching the “intelligent image“.

Posted in technology, commercial stock, Social Media, copyright, license, editorial, filter, Search, Royalty free | 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 27, 2010 by pmelcher.

PicApp is no more.  Launched a little bit earlier than GumGum, PicApp was an image portal offering free images via an embed option in exchange for advertising. The idea was noble, in sort. It allowed for cash-poor blogs or websites to use images from major image providers,  like Getty Images, Splash or Newscom, for free. In exchange, photo agencies, as well as Picapp would share revenues made by clicks on adverting.

It didn’t work for many reasons :

It was impractical. If you found an image you liked on one of the photo agencies and wanted to embed it, you had to leave it and go to PicApp to do so. A bit if you went to a supermarket, decided to pay via credit card and they told you to leave the merchandise, leave the store and go somewhere to redo a search and finally pay the way you wanted.

It was competing against its own image providers. Instead of being a sales partner for those agencies who participated, they had to lure customers way from them in order to be succesful. However, not only the photo agencies have an advantages by having their credit along every image published but PicApp never really launched a marketing campaign. They were probably hoping for a  viral explosion.

The business model was flawed. People do not click on advertising embedded in images. They might click on the image, not on it’s advertising. Furthermore, PicApp had to go out and sell it’s advertising space. With little or no knowledge on who would see the ads and no prior experience in the business, it was also a failed task.

It never became open to users. The only images available were those of established photo agencies. A maybe wiser idea would have also allowed users to upload their own images  in order to seek revenue from them. Having your users participate in the growth of your services in exchange for money is now becoming the norm for any succesful web enterprise.

It never reached critical mass, if it does exist. The fundamental assumption of PicApp was that enough users would publish enough embedded images generating enough clicks to make it a viable business. Either via a few images embedded an obscene number of times or many, many different images published a few times.  There is not been any examples of any editorial images going viral. Photographs that go viral are mostly user-generated and have nothing to do with regular editorial coverage.  PicApp was hoping for some kind of  Google type of acceptance. It never got it.

The company is not dead . Instead, it has shifted it’s attention to offering on the fly slide shows to those who put up a snippet on their website. Their new offering doesn’t make their business model obvious but it seems that those slide show will soon have advertising on them.  It is also very unclear how participating photo agencies will benefit from this, if at all. They will now see their images available on websites who have  will have no need to officially request them. It is nice of these photo agencies to let PicApp experiment with their content until they find a viable business model.

GumGum, PicApp infamous competition, has been very quiet for a while. After getting some funding, they have disappeared into super stealth mode, also probably trying to figure out how to make money with the embedded image idea while they burn VC money.

The real issue with those PicApp, Gumgum type of companies,  is :

- They work as photo portal and have to take traffic away from photo agencies in order to be succesful

- They work a third party licensing system for photo agencies, taking a commission for every sale they perform

Thus they take a commission of every sale they take away from the image providers they work with .  How does that make any sense for a photo agency ?

Posted in celebrity, Plus, technology, license, Search, finance, web 2.0, keyword, editorial | Print | No Comments »

October 29, 2010 by pmelcher.

You know what’s funny ? I’ll tell you what’s funny. By continuing to put so much financial pressure on photographers and photography, the media will loose it’s source of imagery .

With declining space rates and assignment rates, increasingly obscene rights grabbing bordering on copyright infringement, unacceptable usage agreements and overall disrespect of the photography trade, publishers are literally pushing the photo industry to look for new revenues, and respect, somewhere else.

Already photo agencies like VII with news and X17 with celebrity have entered the publishing arena in direct competition to those who used to be their best clients. Others are aggressively investigating how to license images to the million of blogs worldwide while others, like Black Star for example, have left the editorial world almost entirely in favor of the greener pastures of the corporate world.

Independent photographers do not bother approaching publications  anymore for assignments and have long gone with either NGO’s or Foundations. Even new technology companies like Mediastorm already make most of their revenue from foundations/NGO’s. We talk a lot about the desertification of entire regions of the world, soon we will see the same happening in the editorial landscape: Magazines, whether on Ipads or not, filled with nothing more than text and lonely generic images. Textbooks forced to use the same images over and over because there are no more “image suplliers”, preferred or not. Not far is the day when, calling on the phone, a photo editor will hear over and over” Time magazine who ?”.

It is not the will of anyone in the photo trade to cease doing business with publishers. However, the business conditions are becoming so unbearable that they have no other choice than to look elsewhere for revenue. And overall respect.

There will always be photographers because it’s not a job, it’s a passion. But like any passion, it needs to be fed with substantial income. In it’s short history, photography has had a strong love affair with the editorial world. Now the editorial world is treating it’s favorite mistress as an old whore. The bond is being broken.

However, it is not like photogrpahy doesn’t have anywhere else to go to be treated as a princess again. The internet has opened new revenue streams and while it is still a wild west, it promises a lot of new beginning. A lot of new love stories.

There is really no logical reasons for this change in attitude. Publishers have seen a lot of pressure on their industry, certainly, but none brought forth by photography. However, if circulation goes down, it’s photography that pays the rough price. Cuts are made, because, unlike electricity, it is deem unessential for the survival of a magazine. Almost as if, completely rid of the cost of photography, a magazine or book would actually do better. Well, soon, that might just become reality.

With licensing fees coming close to insulting, there will be no one to take those images anymore. No one to shoot wars, politics, archeology or even movie premieres. No one left to service them with their needs. Just an obscenely huge amount of crowd generated images of everything that doesn’t really matter. Pretty, certainly, but of no interest. It will be cheap, but useless.

For now, the old whore still clings to its lifelong lover in the hopes of a change of mind. But for how long?

And yes, you are right, it’s not that funny after all…

Posted in magazine, celebrity, technology, Newsweek, Good Enough, license, mediastorm, finance, editorial, TIME, Search, multimedia, news | Print | 3 Comments »

October 20, 2010 by pmelcher.

We have been advocating the emergence of the “intelligent image” here for many years.  Images that are able to call back home to deliver pertinent data, images that can automatically find their way to the expecting viewers, images that can self edit according to viewership and a lot more.

Some aspects are already in circulation in one form or another. Companies like Fotoglif or Embedanything, for example, already allow licensors to track number of visits on a published image and eventually reap revenues from associated  advertising.

Daylife, partly owned by Getty Images, allow sites to bypass photo editors and have images edit themselves based on surrounding content.

Now, thanks to a company called Netbat ( What’s with all the horrible stupid names ?),  images can be linked to any and all relevant information, thus making them even more informative.

The process is simple. When a image is published, it is also populated with links for more information on the subject, being at Youtube, Wikipedia, or any other sources. Thus the image becomes the starting point for a relevant web-wide search on the topic.

 The company apparent business plan is to sell that search link space to advertisers so that topic/subject can be linked to a brand. Already Pepsi has signed up. Instead of advertising on random images, netBat can make sure a brand is always associated to a personality or a topic and nothing more/less. It’s not a big surprise as the parent company of netBat is in the business of selling celebrity endorsement. But that is not what is interesting here.

What is interesting here is how, once again, a company from outside the photogrpahy space, find another way to monetize images . While countless of photo agencies and independent photographers are moaning and bitching about the declining space rates/ day rates  / whatever rates being offered in the traditional licensing space, other companies are hard at work in redefining paying usage of photography.

NetBat, like Pixazza, another image monetizing company (this one partly owned by Google), has no intention of splitting revenues with image licensors. For them, once an image has been licensed by a publisher, the licensor is out of the profit sharing scheme.

Thing is, photo agencies should be the ones offering these services to their clients, not third party companies. It would make sense for a photo agency to offer a tool like NetBat that would allow visitors to go  beyond the metadata.  To transform their offering to a vast array of option that are up to pace with current and upcoming technology.

Currently, besides having painfully switched from analog to digital, none are being pro active in redefining image delivery and licensing. Some have timidly put a toe into third party initiative but none have taken a full plunged into uncharted territory.

We are not saying netBat will be a success. Actually, it is so heavy, it is doubtful it will ever be. However, the idea of helping viewers to go beyond the image is a great concept. One that fits perfectly  with the unstoppable maturing of photography into an intelligent experience that can take you places far beyond it’s current solitary confinement.

Posted in copyright, celebrity, magazine, technology, license, Search, transaction, finance, photojournalism, google, editorial | Print | 2 Comments »

October 14, 2010 by pmelcher.

“You want to save it, you should niche it”. From old timers stock gurus to young green microstock expert, they all tell the same tale of potential success : dig yourself into a deep hole where no one else can reach you and stay there. Shoot stuff no one else shoots and bark if they approach. If you can, trademark your subject so no one else can do it.

It’s not about being successful as a photographer anymore, it’s about protecting your turf, like a suburban owner protects his patch of lawn from his neighbors. It’s the typical bourgeois mentality. In face of adversity, retreat and protect. Would you like a pair of well trained Doberman with that ?

Problem is, you do not own your subject. You do not own your clients . You do not own anything ( well, besides your equipment). So there is nothing to protect.

In Microstock, more than anywhere else, clients belong exclusively to the platforms. Contributors have no clue who they are selling to, or why.  In more traditional markets, sales report still carry some information on the licensor. However that is diminishing too. So, tell me, if you do not know who your clients are, what your market is, how can you niche yourself ?

By trial and error ? Sure. Another problem, is that, mostly in microstock, it is very easy to see what works. Makes that niche even more so attractive to others. Quickly.

The commercial stock market has decided to walk on its head. It used to be that photographers would shoot what they loved and sell that. Some, very, very well. That worked well, especially since no one had really any clue what the other was shooting, except by seeing what was being published. Now, everybody can see everybody else’s body of work, especially the vast quantity of what never gets sold. So, instead of shooting what they love, they shoot what has not been shot. They search for a niche, like miner search for a vein.

Let’s say you find a niche. Then what ? How do you find your clients? Since you are the only one with these images, they will find you ? Is that the thinking ? The “field of dreams” marketing strategy ?

Images don’t market themselves ( at least, not yet) . Those images you see going viral are the exception, not the rule. They are billion of images just on Flickr and you think your images will stand out ? because they are rare ? Did you ever think, for one second, that they are rare because no one cares ?

Once you start leaving the crowded marketplace you certainly find less competition but also less clients. And that is what this whole “find a niche” counsel is all about : If you can’t sell what you have it’s because of the competition thus if you eliminate the competition by going where they are  not, you will be successful . It’s not by moving away miles away from Wal-Mart that you will beat them.

Here’s a niche you should try : talent. Shoot everything that everyone else shoots : with talent. No one can copy talent. You will be own out there, because clients will request your images, and no one else’s, regardless of what you shoot.

Leave the niches to those who like living in caves. Your specialty should be how you approach your subject, not your subjects.

Posted in license, commercial stock, Waste of time, Search, prosumer, Royalty free, flickr, Microstock | Print | 1 Comment »