January 25, 2012 by pmelcher.

Just like the music industry, with which it shares many similarities, the photo licensing world is ripe to be iTuned.

The industry landscape is dispersed and confused. None of the photo licensing companies know what to do. From the Getty images to the small mom and pops that have been around for 5,000 years ( it seems) , everyone is playing the wait and see game. Some try various solutions in the hopes it will lead to a new golden age but none innovate.

Furthermore, even with the Getty/ Corbis consolidations, it is still a very disparate world with deep resentments and personal conflicts. From one company to the other, there is suspicion, continuous poaching, and overall despise.

• Illegal copying is rampant. Copyright images are being stolen at a rate never experienced before. As much as 85% of images used on the internet are done so without permission. While bigger companies have seen this as an opportunity for new revenue by throwing crowds of lawyers on the issue, most are just bleeding files like the worst days of Napster. It is not going away. Even as the marketplace gets more educated, there is little or no incentives, or risks, not to continue. While some technology have tried to alleviate the issue, it is getting worse, not better.

• People are lazy. They like simple because it is easy, not because it is simple. They want to be able to find images quickly and use them immediately. While Royalty Free and more recently microstock have greatly facilitated the image purchasing process, their content is too generic to satisfy the increasing demanding need for personalization.

• RM is too complicated. And obsolete. With its complicated rules, it is a deterrent. For users to find the price of an image based on at least 6 different variables ( territory, circulation, placement, length, language and type of publication) is a nightmarish headache. Furthermore, it doesn’t make sense to an uneducated market. It makes those who can afford more, pay more. For the same image, a successful publication will pay more than the poor, just because they have been successful in bringing in traffic. Not specially fair. Furthermore, a fee based on final usage doesn’t make sense: It is a bit as if at the check out of a supermarket, they would ask you what you plan to do with those raw potatoes before charging you accordingly. Finally, It is also out of tune with the current market conditions that demand the possibility of using the same image for the same purpose on different support.

• Exclusivity is dead. Well, almost. Withe the huge amount of images available, the risk of using the same image as your competitor is nullified. Still, if absolute exclusivity is a requirement, assignment photography is now cheap enough, especially with all the unemployed photographers on the market. Furthermore, unless if you are a huge brand, in which case you will not use stock photography, having the same exact image does not seem to matter much.

• The market is expending. While some companies have done a great job at controlling the traditional sales channel, they cannot control the incessant increase of new customers, especially online. New blogs, brands, businesses appear everyday with photography needs and with no idea where to purchase images.

• Trained Photo editors are disappearing. While purchasing photography was the responsibility of a few very well educated professionals, it is no longer the case. As the old timers are being laid off, they are being replaced by younger, uneducated people who purchase images among many other duties. They don’t know, nor do they care and are asked to purchase based on price.

• Photography is begging to be free. Just like news on the internet is begging to be free. Taking photograph has become such an easy process that no one believes they should pay to use one. With billions of easily available images online, it has all the aspect of an endless commodity. Barriers between professionals and amateurs have been blown away and even high end commercial sites like CNN.com are more and more relying on free crowd sourced images. If CNN doesn’t pay for images, why should anyone else ?

In other words, professionally licensed photography is breaking from all direction. A bit like the music industry was before a tech company ( Apple) took over the distribution.

Since photography and the internet is a marriage made in heaven, there no shortage of very smart, tech savvy entrepreneur ready to spend the funds of a smart VC . The challenge ?

Replace the antiquated, print based licensing model by an effective, flexible process. A platform a la iTune.

Not that replicating iTune for photography would work. Countless of RF or Microstock aggregators have come and gone leaving no trace of success behind them.

The iTune for photography will come from somewhere else, from a tech company that will approach the photo licensing industry from a consumer end. Not from what licensors want but from what consumers need. They will make it simple, easy and cost effective to purchase images and use them, wether it comes from Getty Images or your cousin Fred. The solution, using technology wisely, will be so obvious that it will sweep the photo industry of it’s already febrile grounds and make impossible to live outside of it.

Posted in license, Search, Cnn, technology, commercial stock, web 2.0, finance, getty, Royalty free, corbis, news, editorial, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

December 7, 2011 by pmelcher.

Finally a smart exact match image finder with accurate results. Current image match operators use a lazy approach to find similar images. They scan the images and look for exact replica patterns in other images, regardless of content. The result is that they sometimes , or very often, get fooled by exact patterns that have nothing to do with the original image . Sometimes we are left to wonder.
This project from Carnegie Mellon University  uses a more human approach. It first compares the image with a pool of images that have nothing to do with the original. The reason ? To find out what is different thus notable. It then takes that information and proceeds with the match search. So, not only it searches for exact patterns, it also keeps on track by making sure that the notable element(s) of the image are included, discarding others.
The result is a much more efficient result, matching more precisely what a human would be looking for.
See video here:

The issue with image search on the internet is, however, not solved. With millions of images being uploaded everyday, with billions of websites changing their content daily, it is currently impossible to index and search all images. Sites like Tineye, although claiming 2 billion images indexed is still only indexing a nugget of the image universe. Not even  mighty Google can keep up.
Thus, this technology is certainly a step in the right direction and could work wonders in a closed image database but it still will not find all the images out there.

Posted in technology, commercial stock, idee, Search, google, editorial | Print | No Comments »

October 25, 2011 by pmelcher.

Picture yourself, if you will, at a baseball game ( or soccer, or basketball). Imagine that each player, from each team has a HD video camera following his every move throughout the entire game. A few seconds after the game is finished, 5 of the best frames from all the video feeds are send to to publications worldwide.

Just like that.

How is this possible you say ? It is not. At least not yet. But it is coming soon.

Researcher at the University of Washington are currently working on what could be called “machine based photo editing”

Using videos of people speaking at a camera, they can teach a computer to extract the best frames that would make perfect portraits.

How do they do it ? Simple. They first use real people to select the best faces in a feed. They then teach the computer the elements that make a good portrait, like a visible smile, an expression, open eyes, etc and that’s it. They compare the machine edit with the real people edit and see if they have a perfect match. when they do, they know that they no longer need humans.

This wouldn’t have to be limited to sports photography. The same could be done for movie premieres, press conferences, political rallies and so on. In the amateur field, this would be perfect to cover parties, weddings or any family/friends events. Imagine, you are filming and you camera could automatically pick the best images and post them to Facebook.

Harder would be coverages of wars or any brutally unexpected events.

The push for machine based editing is already happening. Microstock companies, for example, would be delighted to get rid of the thousands of free lance photo editors that comb through their millions of submissions and give it to a 24/7/365 machine that would never ask for a raise.

Most photo agencies would certainly also be  delighted. Since the advent of digital and with the continuous drop in prices of cards, they have seen the volume of images submitted to them increase dramatically. Being able to instruct a computer on how to pick the best frames would cut costs dramatically.

The possibility of quickly and reliably edit from a video feed will soon open up the doors to impeccable photo coverage without the need of ever using a photographer. When ? in the next 5 year. And you thought that declining space rate prices was a challenge.

Posted in technology, commercial stock, celebrity, wire service, editorial, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

September 25, 2011 by pmelcher.

The real story behind the evolution of photography is its pauperization.

In its early days, photography was for the wealthy and educated. The equipment needed was expensive and the skills involved needed formal education. Furthermore, the financial risks involved in being a photographer - variable income- meant you had to have some other resources.

Even if they weren’t rich themselves, they were rich kids. And for a long time, it remained unchanged. Until rather recently when colliding advancement in technology - all pretty much unrelated to photography- open the door to lesser financially fortunate people from around the world.

- The internet, at first, made all the connections possible. It took a while to grow, mostly due to the cost of computers and connections but now, almost anywhere in the world, it’s dirt cheap.

- The dropping cost of memory, making it much cheaper to shoot digital then film.

- The cheap accessibility to market. What photo sharing companies like Flickr did, unintentionally, is connect buyers with new sellers.

-The incredibly low learning curve. No need to know anything about photography to be able to take amazing images these days: Instagram will do it for you.

Finally, automated translation has practically eliminated language barriers all over the world.

The result ? First in developed countries and then very quickly in less developed countries, more and more individuals took to their cameras as a new or additional source of income. Most pushed by a desperate need to generate income rather than an urge to express any artistic impulse. Because of their already low level of income, any revenue is good revenue. Clearly visible in microstock ( the extreme majority of participants are from emerging countries with low per capita) it is now spreading to non commercial stock areas of photography like news. They will happily accept any payment regardless if it is a fair price or not. Some publishers and photo agencies have realized the saving potential and have blissfully tap into this cheaper market.

Obviously, photographers living in developed countries, like the Western Hemisphere, have to face much high cost of living and cannot compete. Thus, they have to retreat in areas not available to rest of the world. For example, a US sport photographer can still command higher fees since his coverage cannot be done from another country. However, he is slowly being pressured downward by his local peers who have been pushed out of their market by cheaper competition.

The barriers of entry have fallen at such level that almost anyone can now pretend to be a photographer. With rising unemployment worldwide, more are stepping in the hope to generate some income, pushing aside established professional. Since in a depressed economy like ours the key differentiator is money, it’s the cheapest that wins the day.

In order for the situation to change, a few things would need to happen. First, obviously, the worldwide economy has to pick up, eliminating those who are necessity photographers by integrating them into other full time jobs. A more advanced type of photography should emerge, necessitating advanced skills to perform. Finally, a disassociation of the means of communication, wether technological or cultural. None seem likely to happen soon.

Posted in license, web 2.0, technology, commercial stock, Good Enough, Social Media, prosumer, flickr, news, Royalty free, editorial, transaction, photojournalism, finance, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

September 20, 2011 by pmelcher.

Just imagine, if you will, that publishers would get paid to use your images. Just imagine that publishers would actually generate a profit directly from your photographs. All that and you would also make more revenue at the same time . Don’t you think you would be the most popular photographer/ photo agency ?

Well, as of today, it is possible. Stipple has just launched Marketplace, an online tool that facilitate discovery of tagged images. Here is how it works : Publishers connect to the Stipple Image cloud by installing a little javascript code. They can then log in Stipple Marketplace and find images that contain embedded paid tags. Once published and thanks to viewers’ engagement, these images  start paying a revenue share to both image owners and publishers. It’s that simple.

For publishers, it is a godsend: What used to be a cost center can now become, for the first time ever,  a profit center. For image owners, it is a brand new revenue source. And for both, it does not require any additional work; Stipple handles all the back work. Finally, for both of them, it is free to join and participate.

But you do not have to believe a word I say. Instead you can read all about it in the Washington Post .

Posted in technology, Pacific coast news, Social Media, magazine, celebrity, finance, web 2.0, license, editorial | Print | No Comments »

September 12, 2011 by pmelcher.

Taking a cue from the succesful microstock model here is where photojournalism is heading.  It is happening under our eyes, right now and in four steps.

The decline of traditional photojournalism.
Nothing really new here. Rising cost of living (travel, lodging, food) has made it almost impossible for current print and web publishers to send top talents on stories anymore. The profit margins are not there anymore. Although there is a bucket full of very talented photojournalist available, there is just no funds to make them do what they do best. Furthermore, with the deaths of traditional photo agencies who used to pay for half of the costs, there is just not enough financial support to keep it going. It’s not photojournalism that is dying, it’s the funding that is going dry.  Furthermore, photo editors that championed the great stories have long gone, either retired or pushed out due to corporate restructuring or cost saving measures.

The rise in volume of the me-too photojournalism.

Here again, nothing we haven’t heard or seen before. Automated cameras that can nail an image in the even poorest conditions has helped introduced a new wave of photographers that can, and will snap at anything and everything and force distribute it via every channel possible. Force distribute because we really do not want to see it but thanks to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other social media, we get to see them anyway. The poor state of our economy has not help, obviously, making this forced free lance job even more appealing to many. It also has become easier to get published, at least once, giving everyone the false impression that this is easy. Anybody can become a photojournalist these days : you just need to be where the media attention is focused upon.

The death of the photo agency.
Photo agencies used to be the gateway to the media. With trained professionals, they filtered out the bad from the good and edited the work of the talented to make it even more compelling. They would also seek out news stories and send the best photographers to cover them, not only creating the news, but partly covering  for the costs. It was a gamble, where talented journalists would scout newspapers worlwide for that snippet of information that could be turned into the major news of the week thanks to the talent of a brilliant photographer. Those editors are gone now. Gambling on stories is just not an acceptable business model in our corporate world. Photo agencies are not agencies anymore, they are image distributors.

Speed vs quality.
Thanks to digital, the key decision element for an image to be published is how fast they get to a desktop. Thus a bad photographer can very well become successful if he is the fastest.  More and more, this is what we, viewers, are being served with : the first images rather than the best. Thus the key to becoming a published photojournalist is where you are and not who you are.

Where does it lead us to:

Where everyone can be a shooter, with no money to be spend on travel, no editors acting as gatekeepers and speed as the key factor, the decision us easy;

Forget the photo agency as an agent of talented photojournalists. The key now is to have a lot of contributors worldwide and hope that one will be at the right place at the right time. With photographers everywhere chances you will get the right image at the right time will increase, like buying a lot of lottery tickets.
In the film age, the cost of film, processing, shipment was too prohibitive. Now, you can receive and store million of images for a buck or two.
This well know photo agency recently proudly claimed representing 40 photographers in Gaza only. For a territory 140 square mile ( 360 Km2), that is one photographer per 3.5 square mile.

Thus, taking a queue from the microstock model, photojournalism is now switching to the volume based model. While profitable for a photo agency, it is devastating for photojournalism and photographers themselves.

Posted in technology, magazine, Tweet, Social Media, Corpocrates, Good Enough, newspaper, TIME, editorial, getty, transaction, finance, photojournalism, wire service, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

September 7, 2011 by pmelcher.

“Thoughts of ” is relocating or expanding :

On Facebook :  Thoughts of a Bohemian page  for the daily snippets

On La Lettre de la Photographie for 2 columns a week. One column is dedicated on the best there is to discover about photography on the web while the other, brand new, is about the world of photojournalism and photo agencies. You can read it and subscribe, for free, here : La Lettre de la Photographie.

what about about the typos ? they will follow me everywhere I go…

Obviously this blog will remain open, while quite not as often,  for longer thoughts and  hair raising revelations

Posted in magazine, celebrity, license, multimedia, Plus, technology, Corpocrates, Good Enough, Waste of time, Social Media, Search, No sense, finance, transaction, editorial, news, wire service, photojournalism, keyword, web 2.0, prosumer, getty | Print | No Comments »

July 10, 2011 by pmelcher.

Let’s face it, you are waging a losing battle. In fact, it’s not even a battle because one side has won already. Every time you sign up for a social network, be it Facebook, Twitter or Google +, you are faced with TOS ( Terms of Service) that are pure rights grabbing, making it a very dangerous proposition for you to share your images. Yet, everyone tells you that the only path to success is to have your images on these sites.

So, here are three core facts that you need to know about Social Networks:

- There is still no such thing as a free lunch. If someone offers you something for free, it is only because they get some kind of benefit out of it. You can be sure they will find a way to monetize your images.

- If you use a service for free, you become the product : what do you think Facebook, Twitter or Google + sell ? You. Your interaction on their sites is what they in turn sell to advertisers. That includes your pictures.

- They need the legal right to share your images. In order to show the images you post on their site to your friends and family, they need the legal right to do so. Since there is no way for them to know who are your friends, family or others ( nor do they care) , they make you agree to a blanket agreement stating that they can share them with everyone.

So, if you think you can sign up for a social network site that will protect your intellectual property, you are sticking your big left toe in your eye. It is just not and never going to happen. The answer ? Deal with it.

Accept the fact that if you post your images on a social network site, there is a 110 % chance that you could loose complete control of that image. Play along . If you post pictures of your 3 years old nephew at your cousin’s barbeque party, you have not much to worry about. Besides a few polite likes from your relatives, not much will happen to that image and it will soon be forgotten along with the other 10 million images uploaded to Facebook in a month. However, if you post the only image of a plane crash landing on the Hudson river, well, get ready for it to be grabbed and spread around.

Here is the irony. Photographers or photo agencies will post their images on social network sites in order for them to be seen, appreciated and dare we say it, shared ( ouch). Isn’t it the intended purpose of posting these images that they will end up in front of the eyes of a wealthy photo editor who will either purchase it or hire you ? And since you do not know him yet, the only path is via friends of friends re-posting it ? Should they all ask you for permission and pay you a license fee every time they do ? In other words, you give them something to share but you don’t want them to share.

Well then, quite a paradox . Ownership of an image doesn’t lie solely in managing its usage. It is also embedded in it. If you have a style, a talent, a point of view and an identity, your image will always speak your name, credit or no credit. Better yet, people who see your images will want to track you down in order to find out who is the talent behind those photograph. If they don’t, well, that’s because you failed as a photographer.

So what should you do with all these rights grabbing, soulless TOS that you keep on facing every day? Adapt.

They are not going to change because they are at the core of how these social networks make money. Not so much by licensing your images, obviously ( everyone knows there is no money there), but by using them to grow their network and thus selling more people to advertisers. And for that, they need the right to do what they damn well like with your images. Forever.

Keep that in mind next time you post images on any of these sites ( and others).  Your choices :

- Do not upload images

- Watermark your images

- Upload only images you are ready to give away

Either way, stop bitching and moaning about a new TOS like there was anything you could do about it. Although it might feel like it sometimes, it is not your platform, it’s theirs. They will do whatever they think is appropriate to generate revenue from it . They don’t owe you anything, you do.

So stop wasting your energy and time . Get back on your saddle and figure out  how you too can benefit from their services intelligently without loosing your pants and shoes ( and your sanity). Eventually the ecosystem will find a balance.

Posted in technology, Tweet, Social Media, Waste of time, digg, license, flickr, prosumer, web 2.0, transaction | Print | 1 Comment »

June 22, 2011 by pmelcher.

A new camera is about to change how we think about photography. Or is it ? This camera, called Lytro, records the light field instead of a beam of light. Let me try to explain:

Our current camera record light in one point regardless of its distance and crashes all the information in one location. The Lytro, however, records light from all direction and can take into consideration how far the light is based on its intensity. It than records and store this information so it can be retrieve at will later on.

The result. A camera that does not need to focus. By capturing all the information of a visual scene at once, including the distances, it creates a file that contains all the focus points. Thus leaving the focus decision to the viewers. Example ( click on the image) :

The result is an interactive image demanding viewer participation. No longer does the photographer control the narrative of his image, it becomes the prerogative of the consumer.

The good news is that there is no need for focusing anymore. Everything in the image is in focus when needed. Thus no waiting for cameras to find the focus point. The second advantage is since the sensor is so much more sensitive, images in very low light are not so difficult to capture anymore.

However, because there is always a However in new technology, this puts the burden of point of view on the viewer. Well, it’s not really a burden. The photographer no longer controls where he wants the viewers eyes to concentrate on. Since photography or at least great photography is all about point of view, this could not be such a welcomed tool.

It also kills depth of field . Well, it redefines how we experience depth of field. From a fix position, we can now navigate through it, revealing what used to be blurry elements. Again, we are messing with point of view and subjective perspective. A photographer uses fixed depth of field to convey a message. By allowing it to change, the message is partly, or greatly lost.

Finally, this technology is only available online. Obviously, it cannot be printed. It is not explained how an image taken by one of these cameras would look in a book, or a magazine . The assumption would be that one would need to select a point of focus and fix it in order to use the image for print, thus loosing all the novelty aspect.

“Proof is in the pudding”, as said the queen of spade, so there is no telling what the result would be until one of these cameras are put in the hands of very creative people. It will be interesting to see the results when the camera becomes available but we do not see this going much further then other trendy technologies like tilt-shift photography or lens Babies.

You can read some more and reserve your camera here

Posted in focus, technology, multimedia, filter, lensbabies, slideshow | Print | No Comments »

June 15, 2011 by pmelcher.

It was bound to happen. Like clockwork, Google has released its Tineye killer :

Google’s version is much better as it also offers exact match with size option, similars, and of course any context relevant to the imageSince Google has a million time more resources than Idee, the company behind Tineye, it is obvious who will will. The question becomes what will Idee do with the billions of images it has already indexed ?

More on this info and Tineye reaction ( or lack of) : The Financial Post

Posted in technology, idee, Search, google | Print | No Comments »