August 4, 2010 by pmelcher.

From a Photo Editor job posting at Time, inc, the world’s biggest publisher of magazine in the world:

-Excellent editorial judgment and eye, must generate story ideas and identify topics to cover, must react to news.
-Edit and build various online photo galleries, notably never-seen LIFE archival content and LIFE.coms weekly feature: The Weeks Best Photos
-Oversee and perform the digital restoration of LIFE archival photos (basic retouching and color correction)
-Experience negotiating and managing usage rights and rates for digital, mobile and video content
-Assign, produce and direct original photo essays
-Liaise with Editorial, Legal, Sales and PR Teams in the execution of featured content packages
-Manage freelance staff
-Strong eye for young talent
- Must be creative in terms of doing more with less for less and must be ready and willing to do so

Revealing, isn’t it ? Especially the last phrase, which could be rewritten like this : Must be capable of getting the best images for peanuts and not complain about it. Ever.

This is symptomatic of the photo world today : Publishing companies profiting from the recession to squeeze top talent into a dilapidated photo department and forcing them to put pressure on photographers.

When will we see photo editors salaries only constituted of the money they save ?

Here is you budget. Whatever you do not use for photo purchase, you can keep for yourself.

Thus putting photo editor in direct survival competition with photographers.

As long as the publishing companies keep on treating photography as a necessary evil that needs to be crushed into “misc.” category along with other parasite expenses, nothing will change.

And, as long as there is photographers or photo agencies willing to accept this pathetic treatment , nothing will change.

O yes, if you wondered why we all had to sacrifice ourselves: 

Time Inc. Operating Profit Jumps 50%, Ad Revenue Climbs 4%

Posted in celebrity, license, magazine, Good Enough, Corpocrates, newspaper, SIPA, news, editorial, photojournalism, TIME, getty | Print | No Comments »

July 19, 2010 by pmelcher.

Man I love what this guy has to say :

Posted in license, multimedia, Search, TIME, celebrity, magazine, E Reader, commercial stock, technology, web 2.0, prosumer, news, corbis, getty, editorial, transaction, flickr, photojournalism, finance, Microstock | Print | 3 Comments »

July 12, 2010 by pmelcher.

The Long love affair between photography and Media is over .

Because the editorial world is replacing experience photo editors with journalistic background for inexperience pixel pushers that are ordered to select the cheapest images, regardless of quality, they are opening the visual airways for steep competition.

A bit like traditional Royalty free opened the door to microstock by increasing prices and leaving a huge marketplace vacuum, magazines ( web or print) are leaving a wide open space for quality photography.  Because they still thinking terms of gatekeepers, they beleive the audience will follow them into whatever they publish. Problem is, this is the internet : the many to many market. They are no gatekeepers anymore, just influencers.

More and more, out of frustration to see great images go unpublished, photo agencies or photographers are doing their own editing/publishing. Zuma Press, with their Double Truck magazine was one of the first ones. Probably fed up of not seeing great images published in their rightful format, aka double page, they proceeded in doing their own magazine, featuring the images they liked the most. Is it a runaway success ? No. But it was a first.

Since then, a lot of photo agencies have launched their own blogs, featuring their own images, since their traditional clients would not use them. Not because they were bad, but because they were unwilling to pay a decent price for them. Some of these blogs, like X17online.com have become leaders in their markets. Photo agencies like VII have also launched  their own magazine, also in frustration of never seeing some of their great coverage go unpublished.

The result ? The public now has access to other sources of photography, previously hidden from them. They can see and compare. Gatekeepers are being challenged by influencers.

The smart publisher are the ones that will quickly realize and capitalize on this. Drop the most traveled image rat race for the lesser traveled side road of quality.

Here’s the deal : A well designed magazine with high quality- exclusive content will have no problem raising a successful paywall. The same way as people have no problem paying for very expensive Jewelry at Tiffany’s, or Cartier, they have no problem for paying for something they feel has value. They will not never pay for same middle of the road content. It’s not Pay walls that do not work, it’s what it’s what is behind them.

So here is the evolution of photography : More and more, creators of photography , disappointed of not seeing their best work being published, mostly because of unbreakable subscription deals made with mass providers, will start self publishing . More and more, those precious eyeballs that all want to retain so desperately will start navigating elsewhere and spread their attention span to other non mainstream sites.

The tide will be even greater when a critical mass will start understanding that they are not seeing the best , but the cheapest . Photographers will start combining their content with others and create their own outlets. Photo Agencies will gain momentum in their self publishing efforts. The media outlets that have spend millions to raise and maintain their brands will start being eclipsed by a guy and a computer.

Don’t think it can work ? Wireimage has been very succesful for many years in charging consumers to have access to medium  access to their images. No downloads, no editorial, just access to bigger thumbnails. Strangely, that model has never been replicated while their is no reason why it wouldn’t work elsewhere.

Editorial publishers are dropping the ball on their suppliers and forcing them to become their own competition. Or go out of business. Does that make any sense ? All that while lying to their clients. How long will that last ? Even with the advent of Ipads and E readers, this will not continue long.

Maybe the fall of Newsweek, and right behind, Time magazine, has a lot to do with that. If you have paid attention, you would have seen that in the last 4-5 years, they have reduced their image content to everything Getty/AP/Reuters in order to save money. Result ? Same images you all have seen on the web, but a week later…And then they wonder why people don’t purchase them anymore. They have laid off so many great photo editors that there is no way they can even find a great image anymore. In other words, they have both killed what had made them successful.

In other words, if photography is in crisis right now, its because Media is dying of a long slow agonizing death and trying the bring it along. Trouble is, photography can live without Media, not the opposite. These times are about to show it.

Posted in celebrity, magazine, Newsweek, E Reader, license, TIME, news, editorial, photojournalism, web 2.0, getty | Print | No Comments »

May 13, 2010 by pmelcher.

What is going ? I ‘ll tell you what is going on : Recently, Time, inc, the biggest publisher of magazines in the world has made an agreement with AP, Reuters and Getty Images to license any and all non-exclusive images for a flat rate of $50.00, regardless of size or placement . Magazines like Time, or Fortune, or Sports Illustrated, that used to easily pay $200.00 for a 1/4 page will now have the same images for $50.

It is not the first deal of the sort. Recently Getty Images had a similar arrangement with Bauer publishing for a 3 months try out. Probably because of photo editors resistant clamor and the very negative reaction of other photography suppliers, it did not last.

What does all this mean ?  Well, for one, big publishers are trying to cut costs as drastically as they can. After laying of hundreds of staffers, they are now squeezing suppliers as much as they can. It is somewhat predictable considering the hit they have taken on the advertising side.  Some magazines , like Time, know it is just a question of time ( no pun..) before their paper edition vanishes. It is the same for most weekly celebrity magazines who already suffer heavily from the onslaught of free celebrity website that are much faster at breaking news.

But why would AP, Reuters and Getty would agree to such prices ? Well, for AP and Reuters, born and bred on the subscription model, who hardly pay any commissions to photographers, it is not too much of a stretch.  Furthermore, each one must have thought that the other would have taken the deal and thus be shut out. Dividing to better conquer is something that just doesn’t belong to Julius Ceasar.

Getty images in all this? Well, they have recently change their strategy completely. They are moving away from the fully wholly own content to the mega distributor. They no longer care if they pay any commissions or not and where they get their content from. They want to become indispensable so there is no way to avoid them. Be a monopoly without appearing to be. Thus, they will be willing to sell images for pennies (which they already do) as long as they are the sole distributor. In a way, they are applying the istockphoto model to editorial : “if it cost me nothing to get content, then I can sell it for nothing”

Obviously this is extremely damaging to the world of photography . It will continue to force thousands out of this business, including some very talented elements. It will further eliminate the need for good photo editor as their choice will only be a factor of price. It will devalue the role of photography altogether.

Together with the apostles of the free internet, the Creative Commons barbarians of the Free Frontier foundation, those who are accomplice to these ravaging pricing policies , sellers as well as buyers are contributing to the complete destruction of the photographic landscape. Sure, you will always find “push buttons” ready to execute for a few dollars while they search for another job, but you will no longer be able to see great passionate photography done by amazing eyes. It’s going to be the battle of the crabs, pushing and shoving each other for pieces of crumbs in an ocean of boring banality.  There will no longer be careers in photography.

For those photographers contributing with a smile to these “agencies” thinking they bet on the right horse, they will realize soon that they are no better than slime sticking to a rotten ship . Your photos will soon be free, the exact value that these companies have for your miserable little lives. If you think you are in control now, we shall talk in 5 years from now.

For the others, those who continue to stand against these increasing polluted waves, there is still hope. The hope that mediocracy will destroy itself in a vast self sucking black hole, that those nose-in-the-sky corpocrates who destroy the very own land they try to build upon for pure self interest will finally go the way of the dinosaurs, like so many before them. For those who stand for well rewarded quality work, for making and maintaining a trade made by individuals with a soul, with a passion, with a dedication for truth and respect, there is hope.

There is hope in the knowledge that soon readers will be fed up of seeing the same images everywhere, regurgitated by the same gross pipeline of photography. There is hope in knowing that soon, not every website, every magazine will want to have the same exact images that their competitors have, even though it’s cheap. There is hope in knowing that exclusive will soon regain their value and their grace, that talent attracts eyeballs and that pleased eyeballs bring money, lots of money. Finally, there is hope that by committing to these prices, these companies will fail to find anyone able to live to sustain their production.

What we are witnessing  are the first final steps of those who wanted to be giants who will  collapse on their own weight. Because, once you have reached critical mass, once you have cornered every major aspect of this market, there is only one way to go.

Posted in license, celebrity, magazine, technology, TIME, photojournalism, editorial, transaction, finance, wire service, getty | Print | 20 Comments »

January 19, 2010 by pmelcher.

So you would think that with all the problems that online publications are causing to the print magazine industry, they would fight back in some manner. The print paper world would be all gang ho in trying to secure its predominance as the primary source of news and information so that the crowds would rush to purchase copies. But no.

It’s a complete lethargy. Well, at least in the USA. Take editorial photography. As much as they care if an image has been used in a competing publication, they completely ignore anything online.  They seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that they come out sometimes with the same image that has been seen previously for more than a week on numerous websites. As if no one paid attention. However, with some URL’s drawing millions of visitors , and most, the same people they also try to attract, it should be hard to ignore.

Yet, they continue to ignore the reasons for their decline. Partly to save money ( as if it is going to help) , partly because a completely blindness to the forces that are shaping their market. If I have seen an image numerous times, for free, online, I am going to be a bit upset if I see it, again, days, weeks later, in a print publication I had to pay for. If it happens once, I could ignore it. If it happens issue after issues, I would want my money back.

No other industry has this approach to its consumer. Movies only show trailers, music have just snippets ( of  course, I am not mentioning stolen material) and you pay to hear/see the full version. If all was available online  a week before they could be purchased, it is doubtful that a lot of people would pay for them.

Magazines, in some sort of oblivious superiority,  continue to publish , week after weeks, month after months the same images already seen online more than once. Maybe they think that if they ignore it, the problem might disappear. Maybe they think that by the time they come out, readers will have forgotten what they had seen just hours ago on a website. Maybe they just think that their support is so superior than the digital, no one will notice.

The second issue with this, a bit more hidden, is that photogrpahers and photo agencies provide website with a free first right  at a lesser fee than  what a print publication would pay. In other words, website get to use the same image, much sooner than print for 10% of the price that a magazine pays to use it a week later. Does it make any sense ?

In France, for example, no magazine would ever publish an image that has been used on a website previously. None. Photo agencies or photographers do not have a problem with that since website pay so little, it is not even funny. Thus, readers can be sure that will discover new image in every issue. And with just cause, they paid for that, and other privilege. They paid to purchase a  product that do not consider them like fools. They pay for originality. They pay for what they value.

In the upcoming or ongoing debate about online pay walls, how many of the newspapers, magazines and others will take the step to guarantee original photography ? Because if it is to see another slideshow made of pictures from the trilogy (Getty, AP, Reuters ) that you can see anywhere else, I doubt people will be happy. And if they are not happy, well, they won’t pay. A pay wall will only work if people want to get in. And people will want to get in if the content inside is not something seen elsewhere for free.

The war between original content ( expensive) and  cost cutting  (cheap) is raging with  cost-cutting seemingly winning most battles these days. However, creating something for cheap that no one wants to pay for is not at all a guarantee of success. Once the CFO’s and their bosses finish destroying the very nature of what made their companies successful in a rarely seen slaughterhouse of talent, there will be only a few standing. And those will not be the ones that are the cheapest to operate but those who have found the zen like balance between originality, quality, cost and timeliness.

Photography will always be here to offer  all of this and much, much more. We know it, we are just waiting for them to understand it.

Posted in license, newspaper, celebrity, magazine, Newsweek, TIME, photojournalism, editorial, transaction, finance, wire service, france | Print | No Comments »

December 24, 2009 by pmelcher.

Today should be a day to rejoice, worldwide. People all over the world close their doors, and eyes, from the surrounding world and regroup in their family cocoon to enjoy a few hours of peace and serenity. Outside, the battles still rages creating more casualties.

French newspaper le Monde just announced that collective photo agency, L’oeil Public, was filing for bankruptcy.  For those who only care about what is happening in their own country, or even backward, that might mean nothing. However, like a upcoming storm, events that will soon be over your head tend to start somewhere else. L’oeil Public was one of the most successful collective in the past ten years. Composed of a handful of very talented photogrpahers, they had managed to elevate social photojournalism to new heights. Mostly specialized in french social events, they were not afraid to tackle international events if they deemed important enough L’oeil was one of the rare few collective to have managed to cross the Atlantic successfully , getting regular assignment from US publication like Time or Newsweek.

A collective is not a photo agency. A collective is made up of like minded photographers who decide to pool some of their resource needs in order to reduce cost and help each other. It is a tad socialist concept, thus very unpopular in the USA as it might potentially lead to a communist revolution .

The reason for L’oeil’s closure is now becoming a banality : Falling prices and  lesser assignments. A declining demand for original photography thanks to a marketplace that is more eager to save money than make money. A marketplace that has become a playground for CFO’s and their armies of blindly dedicated bean counters. Where photojournalism has been replaced by coupon journalism, where photo editors recruit amateurs to submit free images and where photographer hold high and proud checks with $2 and $3 license sales while screaming ” This is Better than nothing”. It is a market place where pundits will tell you that the road to posterity is paved with Twitts, blogs and Facebook updates. That the next Google search could yield thousands if not millions of dollars and that SEO is your key to success, not photography. It is a marketplace where trade publications turn a blind eye to monopolistic behaviors and where cheap has replace talent. It is a marketplace  that now sees editorial sales fall to 8 and 11 cents a piece.

L’Oeil Public’s situation is certainly not  a fluke and should not be dismissed as extremely far and extremely irrelevant. It is what is awaiting a lot of businesses and individuals in the year to come. Prosperity in not just around the corner and the “something is better than nothing” mentality will not work.

Posted in TIME, license, magazine, Newsweek, photojournalism, finance, news, france, editorial, getty | Print | No Comments »

October 7, 2009 by pmelcher.

20 minutes to better understand what my earlier post was about. Chimamanda Adichietalks about literature but photography is as much a guilty member of this . We should no longer be the instruments of intellectual colonization.

Next time you embark on a photo shoot, think of where your story will fit in the perception of the country, continent and culture you are about to photograph.

Posted in newspaper, magazine, technology, Newsweek, TIME, photojournalism, editorial, slideshow, filter, news | Print | 2 Comments »

September 24, 2009 by pmelcher.

I do not want to see another photo essay, multimedia or any visual on dying Africans. Never, ever again.  Enough. I understand that it makes for compelling images, that it seems that the photographers cares, but it present such a distorted vision of this beautiful continent. Not every country is at war, not every African is an orphan dying of aids or malnutrition. Not everyone lives in a broken down shaft wearing nothing more than rip jeans.

But from here, from the United States of America, a country which is still very much struggling with its very, very  racist past, it is just not sending the right message. It is actually saying “look, Africa is this continent full of malnourished savages with hatchets dying of aids because they are uneducated”. It is the biggest, longest, most powerful brainwashing operation that photojournalists have gladly contributed to with open arms.

This ongoing belief, supported by photo festivals like Visa and others, that photojournalism is all and only about blood, decay, despair and endless wars has found in Africa an endless feeding ground.

Although most of these images do not lie, it is not the Truth. This is not Africa. It would be like putting a loupe on a beautiful dress and  only continuously showing its one flaw.

The reason is clear. It is mainly because of NGO photojournalism. Rich people give money to NGO’s who then hire photographers to document their work. And since they operate in poor, war and disease stricken area of Africa, that is all we get to see these days. And because of the continued lack of funding of the editorial press, we will probably see even more, not less.

Just imagine your perception of America if all you would see were images of  9/11, Katrina, Detroit, urban ghettos and nothing else. Don’t laugh Europe, we could do the same with you. Would you ever consider going there on vacation ?

Africa, or at least it’s despair, has become the playing ground of the new photojournalists. Like a badge of honor, you’re not a real photojournalist if you have not covered at least one desolate part of the continent. The results is thousand upon thousand of reportages , essays, multimedias, especially online, repeating the same stories to a saturation point. No wonder magazines will not publish them even if some are extremely brilliant. They are, as the readers, fed up.

In  a way, photojournalism is killing itself by over repetition. Ironically, it is also deforming our view of the world by being so stubbornly surgical and mono sighted. It is replacing reality with cliches, destroying what it tries to explain.

So please no more images of half naked dying soldiers full of flies under an imponderable sun, no more death looking eyes on top of an extremely malnourished 3 year old, no more images of Kalashnikov-wearing tweens walking barefoot on dirt pathways amid the empty Savannah. It will end up making everyone look the other way, if it hasn’t already. Make us hope, make us want to get involved. Don’t disgust. You are not better, or more useful, because you took pictures of it and we didn’t. If you keep this up, it’s not Africa that will disappear first, but those who try, so poorly, to make us aware of its plights.

Posted in multimedia, magazine, focus, lens, newspaper, TIME, editorial, slideshow, photojournalism, news | Print | 6 Comments »

August 19, 2009 by pmelcher.

Some photo editors need a medal…along with their editor in chief. Not a one time award for best editing. No. Something bigger, brighter and more reflective of their achievement.  Jody Quon, Director of Photography for the wonderful New York Magazine should be the first recipient. Not only the photography in every issue is always amazing, refreshing, surprising and captivating, but the Fashion Issue that just hit the stands this week surpasses everything. The portraits are dead on, the stock is carefully chosen, but the real treat is a 24 pages photo essay by Marcus Bleasdale on the fall fashion shows in Paris.

Yes, 24 pages, mostly double page spread, of pure, unaltered, hardly captioned photography. No article, no explanation, just pure photography. This is such a rare and powerful event in magazine publishing, it should be noted screamed about. When all other magazines, worldwide, are using less and less photography, in what they beleive is a healthy way to cut costs, New York Magazine goes entirely the other way and puts more.

It is not the first time a magazine hires a war/documentary photographer to shoot fashion. It has been done before, hoping to shed a different vision on the already over-photographed catwalks. Most of the time, the result is very bad. The reason : The photographers couldn’t care less about what they are seeing and you can see it. They would much prefer to be paid to go back on the battlefield, any battlefield.

Marcus Bleasdale, recent new member of  VII  photo agency and mostly known for his powerful and multiple award winning work on the horrible conditions of gold mining in Congo, was up to now, mostly seen in Time or Newsweek magazine, if hardly at all. He would take his work and expose it everywhere it could make a difference (See article here). If you know the man, he is not the type you will see at parties, movie premieres and or at fashion shows. That is a world that he avoids at  all cost.

Liu Wen at the Alexander McQueen show. (Photo: Marcus Bleasdale)

So, seeing his photographs of runways and backstage is a shock. I had to read his credit three or four times before I could convince myself that this was the same man who has been living in mud, contracting the worse horrible diseases, hiding from corporate-hired hit man, in order to expose the realities of Africa.

The New York Magazine spread is Marcus all right: It is clearly judgmental, sometimes violent in its opinion. Some models look like criminals just arrested for a crime they know they are guilty off and the whole atmosphere reeks of decadence. Like a party that has been going on too long. You see and feel that Marcus doesn’t like this crowd. There is also a strong sense of solitude, probably wanted by Marcus but accentuated by the editing of Jody.

So, for all those who complain and whine about the death of the photo essay in the American magazine landscape, go out and purchase one, or ten copies of this week’s New York Magazine. Not only you will love it, but you will also send a clear signal that this is what we all want to see more off. Furthermore, the images do not seem to be online, so if you want to experience them, you better get off that couch.

Thank you Marcus Bleasdale, Thank you Jody Quon, Thank  you Adam Moss ( That is the Editor in Chief, in case you didn’t know)

Posted in technology, lens, Newsweek, magazine, TIME, editorial, photojournalism, news | Print | 1 Comment »

June 18, 2009 by pmelcher.

It is interesting to see that as the technology has made easier and faster to transmit images, we are seeing less of photojournalism on main events.

30 years ago, it would have been unimaginable that such events like the Gaza/Israeli war, the Sri Lanka war or the Iranian protest would not be photographed. Now it seems to be the rule more than the exception. More and more, governments seem succesful in blocking any professional coverage of events they deem to cast a negative light on their policy.

The US, with the first and second Iraqi war were the first to initiate a partial blockade of imagery. They subtly enforced a control of photographers by forcing them to be either pooled ( first Iraqi war) or embedded ( second Iraqi war). It has been quite succesful in avoid the American public and the world to see the real impact of these wars.

Israel was even more succesful in completely shielding its theater of operations from any media. Sri-Lanka followed suit and now Iran.

It doesn’t seem so hard, after all. As long as you threaten the media with  physical harm or arrest, you are practically done.

Thus, the only scarce images we get to see are those official images, or those taken by participants, both with very clear agendas.

The reasons for this major shift in coverage are numerous :

- Lack of financing from the media. Either they cannot afford to send photographers to these part of the world, or they will not pay enough to justify a free lancer to risk their life. The disappearance of media outlets does not help as a photographer can’t even count on volume sales to cover his costs.

- The new journalists : they much prefer to set up Google alerts, check Twitter, Facebook and other sites than lift their asses from their chairs and report themselves. Twitter success, for example, is not due to its users, but to how broadly the media is using it. You have more chance to be published these days if you have a Twitter account than if you send a video to CNN Ireport. And why would those journalist leave the comfort of their cubicle if everything is delivered in their desktop.

- The death of the photo reporter : few and rare are those who really care about covering the news at all cost. Gone are the days of the Capa, Mccullin,  Adams, and many, many others that could not live if an event was not covered properly. Today’s photographers are too busy courting the NGO’s and Foundations to pay for them to cover anything.

- The death of photo agencies : the Sygma’s, SIPA, Gamma of the not so old days would do whatever it took to support a photographer willing to go and cover an event. Since you can now make a hundred time more money with a picture of Lindsay Lohan leaving her hotel a few blocks away, why bother ?

- The disappearance of the great news magazine: Besides Europe, great news magazines have vanished. They have not been replaced by online equivalent. There is a huge void. Not because there is no audience, but because there is no great editor in chief, great news gatherers.

It’s appalling to see, at least in the USA, that just because  foreign journalists are being kicked out from Iran, the pro coverage stops. It will only get worst.

Update : an exception should be made for Polaris Images. see here

Posted in magazine, technology, Newsweek, newspaper, SIPA, editorial, photojournalism, TIME, news | Print | No Comments »