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 »

May 21, 2009 by pmelcher.

Web 2.0 and beyond is all about empowering the consumer. It is no longer a viable business to make a product and sell it. These days, you have to let your customers act upon it to make it more personal. Technology allows this and as we have seen with Nike and it’s sneakers, it is highly successful. After all, we are individuals and we like our product to reflect us, and our taste.

Enter publisher and photographer of a  “A Day in the Life ” legend, Rick Smolan. He is releasing the “Time Capsule” book on Obama that lets you add your own images. Along with those of respected professional, you can now have a coffe table book that also contains your own photographs and experience. You can also add some of your own text. Every issue becomes exclusive to you.

More explanation here :

This is only the beginning of a new trend we have already seen with the MINE experiment from Time Inc. More and more, a bit like Google for news, one will be able to customize what they want to see, read or purchase. Not only customize, but personalized so that the user/buyer becomes part of the experience. An active consumer. A prosumer.

This will affect how images will be licensed in the future as, the more we seen on demand publications, the more a photo agency or photogrpaher will have to adapt its business to follow. Websites will not longer be a repository of stock images to be used by pro researchers, but accessible by anyone that would prefer to customize their edition.

An example : I read Time magazine and I am an avid  fan of the Aurora news photographers. I could choose to have the whole issue illustrated by that agencies photographers only. or mix and match with multiple sources of your liking . The same could be done with websites, books, or anything using photographs. Of course, I could decide to have only Flickr images.

This will mean the end of monopolistic distribution channels for photography and instead of trying to seduce photo editors, Photo agencies will have to seduce the public directly.

This is exciting times. See and purchase the Obama Time Capsule here.

Posted in copyright, magazine, technology, Aurora, license, TIME, editorial, flickr, prosumer, web 2.0, news | Print | No Comments »

April 21, 2009 by pmelcher.

Seems that Google is pushing through some image search innovation lately. First, it was the color search, released a few weeks back. Thanks to a little color palette next to the search tool, you can specify which dominant color you would like to see in your search result.

Not groundbreaking technology. Companies like Idee, Inc or LTU technologies already offer that type of solution.  Unlike these two companies, Google does not yet offer the possibility to add colors to each other. That is, if someone was looking for something Red and Blue. I am sure that is in the pipeline.

Another feature is the Similar search. You execute a text search, it displays the result. Click “similar”  under an image you like and Google displays all similar images. Again, not groundbreaking technology. Again, companies like LTU  and Idee, Inc already license the same technology. Some photo agencies have also started offering this tool ( Getty, Masterfile, ) while others are working on it.

What is important here, is that if Google makes these tool mainstream, then clients to a photo agency will expect to see them on individual sites. It will soon be unacceptable for a commercial stock photo agency not to offer color and similar search. Since these can be easily adapted to an existing database, (LTU Technologies has a great and easy solution), there is really no reason not to offer them.

Finally, Google has also released ( boy they are busy these guys) a “News Timelime ” search which allows to, as per the Wall Street Journal : ” …presents the globs of content already in Google News — including articles, blogs, photos, scanned newspapers, magazine covers and more — in a draggable timeline. Users who search for a topic like the Iraq War will see a history of articles, photos and videos arranged by date, week or month and can scroll through them quickly with their mouse. Users can refine their search to specific sorts of news, like newspapers or blogs, and search some non-news sources like Wikipedia or movies.”

Not a lot of titles are offered yet, but however, this raises an interesting issue. Images that had been buried under the successive pages or fresher news will now resurface in the open and under a different format. Will the photo industry remain silent or ask for additional license fee. How many agreements does this one break ?

Posted in magazine, technology, commercial stock, license, Search, web 2.0, google, TIME, getty | Print | 2 Comments »

April 3, 2009 by pmelcher.

While the world of photography was busy trying to figure out how to squeeze one more dollar out of every image, pointing the fingers at potential scammers, or listing, day after, the name and addresses of every single newspaper closing its door, the hallways of the supreme court justice in Manhattan echoed of the fainted footsteps of a mostly forgotten, yet highly important case.

A very well to do photo agency, back in the days when it was still trying to make a dent in the news editorial market had reached out to a very talented photographer based in the nation’s capital, Washington DC. Having lost its main contributor in the White House, it  called for the service of an already well implemented and well establish photographer to cover the ins and outs of the political establishment. The photographer, already the recipient of many many assignments from top news publication like Time, Newsweek, Us World and many more, thought, at the time, “hey , why not”.For him, it was an opportunity to grow his reach worldwide, or so he thought.

In these days, film was still mainly used , and so he submitted many of his archives, and his recent work, in slide and film format. The well to do agency had a battery of photo editors looking at the material and selecting the ones to be scanned to be added to its online delivery system.

Time went by, and after 16 months, not seeing any tangible results , the photographer decided to terminate the relationship. Up to now, nothing special.

But upon termination, he was incapable of getting all his images back. Not a few, but more than 12,000 of them. Gone, vanished, disappeared. At first, the well to do agency denied any wrongdoing or hugely minimized the count. That didn’t work too well. They were found guilty for the whole amount.

Lets take a pause here. 12,000 slides, or negatives, that is a lot. out of 50,000 submitted. Its not one slide that fell  behind the back of the lightbox. Its 12,000 of them. well 12,640 exactly.

Out of all the images submitted, only 763 were scanned to be put on the website and thus attempted to be sold. Less than 1%. Either the photographer was really, really  bad, or the editors were really, really lazy. Or, very simply, the big wealthy company was so overwhelmed with images to scan from everywhere that they just couldn’t do more.

My take is on the last option.

Anyway, guilty of lost of images, the Photo Agency and the photographer went on to quantify the lost. How much ?

That is always an ongoing issue, isn’t it ? How to quantify the value of an image if it has never been sold and cannot even be seen by anyone anymore? Some of these images could have been  masterpieces or just  plain film in a mount.

Of course, the Big Photo Agency took the low approach. In a nutshell, backed by “experts”, they figured out how much money they made with the photographers work over 16 months and added some . After 2 years of testimony, a Judge declared that $100,000 was a fair compensation. A mere  $7.26 per roll of 36 frames  !!! including processing.  If you can make a deal like that, its worth dropping digital and going back to shooting film.

Obviously, the photographer was in shock. Never in the history of lost film was an award been so low.  Here is one of the issue : Because the amount of images lost is so high, a more regular award of lets say, $400 per image ( still low) would quickly bring the total to Millions of dollars. Usually people loose a few images. or a few hundred. but not 12, 000 !!!

So, the judge was trying to make an overall acceptable amount instead of looking at the details. For the photographer, the lost of income is almost incalculable. It’s blood ( hopefully, not to much), sweat ( a lot) and tears ( especially after hearing the judgment). An appeal has been made, obviously.

The big bad unprofitable photo agency has a battery of full time lawyers that have nothing else to do then to drag this forever. The photographer, well, not really. This has been going on for 7 years now with more than 10,000 documents and a battery of witnesses. And it ’s not over.

Why is this important ? Because, like any judgment, this will become a judicial reference. If the Agency gets away by paying  $7.36 for 36 frames, then subsequently, all lost images in the future will be awarded accordingly. And that affects every single photographer out there. Like any other trade profession, ones work should be respected to its real value. Not just for the cost of the support it lays upon.

What is even more upsetting here is that this appeal went on completely silently in the industry. Instead, everyone is busy looking at their navels, making sure their backyards is clean. This should be everywhere, talked about in all trade association and debated publicly. There is no predefined amount, obviously, and determining it is very difficult. But since it will affect everyone, it should be everyone responsibility to join the debate.

Posted in newspaper, license, copyright, Newsweek, TIME, photojournalism, news, law, transaction, finance, corbis | Print | 3 Comments »

March 19, 2009 by pmelcher.

While others duck and hope this whole mess will magically pass them by without too much damage, the Time Inc group of magazine is all about experimenting new business model. They recently announced a new project, on trial for a few issue, that will let users ( readers) customize their magazine.

The idea is quite simple. You pick 5 magazines from the Time inc group whose content you like and they will deliver via print, or online, a customize version, called “Mine” . The project is currently limited to the first 31,000 subscribers for print and 200, 000 for online.

The project was created and sponsored by one advertiser, the car company Lexus (owned by Toyota ) , because they also have a Hybrid car. Not sure how Hybrid applies to a magazine, since it is mostly used to define a car who uses two types of energy to run, but, hey, I am not a marketer.

The idea is since people register to get the publication and answer a few personal questions, the ads will be perfectly customized to the reader’s taste and will address them intimately, even using their first name.  The magazine will become a huge ego trip to be shown to unsuspecting friends forever more.

You have to give it to the suits at Time Inc. for at least trying. Since the new magazine will be a rehash of other titles, it will not cost anything editorially. It will, of course, cost a little bit on mailing for the 31,000 lucky subscribers. The first issue will be shipped in April, for 10 weeks, with 5 issues as a prelimanary test.

The unanswered question, for now, is how images will be licensed. Since the final issues will be customized, images licensed for other publication might, or might not, appear in the final edition. Are photo agencies and photographers ready to come up with a reasonable fee quickly, when asked ? Or will the conversations be full of “mmm..”, “i don’t know”, “let me think”.

To sign up or learn more click on the picture below:

Posted in magazine, technology, copyright, license, TIME, editorial | Print | No Comments »