A great story out of France today. You remember the Frenchman who made the world market crash ( I know, I know, just joking), Jerome Kerviel, responsible for a 7 billion dollars loss at the Societe Generale? He has become a superstar, especially in his native country. However, he has been very illusive and only Read More →

We are all getting fat. let’s face it, we are gaining weight and it doesn’t seem like it is going to change. When we were dealing with slides and prints, we needed to physically move. We needed to get up and get the images in drawers, got to a lightboxe, compare the images, put the Read More →

Not all is bad in the web 2.0 world. Take this new initiative by giant hosting site Flickr. It has posted a part of the huge Library of Congress collection to get some help in key wording for future generation to enjoy. It even has created a new copyright/license for it called “no known copyright Read More →

“By posting user content to any part of the site, you automatically grant … an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide licence … to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such user content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise. … Facebook does not Read More →

As much as I could understand the music industry for trying to stop the free for all downloads initiated by the old Napster , as much as I can’t agree with the Recording Industry Association of America latest move: According to the Washington Post of December 30, 2007 : ‘In legal documents in its federal Read More →

One thing that has always bothered me is why the commercial stock companies always offer discounts on their images and never the editorial photo agencies. Hold it ! I am not saying they should. If you go on Royalty free websites, there is always, always a promotion going on. Get 2 images for the price Read More →

There are some that still combat royalty free in what seems to be an unfounded hope that it will disappear. Others that turn a blind eye towards microstock and its user generated content. If I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Then, there are those who strongly believe that this whole technology thing is just Read More →

It seems that image tracking company Picscout is seriously advancing on a new way to generate revenue from blogs with the imminent launch of Picapp, currently in Beta testing. The principle is simple. You get a free image to post on your website as long as you accept advertising on it . A bit like Read More →

We all know that black and white, Holga / Lensbaby enhanced (?) with a touch of personal sensibility photo “journalism” is a dying breed (thank G~d !) and that it has created in its wake a lamenting song of despair : Photojournalism is dying. Well yes, bad photojournalism, the one that desperately tries to mix Read More →

Just returned from 3 days of Paca international conference in Sin city. How appropriate to have held the yearly convention in a gambling town full of hard core, die hard risk takers. Our industry, the photo industry is very similar in its model. When we take images for stock, we purchase lottery tickets. we invest Read More →