August 5, 2009 by pmelcher.

Recently, a lot of chatter spread over the photo-related  internet regarding a cover of TIME magazine whose image was sold for $30. It is not the first time that this magazine used a microstock image for its cover, and certainly not the last.

The tea cup storm was  a bit unfair to the magazine as a microstock site was probably the only place that they could find such an image ( a glass jar full of pennies) . Hopefully, not many pro stock shooter take that kind of image and probably less stock agency have such an image to offer.

But that is nothing compared to this: On a recent sales report ( last month) , an editorial contributing photographer of Getty Images had the nice surprise to see that they had licensed around 80 of his images for less than  : $2000.00

( We are not at liberty to publish exact numbers to protect the photographers’ anonymity )

For those who are paying attention, that is about $11 per image !!! or $25 before commission.

Again, this is a pro, editorial photographer shooting exclusive to semi exclusive content.

The  cover of Time magazine sold for more than that.

The truth needs to be told that Getty Images is ruining the market for pro photographers with prices like these.  They license editorial images as low as $3.63  to major outlets  like Yahoo.

This is even lower than the $5 pricing that was just announced today. What is the point of getting up in the morning if your images will be sold for less than $10? what is the point of having worked so hard, for so many years to have a respected career in photography and see your agency sell you images at these prices?

It is sad to see pro and talented photographers accept such treatment of their work, as if Getty was the last and only place to license images. because keeping your images in a company that license them for these prices is not only painful but criminal. It makes a statement that this is ok and that is all you expect for yours, and other photographers, work.

Sure, you see the Getty credit everywhere, but what you do see, or hear enough, is how it got there. There is on certitude in this industry : Getty Imageshas no respect for the contributors it represents.

More often then not, you hear photo editors who call Getty in order to get a specific photographer  denied their request. Not because the photographer is not available, but because he/she is not staff. They want only their  staff photographers on assignment, not contributors. They also do not want photographers to create a relationship with a client so they also make sure that the same staff photographer is not too often available to the same client

Trade associations should be at shame for not reporting this. Workshops, around the country, should warn their members, who paid a lot of money to attend, of these practices. Getty would be nothing without its contributors yet crushes them under its monstrous weight.

Shake off the 800 pounds Gorilla .

On another Getty note, its experiment into community- B2C-photo for all has quietly shut down. Brainchild of Microstock inventor, Bruce Livingstone,  Jamd.com, ex-viewmages.com is no longer:

Posted in yahoo, license, magazine, technology, photojournalism, finance, getty, news, editorial, transaction, Microstock | Print | 3 Comments »

May 6, 2009 by pmelcher.

There used to be something called “digital rights”. That is, when a publication wanted the right to publish a copy of an image to use in a digital format, it would pay an additional license fee. At first, like the internet itself or CD ROM (remember those ?) circulation, it was small. But everyone was preparing for the future. Now that its here, no one seem to notice.

Google is scanning books and will display them online, for a fee, without offering any compensation  to non book copyright holders.  That is 99% of images in books. They will however compensate publishers. Will the publisher compensate the photographers. Doubtful, since they are not the ones scanning and offering them.

Instead :

- A photographer with a blog even does a whole story on the scanning technology used by Google without worrying what they are scanning and if he will ever see a license fee on his images that might appear in these books.

- PDN  and others seem delighted to see how some websites seem to have huge traffic. Did they look into on how much these sites paid for images? Nope. Google Books issue ? Nothing.

- Photo associations, like ASMP, seem to be speechless about the whole issue altogether. They are seemingly too busy finding sponsors for their next summer picnic.

We could go on and on here about the complete lack of action by those who claim to be friends of photography .

Digital rights have been battered pretty badly. First by Google, when it won the case to publish images in their search result without paying anything, but then with  National Geographic and others that republished whole issues on CD ROM without wanting to pay any additional fees.

Then there is the magazine industry that has cried poverty since the beginning of their web presence and have gotten away with paying pennies for sites that now have a much bigger circulation then their print.

Yet, a lot of the photo industry seems to look at the web as its savior. The question is how so, if most of the images published online  are discounted dramatically. An image posted on the home page of a site that has 1 million hits a week is not licensed at the same price as an image on the cover of a weekly magazine that has 1 million readers. Why is that?

What makes publishers beleive that  image on-line are less worthy than print  ? What makes photographers and photo agencies agree? Most of the discourse is about how less revenue the online version of a magazine is making compared to their print brother. Since when has that been the concern of a photo agency/photographer? Is this now part of our business to guarantee revenue on top of licensing images ?

Getty Images has been the biggest fool to enter that trap and have now succeeded in licensing images for around $2.00 a pop to giants as Yahoo.com. No, not microstock material. Images from long time editorial pro-photographers. Images that request talent, education, experience, knowledge and special access. Images that took much more than $2 to create.

What is the solution? first, stop treating “digital rights” as an add-on to a license. Maybe make “print rights” as an additional right. Treat web usage  as a full blown license of its own.

Second, stop licensing images online as ” one week on home page”  or ” One day inside, 1/4 page”. A web site is not a magazine. And stop making a difference between Commercial usage or Editorial usage. Most editorial have a hundred more traffic than a corporate one. Treat the web as a entity. It has measurable traffic, much more measurable than a magazine. Charge a license based on traffic. That is how they charge for advertisers, isn’t it ?

Third, pull out of the poverty game. Most editorial sites have a budget bigger than their print siblings. As publications close their print edition for online only, they shift their budgets. Some with the biggest traffic charge $400,000 for a one day banner ad.

Fourth, stop thinking that “it’s good publicity”. Did you ever check ? How many images did you license because one of your image appeared on line? really. Would you offer an images for pennies to a print magazine because its “good publicity” ? That time is over.

Five, stop believing that because the image is of a smaller size and only 72 dpi, it has less value. That is exactly like saying that if an image is used in B/W, although it was shot in color, it has less value. Where does that come from ? The value of an image has nothing to do with the amount of pixel it has, nothing. Does a Cartier Bresson or Leibovitch image is less valuable because it has less pixels.

Six, do something about it. Stop sitting around waiting for someone else to show you the way. Google is ripping your rights away, yet you turn a blind eye.  Call that association you pay a hefty membership fee too and tell them to act. If you are a photographer with an agency, tell them to stop giving away your rights and your images. If they do not, leave them. It’s your problem, now. Not someone else ’s in the future. It’s not going to go away, it’s only going to get worse.

Seventh, stop worrying about what to shoot next  and worry more about how much you license what you currently have. Because if this goes on, what you will be getting for those magical pictures you will shoot in the future will only be a fraction of what you currently have on the market.

Eight, stop being beggars. Beggars are loser, as the expression says . Your images are needed. They are actually the core value of some publications or websites. They are not doing you a favor by publishing your work, you are bringing them the value they need to have a business. What you do is unique. Trust me, if they could do it themselves and keep you out, they would. But they can’t.

Nine, stop being technophobes. It’s not cute anymore. All the information is at your fingertips. Read, learn. Saying you don’t understand is no excuse anymore. You shoot digital, don’t you ? So stop the crap about how you do not understand RSS feeds or HTML, or anything web related. No one buys it and if they do, its only to squeeze more out of you.

Ten,  stop being afraid . Afraid of losing clients, afraid of tomorrow, afraid of big corporations, afraid of your own decisions. The images you shoot or that you license have the value you give  them. Not the value that some dude who will soon lose its /her job as some corporate company is willing to offer. Bargain if necessary, until you have no breath left. Leave the table. Those images are like your children, do not let them be  mistreated. Ever. By no one.

Posted in license, newspaper, copyright, magazine, commercial stock, technology, yahoo, google, law, getty, editorial, transaction, photojournalism, Microstock | Print | 1 Comment »

January 14, 2009 by pmelcher.

According to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, Flickr was inches away from releasing FlickrStock, allowing users to license their images for a fee. Apparently Getty convinced the Yahoo executive that an exclusive deal with them was much better.

Getty protected its valuable Istockfoto asset thanks to this deal and delayed the opening of the flood gates. I would love to have heard how Yahoo was convinced to drop such potential revenue. Or is getty paying them a fee to be their “exclusive” representative ?

more here

Posted in Midstock, license, technology, commercial stock, No sense, yahoo, getty, flickr, prosumer, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

January 5, 2009 by pmelcher.

Can Photography exist outside of its current boundaries ? Is it possible for photographers to create and to sustain on a market that they create and manage directly.

Lets step back for a bit. Photography has always been accessed through gatekeepers, or otherwise called magazines. It has evolved through other forms of publications but the model has always been the same, whether it is a website or a magazine. Clients, viewers, have always been served photography through the passage of photo editors who censored and edited who, what and how images are seen. A little bit like radio and DJ for music and musicians. But the rules, they are changin’ aren’t they ?

Flickr, like Napster before, has opened up the distribution channels of photography. Like the original Napster, no one is making money with this, but mentalities are being changed drastically. Publications no longer absolutely in control of what images get to be seen by the public like record companies no longer control what music is being listened to. Of course, no photographer, today, has completely bypassed the traditional gatekeepers. There is no one that has the notoriety of an Annie Leibovitz and it does seem quite impossible to do these days without first being published in the pages of Vogue, Harper’s, Vanity Fair or other magazines.

But for how long ? Why would it not be possible for a photographer to achieve the notoriety of a Robert Frank, for example, without ever been published outside of its own website or/and Flickr. And thus generate not only a huge following but impressive revenue. After all, we all have been witness of the impressive impact of online viral marketing and social sites like Digg. It has made some images extremely popular already, so why not a photographer?  Where there is a high demand, there is a market.

So what of the gatekeepers. Can photo editors and photo agencies alike, continue to control most of the commercial photo market ?  Is there only salvation and hope only if one is part of a succesful sales platform like Getty or Alamy ? Does a photographers have to be a part of many to be seen and sold ? Does one still need the gatekeepers?

For now, yes. The photo industry, unlike music, is a self sustaining industry. Publishers buy from Agencies/established photographers. They have little or no will to go and purchase images in the wild. Although that is changing already. The question is will they ever buy or hire a photographer just because he consistently has a million hits a day although was never published anywhere? Doubtful, as that is not the training of the gatekeeper, oops sorry, the photo editor. Will a photo festival ever expose the work of someone that has never been published but yet has millions of fans online. Very doubtful.

There is no reason to believe that because the photo world has embrace digital technology before the music industry that it will not suffer from the same drastic changes. There is no reason to believe either, that because traditional publishing is dying that photography will disappear with it. Can photographers create and manage their own market ? It will not happen overnight but the answer is : Certainly.

Posted in license, multimedia, magazine, technology, commercial stock, Newsweek, yahoo, web 2.0, editorial, news, slideshow, filter, prosumer, photojournalism, getty | Print | No Comments »

July 8, 2008 by pmelcher.

By now, you must have read all about the Getty Image/Flickr deal. In a nutshell, Flickr announced that Getty Images has the right to go through the Flickr collection and pick and choose the images that they want to distribute.

Now, seldom know that Flickr has been shopping around for the last two years for a way to license its content. They have approach many existing companies in order to investigate their options. I am not at liberty to say which but lets just say they are not your traditional mom and pops. But like with any huge company, time is not an issue and most potential, at first very excited, ended their conversations with a resentful puff and walking away with what everyone thought was a goldmine. When you looked closer, it is more like a coalmine. Lots of digging for little return. One huge issue, is that, although Flickr has a clear copyright policy, most people don’t care and upload whatever they want anyway. Since nothing is for sale, no copyright infringement lawsuit has ever surfaced, but most certainly a lot of “cease and desist” notices have circulated.

The second very important issue, is that Flickr has a beautiful facade, but behind it,  lies a dump yard of crappy snapshots. Their “Interrestingness” engine is a model of programming done with genius. Only the best images  surface, hiding the ugly muck below.

While these talks where going on, some mash up 2.0 companies tried to take advantage of Flickr’s API to lure users to shift platforms and take advantage of their licensing engines. That was a lost battle as Flickr monitored those links very closely and shut down  any one who  apparent motivation was money. No more than a little slap on the hand.

Getty, having a whole department in charge of making new deals could simply  not let go. These guys lose their job if they do not make any new deals. So they came out with this wackadoodle arrangement: Flick makes deal with Getty Images.

Wait a minute, Flickr doesn’t own, nor does it represent any of its content. It is only a sharing platform. How can they make a deal on behalf of their users ? They can advise them, yes, but certainly not make a deal for them. Getty will still have to ask each and everyone of them for permission to license their images. But be no fool, this has been going on for a long time. I do not know of any photo agency that has not already contacted users of Flick in order to represent their work. And those who didn’t are either fools  or not in the commercial stock business. This deal doesn’t change that, as Flickr cannot dictate anything to its users.

Furthermore only Getty, or its retarded companion Corbis, could afford such a deal. It will take them a huge time to edit through the content and find the pearls. And that is money spend, not received. Let’s say they do find a photographer with great talent, nothing guarantees them that he or she will sign up with them. Nothing at all. Or they have might have already signed with someone else. This is Gargantuan work for little return.

This deal is just a pack of hot air. We all know that Getty is no fool and that this is just a big PR balloon. It will fly, get some people very excited and overheated, and just disappear after a short sting.

What is however captivating is that Getty now officially announced, with this deal, that it can no longer trust its own suppliers or photographers with providing them with the right images. It is  also an admittance of the failure of both  their internal “creative research and intelligence” and in its long held belief that it had secured the right partnerships. To proactively and officially reach out to amateurs is sending a loud and clear message that their current content is not adapted anymore.

After thought : So what happens to those poor pro photographers schmucks who paid $50 dollars to get their images on Getty Images under the brand “Photographer’s Choice“? Let me get this straight : you’re an amateur and upload to Flickr, Getty images includes your images for free. You are a pro unwilling to upload to Flickr, maybe because you don’t want then stolen and you have to pay $50 per approve image ? It doesn’t compute

Posted in Search, license, technology, commercial stock, yahoo, web 2.0, corbis, finance, flickr, prosumer, getty | Print | No Comments »

May 12, 2008 by pmelcher.

Once again, JupiterMedia has released its quarterly results. Once again they are they loosing money on the photo side ( JupiterImages). Out of the big three , Corbis, Jupiter and Getty, only one has posted profits. Corbis is notoriously a cash hungry beast with a huge appetite for cost while Jupiter seems to be on an ever growing decline. Only Getty Images has been able to pull off the acquisition/consolidation scheme. Not without hurting. No longer the aggressive growth company, it was brutally manhandled by Wall Street and had to retreat into the protective hands of an equity investment company that took it out of the public playground.

There is a lot of resentment inside Guetty these days. Photographers are unhappy : Commercial stock RM revenues are declining while there is too many celebrity photographers rubbing elbows at every event. Something has got to give and it will be a no surprise to see it reduce its snapper staff as soon as the public doors are closed. 2008 will not be a good year for the Getty staff in general.

However, what is causing these monopoly hungry corporation to fail ? A few things:

- No passion : Only Jonathan Klein seems to be passionate about photography. Do you ever see Jupiter’s CEO at any industry event ? or Corbis new CEO ? what about those A21 guys?  NEVER. They sell images like others sell socks: With a passionate disinterest. Like a bunch of accountants recently named CEO.

- A dry corporate culture. It takes dedication to take and license images. It is not a 9 to 5 job. Walk in at the office of any of these companies and you will see rows of cubicles populated by clock-watching workers spending more time surfing job sites then their own. Most of the staff in these photo factories are in a transition job, passionately looking for something else. The only passion you see, or feel, is the passion to get promoted before your colleague. Walk into small or medium agency and everyone is ready to cut their arm to make sure it will work.

- A fundamental misdirection:  Mark Getty has a long term plan that fits in a very long term perception of the world economy. The others just want to make money. Even Bill Gates’ plan was a bit more sophisticated than just making money. Money is what happens when your plan is succesful, not the opposite. I never heard Meckler or Schenk formulate a vision besides “we will be profitable one day”.

- A complete lack of risk taking: Corporation are all about control, prediction and risk management. Everything photography is not.  Spending fortunes on marketing is just not enough. You still need the content. But understanding what is the right content is not something so easily predictable. It is not, for example, because you purchase a successful brand that it will continue to be successful. Without taking risk there cannot be a succesful photo agency. Its all about being one step ahead of picture buyers who themselves are not sure where they are going before they get there.

One could continue on and on why these business structure are inadequate for the photography world. Everyone knows that Jupiter Images is for sale for lack of being successful. No one is foolish enough to believe that Corbis will ever be succesful with its current structure. They will only obtain profitability by downsizing and reducing themselves.  A21, we will not comment as its days are numbered. There is no surprises in these quarterly reports anymore and I doubt there will ever be anymore. The non performers are going to not performed as Getty Images will position itself to be acquired by one of the media giants such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft when these will realize that after owning the distribution channels they will need to control content. As Mark Getty very rightly said ” IP ( intellectual property)  is the oil of the 21th century”.

Posted in Search, Jupiter, celebrity, commercial stock, yahoo, google, getty, corbis, finance, Royalty free | Print | No Comments »

April 16, 2008 by pmelcher.

I did not pick this image. I actually have no idea what it will be before I publish this entry. Why ? because it is a sort of semi “intelligent” algorithm in the background that will do it for me. A bit like Google ads scans a whole web page for keywords and post the relevant ads, this system, delivered by Dailylife.com, does the same.

It will scan the page for keywords and post the most appropriate image. Like an automated photo editor. And because it is looking thought the feeds of Reuters, GettyImages and AP, I believe, it selects from a pool of already very tightly edited images. One could also foresee a Flickr API, a bit like I did with the yahoo pipes.

I am guaranteed a good and hopefully, relevant image . This is the future of news photo editing on the web. At least for sites that do not care so much about the image and use them as an illustration of  a written report. Why pay some guy to look at a stream of pre edited  images, download one, resize it and post when the whole thing can be automated. And better yet, computers don’t whine, do not take lunch breaks, or holidays and never, never ask for a raise. So why keep a web photo editor, if only to do some “best of the week” gallery ?

Think about it:  the biggest news source of the internet has no photo editor. It is called Google news and it selects images with a similar technology. Indeed, it relies on images previously edited by pro photo editors. For now.

The dailylife link is completely free, with no uncontrolled ads, like a Picapp or a GumGum would like you to swallow. Sure , it has a link for the site itself but the same technology could easily be applied by anyone on their own site.

Finally, Dailylife.com, still in Beta, looks like an interesting destination. It seems they want to be a new Google news but put a heavy emphasis on photography and has a much better and smoother interface. More like a magazine designed for the internet, and not the opposite. Finally.

As newspapers and magazine are suffering more layouts as ad spending is weakening, most of the photo related professional are turning to the internet. However, because of its built in automation, it just seems that some of the jobs will not be recycle but ultimately replaced by machines. We will still need great pictures, thus talented photographers. Not so sure about needing photo editors.

Posted in multimedia, Search, newspaper, digg, magazine, gumgum, technology, keyword, yahoo, editorial, news, slideshow, wire service, google, photojournalism, getty | Print | 2 Comments »

March 5, 2008 by pmelcher.

Photoshelter, the “business in a box” provider, as it brands itself, has just launched a Flickr import tool. For quite a while, many image distributors, photo agencies included, have banged their heads against their walls trying to figure out how to capitalize on the Flickr offering.

In a nutshell, this tool allows Flickr Pro users ( those are the people paying for their account on Flickr) to easily copy their images into a Photoshelter private archive and license them from their or the newly launch Photoshelter Collection. Either way, Photoshelter takes a cut.

Flickr, or rather Yahoo, soon to maybe be Microsoft, has been studying ways to moneterize the content on their site. Announced for 2007, they are, apparently, still working on it. Photoshelter has come up with a great idea. The question is : Did Flickr authorize the use of its API ?

Not long ago, kiddy site Zoomr had done the same thing, only to see Flickr turn it off. Obviously, they could not accept a tool that would easily allow people to migrate from Flickr to Zoomrrrrrr. PictureSandbox, ex Flickr Cash also tried to use the API with the same result. Flickr said no and terminated the service.

Will Photoshelter suffer the same fate? After all, without a deal, why would Flickr help its users leave the site and make money somewhere else ? Since the press release offers no official comment from anyone at Flickr/Yahoo, it is very doubtful this tool has been fully approved. Sure, Photoshelter’s tool also allows for importing into Flickr, but it is doubtful that would be enough to please the authorities.

Nevertheless, It is the first attempt by an image distributor to take control of the Flickr content and place it in front of pro buyers, with a price tag. There is a good chance Flickr might decide to use a third party to license its content and this would be a good test to see if it would work.

Furthermore, how will the pro community take the invasion of their space by amateurs with a helping hand from Photoshelter. Currently, it seems, the Collection is used by pros. Will the arrival of fresh content from “Sunday Photographers” not only hurt their ego but also their bank account ? Pro and amateurs on the same platform, side by side; doctors, lawyers and photographers sharing the same space.

What will be really interesting, because, in the end, its all that matters, is how are the image buyers going to react. They will certainly continue to purchase with no changes as for them, in this type of stock format, it is the image that matters, not the photographer. If they need an image of a sun rise, they will use the one that matches their layout, regardless of who took it.

Kudos for Photoshelter for launching this API and for continuing to innovate with unmatched brilliance. Are we witnessing the birth of Getty’s next acquisition ?

Posted in yahoo, license, technology, web 2.0, prosumer, editorial, transaction, flickr, getty | Print | No Comments »

October 19, 2007 by pmelcher.

A group of us were invited to discuss the alternate source of imagery as well as the future of stock photography on a panel organized by the American Society of Picture Professionals this past Monday. I have skipped the product presentation that you can see here, if you would like, to go directly to discussion that immediately followed.
Besides myself, you can hear :
Evan Nisselson, CEO Digital Railroad
Brad Kuhns, Co-founder IPN Stock
Allen Murabayashi, CEO Photoshelter
Randy Taylor, CEO StockMedia Corp

Thanks to the ever friendly team from Photoshelter for filming this and making it available to all of us.

Posted in newspaper, HOLGA, Search, multimedia, keyword, yahoo, getty, editorial, flickr, Microstock | Print | 1 Comment »

October 5, 2007 by pmelcher.

In an interview to PDN magazine, master blogger Dan Heller offers the photography world a new idea : Create an Ebay of photography. People, that is everybody and anybody, would upload images to a site where image buyers, other people, would purchase them for an settle upon price. That would allow for the overhaul market to grow from the estimated market of $2 billion to what he estimates to be $15 billion.

A couple of thoughts come to mind here. First, there are already platforms that offer this service, like Drr or Photoshelter. For a monthly fee, these sites allow anyone to upload their images to be purchased on line. One, Drr, handles the transaction for you, the other Photoshelter, lets you handle the transaction. Both take a small percentage on any succesful agreement and allow to license either RF and RM. Both, albeit still new on the market, do not seem to have exploded into an e bay size platform. At least not yet.

There is also Flickr, whose founder just decided to go on paternity leave ( good for him) after announcing at the start of 2007 that his platform would enable users to license their images . Something we have yet to see happen. In its shadow, there is the crash prone, geotagging happy Zooomr, who also announced with big fanfare, that it would revolutionarise the stock photo industry by empowering its users to price their images. It has yet to be launched. It seems its CEO is more busy photowalking around the West coast than really concerned about making it happen.

Finally, there are the Scoopt, Spymedia and other citizen journalists dumb dumb platform that are waiting to exhale.

If an Ebay of photography is a good idea, than why not create an Ebay of drawings or music. After all, anyone can draw or paint and anyone can compose music ? Or an Ebay for idea: Buy and sell any idea.

and why didn’t EBay think of that already ?

Photography is not a second hand Mario’s Brother video game and will never be. It cannot be sold like one. It still is, in my book, an artform, done by professionals for a very good reason. It needs talent. It is not because it is easy to create that it is as easy to sell. I can draw but I am not a Picasso. This reasoning has to stop as it is insulting for the thousands of pro photographers that either risk their lives to show us remote conflicts to those who can generate millions of dollars in revenue without ever slashing their prices. An E bay of photography would somewhat look like a result from Google images, a useless junkyard on uninteresting images. It would also be, like Flickr, a magnet for copyright infringement. And finally, it would not serve much purpose as most photography is extremely timely and tends to be obsolete very quickly.

I would love to see someone break its teeth on such a project so that maybe, just by living proof, the those San Fransisco based web 2.0 twitter happy pseudo entrepreneurs would move on to other spheres of quick money making scams.

NO SENSE ALERT:

I read this article twice and have yet to understand what it has to do with photography.

Posted in yahoo, No sense, Search, google, web 2.0, transaction, flickr, prosumer, editorial | Print | No Comments »