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 »

April 14, 2007 by pmelcher.

A lot has been said about those who contribute their images to microstock sites or the free photo sharing sites. A lot of bad things, mostly, said by professional photographers. But an article in the NYT of today just juggled a thought I had years back as this trend was rising. Is it really a wave of amateurs or is it the rise of a new breed of pros? What defines a pro photographer, especially in the commercial stock world? Some have studied and have a degree in photography. great, but that does not make you a good photographer. Others declare themselves pro as soon as they sold a few images. Microstockers can now say the same, big deal. I, even thought not at all a photographer, have had some of my images published. No big deal. We tend to consider a pro someone that makes a living from their craft. I know a lot of photographers who, although they try, cannot even say that. So what is, really, the difference, if any?

Maybe it is time that the magnate of the photo syndication mafia start looking much closer to what is going on rather then just smile and walk by shaking their shoulders in disdain.

Equipment and the process have become much easier to handle. What used to be a big ordeal: getting film, loading, taking 24 or 36 images, seeing the result a week later, looking at crappy 5×7, putting them in a box never to be seen again has come a long way. Now, first and foremost, you can shoot and edit immediately, and erase, and shoot again, and again. and get better.

I know a lot of photographers who never went to photography school. They learned by trial and error, just like the amateurs are doing now. You get my point.

If I was running a photo agency right now, which I am not, I would be looking and contacting all these potential talents. This is a goldmine waiting to be taken. Yes, Flickr was bought by Yahoo but no ones stops you from contacting some of the great photographers there and offering them a real job. Before Microsoft and other image buyers do it for you, while you sit there, complaining and waiving your arms up in the air. Remember, it is not Flickr that is interesting, it is the images that they host. That should tell you something.
It would be nice to see the “professional” stock photography industry lend a helping hand to all these emerging talents instead of either ignoring them or putting them down. This is, after all the new crop of professionals. Why do the NPPA, ASMP, PPA, and other self proclaimed churches of photography, not offer free classes on syndication, business affairs, 3 months trial membership ?

Why doesn’t PACA or CEPIC offer them a guide on how to choose the best representation and agency ?

Why doesn’t the so called “professional photo community” offer a helping hand to these new arrivals before they get eaten by sharks ? Because they think it will make them disappear? as in” if I ignore a problem long enough, it will cease to exist”?

I don’t think so. It is only going to become a bigger and stronger trend. And the ones that will survive this surging wave are the ones that will accept, embrace and adapt to the challenge. The others should look for another job, quickly.

Posted in yahoo, web 2.0, flickr, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

February 9, 2007 by pmelcher.

I came upon a cool new website today and starting playing with it. The result, if you click on “run this pipe”, is all images in Flickr that corresponds to a news item on Google News.

It is very interesting and when I have more time, I will attempt to create more pipes of this sort. You can customized the source of the news, and I believe, the source of images. I just didn’t have much time to play with it today. I haven’t figured out yet how to keep the headlines next to the images, but then again, I did this in 10 minutes.
The point of this exercise is to show that one could easily create an automated online news magazine, just using Flickr as an image source. Since it is an aggregator, and I am not a commercial user, I am assuming I am not breaking any copyright law.

Play with it and let me know.

Google News run through Flickr

Posted in yahoo, keyword, google, web 2.0, filter, news | Print | No Comments »

January 9, 2007 by pmelcher.

A favorite topic of mine this one is and a major aspect of what we do here at Melchersytem. Born from a multi national background and having traveled a lot through my (short) life, I am extremely sensitive to local cultures. What I see in the photo industry is quite disturbing. I am assuming it is because photography continues to drag this legend that it is an universal language coupled with the No Boundary internet perception.
It all started with Corbis and its first website, Corbisview. All was English ( American, that is), with American design, touch and feel and search logic. Simple enough, it was American, made by Americans and had all the money in the world therefore the whole world would use it as is. To add insult to injury, photo editors would go through the Bettmann Archive and decide which topic and image would be granted the right to be scanned and added to the Mighty collection. Quite obviously, not only the content was heavily American centric ( baseball legends for example), it would also eliminate world events that was not taught in US schools for lack of “sellability”. If I do not know what or who it is, it doesn’t exist.

Soon after, GuettyOne was launched. Because of its more commercial stock oriented content, it had some content that was interesting for non Americans, but it was more an accident than an effort. Needless to say, the design, up to the keywords, where in English.
After that, a torrent of other agencies followed suite with pale copies of their own, thinking like a New Yorker, if i can make it here (the United States), I can make it anywhere . Furthermore, the English and the Australian speak English so there you go, I am already international. This still continues to this day. American arrogance.

People do no read photography the same way all over the world. Photography is only universal when it reaches genius level. most art buyers are not looking for an Henri Cartier Bresson image. American should get over themselves. especially in the editorial field. Images are being sold for 6 figures every day in different countries in the world and they are not of Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. With the rise of reality tv shows, while the concepts are being exported, the celebrities they create cannot cross the border. But they are super mega stars in there country. I use to license a lot of images of American soap opera in Europe, Japan, South America many, many years ago, in the “slide age”, because most TV stations would translate them. Today, not only these country produce their own soaps, they export them to each other and none of the stars are American. Russia is the biggest importer of Brazilian soap operas. The same goes for politics and international news. Just ask Time, Newsweek, Business Week why they have foreign editions.
Same with websites navigation, text, keywords, appearance. While some US agencies understand that a big us corporation might have different ads concepts for the same product in different part of the country to reach local sensibilities, they do not understand that France and Germany are not the same country. or don’t want to. Green is a very popular color in Germany right now, but who in the USA would design their website in green? It’s not just about the content, the packaging matters. A lot.

And I would much prefer using a product that functions the way I think and work than me having to learn another language. Including search logic.
Yes, localization is expensive. But there is no escaping it. It will not disappear. It’s actually getting worse. The more the world is becoming a global market, the more people and sensibilities are local. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and just recently Myspace.com who just launched a French version, have understood that. But not the photo community. Because I can be seen from anyone outside my country with my website, I am international says the photo community.

There is an effort to be made. I always use the Olympics for example. The organizers have to deal with thousands of different cultures and languages ( they are more than 7,000 languages in the world) . How do they do it ? They use Pictograms, most of them that they invent themselves. The photo industry could do the same. Imagine if from website to website, it would always be the same pictogram to download an image. And just think of conceptual searches and how they differ from one culture to another. What makes an American happy is not the same as what makes a Japanese happy, or an Australian.
On the content side, instead of a filter that would block content not available for an image buyer because of contractual restriction, it should be a filter that would actually show an image Buyer images more relevant to his/her country and culture : a local tv star, a local politician or a local concept.
Yes, technology has made it easier to license an image across the world, now it is up to sensibilities to make that image sellable across the world. Using Pictogram verbs and client sensitive imagery would finally make local all photographers or agencies that would want to become global.

Posted in google, yahoo, pictogram, photojournalism, editorial, corbis, france, getty | Print | 1 Comment »

January 5, 2007 by pmelcher.

Let’s say your a commercial stock photographer or agency and you are ready to embark on a new photo shoot. You probably have a direction, an objective in what and how you want to shoot. At least let’s hope you do.

Therefore you should have already a set of keywords, if not written down, somewhere in your mind. Well, give them a test. See how many times the keyword (s) have been entered in the Yahoo Search engine…and what else is there. Obviously, the more the search term has been entered, the more interest there is for it.

And you know advertisers are looking at the same tool. And are or will be looking for images to illustrate their campaign. No need to explain more. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in yahoo, web 2.0 | Print | No Comments »