A quick lesson in political photojournalism

Photographers work hard. At least some do. John Harrington, for example, not only goes out and shoot the State of The Union address made by president Bush last night in Washington D.C., but he also stays after around to check on the work of other photographers. Not only he had to file his own images but he also took the time to create a great video report on how his colleagues work, what equipment they use, at what angle they prefer to shoot the event, and, most importantly, why ?

What a lot of people are not aware and that this video shows, is that pro photographers are not just snappers that are just offered a seat to shoot from and are satisfied with it. They think ahead of time of what image they want to catch, what would be the perfect photograph and why. They are much more than simple button pushers sitting on their butts shooting the president in a sequential harmony. As portrayed in the video, most couldn’t care less about Bush and his final speech. They were there for the Obama/Clinton/Kennedy shot as they preempted that it would be THE shot. The money shot.

It also shows how restrictive the work of a photojournalist has become. You are assigned a position and you can not move. For people trained to find the best perspective, whose talent partly reside in where they physically stand, it is an exercise in frustration. They are locked up and grouped together, almost forced to shoot the same thing.

Finally, it shows how big news organization, like the AP, Getty, Reuters can afford to have photographers in multiple locations, thus increasing the overhaul chance of getting the right image while the lonely independent guy has to battle to make the best of his position.

Here is John Harrington ’s video ( John also has a great blog that, although I do not always agree with, read every day):

I have also taken the liberty to show some of the results, which is, if it has any, the only weak point of the video :The Washington Post here :

Stock it up, people !!!

Last week, super giant discounter and famed losing money photo library Corbis announced with no small effort that it was going “global”.

From Cnet.com :

“SnapVillage, a microstock site founded in June by stock-art sales company Corbis to compete with rivals such as Fotolia and Getty Images’ iStockphoto, has expanded to include international sales.

Although the site now works beyond the United States, the Web site is English-only for now. “

Does that mean that prior to this press release, Snapvillage would refuse any sales coming from outside the United States ? To me, going international is to have your site in local language. Or open offices in countries other than your point of origin. So what did Snapvillage exactly do to go from local to international? The site works beyond the United States now, we are being told. Does this mean that the Corbis programmers have finally discovered that foreign browsers can read HTML too ?

The most interesting part is that a few days earlier, German RF company PantherMedia also announced it was going international by partially translating their site in English. So, what does “going international” really means people ?

According to my extensive research, it is :

1) Having a site in English

2) Having a site that works beyond your borders

3) Having your site in English

During one of my many tenures, and of on the subject of globalisation, I had to listen to a VP based on the west coast of the United States whose furthest travel had been to the East Coast of the same country tell me that ” The United States is the Business nation of the world thus what we do here will apply everywhere in the world” or something like that. No, his name is not George Bush and yes, he was serious.

I guess Corbis subscribes to that model. Corbis also sees Snapvillage as a “image warehouse” according to its own definition :

Which allows its contributors to proudly say to their friends and family that they are “stack” photographers working for an image depot. How proud they must be. Stock it up, people. Faster !!

Finally, on while we are on the subject of the second agency in the world (who decided that ? under what criteria ? Is it that Jim Pickerell again ? certainly not in profit), here is a post that you cannot miss :

Overheard at Corbis this week.

Catching the rays of the blue sunshine

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 slide in sleeves, and get them ready for a messenger to pick up. Depending on the size of the photo agency, the traffic department was either close by or a few flights of stairs away. Even photo editors had to be “on the move” as editing required a combination of many physical steps.

Today, from the moment we sit down in front of our computer screens with a coffee and a bagel (or anything that will serve as a breakfast), turn on our screens, we hardly move. With a combination of tools, from phone to browsers, we hardly have to move. Thus we are getting fat. I am sure if you look down at your midsection right now, you will see a sign that you are gaining some unneeded volume. We barely move to get to a conference room where we cautioulsy sit down again to listen or talk with our peers who are also gaining weight.

Starring at the glare of our screens for more than eight hours a day, switching from e mails to photographs, news websites to blogs, our eyes are also becoming weaker. Hard to find someone working in this business who doesn’t wear glasses. Although our eyes are our weapon of mass destruction, they are slowly declining on us , as we abuse them hours on.

And of course our skins are not looking better either. We barely see daylight anymore as we hardly have any reasons to be outside. Only photographers escape this doom fate, as they still need to move to create their art. They are, however, still constrain to the mischievous chair and screen combination while they caption, photoshop, upload their images for hours on.

And the future doesn’t look much better. As we get more and more wirelessly freed from our offices and work more from home, we might decide not to wash so frequently, let alone take care of our forever growing hair. We might decide that eating three times a day is not enough, thus enjoying a permanent flux of food. We might not have any need to get out of bed that often as all our necessary tools of the trade may be at arms reach.

Paca, Cepic, Asmp, APA, SAA, PLus, ASPP and all other organizations should vote for a mandatory gym membership for all employees of our industry. We should lobby our respective governments to put in place salvation laws that would require a minimum of one hour of forced exercise to all those wishing to work in the photo industry . Finally, we should put in place motivational points of interest in our offices in order to force more activities than just going to the bathroom.

Otherwise, my dear friends, we might become instinct before we get to see the full effect of Global Warming.

A Gigantic clash of talent

This is what you get when you mix the talent of Brian Storm and his team and the incredible dedication and eyesight of Marcus Bleasdale, new member of VII photo agency :

If only everyone had a camera…with a conscience. Like Marcus.

A path to higher wisdom

According to the New York Times, Getty Images is putting itself for sale. Contrary to the nay sayers of this industry, it is no sign of a failure, but rather a clear indication that the owners have decided to cash in and leave. It seems that Mark Getty, and the board, have decided that even by replacing Johnathan Klein as CEO, they would not succeed in achieving more aggressive growth. As written here a while back, they have hit a ceiling and know it.

It would have cost them too much money and effort to go after the mid size and niche agencies that are left in the market. With a company so huge and drowned in perpetual audits, due to its public nature, it is extremely challenging to compete with small, lean, agile companies.

But, it is not because a company is for sale that one, it will find buyers, two, it will disappear. This is not the end of Getty images, so those that rejoice, or those that predict the apocalypse of this industry should tone down and listen. At $850 million a year, Getty Image has proven that this industry has a huge potential. And for a company that started with $30 million, $1,5 Billion is not that bad. In other words, I fail to see where is the failure.

Where does that leave us for the future? not very far. It is even quite possible that the new owners, if ever found, keep the same core management team in place. Istockphoto will NOT raise it prices to $300 an image and the web $49 pricing will remain until everyone is forced to follow and comply. In other words, it is not an industry changing event. Not yet. It’s just a prophecy being executed.

MORE IMPORTANT : my good friend and talented photographer Olivier Douliery has won many awards already has won for best Political Portfolio at this year White House News Press Photographer Association, among other. See full results here.

Photo : Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press. Used with permission.

Flickr this ! and contribute (updated)

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 restrictions” : “[That does] not mean the image is in the public domain, but do indicate that no evidence has been found to show that restrictions apply.”

The Library of Congress, if you are not aware, is a huge repository of documents related to the history of the United States of America and thus, partly, the world. Most of its content has been donated in a deliberate act to make it accessible and available to the public. Unlike a commercial photo agency, the Library of Congress is not in the business of licensing its content for a fee in order to make some profit but to allow anyone with any curiosity to learn from its document. for free. This project of asking for anyones help to tag, or keyword the images is a great idea, “awesome” some would say, that will allow to share knowledges on line.

I do apprehend already some photo agencies, mostly outside the USA, downloading some of these images and making them available to their clients via a “research” or “service” fee, like they currently do with NASA images or images released by movie studios. Since there is no apparent copyright owners and these images are old, chances of being found and sued by copyright owners are slim to none, they will think.

By making this project as public as possible and by educating the as many as possible, we can put a damper on those who give our industry a bad name. Now, go and tag !

UPDATE :Just what I feared, Apparently Rohn Engh does want you to take those images and sell them according to his entry in Black Star Rising. I guess that is the new good advice for photographers : if your images do not sell, steal some public domain and resell them. Treat your clients like idiots and charge them for images they could have found themselves.

The hidden laws of probable outcome

Is Wpn recent announcement to get rid of an undisclosed amount of people, more than half the staff, along with Drr similar decision to refocus on its marketplace somewhat related ? Is Getty images poor performance in the Wall Street stock market any indication of its lackluster performance in the image stock market ? What about Alamy seemingly unstoppable growth despite contributors discontent ? And microstock shooter deciding to drop their involvement in the subscription model because of poor revenues? What about Photoshelter lunching their 1 million dollar marketing campaign by offering a 20 % rebate ?

What is going on ?, would say an observer of this industry. Things have never been so much in turmoil in the photo agency world and it looks like it is going to rip apart. Press releases are being issued at machine gun speed with each supplier announcing a bigger searchable archive like kids in a schoolyard comparing the length of their private parts.

10 million here, 8 over there, almost 2 million in here. The funny part is most of these represent the same content. So it is not as if you would find millions of different images from one provider to the other. Alamy, for example represent some of the same people as Getty does, or Corbis. Maxx.com just announced a new royalty free portal, as well as Blend.com, while Excavator continues to do whatever they do. ImageSource, in the mean time, sells the same images at different prices depending on where you go.

Wpn is actually dropping the “number of images” race, and concentrating its efforts on assignments, a market neither Drr, Photoshelter nor Alamy can currently touch. They are also leaving the “wire service” model which is already over populated with giants like AP, Reuters, Getty, AFP and EPA. However, assignments is also where a lot of news photographers have retreated after being blocked access to the stock/spec image market by the agencies. And a few notable agencies like Black Star, Contact, VII and others are already very well established in that space. It is going to be a tricky wiggle to get in that space.

But it is indeed a move at the opposite side of Drr’s move. One concentrates its effort on single image volume stock/spec sales while the other pushes toward multi image assignment services. However, both are going towards in already crowded markets. Drr has now to convince buyers and users that it is better, or at least more relevant than Alamy, at a moment where Photoshelter is doing a similar push while slashing prices. Is this battle for market share be a downward spiraling pricing war pushing more photographers out of the industry ?

While this battle of the small medium size is raging, things do not look so bright at the top. Wall Street has lost faith in the stock photo industry, as the stock prices from Getty and JupiterImages have shown us. And even as both Getty and Jupiter own two of the top microstock distributor, Istockphoto and Stckxchng. Meaning that financial analysts do not even see microstock as a savior of traditional stock. Will this force both out of this industry to concentrate on higher growth industries.Both Jupiter and Getty are certainly moving in that direction.

Microstocker are moving too. According to forums, they are organizing a boycott of the subscription model because it is not financially gratifying enough. First in the line of fire is obviously ShutterStock who only offers this model and might suffer the most from this move. But at least, amateurs and pro agree on one thing : they are not making enough money.

And then there is the pure absurd. Magnum makes a deal with OnRequest. I fell off my chair. The guys who invented assignments on spec are partners with the paid assignment kings? The company that has raises millions in funding while changing its business model every three weeks is shaking hands with the old lady of photography. I will only refer Magnum to the definitive article written about OnRequest : Read John Harrington ’s entry.

The photo industry is looking for itself and now that rules and rulers do not apply anymore, everyone seems to grab anything they can for survival. Like caught in a flood. This is no longer a revolution but a defenestration. The suits have no Excels to rely on while visionaries have their eyesights blurred. A while back, I had written about the Big Depression of 2007, mainly due to a pricing downfall. I also had written that this industry is still in its infancy. I did not expect to see such a turmoil of unexpected events at such speed. 2008 is going to be fun…hold on.

Sharing sales data

A funny thing happened recently. One of the top microstock agency, Dreamstime, has decided to lift part of the veil on sales data. As an additional tool given to their contributor, they are now showing what keyword generated a download, thus a sale, of their image.

It is a great tool for contributors, albeit a double edge one. One could be tempted to use it for “keyword spamming”, the art of putting the wrong keyword to an image, in the hopes it will be seen, and eventually bought. A plague for microstock platforms. But what is new and challenging is Dreamstime decision to share part of its sales data.

The history of photo agencies and most recently sales platform has always been the opposite. In order to keep contributors with them, no one shared valuable sales data. It was, and is, proprietary information. A bit like enslaving someone by depriving him of knowledge. Getty, Corbis or JupiterImages, along many, many others would never dare make such a move for fear that their contributors would use that information to feed someone else, such as the competitions’ image database. And that will happen to Dreamstime, since exclusive contributors are maybe around 10% of their pool.

In a slide and phone world, that would have been quasi impossible . Requests for images did not come in the form of one or a sequence of one words. Thus photo agencies would have had a very hard time sharing that information. With websites, all this is different, obviously. But it still remains a very well guarded secret.

The real question is how is this useful ? Well, for one, it will bring a succesful microshooter valuable data on what types of keywords are entered for search. And which ones are the most entered and referred to their images. It will not, however, give a full picture. And that can be highly deceiving. It is not because I sold 100 images thanks to the keyword “butterfly” that this keyword is the most used in searches. It just probably means that I have the most relevant images of butterflies. Since it will not give all keywords, it will not help putting keywords you forgot to put in. For example, if my specialty is photographing fruits and I systematically forgot to put the keyword “fresh”, it will not show me how many sales I missed, if any.

Contributors reaction to this tool has been overwhelming positive and I command Dreamstime for making this available. It is a gutsy move to give photographers access to their sales data. It might, or will, force other microstock companies to do the same. Eventually, it might even force traditional agencies to follow and share more of their information. Their is a value for photographers to be less blind to the markets demand, while there is danger in using past sales to predict or influence future sales. It is not because a keyword has done well in the past that it will do well in the future and the risk is having more of the same image ad nausea. But this is more in a trend that is seeing more power given to photographers. And that is a good thing.

ON a completely unrelated note : Digg.com labs has released a image visual tool which allows to see, real time, what images are being voted. It has no practical usage that I can see but yet is very interesting.

Of Empires and Barbarians

So many things to talk about so little time. First there are patents being pended about photography. Empire type companies Corbis and Google have both leaked, “by accident”, that they had files for patents on processes that have to do with photography. Corbis, for one, who actually has a “director of pricing”, registered a process that would seemingly automate pricing. One aspect of it, besides being closely inspired by Wal Mart structure ( Wal Mart sends more wood to an era who they see will soon be hit by a hurricane or tornado), is that is seems to want to increase the price of an image based on its popularity. The more an image is bought, the more its price goes up.

Now, don’t take me wrong, but my understanding of image pricing was quite the opposite. The less an image has been used, the more one can ask for a higher price. Especially, my dear friends, if the clients wants to guarentee that no one else would use the image. Corbis definitely move in mysterious ways . Like Hell, the path to profitability is paved with good intentions.

Furthermore, this, “the more people want it, the more I will make them pay” pricing schemes (sounds like buying tickets to a rock concert) is already being applied by Dreamstime and maybe other microstocks. Ah well, the patent covers more area, so just maybe, maybe, Microsoft’s little brother will one day proudly walk around daddy Gates house showing that he too can get a patent.

Google, on the other hand, continues its destruction of photography. They have just filed for a patent that can read any text within an image. This will allow them to scout the internet’s billion of photographs and look for any written text that lies within an image instead of the image itself. Thus, if you have a great image of US troops in the streets of Baghdad, for example, that happen to walk in front of a McDonald sign, your image will be classified under McDonald instead of war. It will strip the intent of your image in favor of whatever text might be in it. This will be reducing photography to its mere reality reproducing function. Yes, I know, the intend is to be able to “read” the images that have been taken for Google Maps on the street level and allow for someone to search for a restaurant or store based on its name. However, if unleashed to more than the robotic camera sitting atop a van, it could really, really damage image search.

On the technology level, I am quite amused to see that the CES has more to offer the photography industry than ImagingUSA happening at the same time. ImagingUsa is a professional only trade meeting being held one a year. It is being held in the retired state of Florida and seems to showcase the same products and faces every year, with a few very rare exception. On the other hand CES 2008 ( Consumer Electronic Showcase 2008) is full of innovative, crazy products that will make the photography world change in the next years. Do not forget that the photography market has exploded and is now fully driven by amateurs and gadget driven passionate. Companies have seen in the Flickr users and other Microstock members a very attractive source of income who knows no traditional boundaries. From studios in a box that allow your 5 year old to take object photography like a pro to HD video and still point and shoot cameras, the future is at CES. While pros gather in Tampa to see how they can maybe enhance their current business and work flow, amateurs flock to Las Vegas to grab the newest piece of technology. One will fall behind, the other will reinvent how to take images. This is where the new photographers will come from, not from Tampa.

Pro photographers, it seems, are looking in all the wrong places these days, in a desperate attempt to salvage and protect their business. The barbarians ( read non pros) have already crossed the gates and they are invading with much more than their sheer numbers. They have no expectations, no legacy, no traditions, and nothing to build on. They, however, have free minds and a lot of will.

The end of autofocus ?

First there was the end of out of focus images. Thanks to autofocus lenses, it is now quite impossible to get a blurry image. You can, however, get the focus on the wrong object. Now, this company out of California, is working on what they call Refocus Imaging. You can focus AFTER taking the image. Not only that, but you can play around with your depth of field. No need to play around with your aperture at shooting time.
It is still at an experimental level and the quality is not great but once it is all said and done, one could easily have two or three versions of the same image with the focal point at different places. The The Digital Lens™ Platform is composed, for now, of a piece of hardware to mount on your camera and the proprietary software. It also, apparently, captures more light from the same shooting conditions by enhancing current captors. Be prepared for more post processing time.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it integrated in a camera in the next coming years.

see it for yourself