- Shoot! The Day Event and Contest
Wherever you are on July 20th, PhotoShelter wants you to get out and take photos as part of their Shoot! The Day event. Thousands of photographers worldwide will connect, take pictures, and learn.Photographers will take photos in five key image categories. The best images will earn recognition, prizes from Nikon, Apple, and Adorama Camera, and promotion to the world’s top image buyers through PhotoShelter. Contest details and more over at PhotoShelter.
- The weird science of stock photography
This Slate article ended up in my feeds as it mentions my favourite stock photography girl (well lady now!): the Everywhere Girl. As most of you know (if you didn’t, now you do): I am fascinated by her travels in the online and print world. This reminds me that I need to use TinEye on a few of her images and see what I spot this time around. A couple of things caught my eye in :
“We had a bad day when Dolly was cloned,” says Denise Waggoner, vice president of creative research at Getty. “We hadn’t been studying biotechnology, and suddenly everyone wanted a shot of 25 sheep on a seamless white background. So now we try to keep our toes dipped in the water in lots of different fields, so we can be ready.”
And the fact that the list of most popular search terms for 2006, 2007 and the first half of 2008 all include: business, people, and woman. (Woman climbed from eighth to fifth to first).
As a rule of thumb, the lifespan of an image depicting contemporary fashions and technology is roughly four years. “That’s the maximum shelf life for, say, a woman walking down the street talking on a cell phone,” says Waggoner. “After that, she’s retro.” - unless of course she is the Everywhere Girl!
- Lawrence Lessig talks about Creative Commons and Copyright
Jim Goldstein interviews Law Professor Lawrence Lessig for his podcast EXIF and Beyond.In Goldstein’s podcast Lessig, founder of Creative Commons, discusses the purpose and objective of Creative Commons, his perspective on copyright law and addresses the question “How if at all the adoption of Creative Commons is hurting photographers”. He also shares more information about the recently announced CC+ license.
When asked about whether he feels that most people are up to speed on the rules of copyright law Lessig replied “Absolutely not. I mean, here is the fundamental design flaw of the copyright system. It was architected imagining that it would be implemented by about 150 lawyers around the United States who would be living in relatively large institutions and able to manage the intricacies of the system. And because of digital technologies this extremely arcane, complicated system of regulation now gets extended to everybody who wants to express themselves using creative work.”
As to why Lessig and his co-creators started Creative Commons? “When we saw this perfect storm on the horizon, we said we’ve got to build something that makes it possible to negotiate this mess that’s created by the conflict between the architecture of copyright law and the architecture of digital technologies.” he states.
Does he feel that CC is the only solution or the best solution? Says Lessig, “Id love it if the government tomorrow changed the law such that Creative Commons was no longer necessary” fantastic. But until the government does that, I think what CC is trying to do is to provide an infrastructure for that alternative to be built and the alternative, I think ultimately supports the project of copyright, it certainly doesn’t, given the alternatives, weaken it.”
It’s a great interview and I can’t possibly capture it all here, go have a listen! Jim has a transcript available on his website too.
If you are interested in hearing Lessig’s TED talk that Jim references in the podcast you can find it here.
In his TED talk, Lessig shares his very well-organized thoughts on user-generated content. His amusing beginning includes John Philip Sousa’s 1906 statement of warning about the evil “talking machine” - the phonograph.
Sousa took his concerns all the way to the U.S. Capitol, concerned that the “talking machines” would so ruin the development of music and artistic talent because children would stop singing “the songs of the times and the old songs”. His most dire warning was that we would actually evolve away from speech, that “we will not have a vocal chord left” if the phonograph was allowed to take over and replace actual singing.Lessig covers the idea of ‘trespassing’ and how we handled airplanes when they first began to fly the sky. It’s a great talk and you don’t want to miss the clips he uses to illustrate his points throughout.
- Frans Lanting at the Microsoft Photo Summit
Lanting’s Life Project entitled A Journey Through Time is a mammoth undertaking, a multimedia story of epic proportions. Lanting, quite possibly the greatest nature photographer of his time, traveled every part of the planet and made hundreds of images telling the story of life on earth from the very beginning.
In his words, “Nature’s my muse and it’s been my passion… I wanted to visualize the story of life. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever attempted.”
To watch Lanting’s lyrical interpretation of life is to journey back in our own unconscious to the common collective memory of this planet’s history. The pure, emotional connection to his images made me shake my head in wonder and smile as I watched the story unfold. His brilliance is not just his incredible photography but in so perfectly developing the idea behind the collection and meshing the story with the instrumental music of Philip Glass to create an experience.
During his TED talk Lanting goes on to say “I hope it’s a story that has some resonance for our time. It’s a story about you and me.”
The Life Project includes a large-format book with over 175 images, a multimedia orchestral performance, a traveling photographic exhibition, and a dedicated educational website, LifeThroughTime.com. The Project is exhaustive, with online resources where you can learn about Life and follow his 6 year experience creating Life.
“So who are we?” he asks at the end of his talk. “Life is a force in its own right. It is a new element.”
- We’ll be at the Microsoft Pro Photo Summit this week
On July 9-10th our CEO and CTO will be attending the 3rd annual Microsoft Pro Photo Summit, a two-day, invitation-only event that brings together renowned professional photographers and industry leaders to discuss the top issues affecting the industry.The event will open with keynote presentations by Microsoft Chief Technical Officer David Vaskevitch and world-renowned nature photographer Frans Lanting.
Some other agenda topics for the ‘08 event include Victor Perlman (ASMP) and John Harrington (Washington DC Photographer) with an update about Orphan Works, Photographer Louis Lesko’s (Blinkbid) interestingly titled talk “Let the Photo Pirates Have Their Way” and a microstock photography session from the folks at iStockPhoto and Selling-Stock (Lise Gagne and Jim Pickerell, respectively).
Also on the schedule are a number of Microsoft Rich Media Group presentations, a Presidential campaign photography talk by Melina Mara (Washington Post), Eric Chan’s camera profiling session (Adobe) and David Riecks‘ Photo Metadata Project discussion (ControlledVocabulary).
Microsoft’s Josh Weisberg will make the Summit’s closing comments this year.
It will be exciting to find out more about what’s coming out of Redmond during this summit. Hopefully we’ll have some interesting tid-bits to share with you next week, stay tuned!
- Getty Images and Flickr Honeymoon
SEATTLE & SAN FRANCISCO, Jul 08, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Getty Images, the world’s leading creator and distributor of visual content and other digital media, and Flickr(TM), a division of Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) and one of the world’s largest photo sharing communities, today announce a collaboration that unites the authenticity of images from the Flickr community with Getty Images’ imagery collections, photographic expertise and unrivalled experience in licensing digital media.
The exclusive partnership allows Getty Images to invite Flickr members to participate in a Flickr branded collection on Getty Images that will be available for licensing to Getty Images’ creative, commercial and editorial customers in the coming months.
The rest of the press release is available here, but it is however short on details on how photographers will be selected for participation. I believe this is an awesome development for interested Flickr photographers and the industry as a whole. What customers have been licensing has changed over the years, Flickr offers a creative, edgy and very broad photo offering which in my view will only broaden the Getty creative offering.
Flickr and the microstock industry were the talk of the town two years ago when I attended my last PACA conference (that story is for another blog post!) ; I still remember conversations with industry veterans about the blurring lines between amateur and pro photography and how today’s clients needs and budgets changed the world of photo licensing. Ah the heated conversations!
The Seattlepi reports that, “Flickr users will be able to declare whether they want their images considered for commercial use.” and adds: “Flickr users, many of whom are amateurs, will be paid in the same manner as professionals if their images are used commercially. Getty customers usually pay between $29 and $200,000 for an image, depending on how freely they may use it. Photographers receive 30 percent to 40 percent of the licensing fee if the customer’s rights to use the image are limited in scope or time, or 20 percent if the image may be used with fewer restrictions.”
There aren’t too many details in the Flickr FAQ but a PDN interview with Getty’s Jonathan Klein and Flickr Chief Kakul Srivastava reveals a few more details as to the Klein’s vision with this strategic relationship:
Klein: From our perspective, as we’ve talked to you in the past, our approach is to be able to either come up with anything new or innovative in the industry, or if we’re not smart enough to come up with it, to acquire it early enough or to partner with it. We’ve come up with a lot ourselves. We acquired into microstock very, very early on. And now we’re partnering with something everyone in the industry knows is absolutely fundamental, and that is the Flickr community. I don’t know where it will go, but what I can tell you is we need to be very clear what it is and what it is not. This is not another microstock play. This, I think, shows our confidence and Flickr’s confidence in the longevity and the validity of traditional licensing models, in quality imagery no matter who shot it, and that imagery delivered in a way which meets customer needs. ‘Cause at the end of the day, as you said, what stops somebody going to Flickr today to get that picture? The same thing that stops somebody from going to the Library of Congress to get a picture. The Library of Congress has more photos than we do. But you try licensing one on a tight timetable from them. So the key is to twin the right imagery with all of those factors which are not cool and sexy, but which business customers really care about. And that is, am I going to get sued? Can I get it quickly? Will it download? Will it reproduce the way I think it will? And at the end of the day, can I make sure it’s within my budget? And that’s really what we’re doing here. We have over a hundred image partners and I’m just so glad to add one of the great brands in photography to that list, and it’s Flickr.
How strategic is Flickr? Well, let the numbers speak for themselves: from the SeattlePI “Flickr said it gets 54 million worldwide visitors each month and stores more than 2 billion photos for 27 million members.” and I am sure that in this haystack there will be images that can be licensed by creatives looking for authenticity. Oh do I hear better search? Simplified licensing models? Oh do I hear innovation? Time will tell.
- Pix Channel’s amazing photographer interviews
It’s worth setting aside the time to enjoy Pix Channel’s wonderful selection of interviews with the likes of Mary Ellen Mark on “making images that will last forever“, Duane Michals on trusting his instincts, Qi and the nature of reality and Andy Summers (yes, that Andy Summers) who says “nothing that’s really worth while is that simple… I think the greatest art is always ambiguous.”
- John Moore: Award Winning Photojournalism
© Photo by Warrick Page
The July issue of The Digital Journalist, the monthly magazine for visual journalism, is out. This month’s main feature is John Moore, an award-winning photojournalist for Getty Images who seems to be everywhere, especially when there is a big story. You remember him because of his recent photos of Benazir Bhutto during the last moments of her life and his pictures of the chaos in the streets that followed. Not an overnight sensation, John Moore has been a working, globetrotting photographer for more than 17 years. In her incisive portrait of Moore, Beverly Spicer tells us how he works and gives us insight into why he is so successful. Accompanying the text is an extensive galley of John
Moore’s photos including his Pakistan, Iraq and Pan-American Highway series.
- Nothing But Blue Sky For New Photographers
Via Rob Haggard this morning a great piece about all the problems facing photographers written by Vincent Laforet. I met Vincent a couple of years ago at the Microsoft Photo Summit and have come to enjoy his work since. His piece for Sports Shooter is both depressing and invigorating at the same time (go figure!) and Vincent has hit the nail on the head:
The challenge is to find a way to continue to produce quality original content, and to connect with your audience - not to hold on to the old, traditional way of doing things. So while the cloud may be falling - there’s plenty of blue sky above - and the possibilities are endless. Good luck.
- The Magic of TinEye
We love to hear from our community about their surprising TinEye experiences. When we read about Jeff Clow’s story in the Flickr forums the team here was just thrilled and I knew we had to share his TinEye story.Jeff lives in Texas, is a training consultant and picked up photography over just the last three years. He is truly a die-hard digital photography fan with a passion for creating beautiful images.
Jeff’s Flickr profile notes “The best compliment I ever received about my photography came from Flickr. A visitor simply said ‘Boy, you can shoot.‘ Isn’t that what it is all about when you peel back all the layers? We ’shoot’ and we are glad when someone likes how we do it…”
We feel the same way, Jeff. The great team here at the Idéeplex are putting their hearts (and long hours) into TinEye and are so excited to hear that our fans love TinEye too!
What are your thoughts on some of the challenges that photographers are facing today?
Jeff thinks that while image theft is a constant issue it is also something where most often “the juice is not worth the squeeze” as far as trying to pursue action against infringements, particularly outside of North America. The biggest challenge, he states, is simply finding out where your images are in use, legally or not. “For every photographer that has images online it has simply been impossible to know what happens to them once they are sold - until TinEye.”
He estimates that of the over 4000 images he has sold, he knows where only about a dozen have been used.
How do you typically find out where your images are being used?
“Either legal or illegal it’s almost impossible to know where your images are unless you stumbled upon one online by accident or someone you know and who knows your photography sees it and reports it back to you” he concludes. An infinitesimally small number can be found with a regular google text search - Jeff has over 300 images currently for sale and says it would take “forever” to try to find them, with little return.
How did you find out about TinEye?
TinEye was mentioned on one of the message boards on Flickr and Jeff’s initial reaction was skepticism but also curiosity. He said “I am so pleased and have already become a huge TinEye fan because the concept and the reality are the same - most often these things don’t actually work.” He sees Idée becoming the world leader in image search.
Tell me about the album cover story - what happened?
In Jeff’s first few TinEye searches he discovered that one of his licensed images was being used as an album cover!He had been paid for the stunning photo of a horse in a field but didn’t know how or where the image was being used online or otherwise.
Jeff says that finding the image in use on the cover was “one of the highlights in my career”. Fantastic! He even bought a copy so he can use it as part of his portfolio.
What does it mean to find your images in use?
“Any photographer who’s worth his weight in film or photography would want to know where their images are used” says Jeff. “Most photographers take photos because they want to have someone validate that it’s a good photo - that’s the magic of Flickr and that’s the magic of TinEye.”
He goes on to say that TinEye is a way of validating that all his hard work is worth it, that others appreciate what he does. “Getting paid is great, but it doesn’t give you the same thrill of discovery as seeing your image in print, on a website, a book or album cover. You are creating a validation machine with TinEye - and validation is a huge part of life.”
As we wrapped up our talk Jeff mentioned that he can see in the near future a time when people say ‘what did we do before TinEye?’ We like the sound of that too, Jeff!
To learn more about the photography of Jeff Clow visit his online gallery and flickr profile.
To request a TinEye invitation register online.
** All Images Copyright Jeff Clow
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