StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

Corbis To Fire Zefa Staff And Other Stuff

Some more or less serious reading for the weekend: "Citing Redundancies, Corbis Trims Zefa Workforce" (pdnonline), "Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog, Photoblog: How Photographers Are Making The Internet Work For Them" (shutterbug), "Fotolog, World's Largest Photo Blogging Community, Welcomes One Millionth Fotologger" and finally "Photos, Blogging And Fair Use" (pdnonline).

Posted by Andy

File Magazine: A Collection of Unexpected Photography

[COVER PHOTO: Cornfield on Fire, ©by Narayan Nayar]

Nearly every week new online photo mags appear and it has become very difficult to follow all the links to nepalesian photography of the twenties, relaunches of well-known sites and the birth of brandnew sites.

File Magazine, launched August 1, 2004, describes itself as "FILE Magazine publishes images that treat subjects in unexpected ways. All amateur and professional photographers are encouraged to submit their work to FILE magazine. Alternate takes, odd angles, unconventional observations - these are some of the ways photographs collected in FILE reinterpret traditional genres. We leave the Kodak Moments to the family album, the glossy fashion spreads to Vogue, and the photo finishes to ESPN. Rather than taking the well-trod paths, we veer to left and get a different perspective. Confused? Browse The Collection. The photos say it better than we can."

The people behind File Magazine are apatrick, the Photo Editor, a working photojournalist in Northern California and Beerzie Boy, the Content Editor and Webslave, an Information Developer at a large technology company.

Two weeks ago, File Magazine called for submissions on Photoblogs.org (read the File Magazine submission guidelines). Photos are presented in the "The Collection" and the newly created "Karaoke Camera" ("unlike The Collection, Karaoke Camera has pre-selected categories", Link).

Although File Magazine is not "a photoblog, photo challenge/contest, or group photo album", this might become a place where photo-/moblogging and photography meet (to quote a privately interviewed serious photo editor, researcher and buyer "the place where the stupid art directors from ..... might get new inspirations") and some agencies hunt for new talents and new views ("contributors to File Magazine").

Support File Magazine! => "We are also selling FILE paraphernalia. Click here to buy t-shirts, mugs, mousepads and other crap you don't need. Keep in mind we make little from these and what we do make we use to defray hosting and other costs."
Well, someone who uses the words paraphernalia and crap can´t be wrong.

Iraqian Frontline and the Images from Moblogging Soldiers: Final Epilogue

After some weeks of investigating and reporting "Iraqian Frontline: Images from Moblogging Soldiers, Part I - Part VIII" (read all these stories in the Category "Iraq|War: Photos + Reports" and additionally "Iraq|War|Photography: The Meta Level") John Schott of Camera/Iraq ("Camera/Iraq: New Website Launched") recently wrote in "Soldier Photos":

Camera/Iraq has a continuing interest in soldier photograhy from the Middle East, and we would like to collaborate in the creation of an online exhibition of such work. We were first inspired by excellent early efforts at Phototalk... .
Unfortunately, while scouring soldier photo-blogs or cam-phone collections for that one-in-a-hundred outstanding image, Phototalk encountered pictures lifted from other sources, frequently work by professional photographers. This shouldn't be surprising, really, since the pragmatic goal of a photo-blog is to visualize one's military experience in Iraq rather than to sell photo rights or garner professional notoriety. Content and context trump artistic provenance in soldier photo-blogs.
For a photo editor, however, borrowed pictures creates the possibility of mis-attribution. Contacting soldiers by email has proven difficult because they are otherwise engaged in fighting a war, often gather and present work as a unit rather than exclusively from their own "personal vision," and frequently don't encourage communication by including email addresses or are so flooded with messages that they can not respond. Plus, of course, soldiers are under new scrutiny about what images they are placing online.
Still, the notion of editing an online exhibition is compelling. Please email us if you would like to undertake or contribute to such a project.

This is not entirely the complete story: there is a difference between telling your own war history in your words using (sometimes) other peoples images as an illustration for your text and the (how to say: very euphemistic) categorical statement: "Hey, I took these pix, I created them", which is just a stupid lie. On the other hand, time has shown that at a least one army press officer (with a certain background in photography) had taken private photos with a quality and meaning far beyond the day. It is the old question "who is doing what and how". An undisputed claim: 95 percent of all people reading this blog would present/moblog their own images and never ever other people´s images, except under very special circumstances.

John Schott writes: "The pragmatic goal of a photo-blog is to visualize one's military experience in Iraq". This is absolutely right, but who can visualize your own military experience, your daily life, better than you yourself, in your special situation? No one needs to steal pictures for that.

John Schott writes: "Content and context trump artistic provenance in soldier photo-blogs." With stolen photos? Blogged together with complete book chapters "borrowed" from famous writers? All that without a clarifying explanation?

Where (as a soldier) is your very own experience, your "content and context", if you only cite and quote and/or grab and steal for "visualizing" your "military experience"? Is is still your experience you present (as a moblogging soldier)? Borrowed presentations and visualizations of personal experiences? Do they coexist? What is the next step? Borrowed personal experiences? Where is the real life?

Questo blog è chiuso per ferie, fino all' 8 Agosto 2004

[© Grace and Katie]

Chiudo, per un circa settimana, questo weblog. Infatti, a mio modesto parere, per scrivere bisogna prima pensare e, i blogs spesso ti tolgono lo spazio per pensare.


(Hint for the person/CEO/BizDeveloper etc. who is constantly looking for "DigitalVision 2003 revenues", ""Image source" 2003 revenues" or "Index stock imagery 2003 revenues" and other good stuff-- Google hits are a tricky thing, especially with your really nice -- and static -- IP! So, no one has to work for Pixlogic, the company ("Visual Search") with Venture Capital from the CIA, just to know who you are...).
=:-)

"THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR USING OUR PICTURES" Part II

As a recent update to this story "THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR USING OUR PICTURES" there is a starting discussion at The Jason Calacanis Weblog: "Fair Use for photos on the web and in blogs: a modest proposal to avoid a major battle". We might be overreacting but to think that "cropping" or "image resizing" could be a part of the solution is somehow greeny. You cannot resize the copyright.
However it is overdue to set up standards for this topic regarding the use of non-professional-photography on a website/blog (and non-professional in this case is not a term of the quality of the photography, but "Do I earn my bucks with photography or not?").
Any commercial weblog (and we guess there will more and more in the next years) will run into difficulties if it uses photography from both sides -- amateur and pro -- without paying for the images shown.

What others talk about

Remarkable Coincidences. As always a great story about recent photojournalism: "More Photojournalism: Asian Transitions, Gangs of Different Eras, and L.A. Night Life."

Mike Mosall asks: "Is Blogging an art form? Are we photographers or are we artists portraying our daily vision of society through computer software, pixkles, memory cards, and Photoshop? Are we modern day Garry Winogrand’s?"
Andrew Hall responds: "Neither a blog nor a photoblog is inherently a work of art any more than an urinal is a work of art. But that did not stop Marcel Duchamp making of an urinal one of the most influential works of art in the twentieth century."

"Dan Rather nowhere in sight…". Clay Shirky: "Moblogging from the front and the new Reformation": "Jaques Barzun, author of the marvelous history of modernity From Dawn to Decadence (1500 - present), makes the point that the Catholic Church as a pan-European political force was done in by the Protestant Reformation, itself fueled by the printing press. Once the Church lost the ability to control the direct perception of scripture, thanks to the printing of (relatively) cheap bibles in languages other than Latin, their loss of political hegemony followed."

He continues: "New tools for spreading of the word are powerful, of course — witness the weblog explosion in all its complexity. But the spread of images is a different kind of thing, not least because images pass across linguistic borders like a lava flow. Now that production and distribution of images are in the hands of the laity, it’s a safe bet that we are entering a world of “That will kill this.” We just don’t know what parts of society “this” refers to yet."

Reader Marc Hedlund responded: "Isn’t it interesting that the first court-martial from the case, against Jeremy C. Sivits, charges him not with abusing prisoners but instead with photographing the abuse?"[Link]

BoingBoing concludes: "Cameraphones are today's Gutenberg press".

Worldchanging adds: "The Participatory Panopticon vs. The Pentagon": "Anyone, anywhere, with a digital camera and a network connection has enormous power, perhaps enough to alter the course of a war or the policies of the most powerful nation on Earth."

Editor´s Choice: Photoblog/Moblog of the Week

[4th week]

It would however be very easy and pleasant to pick up only the work of the widely accepted pros and superpros and present their pictures in a weeky held "Editor´s Choice", but this is not what we´d like to do.

So this week we are highlighting the work of a portugesian and a spanish photographer. Both photographer with the "other view."

The first one is Luis Farrolas of flux+mutability, who is also great in selecting and presenting the work of other photographers:

[Click on image to enlarge, © Luis Farrolas]

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We discovered his work some weeks ago. The universe of moblogs has become so endless that - given we´d have the ressources - we could present a "Moblog of the Day" every single day.
Additionally, if you want to know what is going on in photography (exhibitions etc.) this should be your the website of choice, together with Coincidences.

The second one is Plácido Pérez of Imaginate:

[Click on image to enlarge, © Plácido Pérez]

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________________________________________________________________
[1st week: Blog of the Photo ]
[2nd week: < < < Pan-O-Rama > > > ]
[3rd week: Bart Bagoda]

How can I prevent my website images from being cataloged by the Google Image Search?

A subscriber of the Editorialphoto Yahoogroups asked the community in general: "How can I protect my site and my images (the main concern) from being listed by the Google Image Search?"

This question has a special history. Besides the tricky questions where your images are stored physically, if they had been copied to another server and if the owner or company behind the indexed server has paid for the usage of your photos (see the Editorialphoto discussion group; note: your membership must be approved) a reader responded: "Google has a section on how to prevent your images from being cataloged, and how to remove image from the search service from servers you don't have control over."

This procedure is also working with other internet image search engines for private consumers like f.e. PicSearch (1; 2 - don´t confound it with PicScout).

Editor´s Choice: Photoblog/Moblog of the Week

[3rd week]

These sites of the polnish photographer BART POGODA are crazy good:

Bart Pogoda | b.art.pl | photoblog | fotoblog | remains of the day
bartpogoda.com | photography
bartpogoda.com | photography
digitalife.net | movieblog

The latter is the dedicated movieblog of Bart Pagoda (See 1; 2).

Bart has a special taste (or click on the image to enlarge it):

[PHOTO AND ALL COPYRIGHTS BY BART PAGODA]

It´s very difficult to pick up only a few of his photos to demonstrate the outstanding quality of his work:

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For a more complete overview on his work download his portfolio. Remember: Copyright by Bart Pagoda and, unless otherwise stated by Bart Pagoda, not for further distribution. Please contact him personally (see his website).
________________________________________________________________
[1st week: Blog of the Photo ]
[2nd week: < < < Pan-O-Rama > > > ]

Pro working with a Camera Phone [Addendum to last posting]

"This Just Happened" [Copyright Photo: Louie Villalobos/ The Sun]

Louie Villalobos, a professional journalist of The Sun in Yuma, Arizona, is writing and photographing with a camera phone for his moblog "The Border: Where Two Worlds Meet". It deals mainly with stuff around the Arizona border with Mexico (drug smuggle, illegal immigrants etc.): "Just a look at the life of a reporter covering the Arizona border with Mexico. I will post pictures while out in the field. I will also include the articles to go with pictures, when available." [Link]

"Another smoke out" [Copyright Photo: Louie Villalobos/The Sun]

Louie Villalobos: "Here is another photo of the Mexican Army burning dope, this time it was 13 tons. They also burned more than 200 grams of heroin."[Link, Copyright Photos and Text: Louie Villalobos/The Sun, see full article at The Sun]

So all we need as pros would be a camphone with at least 3 - 5 MP resolution including a 28mm lens with F2.0 and a suitable flash; and for stock productions at least 11 - 16 MP resolution and a second camera phone with instant video transmission as a remote control for the Art Director behind his desk in LA or NYC.

=:-)

No kidding, these devices will come... .

[Via J.D. Lasica and Steve Outing]