Hi Members
POLICING ILLEGAL IMAGE USAGE: WHAT YOU CAN DO
FOTOFRINGE
CLOUD CUCKOO LAND
HAVE YOU GOT A RED FLAG?
AREAS OF OUTSTANDING NATURAL BEAUTY
SOME RECENT FOTOLIBRA TECHNICAL SUPPORT QUERIES
A LIST OF CITIES
VIDEOLIBRA
ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE
PICTURE CREDITS
POLICING ILLEGAL IMAGE USAGE: WHAT YOU CAN DO
fotoLibra Member Robert Crook alerted us when he found one of his images with a large fotoLibra watermark being used on somebody’s blog. He asked if we’d made the sale, and we hadn’t — the thief had simply stolen the lo-res watermarked Preview and posted it on her blog.
But Do Not Panic. Your original images are safe. They cannot be downloaded from the fotoLibra site without our knowledge. But anyone can drag Thumbnails and Previews off any website, which is why in our case they are protected with embedded metadata and, in the case of Previews, with embedded watermarks. We don’t mind students using such images for free in dissertations and essays. If they want to use an unwatermarked version they have to pay, which of course outrages them because they think everything on the internet should be free.
If it’s not for student use, we charge. But how do you track down unauthorised usage of your images?
Here’s how Bob does it, slightly adapted to suit all fotoLibra members:
Open Google Images in one browser.
In another browser, go to your Portfolio in the fotoLibra Control Centre. Choose one of your images. Double click to enlarge it into a watermarked Preview image.
Highlight the image, and slide it onto the bar on the Google page.
It will take only a few seconds to search.
When it has finished you will see the image at the top of the page and a list underneath of where it is being used.
It also attempts to show you similar images by matching the colours. Sometimes this is impressive. Sometimes it makes you realise how alien a computer’s “intelligence” can be.
If you have some curiosity and spare time, please check through some of your images this way. If you do find evidence that one or more of your images is being used without your knowledge or consent, this is what we want you to do: Email me with a) the FOT number of your image, and b) the precise, full URL of where you saw that image being used.
We will contact the abusers and demand payment on your behalf. We can never guarantee success, particularly in overseas jurisdictions, but we can certainly frighten them, and we can name and shame them.
In fact — here’s a thought — if people don’t pay up, I might publish a regular Cheat List, where we can publicise URLs where any unpaid for fotoLibra Preview images appear, and fotoLibra members and friends can then comment on the probity and honesty (or otherwise) of the offending sites. What do you think?
FOTOFRINGE
fotoFringe is much the best picture buyers’ fair we’ve ever been to. It’s democratised — 92 picture libraries exhibited, and each was allowed a trestle table and four chairs. No displays over A4 in height permitted. No photographers allowed — rotten, I know, but do you really want to see a cow when you go to a milk bar? The ban was strictly enforced but a couple of people lied their way in, and seemed surprised to be treated rather coolly.
Gwyn and Yvonne report that they had a series of excellent meetings with old and new picture buyers. It was well worth going to, even though the number of meetings they had was down 30% on 2011. Life in the picture library business is undeniably tough, and getting tougher. But we had torrential rain, and a badger on the line at Catford, so maybe that was why visitor numbers were down. As Yvonne remarked, the price of virtually everything has quintupled this decade — except images, where the prices have been decimated.
CLOUD CUCKOO LAND
Despite Yvonne’s comments above about the price of images falling tenfold in the last decade, there are still some photographers out there who are convinced it’s still 1992. fotoLibra Member Mark Goodwin pointed us to the Commercial Photography discussion group on LinkedIn where someone had asked what he should charge for front cover use on an ebook. A contributor by the name of Michael had this to say:
“The first thing to ask is how much is he/she planning on selling the eBook for? Since there is no way of knowing the print run. I would go by space rate, which is about $2,500 for full page cover or $1,500 for 3/4 of a page on cover.”
The Dear Leader was astounded. “Show me the publisher, any publisher in the WORLD, who would countenance such a rate! $2,500 for an ebook cover?” he raged. “Tell me who they are! We want to sell them our members’ images!”
He was driven to comment on the LinkedIn group, and this is what he wrote.
“As a photo librarian selling images for the past eight years I would really, really love to know what publisher would pay $2,500 for a full page cover image in 2012. Certainly none of the world’s 8,000 leading publishers who exhibit at the BEA, the Frankfurt Book Fair or the London Book Fair would dream of paying anything approaching that figure, except maybe on a world buy-out for the new Dan Brown. Name your sources, Michael, and try and explain why on earth would their bosses continue to pay them! This is 2012, not 1992, and the price of everything has quintupled except the price of images, which has been decimated.”
He stole that last sentence from Yvonne! — and went on to add:
“The German "Bildhonorare", the official pricing manual for the highly organised German stock agency business, proposes a fee of €1,440 ($1,902, £1,168) for a full page cover image, exclusive usage, for a printed book with a run of over one million copies. ”
I’m publishing Gwyn’s comment here because oddly enough it didn’t get past the Commercial Photography group’s moderator. No, I don’t understand why either. It’s not as intemperate as he usually is, in fact it’s quite mild. Maybe he’s simply stating an unpalatable truth. In the real world no publisher would pay anything like that for a picture, unless they’d commissioned Annie Liebowitz to photograph the Queen for the book jacket. Standing on her head.
HAVE YOU GOT A RED FLAG?
Recently I sent out a few Picture Calls for Ordnance Survey map covers. I don’t select the images to go to the client; that’s Yvonne and Gwyn’s job. Thankfully they know every inch of the British Isles, so when a member submitted an image of Falmouth to the Land’s End and Scilly Isles call, they chucked it out because it wasn’t in the mapped area. Imagine the embarrassment if we sent images to a client which weren’t from the area she asked for! We’d be like those microstock-using agencies which can’t distinguish between Llandudno, Wales and Llandudno, South Africa. Undeterred, the member also submitted the same image for the subsequent Truro & Falmouth Picture Call.
If you realise you've submitted to the wrong call in error, please remove the offending image — it's easy ... just view your submissions and click the delete icon.
Seriously, please do not submit images which don’t perfectly fit the brief. It takes up an inordinate amount of time having to double check the locations and the content of submitted images. Some members even run the danger of being red flagged — if they have been persistent offenders in the past, we are less likely to regard their images as reliable. When the client specifies “Indian Tigers (NOT in zoos!) in Madhya Pradesh, India”, we are not going to send her an image of a tiger relaxing in the Isle of Wight Zoo, however good. So don’t submit them. It’s a waste of time, and rather irritating.
AREAS OF OUTSTANDING NATURAL BEAUTY
We have masses of AONB images on fotoLibra, but scarcely any of them is keyworded as such. For example of the 595 images of the Northumberland coast, only 90 are annotated. Thanks to member Nick Jenkins for pointing out to us that this could be a big sales opportunity, so please start updating your keywords now. You can find details of all AONBs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland here.
SOME RECENT FOTOLIBRA TECHNICAL SUPPORT QUERIES
“Any idea what school this is or how to buy school cardigans?”
“I know this must be an unusual request but i do not suppose you would know where i could purchase one of those picasso inspired scarves from?”
“I have a Very Old Print of "Jesus in the The Temple" Age 12? Could you tell me any thing about this or it's value? Thanx”
A LIST OF CITIES
1. New York (4,731; 2nd)
2. London (20,320; 1st)
3. San Francisco (1,672; 6th)
4. Paris (2,759; 3rd)
5. Los Angeles (381; 13th)
6. Chicago (610; 11th)
7. Washington (2,656; 4th)
8. Seattle (231; 14th)
9. Rome (1,476; 7th)
10. Amsterdam (891; 8th)
11. Boston (636; 10th)
12. Barcelona (1,862; 5th)
13. San Diego (94; 15th)
14. Berlin (721; 9th)
15. Las Vegas (519; 12th)
What’s this? This claims to be a list of the most photographed cities on earth. It’s possibly the only list on earth in which San Diego could outrank Berlin, because it’s surveyed from an American photo-sharing site. You can see it in its full academic rigour here.
What are the figures in brackets? The number of images of these cities on fotoLibra, and the ranking of these places from a fotoLibra point of view. Interesting, isn’t it?
VIDEOLIBRA
Don’t get all excited, it’s not going to happen for a while. But the concept of videoLibra was in the Dear Leader’s mind when fotoLibra was little more than a gleam in his eye. Today the buzz word in the picture biz is Footage, and the monster picture libraries have already snapped up all the rights to those familiar five second film clips that define an era. What they haven’t got are those clattery old reels of 8mm that Grandad took at Frinton in the 1950s. That is, we hope, what you may have in your attics. Because footage like that speaks more about our lives in those times than any amount of yardage or mileage of slick, creamy cinematography. The question is, of course, is there a market? Well, yes there is, but it won’t make any of us rich. Which is why we’re not doing it. Yet.
ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE
I always thought it was worth spending a little while at school learning English. OK, so I’m a pedant. And I’ve recently watched an impressive TV programme about a young English lad learning passable Arabic in 19 weeks. Of course I will ‘eave ‘alf a brick at furriners as readily as the next mountain lass, but these following genuine questions to fotoLibra Technical Support were from people who had proper English names and addresses, and from quite smart areas actually. I promise we did not make these up, or change any spelling or grammar. Me, I blame the teachers.
“I am find out why lots of people have see my photographs in total views and sessions but no one interesting to buy my images” (when this was deciphered it unsurprisingly turned out to be a keywording issue; in fact a total lack of them)
“I noticed thats people have been view with my images. So l wonder how l will know when they are going to buy my images via email or website? Many Thank you”
PICTURE CREDITS
Sugar Granules: © Bob Crook / fotoLibra
Cuckoo Flower or Lady’s Smock: © Carl Morrow / fotoLibra
Wiscombe Park Hill Climb Marshall: © Anthony Rowe / fotoLibra
Beadnell Limekilns Northumberland: © Nick Jenkins / fotoLibra
Workmates (Springwell Quarry): © Margaret Tanner / fotoLibra
New York Skyline: © Stephen Price / fotoLibra
Antique 8mm Cine Camera: © Peter Coupe / fotoLibra
Morris Dancer: © David Harding / fotoLibra