Hi Members
INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS
FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR
USER-GENERATED CONTENT
THE PLUS REGISTRY
PLUS LICENSING REGISTRY NEEDS PHOTOGRAPHER'S SUPPORT by David Hoffman, EPUK
HOW MANY IMAGES?
THOUGHTS ABOUT ALAMY
THE f-STOPS HERE
INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS
fotoLibra member David Cardelús's architectural photography has been recognized with an honorable mention in the 'Buildings' category in the Lucie Foundation’s 2013 International Photography Awards in Los Angeles, California.
Porta Fira Hotel, Barcelona
A series of five photographs entitled “Metallic Architecture” comprises some of his most committed and admired work of recent years. They represent the use of various steel and aluminum saturated colour metal façades in some recent pieces of contemporary architecture in Barcelona.
Cardelús's photographs explore the lightweight metallic look of these buildings, synthesizing their main architectural features and simplifying their bare and essential shapes, solid colours and lighting to transform them into beautiful and unique sculptures planted across the urban landscape, like an open air museum.
FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR
Our Dear Leader has returned huffing and puffing from the world's biggest book fair. He only managed to cram 56 meetings in between his prodigious intake of würst and bier, but they all seemed to be remarkably productive. Perhaps the economic stranglehold is gradually easing. The interest and the intent is definitely there. One publisher saw the work of one fotoLibra photographer and immediately offered to publish a book of the photographs. We'll give you more details when the contract is signed.
Incidentally, always with an ear open for a clever phrase, Gwyn Headley went to the Publisher's Launch conference at Frankfurt where he heard one speaker comment disparagingly on the plethora of websites with "loser-generated content". Another speaker eschewed the traditional rocket science and brain surgeon clichés to say "you don't have to have the belief of an archbishop to know that that's true."
USER-GENERATED CONTENT
Forget the phrase you just learned in the previous story — we had an interesting message from fotoLibra member Jason Sloan:
"I not only like to take pictures myself but I also like to collect old negatives. Sometimes in these old pictures I get churches, streets or buildings I am unable to identify and I wonder if other fotolibra members have the same problem.
"So my idea is that we could add something to a picture we need help with and maybe other members whilst having a tea break etc. could just flick through and we could help each other out?"
This was the original concept of fotoLibra — it was intended to be a way of unearthing the treasures in family albums and shoeboxes packed with old photos. Shortly after we received this suggestion I had six or seven emails through the 'Comments' button which appears underneath every Preview image, correcting the locations given for several archive images. Jason promises these were nothing to do with him. Images captioned 'London' turn out to be of Birmingham:
London? No, Birmingham.
It does show that if we're prepared to work together, we can build a better product. We will look into Jason's proposal.
THE PLUS REGISTRY
The Plus Registry is a not-for-profit organisation with the objective of making image licensing as frictionless as possible. fotoLibra has been working in collaboration with many of the characters involved in PLUS, and in our mutual search for a standard system which can work across the board we feel that PLUS is the right answer for us. We will be registering with the organisation as a licensor. If you are a fotoLibra photographer, your licensed images will be registered through PLUS, with you as the copyright holder and fotoLibra as the licensor. fotoLibra will cover the cost. You retain your copyright.
Major publishers such as Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Pearson etc. will be demanding that image rights sold to them are PLUS registered in order to make their lives easier. That will be the real tipping point for 'togs & libraries. No registration - no sale.
Some call PLUS "the largest evolutionary step for the imaging industry since the Internet arrived", while others remain wary of yet another system designed to simplify image licensing. David Hoffman, a moderator on the Editorial Photographers UK and Ireland website (EPUK) and an advocate for the system in the UK, explains why he thinks it is so important professional photographers sign up for the PLUS registry.
PLUS LICENSING REGISTRY NEEDS PHOTOGRAPHER'S SUPPORT
by David Hoffman, EPUK
Since the arrival of digital photography, the problem of images getting separated from their maker's contact information has grown exponentially. Bylines are omitted, information embedded in the image file is deleted and there's no way to rubber-stamp your name on the back of a JPEG file.
The difficulty of discovering an image's owner is an excuse and an encouragement for copyright infringement. The cost of attributing and licensing images leads some publishers to use work unlawfully and others to reduce their use of photographs taken by professionals.
There's been considerable discussion on the EPUK website of a new system that will permanently link images to their owners with an invisible web of connections. This will also make it simple for image users to locate the owners, manage the rights those owners have granted and manage large numbers of licences simultaneously.
It's called PLUS (Picture Licensing Universal System), and the multilingual global licensing module has already been running successfully for three years, generating standardised licences to fit virtually every need without charge.
PLUS is a not-for-profit organisation. It won't make sales or engage in the commercial market. That makes it unattractive to takeovers. Better still, it means that any other registries that organisations choose to set up for profit will have to offer some added value in order to attract paying customers. That should lead to competitive offers of add-on services (keywording or infringement tracking for instance) for all of us.
PLUS‘s systems are open for connection with other registries. If you register with PLUS and later want to work with some other registry, then that registry will connect seamlessly with your contact info on the PLUS servers.
In essence, PLUS is designing an ecosystem in which an electronic network of agencies, museums, art buyers, photographers and representative organisations each benefit from the presence of the others in a move to civilise the dog-eat-'Tog jungle we have now. It helps towards creating a level playing field that makes coöperation in building business easier than undermining each other to gain an advantage.
Now PLUS is opening up its creator's database for photographers to enter their name and contact details into a permanent database that will soon also link to their images by using techniques that include ownership data written into the file, an invisible watermark and image recognition. Any one of those will lock that image permanently to its owner.
Imagine a designer pointing their phone at an image they want to use. The image is uploaded to the PLUS database, the owner's contact is linked and the publisher they're working for automatically sends an email to the image owner with an offer and draft licence.
Imagine a publisher with a folder filled with images for a project, they upload them to PLUS and each copyright owner gets a standardised draft licence agreement in their own language. Imagine a photographer seeing a suspected infringement. They click on the image and get a list of all the registered licensed uses.
These are components of a sustainable ecosystem that works for each because it works for all. But it can only happen if all the players give it a chance, become a part of it and are willing to support it.
Publishers, software manufacturers and agencies are already taking part. It's time for photographers to get on board and play their part in shaping our future. All those who benefit from PLUS will eventually need to find the cash to cover its running costs, but for now you can register your name and contact info with PLUS free.
Many thanks to David Hoffman and EPUK for permission to reprint his article.
HOW MANY IMAGES?
Images taken before the dawn of the 21st Century are classified by fotoLibra as Historic Images and can be freely uploaded to the site. 99.9% were taken on film. Today, 99.9% of images are born digital; a complete and total revolution.
What I would love to know — and maybe some clever reader could help me — is how many images were there in the world at midnight on December 31st, 1999, and how many are there now? I propose there are now at least twenty times as many; an unprecedented, exponential growth.
THOUGHTS ABOUT ALAMY
On the LinkedIn group 'Stock photography, buy and sell images', a considered post entitled 'Thoughts About Alamy' by photographer Tom Mackie has attracted a substantial amount of attention. Basically, Mackie is withdrawing his 7,000 images from Alamy in protest, because he is 'so disgusted with the rights that Alamy are giving away for next to nothing'.
There are several points that need to be raised here.
Firstly, any business that gives its stock away for next to nothing is doing so for one of two reasons — either they are trying to establish a monopoly, or that's all they can get for it.
Secondly, photographers and picture libraries should be working as partners, not antagonists. Together we are trying to put our work before as many potential buyers as we can. To that end — I'm citing fotoLibra because that's the only picture library I know anything about — we have built a very sophisticated digital asset management system, a fast, robust and search-engine-bot-attractive website, and a straightfoward, intuitive ecommerce system operating in three currencies. On behalf of all our photographers, we visit and exhibit at trade fairs like the Frankfurt Book Fair, fotoFringe, CEPIC and the London Book Fair. We constantly market different categories of images to professional picture buyers. We preach about metadata, copyright, licensing. Yes, photographers could do all this for themselves if they had half a million pounds to invest and six staff members to carry out the work, leaving them free to take the photographs.
Thirdly, virtually all buyers would rather shop at three or four stores where they are well-known and have a line of credit than at 500 tiny shops where they have to bargain over every price and arrange individual payments. The hassle is simply not worth it, especially when there's a deadline in sight, as there invariably is. Why should picture researchers and buyers be any different?
The picture market is incredibly tough. Publishers today look askance if you ask for more than £10 an image. Most of them simply walk away. No business can have changed more radically in the past 13 years. We are all struggling with the inescapable fact that today there is far more product than the market needs. And it's almost all good, or at the very least adequate — which it wasn't 20 years ago. So the market now dictates the prices. Not the picture libraries. Not the photographers. The market.
We're doing our best. Alamy is doing its best. But as far as photography is concerned, the days of wine and roses are over. And half a loaf of bread is better than nothing.
THE f-STOPS HERE
After that cheery diagnosis, let's round up a couple of the stories that were recently exchanged between our London and North Wales offices:
A little girl was fearlessly dancing outside in a thunderstorm. Lightning was flashing, thunder was crashing and her terrified mother rushed out and dragged her inside. "What on earth do you think you're doing?" she screamed. The little girl answered brightly, "God was taking pictures of me!"
Here's an old favourite from darkroom days: "Life is like a camera. Just focus on what's important and capture the good times. Develop from the negatives and if things don't work out, just take another shot."
And a pre-digital bumper sticker: "PHOTOGRAPHERS ENLARGE IN THE DARK."
Kind regards,
Jacqui Norman