by Georgia McCabe
The photo industry has undergone a great deal of change in recent years. Digitization, mobility, social media and cloud technologies have impacted on traditional players and their revenue streams. What we in the industry must bear in mind is that while mankind has a love affair with capturing memories using images, the photo industry is at its heart a story of technology – and technology moves inexorably forward, constantly evolving. If you fail to adapt to the changes you face extinction.
At PMA’s 2015 InnovationNow: Photo Business & Technology Summit in San Francisco we were able to honor a group of technology innovators with the inaugural Out of the Box Awards. The awards were wide-ranging in their scope and reflect the diversity, creativity and innovation that is happening throughout the photo industry today.
Mixbook – Excelling in the Customer Experience
Well over half of all photo book projects end up being abandoned. The obvious culprit? The user experience. Mixbook’s award winning creation solution simplifies this process through the application of automatic image curation, including image quality and duplicate subject detection, meta-data directed page layout and even automatic smile detection. The Mixbook site and mobile applications incorporate “state of the art” responsive design technology that further enhance their clean and easily understood user experience, making the creation of a high quality photobook a quick and immensely enjoyable consumer experience.
DSP Photography – Winner of the Focused Productivity
Dave Stock is a relentless force in what the industry calls “volume sports photography”. DSP Photography has never once wavered from the end game of serving customers with the best photos of their athlete at a value proposition and quick turnaround that creates some of the highest customer satisfaction in the leagues and sports served. Recently Dave was selected as a Lumix Luminary, once again bestowing upon him a worthy award and designation as an exceptionally talented photographer and more importantly, a caring and giving industry colleague and leader.
Disney– Real Magic in the Magic Kingdom
Disney’s professional images are taken at just the right locations, with that favorite character or at the best curve on Space Mountain, but should consumers need to change their mobile picture taking and sharing habits where professional images are concerned? Disney’s answer is a resounding NO and that is where the magic of Memory Maker starts.
Memory Maker is perhaps the epitome of what happens when the biggest tourist attraction in the US thinks out of the box and totally redesigns how they capture and deliver professional vacation images to modern families.
A Memory Maker customer can have as many images taken as they want by Disney’s team of skilled photographers at numerous locations throughout the resort and on-line Memory Maker accounts are directly linked to the Disney Magic Band, a $1 billion RFID consumer wristband program that digitally modernizes virtually everything about visiting and enjoying a Disney theme park.
A professional shutter snap and a Magic Band scan instantaneously transfers an image directly to the guests Memory Maker account where it then can be instantaneously viewed and shared from their Smartphone, computer or tablet. If that isn’t a big enough change, recognizing that connected photography is an entirely new business and in total abandonment of the rules of the past in professional photography, consumers receive license to do whatever they want with their digital images…forever!
Kwilt – Easy Access to every image no matter which cloud you use
Kwilt has have developed an innovative and powerful photo access platform that seamlessly integrates multiple cloud shoeboxes into a single, mobile friendly view. Using Kwilt, a consumer always has quick and easy access to all of their photos, regardless of where they physically reside and without the need to download and upload them to a single cloud storage location.
Kwilt provides simple mobile access to every one of your images, it also prevents your pictures from becoming a casualty in the war for dominance in mobile photography and cloud storage. But Kwilt doesn’t stop there. Recognizing that openness is the key to software innovation, they are offering the Kwilt platform along with a flexible API that enables photo application developers and retailers to build their own solutions using the Kwilt platform.
Olympus America – The Marketing Maverick
To promote the high quality, low weight of the Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II, the manufacturer created a hilarious viral video mocking the weight of standard DSLRs.
The Artona Group – Meet the Master In Millennial Photography
With a history dating back to 1909 the Artona Group could be resting on its laurels. However, John Rak and his wife Mun Kwan are looking to the future and have incorporated new approaches inspired by the experiences and outlooks of their millennial children. The Artona Group has identified and implemented new ways to extend the Artona experience and deliver it to their customers via mobile devices, social media and new proprietary software that the Rak’s themselves authored.
This award recognizes their innovative web, social and mobile technologies. Artona proves that modern professional photography is alive and well.
Mediaclip – Engine of Innovation
MediaClip technology is at the forefront of customized product merchandising for both web and mobile and each day, hundreds of customized product vendors rely on their software toolkits to differentiate themselves on product customization platforms worldwide. Mediaclip, however, is also a merchandising platform, enabling companies to cross-sell products, merchandising products using the customers’ personal images and without disrupting the workflow. The key to cross-selling is to provide relevant visual thumbnail images of suggested products to the customer. The customer doesn’t have imagine what their product might look like or do any of the creation – it’s done for them – all they have to add to cart.
DNP – 21st Century George Eastman Award
DNP’s WPS-1 wireless print server provides a simple way for digital event photographers to enhance their shoot-to-print business by eliminating the need for wires and removable memory cards. With any capture device — from cameras and cell phones to tablets and computers – consumers can effortlessly connect to a DNP photo printer for simple and hassle free wireless photo printing. Think how many printing opportunities are lost because consumers are having difficulty simply getting pictures off their smartphone? DNP’s 21st century adaptation of “You Press the Button and We Do the Rest” is magic.
CEWE Color- Driving Branded Consumer Photo Products
Leading photo and online print services company CEWE boasts 11 geographically distributed production facilities and a staff of 3,200 employees in 24 European countries. In 2013, demonstrating a combination of marketing and technology leadership, CEWE delivered more than 2 billion photo prints, almost 6 million CEWE Photo Books and countless other photo gift articles to 30,000 retail stores, generating a consolidated turnover of 528.6 million euros.
But offering industry-leading products and technology isn’t enough and CEWE “jump-started” the photo book market in Europe with an extensive marketing campaign and distribution of CEWE branded Photo Books through independent retailers.
Atkins Photo Lab – High-Tech Company, Low-Tech Marketing
The Atkins photography business has a heritage that stretches back to the early part of the 20th century. Over the years Atkins has continued to innovate in order to stay relevant. In 2013 Paul Atkins adopted Design Led Innovation and it has changed everything Atkins has done over the past year of implementation.
Paul’s wife, Kate, became Atkins’ Creative Director and the look and feel of Atkins has moved from corporate to a personal feel, putting family history up front. The focus on client driven innovation led to changing product lines and offerings and a fundamental change to their marketing and service strategies.
Atkins is focused on its clients more than ever. Every product and communication is being shaped to meet the most demanding market conditions in their history. They can turn on a dime, no longer longing for the past, tailoring the skills of their operations with how people are living their lives.
Live Portrait – High-Touch, High-Tech Marketing
Live Portrait lets portrait photographers embed video clips into printed photos. These videos “come to life” only when a viewer holds their smartphone up to the print and opens up the Live Portrait app. The app uses the phone’s camera and image recognition software to trigger the appropriate video when the phone hovers over the portrait.
Live Portrait workflow and smartphone applications breathe new life into photography with a modern, augmented reality experience that effortlessly connects sound and video to printed yearbook photographs. Their integration of the printed page with video has not only invigorated the school portrait market, but other photographic segments as well allowing the growing number of mobile devices, from phones to tablets, to give photographers and yearbook publishers the opportunity to add new and dynamic interactivity to the simple printed photo. Live Portrait demonstrates that emotion is really at the heart of a consumer’s treasured photos and provides an easy to use, advanced digital workflow for connecting video and audio content.
Glossy Prints by Lifetouch – All Are Welcome
Glossy Finish professional photographers capture the action and the passion of youth sporting events. The photos are then uploaded in near real time into a state of the art Mobile Photo Lab that allows the families and athletes to come inside to view, purchase elegantly designed multi-image action posters minutes after their photos are taken with the assistance of experienced customer service ambassadors.
Recognizing that mobile consumers capture their own images at events, Glossy Finish welcomes parents and family to make prints of their own images as well in the on-site, mobile lab. Not surprisingly, allowing consumers to compare their DIY results to professional shots more often than not highlights the quality and skill of Glossy Prints’ shooters.
H&H Color Lab – Education Leadership
Good customer service means getting it made right, at high quality, competitively priced and delivered as promised or before, but H&H goes beyond that and actively works to further its customer’s success through its ongoing commitment to quickly adopt advanced digital technology and with its extensive array of customer education programs.
H&H offers a continual stream of targeted business and technical education programs, hands-on classes and seminars for studio, school and sports photography businesses alike. In today’s market, professional photographers need to offer exciting mobile and online image proofing and ordering options for the connected mobile consumer and H&H responded to that as well with its acquisition of Collages.net. Its active B2B partnerships continue to evangelize the exchange of profitable ideas for the benefit of their customers and the photo industry as a whole.
Panasonic – Imaging Evangelist
As video technologies improved and broadband speeds increased, the concept of live streaming became popular. Live webcasting and streaming events are popular enterprise tools that expand the reach and impact of key events, seminars and education.
Panasonic was the first in the photo industry to put live streaming interviews in its trade show booths, with interviews from its Luminary Team members and other industry photographers and notables, as a way to expand the activities of the trade show beyond the booth. They were also recorded and archived to YouTube. The sessions were called Lumix Lounge LIVE.
The concept was expanded by putting a Lumix Lounge in a dealer store, as a model concept for how they will support their photo specialty dealers. The pilot program is at Unique Photo in NJ, and live streaming broadcasts of new product introductions and other events are now a regular part of their online marketing efforts.
Save Family Photos – Evangelizing the value of Photo History
Established by Rachel LaCour Niesen, Save Family Photos is an online archive devoted to gathering images and stories from people around the world. Some of the pictures are informal snapshots, taken during the casual routines of family life, others are posed studio portraits. Photos now come in from all over the US and from as far away as India and Australia. Save My Photos has surpassed 23,000 followers on Instagram.
Peter Tahmin – Unsung Hero
Peter Tahmin is a lifelong photo-industry leader, and second-generation photo executive. His father, Gus, was also in the photo industry for his career. The changes that Peter has seen through his career, which began in 1981, eclipses all the changes his father experienced.
He has been behind the success of many of the photo industries biggest names, including Kodak, Ritz Interactive and Ritz Camera & Image. Currently, Peter is the co-founder & COO at MailPix.com located in Huntington Beach Calif., which also operates Winkflash.
One of the reasons why Peter was chosen for this recognition was, throughout his career, he has navigated an astonishing array of technological and market changes. Like many professionals, he began his career at Berkley Marketing Companies, and later moved on to such companies as Ilford Photo and Colorfax.
In 1993, he made the jump to Digix Imaging, an Eastman Kodak subsidiary, as the director of digital services integration. For 10 years, he was senior vice president/COO for Ritz Interactive, followed by serving as vice president of imaging and online for Ritz Camera & Image. In 2012, he joined long-time friend and partner Fred Lerner in founding MailPix and, later, with the acquisition of Winkflash,
As the imaging industry has evolved, so have Peter’s areas of responsibility. He is an e-commerce and mobile commerce expert. He began his career working with film, chemistry and photo paper, and now has moved to websites and mobile apps.