Craig F. Walker of The Denver Post for his intimate portrait of a teenager who joins the Army at the height of insurgent violence in Iraq, poignantly searching for meaning and manhood (here).
Mary Chind of The Des Moines Register for her photograph of the heart-stopping moment when a rescuer dangling in a makeshift harness tries to save a woman trapped in the foaming water beneath a dam (here).
Bauer, a German-owned publisher which bought music magazines Kerrang!, MOJO and Q in December of 2007 from Emap is trying to impose a new contract on freelancers working for those titles. Over 200 contributors to the three magazines have refused to sign the new contract which contains clauses that “provide Bauer with an unlimited lifetime financial indemnity in the event of legal action arising from their work” and “to acquire licenses from their subjects for the company to use their image for its own profit as and when it wishes.”
In a cover letter delivered with the contracts, Bauer issued the ultimatum that after April 16th any contributors who do not sign will no longer be commissioned.
Here’s a copy of the contract someone sent to me a month or so ago:
I received a press release signed by several of the freelancers standing up to Bauer that states:
A committee of the freelances affected has been attempting to enter into dialogue with Bauer since the first draft was issued late in February, but the company has rebuffed every overture. “Their behaviour is bizarre and counter-productive,” says Iggy Pop’s biographer Trynka, who was previously responsible for overseeing MOJO and Q syndication and contracts. “As contributors, we share Bauer’s need for their titles to remain profitable, and are offering Bauer permission to use some material on the iPad and similar digital platforms for no extra payment.”
Attempted rights grabs like Bauer’s are far more than an assault on a specific group of music writers and photographers – they undermine the viability of freelance journalism as a whole. Freelances bear a significant proportion of the risk in most media businesses because, behind their commission-by-commission availability, they pay for their own equipment, office space and training. Without any of the statutory sickness, holiday, maternity and paternity pay rights of staff, the only asset their work produces is their stock-in-trade: copyright ownership, as acknowledged by UK law. Will Bauer’s magazines sell more copies if they push these contracts through, so losing the services of many of their most expert, reliable and popular contributors? Will musicians and other showbusiness talent stand idly by and see their quotes and photographic likenesses commoditized and put on sale by a publishing company? In business terms, it doesn’t make sense.
More at British Journal of Photography and London Freelance.
The other magazines Bauer purchased from Emap, include Empire, Heat, Closer, Grazia, Max Power, MCN, Match!, FHM and Zoo. All are expected to see a similar contract unless this one is defeated.
Deadline for the $15,000 “burn.” emerging photographer grant awarded by the Magnum Foundation is April 15th (go here to submit).
Last years winner was Alejandro Chaskielburg:
Julie Grahame, EIC of aCurator cites her “frustration with a lack of online destinations that feature full screen images” as the primary reason for founding the magazine. She’s already got Gina LeVay’s Sandhogs project and Stephen Mallon’s Subway Series among others like this one by Aperture Prize Winner Michael Corridore:
A Mark Tansey painting of a Chinese man standing in the way of a tank would have had only a fraction of the impact that the photograph of that scene had.
via Conscientious.
Yeah, what up mutherf-ers. Don’t be messing with photographers.
Thanks to the work of thousands of photographers up and down the country, campaigning and writing letters to MP’s we have defeated the offending Clause that would have had a devastating effect on the livelihoods of freelance photographers.
via, London Photographers Branch.
On Wednesday, the American Society of Media Photographers and other groups representing visual artists plan to file a class-action lawsuit against Google, asserting that the company’s efforts to digitize millions of books from libraries amount to large-scale infringement of their copyrights.
via, NYTimes.
But I can also think of some jobs in the last couple of years which used photography as an incidental part of the ad. For the photographers it was just executional, it was not particular, no style was employed, it was not special. There was nothing creative about it. And yet, arguably, we still pay the same type of fee and usage rates for this type of photography- is this sustainable? I think it might be delusional to think that in these cases, your creative effort has value that you will be able to retain against the tide of easy access to high resolution cameras and distribution methods.
Really enjoyed this post (The Mix – The Marketing Formula of Successful Photographers) over on the Photoshelter blog by Selina Maitreya–ok, I got name checked but still it’s a good read for those looking to get started marketing their work.
No vision? No need for anything else. All subsequent steps rely on a body of work. ALL your sales and marketing tools are worthless if you don’t have the goods. Lets take a look at why.
Lets assume a buyer has a project (finally). They refer back to one of your marketing tools, and call to ask for your print book. If you don’t have one (because you’re convinced that nobody looks at print books), there goes the assignment. Maybe the next interested creative goes to your site looking for a “deep example” of the type of vision needed for their assignment and all they see is one or two things they are looking for mixed in with lots of other types of photography. The “body of work “needed isn’t there and you’ve wasted their time and your money. They wont be calling again.
Live Auction on April 8th (details here). Some amazing prints available:
Wikileaks.org an organization that releases sensitive documents while preserving the sources anonymity just released a classified US military video showing a group of iraqi’s and two Reuters news staff being shot from an American helicopter (here).
David Schlesinger, the editor in chief of Reuters news, said in a statement that the video was “graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism and the tragedies that can result.”
I cannot imagine the extreme difficulty in trying to determine whether the people you are looking at are friendly or foe, especially in an urban environment. The chilling part of the video comes when the photographers are walking down the street with their cameras hanging from their shoulders and the gunner says “he’s got a weapon” before requesting permission to engage and then killing everyone.
Reuters said at the time that the two men had been working on a report about weightlifting when they heard about a military raid in the neighborhood, and decided to drive there to check it out.
The attack killed 12, among them the Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and the driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40.
via, NYTimes
via, lens culture. Brilliant!
Women’s Health launched 7 paid iPhone apps and an event, Are You Game? Revenue jumped 14% for the year and it raised its rate base to 1.5 million.
via – MediaBuyerPlanner.
UPDATE: April Fools.
I think we all saw this one coming the way the NY Times has been harping on and on about the demise of professional photography, “For Photographers, the Image of a Shrinking Path.” I’m a little shocked they went straight for the istock dollar bin and didn’t even bother to remove the watermarks. Seriously, you guys can’t even pay the flippin’ one credit? See it for yourself (here).
UPDATE: April Fools.
This may just be the big breakthrough Kodak needs. Who doesn’t look at a picture and think “man, I wish I could smell that”… ok, Nachtwey probably isn’t thinking that, but whatever this is some cool shit. More (here).
Still life photographer Mariano Pastor shoots product images in his studio for L’Oreal, Givenchy, Schick and Lancome.
He recently launched a website and business called Via U! where “smaller companies can get the same quality photography he creates for his Madison Ave. clients at a price affordable by the common man.”
The site is pretty slick and allows you to pick a background, then pick a composition (or even compose it yourself in a 3d layout modeler) then you ship him the product with some simple instructions and voila, download your photo the next day.
What’s it all cost? Nothing.
He shoots it for free and if you like the shot you pay $112 (half price introductory offer), for all rights.
I like the premise of serving an undeserved market (mom and pop need a killer shot for their local newspaper) and certainly product shoots at $250 a pop or less (at least editorially) is not unheard of. And certainly many companies have built in house studios for this very reason, but just selling images to everyone for a flat fee, regardless of the use seems like a bad deal for photography.
I emailed Mariano to ask him what happens now that L’Oreal says they’d like to pay $112 for a picture? He said “L’Oreal loves the price.” Natch.
When I asked him if he was worried about the backlash from other photographers for selling product photography based on the time it takes to make a picture not the usage he responded with:
How the business of commercial photography is changing is a subject that I considered a big deal while planning Via U!.
All in all what you have going now is what economists refer as “disruptive technologies”. The automobile for instance proved to be pretty disruptive for the horse and buggy industry. The digital camera and photoshop has made possible for a large number of people to achieve results previously unattainable. Digital distribution globalizes the market.
What you end up with is a tsunami of pictures that results in lowering prices. Wonderful for photo buyers, grim for photographers.
You may make the argument that Via U! makes it easier for our client’s to work by charging a flat fee and doing away with usage rights. And we do… no negotiations. That is nice.
However, our policies are also simply reacting to the forces unleashed by technology. Similarly Getty and Corbis are struggling to deal with microstock for the same reasons.
Can’t say I’m complete surprised by this. I know product photography was one of the categories hit hard early on when companies started doing the shots internally so maybe this is just the natural progression of a photographer competing for the bottom dollar there, except something doesn’t feel right to me. Doing this kind of thing for small companies seems like a smart play, delivering the same price to billion dollar companies seems rotten.
From that day I realized that you can take simple, ordinary, everyday things and make something out of them. You can make a statement by using what is right in front of you.
via LBM Blog
I don’t know what’s important to the people who look at my photos. What’s important to me is to make them. I work all the time, but there are only a few of my photos that I find really good. I am not even sure that I am really a good photographer. I think that anyone working as I do could do the same. But my purpose is not to prove my talent. I photograph almost every day, except when it’s too cold for traveling the way I do – as in this time of winter. Sometimes my photos are OK, other times they are not, but I think that eventually something will come out of my work. I don’t worry about it.
–Josef Koudelka
via A Photo Student
Last week Gerard Butler was on Leno and Jay picked up the copy of Men’s Journal that Jim Wright shot the cover and feature of him for and asked about the opening image. Gerard launched into a funny description of the shoot:
I’ve worked with Jim in the past so I shot him an email to get a little more background on the shoot. Also, I know Jim recently moved to NYC after many, many years living and working in LA, I also asked him about a strange phenomenon that seems perfectly normal when you live in NYC “flying photographers out to LA all the time.”
To be honest, I wasn’t the first choice for the shoot. Unfortunately, for him, the other photographer blew out his back and couldn’t make the journey to LA. The week before, I had shot the Bruce Willis cover so MJ came back to me and asked if I’d step in.
Gerard Butler’s publicist is an old friend of mine so the trust level was running high for the shoot. Myself and the crew met up with Gerry at a secluded house in Malibu and we went to town. Gerry was up for anything. We’re were aiming for the normal guy approach; trying to show various sides of his personality. Luckily,whatever challenge I threw out there, he literally dove right in. The ocean shots were a blast and a battle at the same time. I asked him, “If I go in; will you go in?” Gerry comes back with, “Follow me!”. We’re were onto something as this was the first shot of the day. Thank god that my one assistant, Sean Costello, stands about 6’6″ because he saved the camera every time. The guy whose camera that didn’t survive was the guy who was hired to shoot the B-roll. I had assistants watching the waves. He didn’t. Hence, no B-roll of the shoot. My two other assistants literally saved me from getting swept away.
We got the shots and headed up the beach and Gerry leans down and sticks his face in the sand and we just kept going until he was completely covered. Then back in the ocean, then to the hot tub. Which was needed because we were both freezing by that point. The hot tub was not a planned shot. But again, I threw it out there and we got some amazing underwater shots. Eyes open in hot water. I couldn’t believe it. At this point, I felt like I had the shoot in the bag and I hadn’t even done the cover image yet or brought out the three bikini models. Plus we hadn’t even broken for lunch yet.
I’d been in LA for about 18 years, working my way from PA to assisting some of the worlds greatest image makers of the last twenty years. Everyone from Herb Ritts to Michel Comte to Peggy Sirota whom I worked with exclusively for almost five years. She was a real mentor to me and gave me the confidence to do my own thing. My career has gone well, knock on wood, for the last 12 years. This past winter I moved to NYC to be with my girlfriend and near family. I switched agents as well to NYC based Bernstein & Andriulli, so most of my work was coming out of or based in NY. But as fate has it, once you move to one coast they want you on the other, so much of my time lately has been spent flying back and forth. Last month a three day trip turned into three weeks as people got word that I was in LA. I don’t mind it, I just wish someone can explain it to me
