Posts Tagged ‘photography’
An Obnoxious Vanguard?
April 25th, 2012
Managing Director
We’re busy with our final preparations for fotoFringe London 2012, the picture buyers’ fair which is being held tomorrow in King’s Place, a newish office block and conference centre where The Guardian have their offices, near King’s Cross.
And it’s an article in The Guardian that I want to write about. A friend in Euskadi alerted me to this one (thank you Peta) because it’s one of my favourite topics — the freedom of photographers to use their cameras.
Stonehenge, Trafalgar Square, National Trust properties, a whole bunch of places in the USA — the list of places where photography is banned or restricted lengthens daily. Now, unsurprisingly, we can add the Olympic park in East London to the list.
I’ll never get to see this place because all my ticket applications have proved unsuccessful. However I am permitted to contribute substantially towards it through a hike in my London rates over the next ten years. So I’d like to see some pictures of it.
The Olympic venues are technically private property (purchased using our money, but when did that ever restrain our dear leaders?) so control can be asserted over what can and can’t be photographed within the precincts. But not on the public spaces surrounding the venue, of course.
The Guardian thought this could be interesting, so they sent a couple of photographers and a video to test the temperature of the waters. They struck lucky straight away when they ran into an incompetently and incompletely briefed security guard whose debating skills and command of English were no match for the fiercely well prepared Guardian hacks. He simply attempted to stop them filming in a public place. They refused. Reinforcements arrived.
And here — well, you know I’m on the side of the photographers, but this was outright provocation and harassment. The Guardian hacks were milling around, pushing for a reaction. But they came up against an intelligent, articulate and reasonable security supervisor who conceded they had a right to photograph on public land but as this was a sensitive area — the Olympic Park’s security centre — it would be most awfully kind of them if they could possibly desist.
The Guardianistas hectored and interrupted. They tried to photograph the armband name badge of an old fart security guard who looked worryingly like me, and he tore it off to prevent them. Bad move. The hacks loved it.
I want photographers to be able to photograph what they want when they want where they want, within reason and without causing offence, upset or danger. Yes, there are security concerns. Yes, there are privacy issues. I’m less impressed by the “we own it, therefore we should profit from it” brigade. I personally find papparazzis distasteful, and I believe they were the major contributing factor in the death of Princess Diana.
Our cause isn’t helped by photographers manufacturing an incident where none existed. But every movement needs an obnoxious vanguard.
Doesn’t it? What do you think?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/apr/23/olympic-park-security-guards-journalists-photos
More photography banned
March 8th, 2012
Managing Director
This is getting ridiculous.
Utah, the American state founded by Mormons, is banning the photography of farms and farm animals.
The bill is called HB187, and the Utah Senate passed it on a 24-5 vote. Then the Utah House approved the Senate amendments 62-13. The bill goes to Governor Gary Herbert for his signature of approval today.
No doubt it will pass, and become law, and we’ll have another of those quaint old statutes such as a Welshman caught on the streets in Chester after midnight can be hanged, London cabbies must carry a bale of hay in their boots, and you’re not allowed to photograph Trafalgar Square.
Now every rational human — and quite a few irrational ones — will be scratching their heads and asking, “What is that all about?”
Well, as far as I can ascertain, farmers in Utah are fed up with rogue photographers snapping images of their appalling, brutal, barbarous, inhumane and mediaeval practices. Of course, I could be wrong, but that’s the way it looks from this Atlantic shore. By depriving humans of their rights, the Utah legislature is allowing unscrupulous people to go about depriving animals of their rights.
Talking about mediaeval, those Mormons would have been denounced as heretics by the Spanish Inquisition. And everyone knows what happened to heretics. It was appalling, brutal, barbarous and inhumane. And nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Those Americans, eh? What are they like? They describe their country as the home of the brave and the land of the free. Not in Utah, it isn’t. What jolly japes will they get up to next? In the words of Cerys Matthews, longtime resident of the USA, “Every day, when I wake up, I thank the Lord I’m Welsh.”
And I’m not planning to visit Utah any time soon.
Or Chester, come to think of it.
The most important part of a photograph
November 21st, 2011
Managing Director
I know Jacqui Norman goes on and on at members about the importance of GOOD metadata, and I’m delighted that our aviation expert Colin Smedley has reinforced her call, albeit with a coruscating look at the current standards of categorisation and keywording to be found among fotoLibra photographers. He certainly hasn’t minced his words. Here’s Colin:
Over recent weeks I have been taking a careful look at thousands of images in the fotoLibra library, all categories, not just aviation, just to see what was on offer. You might be surprised at my opinions on what I found.
If you are taking a coffee at this time you might like to put it down in case you splutter all over your keyboard!
Just over 20% of images are in the wrong categories. This in itself is not too bad a problem but it is definitely a frustration amplification factor for picture researchers. Many photographers seem unable to determine the principal subject of their picture. For example a image of a large car with a tiny sticker in the windscreen does not really belong under “advertising”; but a close-up of the sticker may.
About 45% have titles that are inadequate, inaccurate, misleading or just plain wrong. About 15% have titles that are “arty-farty” to the point of being meaningless to researchers. Some even have instead of a title an alphanumeric reference that means nothing to me, researchers and, I suggest, fotoLibra.
About 75% have keywords that are woefully inadequate, misleading, totally wrong or even absent altogether.
About 25% have keywords not properly entered, for example with full stops, hyphens, colons and slashes instead of commas or semi-colons. [crucial separators — GH] Many have sentences or even paragraphs in the keywords box, that is to say keywords that really belong under “description”. Some have keywords and/or descriptions that are transposed and in some cases cut and pasted from other websites such as Wikipedia. Incidentally, have you noticed the increasing internet trend to call keywords “tags”? A very large number of authors are confused by the term “description” and supply a descriptive history of the subject instead of a description of the image.
The combined effect of these failings on sales is potentially enormous. Large numbers of images being invisible to buyers, researchers being put off because they are presented with images with no relevance to their input parameters and random browsers puzzled by finding traction engines under “birds” or birds under “transport/maritime”. None of these factors can be relied upon to impress potential buyers with fotoLibra’s professional attributes.
Sorry to rant on but I did feel my opinions and misgivings needed to be aired. However you may consider these views should be more widely read.
Thank you very much indeed, Colin. We most certainly do.
We’re all here to sell images. We are aware that visual talent is not always congruent with verbal description — we don’t expect surgeons to be boxers as well. But professional picture buyers need to know they’re dealing with professionals, and professional photographers make sure their images can be found by adding concise, accurate, relevant keywords to their metadata.
Incidentally few things irritate picture buyers more than irrelevant over-keywording. A photograph of a lion should not include a list of its prey and other creatures which might be found in a 100 mile radius. It’s a lion, not a warthog, wildebeeste, tiger or elephant.
Colin wants us to recruit an army of expert volunteers in several fields to undertake the work he has started with the Aviation category. That’s a high hope, because men like Colin are the exception rather than the rule, but it’s worth asking anyway.
If there’s a particular subject you feel passionate about, would you like to help vet fotoLibra images in that category? I do what I can for architecture, but I can’t tell a gazania from a geranium. Please let me know if you’re interested. Your endeavours will be rewarded with praise and publicity.
The Cost of Complacency
September 26th, 2011
Managing Director
There was an interesting blog posting by Paoga’s Graham Sadd recently on the perils of ignoring cyber crime.
For the last four weeks someone based in China has been registering as a buyer on fotoLibra.com.
Not once, but approximately every four minutes throughout the Chinese working day. It seems like a manual attack rather than an automated one, because although the fake addresses are all the same — Cherry Street Room 318 Atlanta Georgia USA 30332, which I think might be a lie — there are occasional spelling mistakes. It’s easy for us to block the attacks. But despite failing every time, they continue to trundle in every four or five minutes.
We hope we’re not complacent about online security. We do what we can to protect ourselves against such attacks, but what we can’t get our heads round is what can they hope to achieve through multiple registrations as a picture buyer on a picture library site?
At the very least they ought to try and buy a picture from us.
Coals to Newcastle
August 17th, 2011
Managing Director
We don’t normally comment on sales we make at fotoLibra, but here’s one that caught my eye: we’ve just sold a photograph of the Eiffel Tower to … a Parisian fashion house.
Result!
Update — half an hour later — we’ve just sold a photograph of a Mauritian helicopter to a communications company in … Mauritius.
I love this.
Look Away Now …
May 6th, 2011
Managing Director
… if you don’t want to see a particularly gruesome image of the assassinated Osama bin Laden.
I’ve put it at the bottom of this blog so you don’t have to look at it without scrolling down, not for any vicarious pleasure, but for the simple purpose of showing what can be achieved with digital image manipulation software such as Adobe Photoshop (other digital image manipulation applications are available).
What purports to be the shocking photograph of the dead bin Laden which President Obama deemed too disturbing for public view has of course cropped up all over the place, mainly on right-wing conservative American websites. And they are truly scary (the websites, that is).
You will have read in previous postings on this blog that US courts do not allow digital photographic images as evidence because of the ease with which they can be manipulated. Actually as anyone who has battled with Photoshop will know, it’s not that easy, but a truly skilled Photoshop artist can make it look simple — and realistic.
The image is indeed shocking — until you look at the image on the right.
On the left you will see a purported photograph of Osama bin Laden after he stupidly opened the door to some visiting American gentlemen. On the right you will see a much nastier image — Osama bin Laden alive.
Compare the two images.
Look at the angle of the head.
Look at his ear; look at the highlight inside it.
Look at the highlight on the tip of his nose.
Look at his mouth hanging slackly open, doubtless in the process of delivering some deranged spittle-flecked invective.
The images are identical, except that in one he appears to have met with an accident.
It’s the same image. The one of the left has been Photoshopped — it’s a completely fraudulent image. I’m not suggesting for a moment that this is the image that Barack found too disturbing to release; that one is undoubtedly real and I’m sure it’s profoundly unpleasant.
But in lieu of having the real thing, some talented Photoshop artist has been employed to provide slaughter pron for slavering right-wingers. It’s very good — until some clever chappie like David Hoffman unearths the original image.
Unless of course Hoffman has been even smarter and recreated the image on the right from the original on the left!
Now you can see why American courts don’t permit digital images as evidence. The camera lies through its teeth.
Thanks to David Hoffman Photographs for putting the two images together, and for Will Carleton of Photo Archive News for bringing them to my attention.
Half A Million Images
March 14th, 2011
Managing Director
First thing I do every morning is check the fotoLibra website to make sure it’s up and running.
Over this weekend I confess I’ve only shot a cursory glance at it because I have been immersed in rugby, exulting over Italy’s first 6 Nations victory over mighty France, delighting in Wales’s rule-breaking defeat of Ireland and secretly but vainly hoping Scotland might derail England’s remorseless progress to the Grand Slam.
So on a beery back-to-work morning I powered up my (now obsolete) MacBook Pro and went through the site. I checked the Home Page.
And double checked again.
We’ve gone past the half million mark. We have over half a million images on fotoLibra.
WOW!!
When fotoLibra was just a glint in my eye in 2002, I took Anne-Marie Ehrlich, the doyenne of picture researchers, to lunch. She said one couldn’t really take a picture library seriously until it had about 25,000 images. “No problem,” I scoffed, “we’ll have that many in five years, easy.”
And now here we are. We’re not the biggest picture library in the world — there’s the microstock rabble, and of course Getty, Corbis and Alamy (which has about 40 times as many images as we have) but I think we can say we’re now big enough to count. And our images are the images of fotoLibra members, not compilations of portals of images like the three I’ve just mentioned. With the largest image libraries, the same picture may appear from three or four different sources. I can’t say that never happens with fotoLibra, but you are more likely to find a unique image on fotoLibra than with most other image collections.
If you look at the rankings table in my last blog, you’ll notice that out of twenty leading picture libraries exhibiting at fotoFringe, fotoLibra has many more site visitors than any of the others — excluding the two celebrity stock agencies, because we don’t do slebs.
When I had the fotoLibra concept, I was forced to go ahead with it on the grounds that if I didn’t do it, someone else would. And I would have been kicking myself for the rest of my life. “I could’ve been a contender,” I would have been muttering thickly into my beard.
Well, now we’re contenders. Please raise a glass!
fotoFringe, May 11
March 11th, 2011
Managing Director
4 Corners, Alamy, Arcaid, Arenapal, BAPLA, Bridgeman, Camera Press, Corbis, Country Life, fotoFringe, fotoLibra, Getty, Heritage Images, Image Source, John Walmsley Education, marketing photographs, Mary Evans, Mirrorpix, Nature Picture Library, Photo Archive News, photography, Photoshot, picture library, Picture Research Association, picture sales, Robert Harding, Ronald Grant Archive, selling photographs, Specialist Stock, Splash, stock agency, Topfoto, View, WENN, Writer Pictures
When fotoLibra was just an ickle bitty new picture library we scraped all our pennies together and took a stand at the BAPLA Picture Buyers’ Fair. We thought it crucial that we should hang out our faces in public, and meet all those radiant people who would (we were convinced) shortly be buying shedloads of photographs from our wonderful members.
It hasn’t quite worked out like that, although we haven’t done too badly. We’re nearing half a million images online, which although it doesn’t yet match the behemoths of Getty, Alamy, Corbis and the microstock rabble, is still a respectable amount of superb images.
So it was with sadness that we learned that BAPLA would not be holding a Picture Buyers’ Fair this year.
Full marks therefore to the lovely Flora Smith of Topfoto who reasoned “If they’re not going to do it, then we will”. She hired a room and some trestle tables, called the event fotoFringe and invited a few friendly picture libraries to exhibit with her. “What a great idea,” I thought, and emailed Flora to say “Count us in!”
No room.
It was by invitation only, and she’d filled it already. 21 picture libraries, plus media partner Photo Archive News, will be exhibiting at fotoFringe — but not fotoLibra. We’re on the waiting list for a table, but we’re not holding our breath. Of course we’ll be there in person(s) (Flora said we could come), prowling round the room like hyenas and jackals, but we won’t be sitting at the top table.
Sleepless nights haven’t resolved the question of why Flora and Will Carleton of Photo Archive News didn’t think of us when choosing 20 picture libraries to exhibit with them (is it my tendency to dribble? my flatulence? my general nastiness?) but there we go. We will just sit on the sidelines and wait.
fotoLibra strongly supports the idea of fotoFringe, and hopes that every picture researcher worth her salt will attend, despite the formal absence of fotoLibra, Getty, Alamy and Corbis. There’s a website for the event at http://www.fotofringelondon.com, and it takes place on May 11th at the spiffy new Kings Place venue just north of King’s Cross. See you there!
One thing the fotoFringe website doesn’t do is link through to the exhibiting agencies’ websites so you can see what they offer, so as a service to picture buyers I thought fotoLibra could contribute that here.
And rather than list the libraries conventionally in alphabetical order, I’ve listed them in the order they appear on Alexa, the website ranking index standard, to see how close they get to Google, Facebook and Youtube. The lower the number, the more people visit the site.
Although fotoLibra isn’t exhibiting at fotoFringe, it would be invidious to leave my own company out of any listing. So here we go:
| LIBRARY | SPECIALISM | TRAFFIC RANKING |
| Wenn | Celebrities | 44,438 |
| Splash | Celebrities | 90,218 |
| fotoLibra | General | 149,195 |
| Image Source | General | 307,297 |
| Bridgeman | Art | 312,278 |
| Heritage Images | Heritage | 367,724 |
| Photoshot | General | 386,375 |
| Topfoto | General | 442,985 |
| Robert Harding | Travel | 581,251 |
| Photo Archive News | Trade News | 824,236 |
| Nature Picture Library | Nature | 940,390 |
| View | Architecture | 1,179,000 |
| Camera Press | General | 1,904,000 |
| Picture Research Association | Industry Body | 2,080,000 |
| Mary Evans | History | 2,138,000 |
| Arcaid | Architecture | 2,216,000 |
| Mirrorpix | News | 2,424,000 |
| Country Life | Heritage | 2,667,000 |
| 4 Corners | Travel | 3,590,000 |
| Specialist Stock | Environment | 7,590,000 |
| Ronald Grant Archive | Cinema | 8,012,000 |
| Arenapal | Performing Arts | 9,170,000 |
| John Walmsley Education | Education | 22,800,000 |
| Writer Pictures | Authors | no data |
2010 fotoLibra Pro Blog Index
January 17th, 2011
Managing Director
This is the Index to the fotoLibra Pro Blog postings since January 2010, and a couple from this month as well.
If you’re new to fotoLibra, welcome! — and may we suggest you read through the HINTS & TIPS section, and if nothing else read Great Expectations from the 2009 blog. It still holds true.
In fact there are a lot of interesting posts in the 2009 blogs, and you can see an Index to them here.
Comments are welcome, even on old posts, and will be read and often responded to.
HINTS & TIPS
- What’s So Thrilling About A Parking Meter?
- What You Should Buy In Order To Sell
- Property Releases
- Model Releases
- 10 Hot Tips For Selling Your Photographs
- Mountains Into Molehills
- Why DPI Does Matter
ABOUT FOTOLIBRA
- Micro Royalties — A Clarification
- Micro Royalties
- fotoLibra’s Top Selling Categories
- fotoLibra’s Most Popular Subjects
- Mature Times
- New fotoLibra 4.1
- autoFocus
ADOBE
CUSTOMERS
E-BOOKS & PUBLISHING
IT
- Apple Mac Blues
- Up to 20 Mbps Broadband
- Where Does iPad Fit In A 3 Screens World?
- Chopped Pork & Ham
LAW
- Opening Up Stonehenge
- Stonewalling Stonehenge
- Guidance From The Met
- Privacy
- The Future Of Online Advertising
- Curious
MICROSTOCK
- Microstock: Why Would A Reputable Company Do This To Themselves?
- More Microstock Moans
- Selling Photographs Through Flickr And Getty
MISCELLANY
NETWORKING
PICTURE CALLS
Micro Royalties — A Clarification
January 13th, 2011
Managing Director
OK, never let it be said we don’t listen to you.
It would appear that a small majority of our members are threatening to leave fotoLibra if we pay them more money.
Blimey, I really didn’t make myself at all clear in my last blog, did I? I blame the flu.
I think people saw the word MICRO and just stopped reading. Or understanding.
This proposal has nothing whatsoever to do with cash flow. It is merely a new concept to make image buying more attractive. It may not catch on. It may even not work. But the day we stop searching for new ideas and new concepts will be the day fotoLibra subsides into being just another everyday picture library.
Here’s our reasoning. Please note, this is merely for illustrative purposes only, and none of these figures are real.
With MICROSTOCK, photographers are lucky to make 20¢ for each image sold. So they have to sell 250 images before they earn a penny because payouts aren’t triggered till they accumulate $50. And all they will ever earn from that picture sale is 20¢ per picture sold.
But with fotoLibra’s MICRO ROYALTIES proposal, photographers will be paid a portion of the net sales receipts of the book per picture used, just like an author — except of course the portion will be smaller.
They will be paid after each royalty statement, which is usually every 6 months. fotoLibra payments are triggered when the member has accumulated £30 / $50 worth of sales.
The percentage share of the Micro Royalty will be based on fotoLibra’s existing average picture sale, which is $80. We pay photographers 50% (Platinum, 60%).
On our standard licensing model, the fotoLibra photographer receives an average flat payment of $40 when a sale is made.
Under the Micro Royalty system, the idea is that if a book retails at $10 and sells 10,000 copies in 6 months, the fotoLibra photographer will receive a micro royalty of $40 — the same as our standard licensing model.
When / if the book sells 20,000 copies, the fotoLibra photographer will receive a micro royalty of $80.
When / if the book sells 100,000 copies, the fotoLibra photographer will receive a micro royalty of $400.
When / if the book sells a million copies, the fotoLibra photographer will receive a micro royalty of $4,000. Per picture sold.
On our current licensing model, if the book sells a million copies,the fotoLibra photographer receives $40.
I hope this makes it clearer. It seems like fair play to us.