Photojournalism
Since 2005 MediaStorm has produced 30 powerful,
issue-driven video stories about real life people and problems. All this work has been available for free on their
website. Most of these stories have been viewed a million or more times and they tend to draw large audiences outside the photo industry.
The stock photography industry has to face the challenge of becoming relevant in an economy that has no patience for inadequate business models. Today the vast majority of photographs are used without any contact with the traditional photo industry, which has completely lost control of production and distribution. But the industry continues stubbornly to apply old rules to this new landscape. It does not see, or purposely wants to ignore, that their model does not fit current needs and thus is chasing customers away.
The Associated Press and Fotolia have announced a collaboration giving customers access to millions of royalty-free images. AP Images customers will be able to buy editorial, rights-managed and royalty-free images, including millions from Fotolia, on
APImages.com.
For the second consecutive year
Corbis will be the exclusive media broadcast partner p with the
LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph in Charlottesville, Va. from June 7-9.
Publishers are asking for free pictures more frequently. Usually they
argue that the recognition a photographer receives from having his or
her pictures appear in their publication is all the compensation the
photographer should expect. Often they don’t even publish a byline.Thus
readers have no way of knowing who took the picture.
Alamy and
epa european press agency have signed a strategic commercial agreement which allows Alamy to sell epa's award winning news, sport and entertainment images including the epa archive. The images are available through Alamy’s website to key market sectors in the UK, North America and the Middle East.
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ZUMA Press, the California-based news agency is now supplying
Alamy's live news feed with images from its global network of 3,000 photojournalists. Owned and run by renowned photojournalist Scott Mc Kiernan, ZUMA has also made its back catalogue available online through Alamy’s
VII has announced that two of its member received top awards in two of the 9 categories in the 2012 World Press Photo Contest. Stephanie Sinclair, received a First Prize for Conterporary Issues stories and Donald Weber a First Price for Portaits.
Not too long ago the primary way to keep up with new trends in
photography and what the industry leaders were doing of thinking was to
attend industry events. This often meant traveling to New York, Chicago,
Las Vegas or New Orleans (in the U.S. – I’m not sure where all in
Europe) and fitting into the schedule of the event organizer. Now, it is
becoming possible to participate in such educational programs while
sitting at your desk and often at your own convenience in terms of time. This story offers a few examples.
Corbis Images (
www.corbisimages.com) and The Associated Press (
www.ap.org) have launched their Media offering that provides customers with more than 10 million images covering a range of breaking news, sports and entertainment, archival and creative images.
The National Press Photographers Association has made several
significant announcements about its annual
Best Of Photojournalism contest, including a reorganization of the
competition as visual journalism moves into a new era. Along with a new
and easier way to enter, there's also some category revisions plus some
new categories, and winners will be picked using a mixture of online and
on-site judging.
The concept of a realistic still photograph that provides an accurate
representation of a news event may be an impossible dream. Many people
blame Photoshop for making it so easy to “clean up” and “adjust”
photographs. Photographers lose their jobs if they “overuse” Photoshop.
But that is only a small part of the problem.
Microstock sites are usually thought of as places to go to find generic commercial images, not editorial coverage. But, recently several microstock sites have started accepting unreleased, editorial images.
Dreamstime has provided links to images related to some of the major events its contributors covered in 2011.
Getty Images notified its editorial photographers on November 9th that
it is revising its editorial contract and cutting the royalty rate to 35
percent. Under the current editorial contract Getty pays photographers
50 percent for some sales and 35 percent for others.
Corbis Images (
www.corbisimages.com) has named Barak Ronen as Senior Vice President of Media Products. Ronen was formerly with Reuters and will be based in London. He will be responsible for the company’s Media product development and commercial strategy.
Getty Images plans to use "a handful" of 3D-dedicated photographers to cover secure next year's Olympic Games in London.
The owners of VII Photo Agency have announced the revised roster of photographers represented by the agency. They include: Lynsey
Addario, Jocelyn Bain Hogg, Stefano De Luigi, Venetia Dearden, Jessica
Dimmock, Adam Ferguson, Ashley Gilbertson, Ron Haviv, Davide Monteleone,
Seamus Murphy, Maciek Nabrdalik, Anastasia Taylor-Lind, Tomas van
Houtryve and Donald Weber and VII's veterans Marcus Bleasdale, Ed Kashi, Gary Knight, Antonin Kratochvil, Joachim
Ladefoged, Christopher Morris, Franco Pagetti, Stephanie Sinclair and
John Stanmeyer.
Stipple Marketplace, the San Francisco based company with the goal of turning editorial images into e-commerce storefronts for consumers, has developed a system that allows publishers to earn money from the images they publish, not just sell ads around those images.
Paul Melcher takes a look at where photojournalism is headed and outlines four key changes that will dramatically alter the future of photojournalism. He also acknowledges, though not with any sense of satisfaction, that the new photojournalism is taking some cues from the successful microstock model.
Corbis Images has made an undisclosed investment in
Demotix following the media distribution partnership between the two companies
announced in March.
Within the framework of
Visa pour l'Image,
CEPIC is organizing a roundtable with photographers, picture agencies and photographers cooperatives exploring the "Relationship between Agencies and Photographers: Art + Commerce or Photographers and Agencies - Making this Symbiotic Relationship Work"
In the digital world everyone loves to work for free. Particularly when it is an opportunity to help someone else earn money as a result of their efforts. With that in mind
Magnum Photos is looking for
volunteers to help them tag their online archive. If you’re interested sign up
here.
In an effort to recognize and support emerging photographers, the Editorial Photographers trade association [EP] has announced its Third Annual EP Education Grants student photo competition. For details go to:
http://www.editorialphoto.com/epedu/ The Grand Prize winner will be chosen from among the finalists by internationally-acclaimed Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt. More than $5000 in prizes will be presented to the Grand Prize winner, and more than $2000 each for the other five finalists!
Corbis Images has announced a new worldwide distribution agreement with London based
Demotix , the multi-award winning source of “Street Journalism.” Later this month, Corbis Images will begin offering an edited selection of breaking news photography from Demotix through
corbisimages.com.