ASPP's The Picture Professional Spring 2014.1 by American Society of Picture Professionals

QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF PICTURE PROFESSIONALS

ISSUE 1/2014

THE

PICTURE PROFESSIONAL

TABLE OF CONTENTS ISSUE 1 / 2014 THE PICTURE PROFESSIONAL COVER: © Menno Aden

PORTFOLIO 13 Corey Arnold

PORTFOLIO 22 Menno Aden

PORTFOLIO 30 Uliana Bazar

Q/A Paul Melcher, VP of Images, Stipple

ALLURE OF THE AERIAL Samaruddin Stewart

THE COLOR-MANAGED WORKFLOW Martha DiMeo

PATENT TROLLS Nancy E. Wolff

IN MEMORIAM Margaret Buckwalter Grant Heilman

WHAT’S HANGING

BOOK REVIEWS

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE Sam Merrell

CHAPTER CAPTURE

CONTRIBUTORS

LIFE IN FOCUS Elena Zhukova

aspp.com

American Society of Picture Professionals

Since first forming as a small, dedicated group of picture professionals in 1966, ASPP has grown into a large community of image experts committed to sharing our experience and knowledge throughout the industry. We provide professional networking and educational opportunities for our members and the visual arts industry. If you create, edit, research, license, distribute, manage or publish visual content, ASPP is the place for you. Join us at www.aspp.com.

LIST OF ADVERTISERS Adobe SendNow

Custom Medical Stock Photo

Global Image Works

The Granger Collection

akg-images

Dan Suzio Photography

Minden Pictures

The Image Works

Artists Rights Society

Danita Delimont Stock Agency

MPTV Images

Travel Stock USA

Association Health Programs

Debra Hershkowitz

North Wind Picture Archives

VIREO/The Academy of Natural Sciences

Bridgeman Art Library

Everett Collection

Robert Harding World Imagery

Visual Connections

Curt Teich Postcard Archives

Fundamental Photographs

Sovfoto/Eastfoto

Young Photographers Alliance

MASTHEAD

The Picture Professional quarterly magazine of the American Society of Picture Professionals, Inc.

ASPP Executive Offices 201 East 25th Street, #11C New York, NY 10010 516-500-3686 director@aspp.com

2014-2015 National Board of Directors

2014 Chapter Presidents

President Anna Fey

Editorial Staff Jain Lemos - Publisher April Wolfe - Editor-in-Chief Ophelia Chong - Art Director Debra P. Hershkowitz - Copy Editor

Secretary Ellen Herbert

West Christopher DiNenna Jennifer Kerns Walker

Contributing Writers Josh Steichmann Paul H. Henning Brian Seed Katie Buntsma Jenny Respress John W.W. Zeiser Nancy E. Wolff Samaruddin Stewart Martha DiMeo

MidWest Christopher K. Sandberg Christopher Beauchamp

Treasurer Mary Fran Loftus

New England Jennifer Riley Debra LaKind

Membership Benita Spight Doug Brooks

New York Kris Graves

Education Susan Rosenberg Jones Cecilia de Querol

DC/South Jeff Mauritzen

Technology Daryl Geraci Mayo Van Dyck

2014 Sub-Chapter Vice Presidents

Marketing & Communications Lisa Vazquez Roper

Minnesota Julie Caruso Missouri Sid Hastings

Advertising & Executive Officers Sam Merrell Executive Director director@aspp.com Editorial April Wolfe editor@aspp.com National President Anna Fey president@aspp.com Membership Benita Spight Doug Brooks membership@aspp.com Website Daryl Geraci webmanager@aspp.com Tel: 602-561-9535 eNews Blog Jenny Respress newsletter@aspp.com

Ohio Mandy Groszko Wisconsin Paul H. Henning • The American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP) is a non-profit, non-partisan association of image experts committed to sharing their experience and knowledge throughout the industry. The Picture Professional (ISSN 1084-3701) is published spring, summer, fall and winter as a forum for distribution of information about use, purchase and sale of imagery. • ASPP is dedicated to promoting and maintaining high professional standards and ethics and cooperates with organizations that have similar or allied interests. We welcome the submission of articles and news from all sources, on all aspects of the imagery profession. Contact editor@aspp.com • Advertising is also desired and welcomed. We offer a specific readership of professionals in positions of responsibility for decision making and purchase. For our media kit and rate sheet, contact Sam Merrell, 516-500-3686. Space reservation deadlines: February 10, May 10, August 10, November 10. Subscription rates: Free to members, $40.00 per year to non-members. Back issues: $10.00 when available. Non-members are invited to consider membership in ASPP. • POSTMASTER: Send old and new address changes to ASPP, Inc., 201 East 25th Street #11C New York, NY 10010. Members can update contact information in the Member Area of our website at www.aspp.com. • ©2014 American Society of Picture Professionals, Inc. Single photocopies of materials protected by this copyright may be made for noncommercial pursuit of scholarship or research. For permission to republish any part of this publication, contact the Editor-in-Chief. ASPP assumes no responsibility for the statements and opinions advanced by the contributors to the Society’s publications. Editorial views do not necessarily represent the official position of ASPP. Acceptance of an advertisement does not imply endorsement by ASPP of any product or service. American Society of Picture Professionals

The Royalty-Free you need, from the Rights-Managed collection you love!

Worldwide Travel, Nature & Culture

Now offering over 70,000 quality travel and editorial images in our new Royalty-Free collection! Danita Delimont Stock Photography represents 300+ photographers and agencies from around the world. For more info, call 425-562-1543 or email Danita@DanitaDelimont.com.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR © Lile Merrell, 2013

SAM MERRELL

DEAR PICTURE PROS, Why ASPP? Number one reason: We’re here to help our members stay curren, to provide a venue where we can meet and talk together about coping with the changes that are affecting us all. Creative destruction has long been a hallmark of our industry. Photo styles and subjects come and go with the seasons, but the technology platform for making images and moving them through production changes daily. As do the business models which underlie our marketplace. Big capital, digitization, and the Internet are grinding away at the commercial photo business and in the process, many jobs—and companies—vanish. New ones spring up, but usually they’re quite different from, and do not replace, what has disappeared. Against this backdrop, the Internet quickens the pace of change and every day delivers a fresh avalanche of information on what to do about it. But when the megatrends hit close to home and the experience gets personal, finding and seizing upon new professional creative opportunities requires deft footwork as well as no small amount of luck. I believe that we make our own luck, and hope you are taking advantage of Chapter events and other ASPP activities in your area. We try to make them timely and bring you face to face with experts who are willing to share what you need to know to make some luck of your own. This year we have two new board members who are dedicated to educational programming, so if there’s an event you’d like to see happen, reach out to the Chapter or to the National Office. We are here to help you get what you need from your ASPP membership. Now more than ever, we believe professionalism matters. Specialized knowledge, our connections, and our experience make us more valuable on the job, but unlocking that value is the key. So in 2014, we are focusing on ASPP’s value-proposition and working hard to enhance

and add to it. ASPP is the only commercial photography trade organization that brings the demand side together with the supply side. Our members are the best, most highly trained and experienced photo professionals in the business. We know the ins and outs of content licensing, and our keen understanding of copyright issues helps keep them out of our clients’ ways. Bringing both sides of the image marketplace together gives ASPP Members the opportunity to empower each other and confront new challenges. Singly and apart, we are left to navigate through the rubble of our corner of the information economy. Together, we help each other unlock the opportunities. If you’re a researcher, editor, or buyer, come to one of our events and meet our sell-side members. If you are a seller, come discover our buy-side members. At our best, ASPP members help each other open our eyes anew, ask the right questions and listen carefully to the answers. Perhaps we even get comfortable enough to venture forward, out of our comfort zones, and carve out a chunk of terra incognita for ourselves—and our clients.

SAM MERRELL

With this issue, The Picture Professional ushers in a number of changes. ASPP says goodbye to Jain Lemos, ASPP’s Executive Director and TPP publisher for the past four years. We also bid adieu to our awesome TPP designer Ophelia Chong, who has brought her boundless energy and visual flair to these pages. Both jobs were well done. ASPP will miss them both!

aspp.com

more than entertainmentâ&#x20AC;Ś

web: www.everettcollection.com tel: 212.255.8610 x7122 e-mail: sales@everettcollection.com

EDITOR’S LETTER

APRIL WOLFE

DEAR PICTURE PROS, This issue marks some ends and some beginnings. For the past two years, I’ve had the privilege to work alongside Executive Director Jain Lemos and Art Director Ophelia Chong, and our now-former President Michael Masterson. But, as with everything, we have some changes. Michael Masterson has completed his illustrious term, and after leading an arduous and multi-phase rebranding campaign, both Jain and Ophelia are moving on to new and brilliant projects. In my experience, Jain and Ophelia have shown themselves to be tireless, inventive, and resourceful, and without them, I do not know how we could have pulled together some of our best articles. These have gone on to be reprinted and shared many times over in print, on the web, and even on television with the likes of Business Insider, National Geographic, Huffington Post, and CBS Morning News. Our collective goal was excellence in reporting and design to make people take notice of ASPP and recognize us as an organization that knows the trends as well as they know the classics. Finding ways to evolve, while holding onto everything that makes us successful in the first place, is never easy. There will be trial and error and trial and success, but Jain and Ophelia’s ability to circumvent a setback kept this thing going, and they will be greatly missed. I wish them continued luck and success in their individual goals—Jain finishing her book and Ophelia leading the brand campaign for clothier Earnest Sewn—and I’m so excited to see what they do next. With a heavy heart and a big smile, I must say that this issue marks their farewell to us.

As you will have already discovered when this issue goes to print, Sam Merrell has stepped into the role of executive director and is leading the search for his replacement as president, while Anna Fey has stepped in as interim president. We’re eternally grateful to Sam and Anna for their hard work, service, and adaptability. I’m also excited to say that Debra Hershkowitz is our new TPP copy editor. You’ll notice some major changes on the masthead with our new Chapter and Board. Please take a look and familiarize yourself with these wonderful people who will be leading ASPP into another successful year. And without further ado, I present to you another robust issue of The Picture Professional. Included in our portfolios are the travel and lifestyle images of Uliana Bazar, the innovative eye-in-the-sky portraits of Menno Aden, and the breathtaking adventure and editorial images of Corey Arnold. On the tech front, Samaruddin Stewart returns with an article on new drone photography, while Nancy E. Wolff joins us to discuss how we can stop patent trolls, and. Paul Melcher of Stipple gives us an in-depth look at the most innovative way to monetize images yet. Lastly, Martha DiMeo the ChromaQueen returns with a hugely necessary and informative piece on color management and monitor calibration. Enjoy!

APRIL WOLFE

aspp.com

WHAT’S HANGING

Photo exhibitions near you.

CALIFORNIA DE YOUNG Golden Gate Park 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive San Francisco

As many as 8,000 men worked on the construction of the Bay Bridge, and the exhibition highlights the vital role of these laborers, as well as the technical audacity of this engineering feat. Following the recent completion of the new eastern span, The Bay Bridge: A Work in Progress is a celebration of the grand ambition, unprecedented innovation, and irrepressible personalities behind one of the most important public works projects in California history.

©Peter Stackpole

The Raised Bridge, ca. 1934. © Dong Kingman, American, 1911–2000. Watercolor over graphite on wove paper. Bequest of James D. Hart.

Untitled (cable spinning, Telegraph Hill in the background), 1936. © Peter Stackpole, American, 1913–1997. Gelatin silver print. Museum purchase, Pritzker Fund for Photography.

American Society of Picture Professionals

The exhibition includes prints and drawings by other Bay Area artists, many of whom conducted their practice and earned their living under the auspices of San Francisco’s Federal Art Project. These include works by Dong Kingman (1911–2000) and Otis Oldfield (1890–1969), and a small selection of original studies from the firm of renowned San Francisco architect Timothy Pflueger (1892–1946), who contributed to the design of the original Bay Bridge.

©Peter Stackpole

The de Young presents a newly acquired group of thirty-eight photographs by Peter Stackpole (1913–1997), the first works by this important Bay Area photographer to enter the Museums’ collection. Over the course of three intense years, at great personal risk, Stackpole scaled the dizzying heights of the unfinished structure and moved freely among the construction workers to tell their story of death-defying labor in a series of striking photographs.

Pay Day (Hank Dennington and others on payday at the paymaster shack located at the base of tower W2), 1934. © Peter Stackpole, American, 1913–1997. Gelatin silver print mounted to card stock. Museum purchase, Pritzker Fund for Photography.

©Peter Stackpole

This exhibition documents the original construction of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge in the 1930s and includes seventy-two photographs, prints, and drawings from the Museums’ collection. The bridge’s modern engineering inspired many artists to capture its bold industrial forms and commemorate the heroism of the workers who built it.

©Peter Stackpole

The Bay Bridge: A Work in Progress, 1933–1936 February 1–June 8, 2014

NEW YORK

CENTER FOR CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY

STEVEN KASHER GALLERY

University of Arizona 1030 North Olive Road Tucson

521 West 23rd Street New York

Charles Harbutt: Departures and Arrivals November 8, 2013–June 1, 2014 The Center for Creative Photography is celebrating Charles Harbutt’s photographic work, and its relationship to the printed page. The exhibition features a complete set of prints from Harbutt’s newest publication, Departures and Arrivals, sequenced as they appear in the book, along with a short video in which Harbutt and Joan Liftin describe the book’s creative process. In addition, work prints from Harbutt’s 1959 trip to Cuba, demonstrating how he chronicled the earliest days of Castro’s leadership, the romance of revolution, and some American responses, are paired with working materials for a planned but never published book. A third exploration of Harbutt’s concern for the relationship between the photographic image and the printed page relates to his long career as a photojournalist. A slide show of over 150 photographs Harbutt made on assignment will be projected in sequence, revealing their drama and power. Related clippings and tear sheets, showing how these commercial works appeared in their original magazine contexts, complement the slide show and demonstrate this photographer’s ability to work both sides of the divide between art and commerce to arrive at an original vision.

Jerome Liebling: Matter of Life and Death March 13—April 19, 2014 Curated by Liebling’s daughter, filmmaker Rachel Liebling, the show includes both early vintage photographs and later largescale prints in black and white and color. Spanning six decades, the seventy-five works in the show comprise a retrospective of selections that explore the themes of youth, maturity, and death. Liebling’s images capture unguarded intimacy on both sides of the lens. He reveled in subjects and places where fortitude battled against decay. “My sympathies have always been with the everyday people; they are the center of my photography,” Liebling said. “There is a sublime and special respect that is ordinary, but which I think I sometimes push to heights of importance.” Former student Ken Burns called Liebling “a fierce warrior, insisting on a kind of justice, a kind of truth, and an utterly American vitality. He saw in every individual his or her own worth.” Liebling’s body of work defies easy categorization. He was in his element in both color and black and white—at home on New York City streets or in Massachusetts apple orchards. In his last years, Liebling used digital printing with the deftness and refinement of a master to create new interpretations of his most iconic images. “Liebling’s large-scale photographs are revelatory,” wrote Boston Globe critic Mark Feeney. “Monumental but not overbearing, these pictures are hard to imagine as having been any other size.” Many have never been exhibited until now.

Hotel, Vera Cruz, 1982. © Charles Harbutt. Charles Harbutt Archive/Gift of Sarah Harbutt and Ken Kerbs. Women Buying Peaches, Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, New York 1991 (Jerome Liebling). Chromogenic print. Copyright estate of Jerome Liebling, courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery, New York.

aspp.com

WHAT’S HANGING

ARIZONA

The Desert At Assouan, 2014. © Nermine Hammam (Cario, Egypt). Mixed Media. Courtesy of the artist and Rose Issa Projects, London.

TEXAS HOUSTON CENTER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY

Roping a Rustler, 2014. © Nermine Hammam (Cario, Egypt). Mixed Media. Courtesy of the artist and Rose Issa Projects, London.

1441 West Alabama Street Houston Nermine Hammam, Wetiko: Cowboys and Indigenes March 14–May 4, 2014 In her new series, Wetiko: Cowboys and Indigenes, Egyptian artist-photographer Nermine Hammam manipulates historical paintings of the American West with recent photographs of the Arab Spring—that wave of revolutions, uprisings, and protests that has spilled across the Arab world since 2010. Walking around Cairo, she has witnessed protesters faking their deaths for visiting photojournalists; watching TV at home, she has seen the media rally support for an attack on Syria with a photograph of alleged chemical-attack victims wrapped in shrouds. But that moving BBC News photograph was taken in Iraq in 2003, not Syria in 2013. “I realized that the mechanism of trust has disappeared from the written word and the published image,” she says. “Our trust has been challenged by manipulation, forgery, and the constant rewriting of narratives and counter-narratives.”

Hammam has found parallels between the mythologizing images of the artist-correspondents of the Wild West, such as Frederic Remington and Charles Marion Russell, and the international community’s influence in the Arab world. In both cases, highly emotive images have been widely used to justify aggression. Wetiko is therefore about ways of seeing. In Remington’s “Aiding a Comrade,” two cowboys try to rescue a companion who has fallen from his horse while fleeing Native Americans, but in Hammam’s image, a pro-Morsi protester charges ahead of the cowboys, referencing the rumors that the Muslim Brotherhood is supported by US funding. Will this alliance topple anyone from his horse? Similarly, “Days on the Range (Hands Up)” depicts a posse in pursuit of an unseen foe—will the young protester in Hammam’s photograph be caught in the crossfire? When and how the turmoil will end is anyone’s guess, but for Hammam, one thing is certain: Wetiko—the Native American Cree tribe’s ancient word for compulsive consumption of the earth’s resources—is becoming an epidemic. 10

VIRGINIA VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS NewMarket Gallery 200 N. Boulevard Richmond, VA Posing Beauty in African American Culture April 26–July 27, 2014 Posing Beauty in African American Culture examines the contested ways in which African and African American beauty has been represented in historical and contemporary contexts through a diverse range of media including photography, film, video, fashion, advertising, and other forms of popular culture, such as music and the Internet. The exhibition explores contemporary understandings of beauty by framing the notion of aesthetics, race, class, and gender within art, popular culture, and political contexts. Drawn from public and private collections, Posing Beauty features approximately eighty-five works by artists such as Carrie Mae Weems, Charles “Teenie” Harris, Eve Arnold, Garry Winogrand, Sheila Pree Bright, Leonard Freed, Renee Cox, Anthony Barboza, Bruce Davidson, Mickalene Thomas, and Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe.

Atlantic City, Four Women, ca. 1960s. © John W. Mosley. Gelatin silver print, Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, Temple University.

The exhibition is organized by the Department of Photography & Imaging at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, traveled by Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions, and curated by Dr. Deborah Willis.

American Society of Picture Professionals

SUSTAINABLE PHOTOGRAPHY

COREY ARNOLD

aspp.com

BY KATIE BUNTSMA

Corey Arnold grew up in Southern, California, fishing alongside his dad. He even dressed up as a fisherman for Halloween and brought some of his catches for show-and-tell. While many people turned their backs on their tradesman dreams, Arnold followed his to a deckhand job in Bristol Bay and finally to a 107-foot crab boat anchored in Dutch Harbor off the Bering Sea. “I remember being surprised by the captain’s calm disposition on that first trip, but as the years went by, I grew accustomed to violent weather and learned that the captain’s facial expression is a good gauge for when to know it’s time to be concerned.” This attention to detail, to what’s important, also aids him in his other career as a photographer. On a trip where many photographers might just go for the big action shots, Arnold knows what’s important to see. And often, that’s people.

up all the strength in my body to force my fingers to blindly grip the ladder on the way down in the freezing wind but finally succeeded with the only damage done to my ego as I squirmed in pain while my fingers dethawed under the galley heater. What is your favorite story associated with an image from any of your series? Your projects have such rich history and narrative. What are these people’s stories? During the summer of 2010, I jumped onto a friend’s skiff to snap some photos while gillnetting salmon in Bristol Bay. Ben Thomas was the captain, a really lovely person, salt of the earth, religious, an advocate for sustainable seafood. Suddenly a thirty-five-pound King Salmon struck the net and was quickly gaffed and pulled aboard. I asked Ben to hold the fish up and as he did, the salmon flailed and an extreme amount of blood was squirting all over him and the boat. It was a moment of gruesome triumph. I like that it creates a dialogue about the morality of killing for food. Is this man a heartless killer? Is he an enviable hunter? Is this sustainable? These are the questions I want people to ask themselves. I want people to think more about where their food comes from.

Recently, I got the opportunity to track Arnold down after he’d returned from a month-long fishing voyage and get his takes on photography, life, and the open sea. He’s difficult to pin down, but you can find him at least some of the time in Graveyard Point, one of the world’s largest Sockeye salmon runs. Unfortunately, Graveyard Point faces a catastrophic future due to mining pollution. Corey fishes for the catch and uses the photography as a powerful medium to show the importance of preserving Bristol Bay and Graveyard Point. See more of Arnold’s work at coreyfishes.com or pick up a copy of his book Fish Work: The Bering Sea published by Nazraeli Press. He’s repped by Charles A. Hartman Fine Art in Portland, Oregon.

You started out shooting your projects with film. Do you still primarily work with medium format or have you made the switch to fully digital? I read that Graveyard Point was shot using mostly film. Why is it important to you to shoot on film?

What is the most harrowing experience you’ve had while trying to get a shot?

There is a feel about Graveyard Point that lends itself to film. It’s a dirty, gritty, rough place. The series is more focused on the inhabitants, the fishermen who squat in this abandoned cannery in Alaska every summer. I use medium format film when I know that I can shoot slowly and set up portraits and landscapes. I go for digital when there is a lot of movement or action and I need to shoot a few hundred shots to capture a certain moment. For years, I’ve blended both film and digital into projects and exhibitions preferring to choose the right tool for the specific job. People can rarely guess which is which on the wall as I do my best to match the texture of the files, although very minimal color correcting is done to my images.

I once climbed the rigging of the crab boat I was working on during a storm in the Bering Sea. I wanted to capture a nearly aerial view of the windswept sea. It was 18 degrees Fahrenheit, and I thought I could scale it with no gloves, get the shot, and quickly climb down. While I was up there, I spotted an intense squall in the horizon and decided to stay and photograph as the 80-knot gusts struck the boat. More powerful then expected, the squall forced me to grip onto the railing and hold tight until the winds calmed before I climbed down. My hands rapidly froze and became uselessly numb while my camera got thrashed against the railing by the wind. I had to muster American Society of Picture Professionals

Your career swings back and forth between photographer and fisherman. Now you’re captain—fishing and photographing. How do you balance it? Is it all still a grand adventure, or has it started to feel like work at some point? It’s a ton of work to juggle both, but really it’s the photography that takes up the bulk of my mental space. The physical work of fishing is grueling for a short period of time and managing the boat and crew is a welcomed challenge, but I love how I can put my email on auto reply and just disappear for six weeks every summer. Sometimes I think that physical labor comes more naturally for me. I love and hate photography. I despise email and editing and all the time I spend on the computer to manage the logistical side of things but I love the places photography takes me, the people I meet because of the excuse I have to be there as a photographer, and I love to stare at the prints I’m proud of once the work is done. Do you think you’ll ever put down the camera or the fishing net to simply pursue one or the other? I’ll never put down the fishing. Life at Graveyard Point is my favorite time of year. But unlike fishing, my finger will still be able to click a shutter well into my 90s, so I think I’ll probably keep my finger on the button for some time. 15

aspp.com

ÂŠ Corey Arnold American Society of Picture Professionals

aspp.com

ÂŠ Corey Arnold

COREY ARNOLD

American Society of Picture Professionals

aspp.com ÂŠ Corey Arnold

ÂŠ Corey Arnold

COREY ARNOLD

American Society of Picture Professionals

aspp.com

ÂŠ Corey Arnold

©Menno Aden

MENNO ADEN About seeing the world from above, French astronomer and balloonist Camille Flammarion said that nothing compared to “the beauty of nature as seen perpendicularly from the regions of space.” It is this vantage that German photographer Menno Aden adopts in his newest series titled Room Portraits. The view from above provides a different impression of how we occupy, order, collect, and organize the spaces of life; from convenience stores to kitchens, bedrooms to classrooms, their footprints take on new meaning when seen from such heights.

These influences lodged in his head when he began a photo-diary of his meals. According to Aden, he “took pictures standing on a chair taking a photo downwards.” At first, Aden felt the perspective “emancipated” the dishes on the table, but he worried that other parts of the room became abstracted, so he changed tack, moving the chair around the room to take in its totality. When he tried to weave the images together, he realized the corners were distorted and the angles were different. To correct for this, he began using “fillet-pieces of each photo,” a time intensive process, taking the undistorted areas of the images and sewing them together. Even today, Aden says that a single image from Room Portraits takes between six to thirty days to assemble.

Aden’s work lives within the rectangle (and square), the most common shape of ceilings, floors, and windows. Aden acknowledges that some of this geometric and domestic inspiration stems from David Hockney’s photomosaics and Gordon Matta-Clark’s “building cuts.” Aden also credits Otto Umbehr’s photographs of Weimar Berlin in the 20s for their thrilling inversions of perspective. American Society of Picture Professionals

Now, when Aden wants to photograph a room, he first relies on its “style or feeling” before getting analytic— assessing colors, furniture, how a room can be gridded 22

©Menno Aden

AN EYE IN THE SKY out, potential light sources. Aden prefers not to use “extra light.” He then follows a grid, taking up to 150 pictures of the floor with a camera mounted on a monopod or tripod attached to a boom. Once he has enough photos, he moves on to editing them into a single image. One can imagine him listening to minimalist music, which he also claims as inspiration, for hours on end as he lines up and stitches together each fillet.

with its walls a mosaic of bottles, all imbue the top-down perspective with an imposing, vertiginous feeling.

It comes as no surprise when Aden remarks that his images may “open up some new dimension in the future.” These images operate in one that we rarely enjoy beyond planes, mountains, or skyscrapers. And Aden’s choice of subject matter, the everyday spaces shorn of human presence but imbued with its footprint, cluttered yet ordered, takes The process may be intricate and time consuming, but the us out of the grand perspective of a pinnacle and trains end product exhibits an alluring simplicity that belies the our eyes on something close to earth. A different way of months Aden spends on each image. What is especially seeing our own quiet lives. To be a fly on the ceiling. striking is how walls, seen from above, create a deep well of gravity that drags the eye into a room’s exact center, as Truly an innovator, Menno Aden has garnered numerous if Kubrick decided to shoot from the ceiling rather than awards in the fields of science and architectural down hallways. “Untitled (GS II)” all tall window and photography. He shows us clearly that there is much art to thin vertical bookshelf, “Untitled (Classroom)” draped in be found in science and architecture. light-soaked curtains, and “Untitled (Corner Shop II),”

BY JOHN W.W. ZEISER 23

aspp.com

ÂŠMenno Aden American Society of Picture Professionals

ÂŠMenno Aden 25

aspp.com ÂŠ Camillo Longo (4)

ÂŠMenno Aden American Society of Picture Professionals

aspp.com

ÂŠMenno Aden

image. itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s everything.

bridgemanart.com

Angkor Wat, Cambodia: A Buddhist nun in Preah Khan in the Angkor Wat complex, 2013. ÂŠ Jack Kurtz / The Image Works

editorial specialists for over 30 years historical

natural history

science & technology

religion

performing arts

illustration

documentary & photojournalism

fine art

theimageworks.com

PO Box 443 Woodstock NY 12498 800.475.8801 845.679.8500 info@theimageworks.com 29

aspp.com

ULIANA BAZAR: A TRAVELOGUE OF ESCAPE Viewing Uliana Bazar’s photographs of Assateague Island, you know you’re viewing a very singular and unique place. Assateague Island has been described as “a place recreated each day by ocean wind and waves,” and through Bazar’s lens, it looks almost as though no human hands have ever touched it. One senses that it’s one of the lonely places of the world, a place where the earth stops, where if you were to stand on this beach, you’d wonder if there’s anything beyond the horizon. One can easily see the influence of Uliana Bazar’s National Geographic background in her candid shots of daily life. Her photos give the impression of events happening in real time, right now, like stills from a hidden camera. Whether on the canals of Venice, the streets of St. Lucia, or inside the cloisters of a monastery, Bazar witnesses moments as though the photographer were not there. Nowhere is this quality more apparent than in Bazar’s more urban projects, such as the Little Odessa series, taken on the streets of Brighton Beach,

American Society of Picture Professionals

in Brooklyn NY; or in her photos of non-tourist areas of the Caribbean islands. Cooking, working, waiting for a train: mundane activities that we would otherwise ignore are rendered colorful and beautiful by Bazar’s eye. The Assateague series, though, conveys a sense of stillness and serenity, where the movement belongs to the clouds rather than the people. This sense of calm is also evident in Bazar’s photos of the Monastery of the Holy Land, with its images of people at prayer or contemplating nature. In fact, many of her photos show someone in a thoughtful pose. One needn’t even read Bazar’s blog to understand that she aims to capture “the reality of [her] subjects without any attempt to portray them in an idealized manner.” What, then is the reality of her Assateague subjects? They aren’t selling wares on the streets of St. Lucia or driving gondolas in Venice or attending Easter festivities in Brighton Beach. They are here to play, to get away, to commune with nature.

© Uliana Bazar Assateague is a place where someone can experience the beauty of a wild seascape just minutes from the hustle and bustle of the Eastern Seaboard. It is a place whose moods often change by the hour, providing a kind of visual candy for an artist.

Most of Bazar’s Assateague photographs feature one person, seen from behind, looking in the same direction as the photographer. It gives the impression that the subject, photographer, and viewer are sharing the same view, the same experience, possibly even the same thoughts. TheAssateague figures could be the spirits of others who dream of being out in the open air with nothing near but sea, sky, and sand. Since receiving her MFA from Corcoran College of Art + Design, Uliana Bazar has worked for National Geographic Books, first as an intern and now as a freelance photo editor. Bazar’s work has been exhibited in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Magenta Foundation Flash Forward 2013 UK, and FotoWeekDC. Her photography has also appeared in PDN Magazine, Esquire, NPR’s The Picture Show, The Washington Post, and many other publications.

BY JENNY RESPRESS

aspp.com

There always seems to be something happening. Some mornings I have crawled out of my tent and found myself in a fog bank obscuring all but the closest sand dune. Other mornings I have emerged into the hot summer morning sunshine to find a herd of wild horses grazing the beach grass only feet from where I slept.

American Society of Picture Professionals

ÂŠ Uliana Bazar

aspp.com

ÂŠ Uliana Bazar American Society of Picture Professionals

© Uliana Bazar I don’t usually seek photographs while I’m at Assateague but instead allow them to come to me. For me, the experience of being there is just as important as making a picture. I allow myself to respond naturally to its unpredictable rhythms. These images are not the result of some project or self-assignment; rather they are my simple perceptions of this place and my diary of experiences there.

aspp.com

ÂŠ Uliana Bazar I have come to Assateague in the dead of winter when the sand is frozen like pavement, and I have been at Assateague during howling storms when it seems as if waves will wash away the island altogether. I have seen huge rain clouds drop to the horizon giving the impression of distant mountains. I have watched the ocean go from a lake-like calm to a wild and unruly sea in the course of an afternoon.

American Society of Picture Professionals

aspp.com ÂŠ Uliana Bazar

visual media expo

RETURNS to CHICAGO The must attend event for professional users of photography, footage and illustration.

Q&A SESSIONS:

THURS APRIL 24TH THE IVY ROOM, 12 EAST OHIO ST

10AM–NOON SPONSORED BY ASPP

2:30–4:00PM Discussion panels on key issues for image/footage buyers: copyright & fair use, rights & clearances, research tools & tips. Exhibit Floor Opens 12–5PM

Discover new sources of distinctive creative and editorial images/footage from around the world • Connect with existing suppliers • Enjoy lunch on us • Win valuable prizes • Network with peers Register now at visualconnections.com/ASPP * Entry is restricted to professional image/footage buyers and researchers. Session tickets are limited and may not be available at the door. Image credit: © Panoramic Images / Mark Segal

©Kristi Knupp 2013 Mentoring Program “Escape” LA Team

Great talent isn’t born. It’s developed. For more information on how you can get involved go to www.youngphotographersalliance.org

> Mentoring. > Scholarships. > Educational lectures.

inspiring. empowering. educating. @YPAFoundation

American Society of Picture Professionals

YPAFoundation

Young Photographers Alliance

Curt Teich

Postcard Archives

847-968-3381 www.TeichArchives.org

Historic Images that Capture Time and Place

A unique collection of images representing the history of Russia, Soviet Union, and the entire Communist Bloc including Eastern Europe and China. research@sovfoto.com (212) 727-8170

ASPPad.indd 1

2/25/13 4:18:45 PM

IN MEMORY OF FORMER ASPP PRESIDENT MARGARET BUCKWALTER Margaret Buckwalter was the first two-year national president of the American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP), from 1976 to 1977. During her tenure, she doubled the membership and created the first chapters outside of New York City—in Washington, D.C. and New England. Through seminars, tours of special collections and research sites, and a photo fair, Buckwalter created gatherings for professional development and industry networking that helped create an identity for the developing profession. Outside of the ASPP, Buckwalter’s career was long, prosperous, and varied. She began in the art department at Time, Inc., moved on to American Heritage—where she became its first picture library manager—and later worked rigorously to save the Alice Austen House, which has become a haven for artists and historians alike. Margaret (Peggy) Riggs Buckwalter died on Jan. 5 in Northampton, MA. Donations can be sent in memory of Peggy Buckwalter to the Lathrop Home, 215 South Street, Northampton, MA 01060.

IN MEMORY OF GRANT HEILMAN FOUNDER, GRANT HEILMAN PHOTOGRAPHY Grant Heilman passed away on Tuesday, February 25, at his home in Buena Vista, Colorado, following a brief illness. Grant believed in and was an active supporter of the photographic and agricultural communities. He believed strongly in industry organizations, having two national presidents of PACA on staff at his agency. He was involved in the National Agri-Marketing Association, America Agricultural Editors Association, The Agriculture Relations Council, American Society of Picture Professionals, American Society of Magazine Photographers, and many others. He retired as CEO from Grant Heilman Photography in 2011. His writing or photographs have appeared in almost every publication, and in thousands of textbooks. He has authored—both text and photographs—a number of books, of which the best known are Farm Town and Farm. In 2012, he self published a western novel, Krieger. American Society of Picture Professionals

Tell Your Story with

style

Tell Your Story with

class

Tell Your Story with

mptvimages

www.mptvimages.com sales @ mptvimages.com 818-997-8292

From top: © Sid Avery; © Mark Shaw

aspp.com

Q/A

Stipple opened, actually in 2011, we took the decision to make it as visible as possible. What better way than to target celebrity images, which represent the majority of photographs seen on publishers’ websites? We proceeded in partnering with the top international celebrity photo agencies in the world and offered Stipple’d images to publishers. Brands, ad agencies, and publishers quickly came back to us asking if they could also Stipple their own images. In the summer 2012, we created the Stipple. com platform, which allows anyone to upload and Stipple their images. As a tech company, we are not the ones deciding which images should be Stipple’d or not. We leave that decision to our users. We can certainly give pointers, based on results. Obviously, the more popular an image, the better it will succeed.

PAUL MELCHER,

VP OF IMAGES, STIPPLE

Aside from those whose products are featured in images, what kinds of advertisers are you seeing jumping on board with Stipple images, and what types of images are they gravitating to most? When the multi-faceted technology company Stipple rolled out, picture professionals took notice. And in October 2013, PACA’s New York conference featured Stipple’s VP of Images Paul Melcher as their key moderator for the stock-photography conversation. When you look at Melcher’s history, it’s easy to see why. Melcher has been a pioneer in image technology since he first told magazines he would no longer offer prints from digital files—only CDs. At the time, he was with ImageDirect, and his streamlined, money-saving process caught the eye of Getty Images, who quickly saw the benefits of a digital-only platform. A couple decades later, Melcher’s in front of the pack again with Stipple, and we’re excited to ask him some questions and get a better idea of how Stipple is changing the digital landscape for agents, publishers, and image makers.

One fundamental aspect of Stipple is that the tag on the image must be 100% related to what is in the image. Thus when a viewer hovers over a product and opens up the Stipple tag, they get information for that product—or service—and nothing else. This is key to our very high engagement rate. Because we started in the celebrity space, the fashion industry has been first to adopt us. However, in the last year, we have seen a wide range of advertisers, from music labels to video games, retailers, travel, real estate, wedding, automobile, movie studios. It continues to expand daily. We have yet to see an overwhelming trend on the type of images used the most. It varies a lot depending on the industry they are in. Initially, publishers and image creators greatly received the concept of Stipple, because it could potentially keep their images in constant circulation, while keeping better tabs on them and allowing for continued monetization. How is Stipple helping this group do their work more efficiently now?

When you launched Stipple, the idea was to reach out first to celebrity-focused photographers. Advertisers would then be able to tag certain photos that perhaps featured their own products, bringing in revenue— which would be dispersed to the original publisher, the image creator, and Stipple— each time a user clicked through. Now that your library has had an incubation period to expand, what types of images are you most including outside of celebrity-focused ones?

Because we work with photography, we know that image attribution is the number-one pain point today. That is why we offer free, persistent image attribution. Whenever an image is Stipple’d, the IPTC information is automatically ingested and displayed (on the top right of the image) in an automatically created tag (on the top right of the image) that cannot be erased or altered by anyone. This “info” tag travels with the image wherever it is published in our network, again, automatically. The copyright owner is thus easily viewable and reachable. Furthermore,

When a new tech company launches—regardless of how much you want it—you cannot have ready all the features you have in mind ready. You have to start with a solid foundation from which you build and add upon. When American Society of Picture Professionals

photographers can easily keep track of where their images are published, thanks to an extensive dashboard. We also recently launched “Stipple Search,” which allows anyone to perform an image search on Stipple.com and find more information about any image and its owner. Finally, we are a partner and supporter of the PLUS Coalition. We have integrated the PLUS Image ID and are in talks for an even deeper relationship. You’ve launched a Mac-compatible mobile app for Stipple. Are you finding that the mobile app is as popular as the traditional web interface? We just launched our mobile app for iOS platform (Android version in the works). We want to extend the Stipple experience to everyone who wants to create a multidimensional image to share it with their friends. It is a bit different than our web interface, as it is more aimed at the consumer market. So while it’s gaining traction, it is mostly for a different kind of user than our web app. We are certainly encouraged by the results. For an individual photographer, the benefits of Stipple embedding an image with purchase and contact information are obvious. But what benefits could this offer photo agencies, who already sell from their own sites and may already have their images’ metadata embedded and tracked? First, let me clear up a slight misconception: Stipple is not about embedding. We offer the ability to do so if and when someone would like that, but it is not how Stipple works. Stipple works with automated image recognition. Once an image has been Stipple’d, our system tracks every and all instances of that image in our network— even if it has been altered—and automatically adds the Stipple tags. For photo agencies, it is a new and additional way to create revenue. When you see that images online are licensed for $10, it becomes very lucrative to forego the licensing fee and instead get the revenue share generated by the Stipple tags. Furthermore, because the

tags follow the image automatically, even if the image is shared on other websites, you still get the revenue. In fact, the more an image is shared, reposted, and tweeted, the more revenue you can potentially generate. It’s a very effective way to capitalize on the rampant image-sharing culture, while still keeping attribution and control (via our dashboard). We work, and have projects with, numerous photo agencies (Getty Images and Associated Press among the two best known), who have quickly realized the massive potential it offers. What steps do you take to verify that a user’s uploaded image is indeed their own? Like all technology companies, because of the volume of images we handle daily, we have to rely on our users. Every time they upload an image, they are asked to confirm if they are the copyright owner. We also have a very thorough DMCA takedown policy. As soon as a breach is reported, we act very quickly. If it is clearly malicious, we then take steps to close and bar the user forever. We take copyright protection very, very seriously. For agents and photographers who’ve been using Stipple, are the tiny transaction fees paid out through click-throughs adding up to anything substantial? Why should someone use Stipple? The Internet is all about scale. You can’t—and shouldn’t— apply the same rules that exist in print. While the revenue might seem small on an individual basis, the revenue might seem small, you have to multiply them it by millions, if not hundreds of millions. For example, a few million people see the biggest-circulation print magazines, but a website like People.com receives close to one billion page views a month. Stipple works by taking full advantage of this—not once but every time your image is published. So if your image is published on just three sites with 10 million visitors, that’s already 30 million people seeing your photo and interacting with the tags on them. 43

aspp.com

akg-images has a new website! www.akg-images.com

American Society of Picture Professionals

Fine Art | History | Photography

S E N T I

T S I

H O

T S

Y R O

U O Y

W R

GRANGER.COM

aspp.com

THE ALLURE OF THE AERIAL: DRONES PROVIDE A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAMARUDDIN STEWART

For most of photographic history, capturing aerial photographs was a costly and complex endeavor. In addition to the considerable expenses involved, you also needed access to an aircraft and an experienced pilot, which in some locations and situations could prove impossible. Fortunately, recent technological advances have made remote-controlled consumer unmanned aerial systems (UAS)—also commonly called drones—accessible to the masses. Most consumers know about the availability of drones through Amazon’s now-famous short video documenting their stretch goal of one day delivering purchases via drone, dubbed Amazon Prime Air. In reality, this usage isn’t happening anytime soon, but you are now able to purchase a relatively affordable drone for your own use on Amazon’s site. And with this release, drones have now made aerial photography affordable and attainable. After seeing many examples of aerial photography from early entrants into consumer UASes, I decided to purchase my own in 2013. I have a unique appreciation for aerial photography. In 2001, I was a crewmember aboard a vintage Grumman Albatross seaplane that flew completely around the world. During that adventure, my primary role was to document the journey in digital photographs. In the end, I spent almost two months capturing aerial photographs and seeing the world from above. To rekindle that awe of expansiveness I found in aerial photography, I chose a DJI Phantom based on its reputation of being easy to fly, as well as the fact it comes ready to attach a GoPro camera, which I already owned. With remote-controlled aircraft, one basic equation has been: the lighter the load, American Society of Picture Professionals

the longer the flight time. For this reason, GoPro cameras have been very popular for aerial photography because of their slim size and weight. Days later when the Phantom arrived, I was indeed surprised by how simple it was to unbox, assemble, affix the camera, and begin flying. After only watching only a few how-to videos online and reading the manual, I was flying my Phantom and capturing aerial photographs. But even with its ease of use, there are bound to be some difficulties. Aerial photography possesses a unique escapism, a viewpoint that simply by its location makes it strikingly surreal. However, that change in perspective (in conjunction with the camera being remote) makes capturing photographs a new challenge. While it’s true there are far fewer obstacles in the air to hinder angles, shooting back towards earth is something many photographers are unaccustomed to. Composition and lighting (which is generally now solely from the sun) need to be analyzed anew. Also, capturing photographs while in motion (including hovering) tends to require using higher shutter speeds than photography on the ground. Changing altitude has some unique challenges. Aside from these camera-specific issues, there’s also the matter of safety. As with anything aviation-related, safety is a top priority. Crashes of UASes are well documented, especially when users are learning to fly. All safety precautions should be taken with regard to operating away from buildings, inhabited areas, groups of people, and in inclement 46

Sunset over Baker Beach, California

weather. Additionally, it’s essential to keep current with federal and local laws regarding flying unmanned aircraft, paying close attention to altitude limits, commercial use, and restrictions on flying near airports and government properties. As the guidelines and recommendations are changing rapidly, it’s important to seek and know the most up-to-date information. (The FAA has a great resource page for personal drone use, which you can find in the links at the end of this article.) We are still in the early stages of consumer UAS systems, but there is ample evidence that many industries are finding benefits to UAS aerial photography, and widespread use is imminent. Those uses in filmmaking, real estate, local law enforcement, wedding planning, landscape photography, sporting events, wildlife photography, academic research, and journalism have been documented in the past months. Consequently, drone manufacturers have responded, and many new models of aircraft now possess heightened control options, including the possibility of pre-programmed GPS flight. One only needs to select a flight plan and

have the aircraft fly autonomously, allowing the user more time to concentrate on photography, while the craft focuses on flying. The key takeaway is the enormous opportunity that consumer UASes are providing for aerial photography, allowing perspectives that were either impossible or very difficult to capture before. The UAS has become a powerful new tool for photography, but as with photography, flying takes practice. No matter your views on drone use by consumers, drones are here and will become even more in demand and commonplace as time goes by. As they say: the sky’s the limit. Links of Interest FAA official UAS operations site: www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/uas Skypixel, aerial photographer Eric Cheng’s blog: skypixel.org Drone Journalism Lab, journalism professor Matt Waite’s blog: www.dronejournalismlab.org

aspp.com

THE COLOR-MANAGED WORKFLOW: MONITOR CALIBRATION BY MARTHA DIMEO

Have you ever spent hours perfecting a photograph in

object—i.e., an apple is red. But if the light falling on that apple changes from daylight to incandescent, the color, or more precisely the human observer’s perception of the color, changes. In the three-part equation, if we change the observer from a human being to a camera, and then subsequently view the image captured by the camera on a computer display, what color will the apple appear to be? It depends on these three things: the characteristics of the chip in the digital camera, the condition of the monitor on which the image is being viewed, and, lastly, the environment in which the monitor is set.

Photoshop, only to discover that when the image goes to press, the color looks nothing like what you expected? Achieving color that reproduces the way we expect when an image goes to print can at times seem like rocket science. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With the tools of color management, the guesswork can be eliminated, and predictable color can be obtained from capture to final output. If you’ve ever taken a color-theory class, the first thing you probably learned is that color is relative. To answer the question “What is color?” or “What color is that?” while pointing to anything in your immediate view is not unlike answering the philosophical question about the sound of a tree falling in the woods. By definition, color is an event that occurs because of three participants: an observer, an object, and a light source. If any one of these three things is changed, the color event is different. In other words, we see a different color. Intuitively, we have the tendency to treat color just as a function of the American Society of Picture Professionals

Let me explain each of these further. A camera’s sensitivity to light is different than that of a human observer. In other words, the camera may not record the light falling on the apple in the same way that our eyes “record” that same light. Secondly, no two monitors out-of-the-box are exactly the same. And finally, the lighting in your office, the color of the room’s walls, and the color of your computer’s desktop will influence how you perceive the color of that red apple. 48

COLOR MANAGEMENT & THE DIGITAL WORKFLOW

behavior of the display. It is the profile that translates the ambiguous RGB values to unambiguous XYZ values.

Digital color is ambiguous. Our devices that reproduce color in RGB (monitors, cameras, and scanners) and the devices that reproduce color with CMYK inks (inkjet printers and printing presses) will interpret identical RGB or CMYK values in very different ways. Because of this, the color produced is called device-dependent.

CONTROLLING YOUR ENVIROMENT

Color management eliminates the ambiguity and the device-dependent interpretation of the RGB/CMYK values by giving specific meaning to those values. This is done by translating the values from the device-dependent color spaces of RGB/CMYK to the device-independent color spaces of CIE XYZ or CIE LAB. The XYZ/LAB color spaces are considered device-independent, because their interpretation of color is based on the human response function—in other words, the way you and I see color. By assigning meaning that correlates to the human response function, the values are no longer ambiguous. As a result, color appearance is preserved as the digital file moves from device to device. We are able to obtain a match throughout the entire production process from capture, to edit, to final output. The color on your monitor will match the proof and the proof will match what comes off the press. When implemented correctly, a color-managed workflow produces accurate, consistent, predictable, and repeatable results. For color management to work properly, every device in the production workflow must be color-managed. PROCESS The first step—and arguable the most important—in the color-managed workflow is the calibration and profiling of your display. If your display is not calibrated and profiled, you are essentially working with a blindfold over your eyes. Calibration is the process of altering the behavior of the device by adjusting the white point, brightness level, contrast ratio, and black level to known reference points. For this, I use a colorimeter or spectrophotometer, in combination with software designed to evaluate and adjust the display. Two leading manufacturers of colorimeters and spectrophotometers are X-Rite and Datacolor. X-Rite offers the i1Pro and ColorMunki series, and Datacolor offers the Spyder series. Some models offered by both companies can also be used to calibrate cameras, laptops, printers, projectors, iPads, and iPhones. Once adjusted, the software builds an ICC profile that describes the

The next step in creating a color-friendly, color-managed environment is controlling the physical condition of your office. The lighting needs to be neutral and consistent. Any overhead and desk lamps should have daylightbalanced 5000k bulbs. As we learned earlier, when the color temperature of light changes, it potentially changes our perception of a color. If sunlight—with its continually changing direction and color temperature—is flooding your office, your ability to accurately evaluate color will be seriously compromised. The second lighting consideration is the brightness level of the room. You want to keep the ambient lighting as low as possible. The brighter the illumination is in your office, the higher you will need to set the brightness level of your monitor. Continually running your monitor at the high-end of its luminance setting will shorten its lifespan and render it unusable for color-critical work. Finally, the color of your surroundings—both the paint on the walls and the color of your computer desktop—need to be a neutral gray. The desktop color is set in the system preferences. (On a Mac, the best choice is Solid Medium Gray.) For your office wall color, the industry standard is Neutral Gray N7/N8 paint from GTI Munsell. With that said, if you can’t live with gray walls, than at least paint them white. ACHIEVING CONSISTENT & PREDICTABLE COLOR This discussion of display calibration, profiling, and environmental factors is the first step on the journey of achieving consistent, predictable, and repeatable color. Other considerations are application settings, embedding and honoring image profiles, conversion methods between RGB and CMYK devices, and procedures for handling out-of-gamut colors. Although display calibration and profiling is only the first step in the process of a color-managed workflow, it is a vital step. As a photo professional, it is not required that you become a colormanagement expert, but it is essential that you become a color management practitioner. For more detailed information on color management, visit www.chromaqueen.com.

aspp.com

PATENT TROLLS TARGET IMAGE-LICENSING INDUSTRY NANCY E. WOLFF Patent holders have two options: use their patented invention to create useful products and services, or sell it to entities that hold patent portfolios, solely to bring patent-litigation claims and collect license fees. Companies that purchase large portfolios of patents—often on the cheap from distressed companies or inventors—are also referred to as “patent trolls.” Because most photographers, image buyers, and publishers doing business before the advent of e-commerce never previously gave patents a thought, they’re now the perfect, inexperienced targets for patent trolls. Patents, like copyrights and trademarks, are a form of intellectual property. Unlike copyrights—which are the underpinnings of publishing, image licensing, and trademarks—patents involve “inventions.” Because the business of selling books and images was hardly novel, publishers rarely ran any patent-infringement risks. But now, owners of broad software patents are claiming that commonplace actions, like licensing and selling content online, infringes a registered business method or software patent. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) examines applications for and issues patents to inventors, providing them exclusive rights for a period of time, in exchange for dedicating the novel invention to the public when the rights expire. In the United States, a utility patent holder has this monopoly for twenty years. This system is intended to foster innovation. Unfortunately, this is not always the result. Because of the high costs of defending a patent claim—easily reaching upwards of a million dollars— companies targeted by a troll will prefer settling even unreasonable and questionable claims, rather than facing such prohibitive costs. Because of these high costs, settlements are often out of line with any alleged benefit to the business resulting from the invention. Patent trolls use the early settlements funds, which may include ongoing license fees, to bankroll further litigation against other vulnerable companies. And now as a standard practice, patent trolls set up business addresses in eastern Texas solely to take advantage of federal courts that favor the patent holder and juries who hand out large awards. American Society of Picture Professionals

Companies engaged in any form of internet business are particularly at risk of being sued by holders of business software patents, as many of the patents granted by the USPTO during the 1990s were broadly written, and could arguable cover all online activity. Unlike patents granted to engineers and scientists, who create machines and develop medicines and gadgets that make our everyday tasks easier, patents given to processes do not result in a physical “invention.” These “business method patents” (all in quotations according to other articles and litigators) are more problematic to the examiners who review documents before issuing a patent. The difficulty is in determining the availability of similar systems or processes, known as “prior art,” in order to avoid issuing patents to systems or processes that already exist or build upon what is available. If the examiner discovers prior art, the patent claim can be invalidated. Information on business methods and processes was not centrally located or easily available to examiners, and many who experimented with new technology never wrote about it in the usual academic journals. As a consequence, many patents were granted in the early days of the Internet that arguably should not have been granted. While the USPTO has taken steps to reduce the risk that undeserving business method patents are granted, many patents are still within the exclusive period of protection and can be enforced against unwitting companies. Uniloc, a company with a large patent portfolio, but which no longer uses any of them other than as a sword against companies in patent litigation, could be the poster child for a patent troll. At the end of February 2012, Uniloc filed patent litigation claims against four small microstock companies in the Eastern District of Texas. Ten more suits were filed in December against other image-licensing companies. The latest filings targeted companies both large and small and are not limited to microstock. At issue in each case is US Patent No. 7,099,849, entitled “Integrated Media Management and Rights Distribution Apparatus,” which Uniloc claims covers an integrated rights management and licensing system for storing, researching, buying, and selling intellectual property rights. Initially filed in December 2000, and 50

finally registered in late August 2006, the “process” was written to describe a system for clearing rights in movie properties, where more than one intellectual property owner controls rights. It includes receiving licensingrequest information over a network, clearing rights, submitting a request for approval, and transmitting a license. Citing the patent “doctrine of equivalents,” meaning it does not need to prove all elements if the system functions in a similar manner, Uniloc asserts that the current system of licensing images and media online violates this broadly written patent. Uniloc was not particularly successful against the first four companies (one settled early on (difference between settling earlier than the litigation decision, and settling early on in the litigation, before it went anywhere), and Uniloc withdrew its claims against the other three), but it proceeded to file ten more cases. Before withdrawing the initial three claims, the accused infringers were able to collect information about early online business practices of the image-licensing industry. This prior art (only in quotations to introduce) can establish evidence of public disclosures of similar systems before the date of the invention and can knock out a patent. PACA, the Digital Media Licensing Association, and others are assisting in collecting relevant information. And despite the Internet’s prevalence bringing about the opportunity for these patent trolls, accused infringers have now found it equally useful in defending against these attacks. Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library, has preserved old websites in what is known as the Wayback Machine. Crowdsourcing is also being used to collect evidence of prior art, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation has a patent-busting project, asking for leads on prior art to help invalidate software patents that interfere with the workings of the Internet. Collaborating

and sharing information on prior art has had great success. Around ten years ago, the image-licensing industry defeated the owner of the Freeny (other sources don’t use quotations) patent, which sought to protect a kiosk-type system of ordering books and music on demand, alleging it covered all online content that could be downloaded. Freeny patent trolls went after both Corbis and Getty Images, who successfully defeated the patent claims in both the US and the UK. Patent trolls are a menace to businesses large and small, but hope may be on the horizon. The US government has declared patent reform an important goal to fight the abusive efforts of patent trolls. The House recently passed a bill, now pending approval by the Senate, called the Innovation Act. The Act would make it much more difficult for patent trolls to bring non-meritorious patent infringement claims against businesses. The judiciary has also shown signs of joining the fight against patent trolls’ frivolous suits. In early January 2014, the Supreme Court denied the petition of a technology company that had lost its claim to enforce a patent for an online “shopping cart” frequently used by companies. Many states are considering laws to crack down on patent trolls’ practice of sending demand letters alleging patent infringement in bad faith, and extorting money by threatening litigation. Protecting innovation and intellectual property is an important government policy, but permitting entities to merely leverage vague and overly broad software patents against legitimate businesses afraid of expensive litigation is contrary to such policy. The system needs to be fixed, but continued collaboration and record keeping of prior art can help us fight back against the next wave of trolls.

aspp.com

CHAPTER CAPTURE WEST DC/SOUTH NEW YORK

WEST HOLIDAY AND FUTURE FESTIVITIES: WEST PROGRAMMING Chris DiNenna

On December 19, the West Chapter had its 2013 Holiday Gathering at El Coyote Restaurant in Hollywood, California In attendance were members and friends of ASPP, gathered around a large table surrounded by strung-up twinkle lights and eclectic decor of vintage hanging lamps and colorful plastic animals. It was a great time chatting and sharing 2013 stories with old friends and new acquaintances. After two hours of networking and socializing, our group settled down for brief announcements and a raffle of door prizes supplied by Nixon Watches and Electric Sunwear. Then we got down to business.

creatives across multiple markets. Polara Studio in Portland, Oregon will host the event.

Also planned is a tour of the Huntington Library in Pasadena. The Huntington Library just purchased an extensive photographic collection from Ernest Marquez, a descendant of Mexican land grantees who owned what became Santa Monica and parts of Pacific Palisades. He amassed during a fifty-year period a 4,600-image compilation, including rare photos of 1870s Santa Monica and Los Angeles. Beginning in March, we will also host a series of informal coffee gatherings and happy hours, so members can share ideas about future Now planned for March 14, ASPP West will partner events, panels, and tours. with The American Society of Media Photographers in Oregon to bring together a panel of experts to review The West Chapter, which is split between groups in Seattle portfolios in both one-on-one and group settings. and Los Angeles, is now actively seeking candidates for Reviewers from different disciplines will explain what local chapter boards. Please participate in one of the agencies are looking for today and how photographers announced events and make your voice heard. Come out can fine tune their portfolios for different buyers and and meet new and exciting folks from your local ASPP. American Society of Picture Professionals

DC/SOUTH

NEW YORK

2014 KICKOFF PARTY! Lisa Walker

PRIVATE TOURS & PIONEERING WOMEN Kris Graves

On February 19, members, photo enthusiasts, and new board members gathered at Bar-Cöde in downtown DC for a meet and greet with some delicious snacks and drinks courtesy of ASPP. There were raffle giveaways from Calument for free 20x30 prints, along with some other special store discounts for ASPP members, and a couple of very cool Think Tank photo bags.

Last month, ASPP made a visit to the New York Public Library exhibition, Pioneering Poet of Light: Photographer Florence Vandamm & the Vandamm Studio. Barbara Cohen-Stratyner welcomed us for a private tour around the beautiful exhibition.

President Jeff Mauritzen introduced the following 2014 board members: Maura Walsh, treasurer; Lisa Walker, secretary; Erich Morse, membership; Jonathan Irish, programming; Cory Lawrence, communications; and Beth Partain and Judy Heffner, board members at-large. There was also a special appearance by National ASPP Board Member/Technology Co-Chair Mayo Van Dyck.

According to the NYPL, “Florence Vandamm was one of the most prolific and widely published female commercial photographers of the early 20th century. The free multimedia exhibition celebrates Vandamm’s remarkable career and offers a unique opportunity to understand the photographer’s expert and innovative use of light, drawing on materials primarily from the Vandamm Theatrical Photography Collection, with the Library’s Billy Rose Theatre Division acquired in 1962.”

Everyone is really excited for 2014 and we look forward to seeing all of you at our upcoming spring events, including a DSLR workshop. Stay tuned—more fun events to come!

In other news, we are also in the planning stages for two new networking and peer-to-peer events, one in early March and one in April.

aspp.com

THE

PICTURE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF PICTURE PROFESSIONALS

PROFESSIONAL

PUblICATIoN CAlENDAr Submission & Publication Dates Issue

1 Spring 2 SuMMer 3 FAll 4 Winter

Format

artwork DeaDlIne

PublIcatIon Date

February 20

end March

Digital

May 3

mid-May

May 20

end June

Digital

August 3

mid-August

Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be reaching:

August 20

end September

retouchers writers

Digital

november 3

mid-november

agents multimedia

november 20

end December

Digital

February 3

mid-February

designers web publishers digital experts photo editors researchers

AD rATES

image buyers

Advertisers receive a 10% discount when purchasing ad space in all four issues at once. We also offer double page spreads and advetorials upon request and availability.

consultants

app developers historians art buyers educators reps rights & asset managers students permission

Placement

sIngle Issue

4 Issue DIscount

Back cover

1,650

1,485

InsIde covers

1,250

1,125

Full Page

800

720

HalF Page

500

450

Quarter Page

250

225

eIgHtH Page

125

115

desks marketers photographers illustrators librarians curators footage/motion makers metadata/ keyworders bloggers writers content creators.

Why are these men cheering? Because you have “A” rated insurance carriers from ASPP and Association Health & Business Programs!

ber m e M efit! n e B

AHP is the new, exclusive endorsed provider of insurance services for ASPP members. These benefits and special rates for members, families and employees are possible through large group underwriting, with our membership being pooled with more than 2.5 million people in 300 national associations. Health insurance programs include group and individual policies, life, long term care, disability, critical illness, dental and more. Our business programs include professional and general liability, property and casualty, home and auto, business owner policies, umbrellas, valuable art/images and papers, workers’ comp, security and privacy, and electronic equipment. Savings in this category can be as high as 15 to 25 percent. Equipment financing is also available from $5,000 to $250,000. HEALTH INSURANCE • GROUP INSURANCE • LONG-TERM CARE HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNTS • DISABILITY INCOME • BUSINESS POLICIES • ANNUITIES AND MORE TO KEEP YOU SMILING

1-888-450-3040

AHP/ASPP stands behind all of our programs and guarantees 100% satisfaction. 1912 Pennsylvania Delegation, Chicago. Photo Courtesy of George Grantham 55 Bain Collection (Library of Congress)

aspp.com

BOOK REVIEWS

THE ART OF iPHONE PHOTOGRAPHY

Bob Weil & Nicki Fitz-Gerald Rocky Nook Paperback, 352 pages $44.95 For someone who grew up on Kodachrome, Dektol, and a Pentax H1-A, reading The Art of iPhone Photography is a pretty mind-blowing experience. The idea that just any old yahoo can use a $200 phone to snap something commercially viable (like the iPhone photo on the cover of Time magazine in 2012) or even recognized as fine art just didn’t strike me as…right. But, at the risk of echoing The Monkees, I can now enthusiastically say: I’m a believer. As Daria Polichetti correctly points out in the book’s foreword, “Mobile art is not about process or equipment. As is true of any art form, it’s about the artist’s vision.”

example, has been highly influenced by the work of Albert Watson and thus “gravitates toward dark, moody, provocative imagery.” His lovely photo titled “Kitava” captures a model whose exotic looks, combined with McNamee’s use of a “hand-applied emulsion look,” is reminiscent of Edward Curtis but with the added element of palpable sensuality. Another Yank, Cecily Caceu, forgoes people altogether in “Long Beach in the Rain,” her stunning picture of a lonely red bike that’s seemingly been abandoned amidst tall grasses, wet pavement, and the distant ocean. Using just three apps, most notably Pro HDR, Caceu has fashioned a moody, eye-catching homage to the California Coast after the boys of summer have gone.

The Art of iPhone Photography is really a series of tutorials by forty-five of the world’s leading iPhoneographers (yes, this is now an official term), divided into two sections, Photography” and “Illustration and Fine Art.” In many cases though, I’m hard-pressed to figure out where “photography” stops and elements of “illustration” and/or “fine art” kick in. (Isn’t David Ingraham’s beautifully noirish “Rat Race,” for example, at least photo-illustration, if not fine art?) Each tutorial provides comprehensive details on how a single final image was created—starting with the initial push of the button, then identifying which specific apps were used in post-processing, and showing the result of each individual step along the way in the evolving image.

Included in The Art of iPhone Photography is an inspirational twenty-two-page gallery of additional images produced by the book’s contributing iPhoneographers, as well as an Appendix listing all the apps used in the book. (It would have been helpful if the authors had indicated which ones are free and what the prices are of those requiring payment.) The Art of iPhone Photography successfully demonstrates that it ain’t the tool, it’s how you use it. And while neither Nikon nor Adobe probably has to worry about smartphones putting them out of business, the iPhone has clearly added an entirely new and exciting dimension to what we consider both “photography” and “art.”

The subject matter tackled by this cross-section of today’s mobile artists is as diverse as their national origins and preferred techniques. America’s Doug McNamee, for

American Society of Picture Professionals

— PAUL H. HENNING

ÂŠ Melissa Vincent, Midnight Ride.

aspp.com

BOOK REVIEWS

THE KENNEDY YEARS: A MEMOIR

Jacques Lowe, preface by Thomasina Lowe Rizzoli Hardcover, 279 pages, 300 illustrations $45.00 Jacques Lowe was born in 1930 to a German father and a Russian Jewish mother and spent the years of World War II with his mother in hiding. They both made their way to the United States in 1949 when he was nineteen years old. He had not attended school since he was nine, but once in the US, Lowe began to study photography. He says, “When I was still in Germany, I saw the movie Foreign Correspondent with Joel McCrea as an intrepid trench-coated journalist, and it made a big impression on me.” Lowe was clearly a fast learner, and by 1956, he was a successful photojournalist working for the major magazines of the day, three of which assigned him in the same week to photograph Robert Kennedy. Lowe’s entrée to the Kennedy family and his resulting assignment as the personal photographer to a future president of the United States sprang from this remarkable coincidence. Joseph Kennedy saw the complimentary 11x14 prints that Lowe had made and was immensely impressed. A little later, Lowe was offered the position as JFK’s photographer during his presidential campaign. The agreed terms of employment: a day rate of $150 and coverage of all expenses. Jacqueline Kennedy was very welcoming to Lowe on his first visit to her home, and the photographs of her— including the charming ones showing her with three-yearold daughter Caroline—reflect this warm and friendly attitude. And though John Kennedy was initially hostile, this hostility soon ended when his political campaign got underway. Lowe became a one-man publicity service for

American Society of Picture Professionals

Kennedy. He took, processed, and printed the photos, also sending them to the media. Once Kennedy became president, Lowe was often at his side, sometimes to the horror of the high-ranking dignitaries who thought they were in a private meeting. When Kennedy first stepped into the Oval Office, he was alone with Lowe. They both thought the wood floor had to be refinished, as it was pitted with deep indentations. Their cause: President Eisenhower’s studded golf shoes. After Lowe was no longer working for the president, he returned to the White House to ask Kennedy to sign his famous photo—JFK with an anguished expression and his hand to his head, taken when Kennedy learned of the death of Patrice Lumumba. Lowe says, “With an impish grin, he put his hand to his head and imitated the same pained expression. Speaking with mock seriousness, he said, ‘Is Jacques Lowe in the White House again?’ And that is what he wrote on the print.” Readers of this book will see quite the extensive use of contact sheets and images enlarged from contact prints. Much of Lowe’s file of 40,000 Kennedy negatives burned to ashes in the fires following the 9/11 World Trade Center attack. The negatives had been stored there in a J.P. Morgan Chase safe when Lowe had been unable to obtain insurance for them. Miraculously, Thomasina Lowe found the safe in the burned-out ruins, but the negatives were gone. The contact sheets and prints, however, were fortuitously stored at another location. Many hours of painstaking restoration work went into creating this collection of memorable images. — BRIAN SEED

PROFESSIONAL

aspp.com

BOOK REVIEWS

THE POLAROID YEARS: INSTANT PHOTOGRAPHY AND EXPERIMENTATION Edited by Mary-Kay Lombino Prestel Hardcover, 224 pages $35.45 The Polaroid Years is both a fantastic archive of fine-art instant photography and an insightful discussion of ideas like technology and practice. Editor Mary-Kay Lombino, who as curator of photography at Vassar’s Art Center organized the show on which the book is based, sets the beginning of the “Polaroid Years” in 1972, when the SX-70 debuted in Miami. It was the first instant camera that could take pictures quickly and didn’t leave chemicals on the photographer’s hands. Using a gelatin-based emulsion that gave incredible richness and depth of color, SX-70s were quickly embraced by photographers like Walker Evans and Ansel Adams (Polaroid’s first artistic ambassador, hired in the ’50s). But the images took days to fully solidify, meaning that they could be swirled, distorted, and turned into psychedelic stipples of color, which. This annoyed the Polaroid scientists, who responded with quicker-drying emulsion. More and more, photographers who were once pure to the form of traditional photography came to embrace Polaroids—first as a tool to proof lighting and composition, and then for the Polaroids themselves. Polaroid responded by making the cameras bigger and bigger and eventually built one the size of a Volkswagen for contact prints of museum paintings that produced 40’ by 80’ prints, used to great effect by Chuck Close and William Wegman. Because of this widespread use, the images in The Polaroid Years seem to catalogue nearly every previous art movement of

American Society of Picture Professionals

the past 100 years, with images mimicking impressionism, cubism, abstraction, pop, everything. One of the few flaws of The Polaroid Years is that while Lombino (and Peter Buse, who contributes an excellent essay on the “perversity” of Polaroid) accurately describes the decline of Polaroid as a medium, she misses an opportunity to point out how much of the current experimental work in digital photography is directly descended from aesthetic experiments in Polaroids. From Instagram to selfies and surveillance aesthetic, there are a wealth of connections that Lombino may have felt were outside the scope of her book, but if included would have provided a more optimistic coda than ending with Carter and Dash Snow, offering rich opportunities to contrast Polaroid’s irreproducibility with digital work’s transience. That’s a small complaint, however, for a book that is provocative and exhaustive, beautiful and rich. Throughout The Polaroid Years, Lombino makes a strong case for Polaroids as a medium, by highlighting both the artists primarily known for Polaroids and the groundbreaking work that could only have been done with the instant film. It’s sad that Polaroids have declined to a specialty medium, but The Polaroid Years is the best celebration that medium could hope for. — JOSH STEICHMANN

ÂŠ Chuck Close 61

aspp.com

FOR ALL THE LATEST NEWS GO TO ASPP.COM

American Society of Picture Professionals

CONTRIBUTORS ISSUE 1 / 2014 THE PICTURE PROFESSIONAL

PAUL H. HENNING was a professional location photographer for fifteen years. He co-founded and directed Third Coast Stock Source, and was manager of European operations for Comstock Picture Agency in London. He’s served as acting managing director at the Robert Harding Picture Library and is the founder of Stock Answers, a consultancy that works with stock picture agencies and photographers worldwide. Paul also serves as the director of business development for Tetra Images, a New Jersey–based royalty-free image production company. KATIE BUNTSMA is an LA-based food photographer, designer, and recipe developer from a tiny Dutch town in rural Iowa. She loves stroopwafels, singing loudly in her car, and reading books on rainy days. Sometimes she indulges in bubble baths and canned peas and forcing her roommates to eat her experimental baked goods. BRIAN SEED is an Illinois-based photojournalist and stock-photo consultant. He’s the founder and a board member at Picade LLC, and his photography regularly appeared in Time-Life and Sports Illustrated for 30 years. The first poem JOHN W. W. ZEISER wrote was a crude imitation of William Blake’s “The Tyger.” Finding his elementary school teacher audience receptive, he decided to keep writing. He is now a freelance writer and editor living in Santa Monica, California, where he spends a good deal of his time documenting, on a camera phone, the growth of his heirloom tomatoes. You can follow him at @jwwz. SAMARUDDIN STEWART is a 2013 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow researching image forensics at Stanford University. Prior to Stanford, Samaruddin had worked at AOL, AFP, the Arizona Republic, and the US State Department. He’s interested in all things tech + media. Contact him at mediasam@stanford.edu or follow him @samsends.

JENNY RESPRESS started speaking at fourteen months and hasn’t stopped since. When she isn’t busy finding hilarity in the absurd, she can be found playing with her shih tzu, Oliver. She lives in Boise, Idaho, and is currently the social media manager for The Picture Professional and the e-news blog editor for ASPP. MARTHA DIMEO (New England chapter member) is a Digital Imaging/ Photoshop Specialist, and owner of ChromaQueencom, a photoediting company specializing in color correction and retouching for books, magazines, art publishers, advertising, and digital media. In addition to photo-editing services, ChromaQueen.com offers on-site and remote color-management consulting to the photography and design community. Martha can be reached at 617-855-8474. The first time JOSH STEICHMANN got paid for photography was when he turned a snack shack at a summer camp into a 12’x12’ pinhole camera. Since then, he’s had a love for alternative processes, creative risk taking, and mural prints. Working as a writer, he’s covered everything from Elvis festivals to US Code 2257, and plenty in between. As a photographer, he’s shown across Michigan, and can usually be found jumping Los Angeles fences with a home-hacked Holga. NANCY E. WOLFF is a partner at Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard LLP in the firm’s New York office. She practices copyright, trademark, and digital media law and offers full legal support to a wide range of traditional and new media clients. Ms. Wolff is the treasurer of the Copyright Society of the United States of America, a member of the Media Law Resource Center, chair of the ABA Intellectual Property Law Section on Copyright Legislation, and member of their Task Forces on Piracy and Copyright Reform. She earned her JD from Rutgers University, where she was the business manager and editor of the Rutgers Law Review, and earned her BS in Business Management from the University of Maryland, magna cum laude. Ms. Wolff is admitted to practice in California, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, as well as in the United States Courts of Appeal for the Second and Ninth Circuits and the US Supreme Court.

aspp.com

LIFE IN FOCUS: ELENA ZHUKOVA

“This image is part of an ongoing series called Surealiti,” says Elena Zhukova. “The purpose of Surealiti is to illustrate in fictitious ways the magnitude and vast range of human character and individuality in the midst of fantastical settings.” Elena began in commercial photography, experimenting with the intersections of art and client work. By casually placing her subjects in impossibly expansive settings, Zhukova manages to create an open space for complex ideas and interpretations—conceptual, but versatile photography. Find more of her work on her website: www.elenazhukova.com.

American Society of Picture Professionals