Issue 3, 2013: ASPP's The Picture Professional Magazine by American Society of Picture Professionals

2013: A LOOK BACK

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G U G G EN H EI M M U S EU M

QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF PICTURE PROFESSIONALS

ISSUE 3/ 2013

THE

PICTURE PROFESSIONAL

PORTFOLIO Andy Anderson

PORTFOLIO Noah Sheldon

INTERVIEW: SHESTOCK IMAGES Karen Beard

Q/A Alfonso Guttierez/age fotostock

INTERVIEW: BING 48 Stephanie Horstmasnshof & Michael Kroll

TABLE OF CONTENTS ISSUE 3 / 2013 THE PICTURE PROFESSIONAL

WHAT’S UP WITH PLUS? Jeff Sedlik & Roger Feldman

ASPP MEMBER SURVEY Holly Marshall

CLICK Ben High

INTERVIEW: 1X.C0M Katie Buntsma

WHAT’S HANGING BOOK REVIEWS

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Michael Masterson

EDITOR’S LETTER April Wolfe

THE LAW Joel L. Hecker, Esq.

CHAPTER CAPTURE

CONTRIBUTORS

LIFE IN FOCUS Wealon Bouillet

COVER: © Andy Anderson CONTENTS: © Noah Sheldon 1

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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

Corbis

Global Image Works

The Image Works

age fotostock

Curt Teich Postcard Archives

Minden Pictures

The Kobal Collection

akg-images

Custom Medical Stock Photo

North Wind Picture Archives

Travel USA Stock Photo

Art Resource

Dan Suzio Photography

Robert Harding World Imagery

VIREO/The Academy of Natural Sciences

Association Health Programs

Danita Delimont Stock Agency

Science Source/Photo Researchers

Aurora Photos

Everett Collection

Sovfoto/Eastfoto

Bridgeman Art Library

Fundamental Photographs

The Granger Collection

MASTHEAD

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

ASPP Executive Offices 12126 Highway 14 North, Suite A-4 Cedar Crest NM 87008 Tel: 505-281-3177 director@aspp.com Editorial Staff Jain Lemos - Publisher April Wolfe - Editor-in-Chief Ophelia Chong - Art Director/Photo Editor Contributing Writers Josh Steichman Ben High Joel L. Hecker, Esq. Katie Buntsma Paul H. Henning John W. W. Zeiser Angela Yonke Holly Marshall 2012-2013 National Board of Directors President Michael Masterson

Secretary Sid Hastings

New England Jennifer Riley Debra LaKind

Treasurer Mary Fran Loftus

New York Peter Berberian

Membership Doug Brooks Holly Marshall

DC/South Jeff Mauritzen 2013 Sub-Chapter Vice Presidents

Technology Daryl Geraci Cecilia de Querol

Atlanta Anna Fey

Marketing & Communications Jennifer Davis Heffner

Minnesota Julie Caruso Missouri Sid Hastings

2013 Chapter Presidents

Ohio Mandy Groszko

West Christopher DiNenna MidWest Christopher K. Sandberg Christopher Beauchamp

Wisconsin Paul H. Henning

Advertising & Executive Officers Jain Lemos Executive Director director@aspp.com Editorial April Wolfe editor@aspp.com National President Michael Masterson michaeldmasterson@gmail.com Membership Doug Brooks Holly Marshall membership@aspp.com Website Daryl Geraci webmanager@aspp.com Tel: 602-561-9535 eNews Blog Jenny Respress newsletter@aspp.com

Vice President Sam Merrell

• 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 Jain Lemos, 505-281-317. 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., 12126 Highway 14 North, Suite A-4, Cedar Crest NM 87008. Members can update contact information in the Member Area of our website at www.aspp.com. • ©2013 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

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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

MICHAEL D. MASTERSON ASPP NATIONAL PRESIDENT

DEAR PICTURE PROS, As the weather cools down, things here at the ASPP are heating up for the next few months. If you haven’t dropped by aspp.com recently, you’re in for a treat. We’ve spent months redesigning the site to make it more content-rich and user-friendly. We’re very grateful to our good friends at Corbis who underwrote the project for us. Our tech committee, co-chaired by Cecilia de Querol and Daryl Geraci, worked closely with Jain Lemos, our executive director, Sam Merrell, our national vice president, Jennifer Davis-Heffner, our national marketing communications chair, and our designer to create a cleaner, more elegant site. Of course, all websites are works in progress and we continue to fine-tune ours so there will be subtle changes ahead. However, we’re very pleased with the look and feel and hope you’ll enjoy spending more time at aspp.com as a result.

to sublicense uploaded content. The ASPP firmly supports copyright and usage protections for all picture professionals. Lastly, have you considered volunteering with us? There are scores of reasons why serving your professional community is a rewarding experience. Not only will you be giving back, you’ll be thinking about our industry from a new perspective and you’ll be strengthening your visibility. National Board members serve for two-year terms starting on even years (i.e., 2014-2015) and Chapter Boards serve starting on odd years (i.e., 2013-2014). Calls for nominations are in September each year, and you can nominate yourself! If you are interested in becoming involved but not sure you want an actual board position, you may want to participate on one of our National or Chapter committees. Please get in touch via email to director@aspp.com for more information regarding becoming a board member, volunteering for a committee or perhaps simply attending a board meeting. All involvement is greatly encouraged! Stay tuned for more information on our upcoming National Board elections. ✹

The ASPP has also joined the ASMP in supporting its position on Instagram outlined in “The Instagram Papers” report. Their concern regards Instagram’s unreasonable terms including that fact that once you’ve agreed to them, you cannot terminate the agreement and they can continue to use your images and name without restriction. Although we have had “InstaParty” meetups at some chapters in the past, the ASPP national board voted unanimously to end these events for the time being. We cannot condone Instagram’s terms permitting broad usage rights

MICHAEL michaeldmasterson@gmail.com

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EDITOR’S LETTER

APRIL WOLFE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF THE PICTURE PROFESSIONAL

DEAR PICTURE PROS, As we move into fall, there’s a kind of electricity in the air about where we’re all going from here. It seems everybody and their brother is feeling “the change” somehow or another. For the ASPP, we’ve launched our new website, which was a huge undertaking by all involved, but the long-term benefits will be tremendous. We’re connectors. We want to network and introduce everyone to everyone, and this website will allow us to do that at a rabbitrapid pace. In the coming months, The Picture Professional will be moving much of our back-issue content to the website for an all-around richer experience. We want you to reap the benefits of being a member by taking in these glorious images and reading our timely articles, but we also know you might not have room to store several years of print mags in your home. Don’t worry; we’ll make it easy on you.

PLUS Registry. In our portfolio pages, we are ecstatic to showcase Andy Anderson’s Oil series, which is a follow-up to his wildly popular “So God made a Farmer” Superbowl commercial, along with his never-before-seen images of the wildfires that ravaged Idaho this year. On top of that, we have Noah Sheldon’s gorgeous studies on Chinese weightlifters and a special interview with Karen Beard’s Shestock, a new site dedicated to stock photography by, for, and about women. Joel Hecker brings us the latest on copyright issues and book publishing, while Ben High tells us the best new apps to organize our photo lives. And because we value our ASPP members, we’re happy to print the results from our member survey, along with an analysis of where we can go from here. Thanks so much for being a part of our wonderful organization. We’re excited about the future, and we hope you are, too. ✹

And further embracing change, we’ve decided to make this issue the Interview Issue. CEPIC Barcelona blew us all away, and we wanted to bring a little of that knowledge directly to you. In our pages, we have an in-depth interview with the CEPIC keynote speakers Stephanie Horstmanshof and Michael Kroll to talk about photo researching and their methods of image selection. And an interview with Alfonso Gutierrez of age fotostock reveals some surprising and pleasing directions for picture professionals. We also have a Q/A with 1x.com founder Ralf Stelander to talk about the growth of image-curation websites, and a fantastic interview update with Jeff Sedlik and Roger Feldman of the

APRIL

editor@aspp.com

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WHAT’S HANGING

Photo exhibitions near you.

MASSACHUSETTS Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 465 Huntington Avenue She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World August 27, 2013 – January 12, 2014

During this critical time for the Middle East, contemporary photography reflects the complexities of unprecedented change. One of the most significant trends to emerge recently is the work of women photographers, whose remarkable and provocative images provide insights into new cultural landscapes and refute the conception that Arab and Iranian women are “oppressed and powerless.” In the first exhibition of its kind in North America, Kristen Gresh, Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Assistant Curator of Photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, presents She Who Tells a Story, an exhibition that brings together the vital pioneering work of twelve leading artists: Jananne AlAni, Boushra Almutawakel, Gohar Dashti, Rana El Nemr, Lalla Essaydi, Shadi Ghadirian, Tanya Habjouqa, Rula Halawani, Nermine Hammam, Rania Matar, Shirin Neshat, and Newsha Tavakolian.

Don’t Forget This Is Not You ( for Sahar Lotfi) Newsha Tavakolian (Iranian, born in 1981) 2010 Chromogenic print mounted on aluminum *Reproduced with permission *Courtesy of the artist and East Wing Contemporary Gallery *Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

“She who tells a story” is a translation of the Arabic term rawiya, which is also the name of a small collective of female photographers based in the Middle East. The iconic series “Qajar” (1998) by Iranian artist Shadi Ghadirian is presented as a point of departure for many of the contemporary narratives in the exhibition. Ghadirian’s humorous pastiches set up encounters between different times and cultures: the European-influenced backdrop of a 19th-century Qajar-era Persian photographer is juxtaposed with contemporary studio props, “forbidden” or restricted objects ranging from a Pepsi can to the regularly banned newspaper Hamshahri. Made at a time in Iran when activities, such as playing or listening to music in public, were taboo, these photographs suggest tensions between tradition and modernity, restriction and freedom, public and private. In more recent works like “Nil, Nil #4” (2008), Ghadirian presents more modern juxtapositions, this time between distinctly masculine and feminine objects in anonymous yet personal settings.

and has turned to fine-art photography to address social issues. Egyptian photographer Nermine Hammam’s series “Cairo Year One” (2011–12) muses on the uses of photography by addressing the eighteen-day uprising in Egypt in January 2011 and its aftermath, recording its progression from innocence and idealism to brutalization and polarity. In the first part of the series, “Upekkha,” Hammam embeds photographs of soldiers she took in Tahrir Square during the uprising within the paradisiacal scenery of candy-colored postcards from her personal collection. Playing on images from another era, Hammam’s incongruous composites like “The Break” question the media’s rendition of a historic event while commenting on the anticlimactic arrival of the army in the square. Join the ASPP New England Chapter for a private tour and curatorial presentation of She Who Tells a Story by exhibition curator Kristen Gresh on October 30 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Register at aspp.com/chapters/new-england/.

Other contemporary artists being featured include Tehranborn-and-based photographer Newsha Tavakolian, whose “Listen” series creates imaginary photographic CD covers of professional Iranian singers who, as women, are forbidden by Islamic tenets to record albums or perform in public. As a former photojournalist, Tavakolian is aware of perceived—and sometimes real—obstacles to photographing in public in Iran, American Society of Picture Professionals

And for those who are unable to attend, take a look at the MFA companion book for the exhibition here: www.mfa.org/collections/publications/she-who-tells-story

WHAT’S HANGING

The Break Nermine Hammam (born in 1967) 2011 Chromogenic print *© Nermine Hammam *Courtesy of the artist and Rose Issa Projects, London *Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nil, Nil #4 Shadi Ghadirian (born in 1974)2008 Chromogenic print *© Shadi Ghadirian *Courtesy of the artist *Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

18. Untitled Shadi Ghadirian (born in 1974) 1998 Gelatin silver print *© Shadi Ghadirian *Courtesy of the artist *Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 9

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OIL & FIRE American Society of Picture Professionals

THE STRANGE MAGIC OF ANDY ANDERSON 11

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PHOTOGRAPHER ANDY ANDERSON’S WORK is what you might call “grand.” He’s long been one of the leading editorial and commercial photographers working in the industry, but with every year, he seems to push his own limits and widen the breadth of his visual vocabulary. Take for instance his work with Dodge Ram. Perhaps you’ve seen the “So God made a farmer…” commercial that blew everyone away as the best in show during the Superbowl. Consider that Anderson had never before this done any work with cars, let alone anything with the iconic Dodge Ram brand, and the results seem even more fantastic. In fact, Anderson’s inexperience with cars coupled with his in-depth firsthand experience in portraiture and the American West paved the way for some of the most innovative car shots we’ve seen in a long time, because Anderson doesn’t just seek to portray the blue-collar life of Americans, he truly does live it. Anderson, born a Swede, resides in rural Idaho, just outside the small metropolis of Boise. He spends his free time reeling in trout and traveling all over the world to catch under-made models relaxing on the rocky shores of rivers, superheroes lying across busy LA bridges, and Cuban transsexuals posing in the shadows of a Havana night. Simply put: real people doing real things. His series Oil came from a relatively short trip to Barstow, California, and while many can see the gritty beauty of an oil derrick, only Anderson can bring it alive with a combination of stark portraiture and abstract black-and-whites. There’s a silent quality, a truly arrested moment to these images, simultaneously evoking a playful side and a struggle, much like the concept of “oil” currently: fueling our fun, wreaking havoc on the future. And Anderson’s not immune to this duality in his images; he encourages it. This summer of 2013, the countryside of Idaho, along with the expensive resort areas of Sun Valley and the old Ketchum stomping grounds of Hemingway, went up in flames. The high-desert heat only exacerbated the problems, and the politics of saving resort towns over farmland came to the forefront as money quickly ran out for assuaging the fires. Smoke jumpers flew in daily, and so did Anderson, stealing gorgeous shots that speak a strange and catastrophic beauty, as the natural world burns. When Anderson sent us these supplemental images to his portfolio, he was able to express his extreme sadness for the environmental savagery in the same quick breath that exclaimed he was going back out on the river to catch a trout. Honestly, the man doesn’t stop. It seems he can’t. He’s a force of nature himself, and who better to document it. The Fire images we have in these pages are raw and have never been seen before, and we’re grateful to Andy Anderson for allowing us to show these gut-wrenching photos of the biggest news story you didn’t hear anything about in 2013. We think photography can do something magical. We think that Andy Anderson has that rare combination of a photographer who can make anything extremely real and extremely magic, whether it’s a truck or a scorched landscape, and we’re grateful he’s here to make us think. ✹ American Society of Picture Professionals

BY APRIL WOLFE

OIL 12

ÂŠ Andy Anderson

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ÂŠ Andy Anderson 15

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ÂŠ Andy Anderson American Society of Picture Professionals

aspp.com © Camillo Longo (4)

FIRE

FALL CREEK, IDAHO THE ELK CREEK COMPLEX FIRE AUGUST 2013

American Society of Picture Professionals

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American Society of Picture Professionals

NOAH SHELDON’S

HEAVY LIFTING 23

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NOAH SHELDON HAD BEEN TRAVELING back and forth from China to New York, where he is represented by Brooklyn gallery, Julian Richards, but when his wife, an architect and artist, was offered a job in Shanghai, they jumped at the offer. Aside from being able to raise his daughter bi-lingual, Sheldon would also have the opportunity to ingrain himself in a culture not often photographed. Now, when you look at Sheldon’s photographs, one of the most apparent things is what’s missing. He often refuses to show a finished product. Instead, he brings the viewer into a moment of process; an empty stadium, the politician on his way to the stage, models receiving last minute instructions backstage before heading down the runway. There is something unnerving but also invigorating about this, and Sheldon’s new project Weightlifters continues in this vein. For this collection, Sheldon got the opportunity to photograph members of the Chinese national weightlifting team preparing for the London Olympics. It is a precise and captivating essay on the process of training the body for a Herculean task. He blends relaxed portraits of the men and women with staged shots that show off the athletes’ statuesque bodies. There are also several compelling images of the artifacts of the gym, where the athletes have spent most of their lives—damp towels, the daily log book of accomplishments, the fading colors of weights. A sweaty, humid light pervades the images. The effort and preparation of the athletes is palpable. In China, photography is sometimes a difficult passion. A crumbling wall or old building may call out to a photographer, but such documentation is not always welcome. Sometimes the sight of Sheldon setting up his tripod draws the attention of Chinese officials who don’t want him photographing old things. He says, “I’ve gotten really good at taking quick pictures of everything my minder wants me to, then I go and photograph what I want to.” Sports photography can be even more difficult because the athletes are important representatives of China’s image abroad, and access to them is limited. As in much of East Asia, sports academies are common in China, and Sheldon had been trying to do a project about them for a while. When he was finally granted access to photograph a school in Beijing, he hopped on a plane only to arrive at the location and be turned away for being a foreign photographer. Undaunted, Sheldon turned to an art director friend who had just been asked by Nike to do a shoot. The Nike imprimatur had enough cachet to get Sheldon over the hurdle of “sensitive matters,” and he was able to visit a sports school for weightlifters. Although Sheldon had limited access, only two minutes with each athlete, he was able to snap enough to cull into the sixteen images he finally chose. Many of the lifters he photographed went on to cover themselves in Olympic glory, but somehow these before shots tell a more intriguing story. They are relaxed, down-to-earth, and atmospheric, eschewing the spectacle of sport for the quiet moment. Even the photos of the athletes as statues have a playful quality, displaying the humility and dedication of the men and women. He’s made the most of his time in China. In addition to his professional work and artistic projects like Weightlifters, he maintains the photoblog Far East Broadway where he displays photos, often portraits, of his time in China. Spending a good deal of time in factories, he often thinks of Lewis Hine’s photographs, and these photos carry a casual, everyday quality, documenting the diversity of the country. He says, “When the West thinks and depicts China, it is so often huge masses of conforming people.” However, living there has allowed Sheldon to contextualize and sympathize. He has come to believe that China is “a land of eccentrics with a quiet kind of individualism expressed in small gestures.” Weightlifters, with its soft-spoken candidness, gives viewers one such glimpse into this unexpected perspective.✹

BY JOHN W. W. ZEISLER American Society of Picture Professionals

ÂŠ Noah Sheldon

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ÂŠ Noah Sheldon American Society of Picture Professionals

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ÂŠ Noah Sheldon

American Society of Picture Professionals

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ÂŠ Noah Sheldon

ÂŠ Noah Sheldon American Society of Picture Professionals

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ÂŠ Noah Sheldon (2)

CHANGING THE DIALOG: INTERVIEW WITH KAREN BEARD, FOUNDER OF SHESTOCKIMAGES BY ANGELA YONKE

AS A WOMAN PHOTOGRAPHER, I can relate to the appeal and need for a stock image company providing imagery of women by women, and Karen Beard, the founder of ShestockImages.com, is attempting to fill in the gap. A photographer herself, Karen found herself more than once in camera stores with men trying to explain to her what an f stop was, and moments like this fueled her passion for representing women in the photography boys club. On Shestock, the presence of real women in daily activities and touching moments are prevalent. Gone are the shots of an overjoyed June Cleaver waving her husband and children out the door. Instead, we see a little boy in a superhero costume helping mom mop the kitchen floor and a pony-tailed athletic female rock climbing. These are alongside the still-relevant photos of girls in tutus and shots of moms with babies and weddings, but you can clearly see something is changing. A week before the official launch of Shestock, we asked Karen to give us a rundown. Describe the goals of Shestock Images. What can it contribute to stock photography? Our first goal is to bring back quality to stock photography. This involves women creating imagery that is contemporary and highly curated. Our second primary goal is to recreate the dialog. Women make up the largest target market. We understand that and are happy to contribute to change this visual conversation. We intend to fix it by hiring professional women shooting about their real-life experiences. We want to see more women working commercially. There was a time when men were defining what femininity and feminine ideas meant. We want to take back that dialog. Are you looking for a certain aesthetic? There is no set style. The initial group of stock photographs looks very similar because we are still building a base of portfolios. With more photographers, you will see more diversity of style. What we are looking for is honest imagery with a vision. Just like the saying ‘”write what you know,” we would say, “shoot

cont’d on page 34 American Society of Picture Professionals

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SHESTOCKIMAGES what you know.” We are open to anyone or thing. We are looking for people and subjects of all different backgrounds, ages and ethnicities. We even have a photographer who is still in high school. She’s 18 years old, and she’s in the moment. Her work is phenomenal. Her shots are with her friends and people her age. She has wonderful, honest insight into this group because it is her world, her life. What insights did you gain from working in the field about how to make the business more effective? We want to give buyers the opportunity to have fresh, new images for less than what a normal assignment would cost. Our model has created two parts of the business, one pure stock where there is a 50/50 royalty relationship and the other is assignmentbased. The latter would consist of an idea being proposed with as much detail as possible and then include a fee sheet, day rate, flat fee or the buyer would pay for the shoot beforehand. A buyer would also have options such as being on set, giving out a top ten shot list, or changing wardrobe and props. We want the buyer to have options and we welcome their input. Your site is just starting up. What does the future look like for Shestock? Currently we are working with about forty women. Short term, we want to emphasize that every photographer is provided all the communication they want. Eventually we are looking to work with about one hundred. At this number we can give them our full support and communication without taking away from the quality of this interaction. We want photographers to have a good personal relationship with us, meaning that they have someone to talk to and connect with, not just the website. Come Fall, art directors can throw out what they need in positing an assignment and available Shestock photographers will respond with high quality imagery. Long term we strive to treat shooters and buyers well. We want to change the dialog, or really, start dialogs in a proactive way. ✹

American Society of Picture Professionals

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WHAT’S UP WITH PLUS AND WHY YOU SHOULD CARE JEFF SEDLIK AND ROGER FELDMAN

What is PLUS and the PLUS Registry? The PLUS Coalition is a multi-industry, multi-national, non-profit organization operated by and for the communities that create, buy, sell, use, and preserve images. Besides establishing international standards for image licensing, the Coalition operates the PLUS Registry, an online resource connecting images to rights holders and rights information on a global scale.

Jane Kinne co-founded it. ASPP members helped build it. But lots of us don’t have a clue what it does. Now The Picture Professional interviews the principals to find out about PLUS and the much touted PLUS Registry. It’s coming into its own, and it’s going to make a difference in your professional life. Keeping track of image rights and licenses is an age-old, and never adequately solved, problem. Eleven years ago, ASPP’s Jane Kinne, photographer Jeff Sedlik (then President of the Advertising Photographers of America), and PictureArts president Jeffrey Burke (then president of PACA) decided to do something about it. The result was the formation of the PLUS Coalition—a global, non-profit organization focused exclusively on making it easier to find, understand and manage image rights. PLUS is a collaboration of publishers, ad agencies, design firms, photographers, stock agencies, photo researchers, illustrators, museums, libraries, archives, universities, and standards bodies all over the world, now spanning over 100 countries.

Is the PLUS Registry up and running now? Yes it is. The public BETA test of business and user registration added more than 22,000 users from over 100 countries. The public BETA of the PLUS Registry image recognition and search functions begins in Q4 2013. In the spring of next year we will begin to test license registration. By mid-2014, most key Registry functions will be rolled out and we’ll start testing connections to other registries, DAMS, and related applications.

PLUS is run by a non-paid board drawn from all the communities that create, distribute, use, and preserve images. For the last ten years, ASPP members Roger and Judy Feldman have represented ASPP on the PLUS Board (Rog now serves as Chairman). We recently asked Rog and PLUS CEO Jeff Sedlik to sit down with us and answer the questions many of us have about PLUS, and, in particular, the PLUS Registry. American Society of Picture Professionals

So I can find rightsholders in the PLUS Registry today? Absolutely. Right now you can search the Registry by name or PLUS ID. Soon advanced forensic search tools will be added allowing search by other criteria.

I’m an image researcher and buyer, not a rightsholder. What can the PLUS Registry do for me? Any time you need information about a creator, rightsholder, or licensor of an image, the PLUS Registry can help you find it. Even if you only have the image and nothing else. Is the PLUS Registry an alternative to stock photo agencies? Absolutely not. Unlike a commercial stock agency, the PLUS Registry doesn’t offer image browsing, keyword searches, or licensing. It is purely and only about the collection and discovery of image rightholders, rights, and licensing information. What exactly is a PLUS ID? The PLUS IDs are unique identifiers issued by PLUS to identify businesses, individuals, images, and licenses registered with PLUS. PLUS IDs are part of the fabric of the PLUS Registry, but the Registry is designed to recognize IDs issued by other authorities as well. What if you need to find rights information about an image and you don’t have the PLUS ID? Just upload a low-res copy of the image. If it’s in the Registry, our image recognition function will display all registered contact and rights information. What if the image is from a book, magazine, or tearsheet? Scan it or shoot it with your camera or cell phone and upload it. If it’s in the Registry, our image recognition feature will find it and provide you with rights and attribution information submitted by the rights holders. With image recognition, why do you need a PLUS ID? Publishers have ISBNs. Manufacturers have UPC codes. And now picture people have the PLUS ID. More than just helping you find an image, PLUS IDs connect the image to rights information submitted by the person or business who registered the image with PLUS. What can the PLUS Registry do for organizations that manage large numbers of pictures and licenses? These days, image rights and licensing information is easily and often separated from the image itself. It might be stored in a rightsholder or publisher DAM system somewhere out there, but only the owner of the DAM can access it. But if the image has an embedded PLUS ID, its public rights information can then be accessed by anyone (with the registrant controlling what information is public and what is kept private). The Registry will allow DAM systems to read and import image rights information, greatly simplifying the management of images licensed under any licensing model.

Please visit www.useplus.org and www.plusregistry.org for more information.

Why not just embed license data in the image? Even assuming original image metadata survives the review, prepress, and publishing process, an embedded license is only accurate at a particular moment in time. If the license expires or is later amended or extended, any embedded license data is instantly out of date. But when it’s stored outside the image linked by a PLUS ID to current rights information, it can live and change forever. That’s the beauty of the PLUS Registry. ✹ 37

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Part 2: Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the difference between a PLUS Registration and a copyright registration? Rightsholders register images with PLUS in order to ensure that current rights information is available to anyone encountering their image, and to help users of those images manage their licenses. Rightsholders register with the Copyright Office to create a public record of copyright ownership and assure remedies in the event of an infringement. In the future, PLUS will be incorporating copyright registration from within the Registry, so youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be able to simultaneously register an image with PLUS and the Copyright Office. How exactly do you record image rights information in the PLUS Registry? There are many ways to do it. You can embed rights information using the free PLUS License Embedder. You can use Photoshop, Lightoom, Photo Mechanic and other applications that incorporate IPTC/Plus License Data Format fields. You do it through one of the many PLUScompliant DAMS or automated image licensing platforms. Or you can do it directly in the Registry itself. What if I want to keep my image rights information confidential? The PLUS Registry allows users to designate different aspects of rights information as private or public. You can also limit access to specified parties such as the licensee. At the PLUS Registry, access to image metadata is controlled by the user, not PLUS. Besides rights information, will the Registry ever contain traditional image metadata? Yes. In the same way that IPTC, a founding member of PLUS, supports PLUS rights metadata, the PLUS registry will soon incorporate IPTC image metadata. Is the PLUS Registry primarily a resource for U.S. creators, buyers and sellers? On the contrary. The PLUS Coalition launched with participants from 34 countries, and was from the start an international initiative. Registry users now come from over 100 countries.

Is PLUS involved with the UK Copyright Hub? PLUS has been working with the UK Intellectual Property Office—the IPO—for a number of years. IPO has publicly described the PLUS Registry as an important solution for identifying image rights holders and rights information, and invited PLUS to serve in a supporting role for a new “Copyright Hub” currently under development in the UK. The Copyright Hub is not a registry but it does refer searchers to external registries. The PLUS Registry is the first of those. Isn’t the PLUS Registry designed to function as a hub itself? Yes, but not just to connect to other registries. The PLUS Registry is intended to interconnect with all kinds of image related systems and applications, so that a search of one will search all. There are other initiatives working on image rights standards and registries. How does PLUS relate to them? PLUS collaborates with all of them and competes with none. How is the PLUS Registry funded? The Registry operates on a non-profit, cost recovery basis, like a cooperative. Registry listings of creators, rightsholders and businesses are free, but there is a nominal contribution (measured in pennies or fractions thereof) to register images and licenses. Businesses or individuals requesting PLUS IDs make a small annual supporting contribution. Beyond these income streams, the continuing financial and logistical support of leading industry corporations and associations like ASMP, APA, GAG and others allows ongoing development of the PLUS Standards, the PLUS Registry and the operation of the PLUS Coalition. Where do I go to find out more about PLUS and the PLUS Registry? Go to www.useplus.org to find out more about PLUS. Go to www.PLUSregistry.org to sign up with the PLUS Registry. If you’d like to participate in the Beta test of the new PLUS Registry image recognition and search functions, click the red “Join” button at www.PLUSregistry.org.

Q/A AFTER CEPIC BARCELONA, we thought it necessary to get some words of wisdom from the industry-revered Alfonso Guttierez to outline a plan for the coming years. There’s no one better to inspire and impart wisdom, and we’re so happy he was able to share some time with us at The Picture Professional. How did the idea of age fotostock come about? Quite incidentally. I left chemistry to become the technical assistant in a Spanish company that distributed photography equipment. This allowed me to train with professional brands such as Hasselbald, Linhof, Durst, etc. Some years later I became a staff photographer and picture editor in a publishing house, a position which gave me the opportunity to travel intensively as a photographer to cover the needs of the publisher. During these years I went to the Mexico Olympic games in 1968, repetitively to Africa for wildlife, and made plenty of trips to different parts of the world covering editorial needs and lots of museum work. At the same time, while trying to find images that the company needed for their publications I became familiar with the stock and press agencies of Europe and the US. The combination of experience as a photographer and my photolibrary knowledge made starting a stock agency in Spain an obvious choice. As we know, the best predictor of the future is the past... All that I have seen in 41 years of licensing images has led me to believe that in photography, and specifically in stock photography, everything is cyclical. The main difference, though, between the past and present times is that a specific business model doesn’t last as long now as it did years ago. It took almost 15 years for the printed catalogs era to be overcome by Internet, but it has taken less than 10 years to dissolve Royalty Free as the great model that was once predicted to make Rights Managed obsolete. In fact, Royalty Free’s main market is Microstock today.

ALFONSO GUTTIEREZ, age fotostock

If we look from the companies’ perspectives, few have survived the Internet hurricane, and many libraries that I have known in my life have vanished. Therefore, the future looks unstable and largely unpredictable; however, the core of the business— licensing images—will continue to stabilize as the needs for reliable imagery from reliable sources would not change much.

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In those early days, how did you figure out how to price photography usage, and what were some of the reactions you received? We started in 1981 with a Rights Managed “price list” concept, based in uses and sub-uses—the system had 10 uses and each one a set of sub-uses. The Royalty Free model didn’t exist then. The system has had minor adaptations along the years and is still used today for Rights Managed licensing, one of the advantages being that most of the stock agencies that have adopted the THP (Technological Hosting Platform managed by age fotostock) also use this system. The THP price calculator and Back Office tools provides the original uses/sub-uses system and its integrated licensing language. The reactions in our market have always been positive, as this represented when introduced more than 25 years ago the first step towards the standardization of an images licensing system. You’re now co-distributing hundreds of different collections, from The Granger Collection to Exotica. How do you track all the restrictions and licenses with that kind of volume? We have aggregated through the THP more than 450 different image collections, including the more than 2 million carefully edited images that photographers are supplying to us on daily bases to make a total of more than 25 million images. Without practical and universally accepted standards for restrictions and clearances, the licensing of images can be quite a minefield at times. We differentiate “image restrictions” from the concept of “clearing rights” when we talk about Rights Managed licensing. Image restrictions include permanent territorial or usage restrictions. Providers supply non-machine readable image restrictions in the image metadata. When the image is uploaded to the THP platform, the inclusion of information in this metadata field blocks the image until the distributor verifies if the intended license conflicts with the existing restriction. In the case of Rights Managed “image restrictions” stock agencies would benefit immensely if the industry would accept a modern, updated, universal licensing standard. A “rights clearance” is requested by a distributor prior to finalizing the sale of an exclusive license. We have standardized this system in the THP so that a clearance can be entered by our staff, the THP agents, and our providers. On entering the clearance, the system instantly verifies if the intended use conflicts with existing clearances or restrictions. If there are none in place, the system authorizes the license and automatically blocks the image for the intended use, while automatically notifying all of the distributors via email. Do you feel you that age fotostock has reached the cap of where it can go? Do you see diversification as a way to continue growing, while maintaining the feel of a “little guy”? We always have been a “little guy.” The initial definition of the company was that we never wanted to be a “big guy,” but rather we just want to be another company that tries to stay in business without thinking too much about how it will all end. There is very little space for possible diversification in this business

because the underlying factor is that we all license images with more or less amplitude in what the “license” entails; we will therefore continue doing what has saved us – metabolizing the changes caused by the cyclical ups and downs of the industry. Photography is dynamic; fashion, style, buildings, cities, skylines, landscapes, etc. change constantly, moving images from “recent” to “contemporary” to “vintage” and to “historical.” It is clear that clients are discouraged if they search for “sadness,” and the result is having to go through a noisy mix of eighty thousand images. This is something that we have begun to resolve recently by allowing the user to “filter” the results in our web, selecting from multiple parameters. Users will soon also be able to control the volume of their results by filtering with themed categorizations when searching for images and video. In the past year or so, which category of images is bringing you the best returns: Rights Managed, Royalty Free, or your Low Budget Royalty Free images? Rights Managed is the model that has historically brought in the most money, and this continues to be true today. Low Budget Royalty Free gives us access to a portion of the low end of the market without the need to gain cents on every sale. You’ve mentioned before that photographers need to remember that quality images will always have a place in the market, no matter what the price. Have you seen photographers listening to your advice? Great images always sell. If the photographer is patient enough, those images will bring interesting revenue. If you want instant gratification, choosing “income by licensing volume” is another option. I’m not sure that photographers, I mean the mass of them, actually listen much, each one has different reasons for doing what they do and the way they do it, therefore expecting that whatever anyone says will alter the way things are going is unthinkable, but we never stop trying. I, personally, as a photographer would not follow the route of getting money by selling volume at a few cents per image, but I also respect those that see this as an opportunity to make substantial money because his/her photography is of that precise quality that makes it glow in the night. What, if any, predictions can you make for the industry in the next 5 years? I would say that there is too much technology around, and we are at its mercy. I think the coming problem is more for the “big guys” than for the “little ones,” provided that these little ones have some technological capacities. Our business is in a state of imperfect oligopoly development, but that alone should not exclude anyone if they have the right means to compete. There is always space for the bigs and the smalls because the market is diverse, and there are always discerning clients whose buying needs call for something more than an automatic option. However these 5 coming years are going to be crucial for many of the bigs (thanks to their own competition needs) and for those smalls that are not able to restructure and adapt to the new order where licensing average prices will grow only to a mid-range price level. 39

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What are your feelings about the new “free” image model announced by Serban Enache, DEO of Dreamstime, making images free for use on stockfreeimages.com? How will that depress licensing fees? Or how will it re-envision the industry? I expressed my opinion, together with others, in a public statement that the entire CEPIC Committee published a few months ago regarding this issue. Creators have to get a compensation for their work. A “free” model will not educate anybody. In fact it’s quite the opposite, everybody will continue trying to find free images whether copyrighted or not copyrighted.

When others panic and lament the change, you find a way to adapt. Can you give us a few of your methods of adaptation and survival in the photographic industry? Specific ways of looking at market trends and how not to panic? It is true that I have always been a fighter and found ways for survival by analyzing change while always keeping in mind that business may get sour one day. Maybe my usual method is accepting change as unavoidable, therefore you grow accepting that you have to move forward while constantly making all the necessary adaptations to your business model in order to continue giving value to your clients, whether they are distributors, providers, or photographers. It is also essential to realize that not all market trends need to be instantly yours.

Cheap prices have increased the volume of images available but have decreased their average quality. In just a few years this has demoralized many professional photographers. On the other hand, it is true that a number of them have benefited from the situation, as the results of offering a good product at bargain prices are certainly obvious. I think that the only way to maintain the value of photography is to produce highquality images that attract the client’s attention, because they are unique, innovative, creative, and experimental and can maintain a more than decent price as long as they are not copied by someone else.

Maybe the most difficult part is convincing photographers to understand change and then being able to modify what they do and the way they do it. Photographers are the best asset any stock agency can have and we don’t recognize that value enough. In spite of the present market trends and the fact that that they form a collective, which is at times hard to deal with different personalities, we always try to stay very loyal to them. What is your vision for CEPIC for the next two years and how do you see it changing to adapt to current business conditions globally? Do you see forming partnerships with other organizations as a part of moving CEPIC forward? Our industry has worked more or less the same for many years, adapting to the existing conditions of the business at every moment without the need to introduce changes in a cooperative way, and I believe we will continue to benefit by continuing to work as such. Nonetheless, certain legislative movements within the EU are suggesting that CEPIC will need to play a role as a registry for authors’ data soon, and we have progressed quite intensively in that direction, presenting a working prototype of the CIR (CEPIC Image Registry) in the past Congress in Barcelona. The response to legislative changes would require a more closed cooperation with national associations in both the US and the EU, and we will be working in that direction in these two years.

What is the status of the EU’s ongoing issues with Google and its possible violation of European competition laws? Has CEPIC taken an official position on it, or is the organization involved in any potential legal action? CEPIC is taking an active part in this antitrust case presented to the European Commission in 2010. When the change of presidency took place last June, Sylvie Fodor, our Executive Director, received my full support to actively continue with this work. Having said that, I hope that CEPIC will also receive the practical (financial) support of national associations in this global endeavor, which is essential for the future of our industry as we know it today. What other industry issues do you see that the United States and the European Union have conflicting points of view on? Or which ones are common to both? I don’t think we have conflicting issues, but there are certainly differences. The intrinsic structure of the EU composed by independent countries establishes differences on, for example, how copyright is handled in both in the EU and the US. While it is an element of economy in the US, in the EU it is a cultural asset that brings to light the important role of the authors’ moral rights. Another example is that of intellectual property, whose laws have not been harmonized all across the EU and so there are subtle differences from country to country. The important role that collective management takes adds also another facet that differentiates the EU and the US, not to mention the diligent search requirement when referring to orphan works.

However it is important to say that if we do build bridges of cooperation between different organizations, we need to keep in mind that CEPIC is an organization owned by different European national associations, while in the US the existing associations largely represent collectives of one single country. The Google issue of possible violation of competition laws will bring us a unique opportunity for more intensive cooperation before the end of this year. We need to integrate photographers in a much more participatory way—we are currently on different sides of the same fence, and we should remove that fence and make photographers and Photolibraries part of the same ecosystem, instead of keeping them as two separated ones. There are projects being studied for the forthcoming CEPIC Congress in Berlin. Let’s hope that event will open gates in the fence. ✹

A pediatrician holds a premature newborn baby in a fetal position to relax him. Saintonges hospital, Saintes, France. ÂŠBurger/Phanie/The Image Works

editorial specialists for over 30 years historical

natural history

science & technology

religion

performing arts

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DiD you know we have travel PhotoGraPhy? www.akg-images.com

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Fine Art | History | Photography

Different places, Different faces!

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ASPP

NATIONAL MEMBER SURVEY RESULTS HOLLY MARSHALL RECENTLY THE ASPP NATIONAL BOARD conducted a comprehensive, large-scale survey of membership. Members who completed the survey were given the opportunity to win a Canon A3400 IS Digital camera. A similar survey was sent to nonmembers, including those whose membership had lapsed. Nonmembers who completed the survey were able to enter to win a free one-year membership. Did we hear from you? Indeed! You overwhelmingly responded to us with enthusiastic feedback. You clearly appreciated being asked for your input, and the board is grateful to have such passionate and devoted members. As we promised, we’d like to share with you what we learned and what we plan to do as a result of the survey. Here is what we learned:

• Copyright law is the #1 event topic of interest

to organize a networking or education event in your area

• Members and nonmembers want future workshops to specifically address technology

• Members want to learn more about these topics, in this order: copyright law, workflow and asset management, and business skills/contracts/negotiation

• Nonmembers want to learn more about: photo research/ editing, copyright law, workflow and asset management

• 32% of you said you are or might be interested in helping

• 100% of our respondents said they would recommend • 55% are not aware of ASPP’s Bring-a-Friend Referral program, where you receive 2 months of membership free ASPP to a friend, colleague, client or competitor as a reward for bringing a person into ASPP • 60% have been members for longer than five years, proving ASPP is still important to making their And here are a few of your thoughtful comments: career successful despite industry changes “It would be nice if there were events in the true south, i.e. Atlanta.” • Your #1 reason for joining ASPP is networking and

“I’d like to see many more events at the chapter level. Even informal get-together, anything to keep the name out there and • 57% “agreed completely” that benefits are worth the cost connect with fellow professionals.” of membership “How about some online activities like a Google Hangout—or • 93% have not used the discounts offered to ASPP some other virtual meeting—to bring members from across the members (including product discounts from Apple, country together.” community, with education second

Adobe, PDN magazine, Photo Mechanic, etc.)

“….given that the magazine is the main ASPP mouthpiece…I see • The 7% who have used the discounts reported fewer and fewer articles about stock…..getting back to basics would that savings often covered their annual ASPP be good.” membership fee and more Once we received all of the results the national board called a special If you could change or add anything about ASPP, you said you meeting and took a concentrated look at the results of the survey. were hungry for more events—both networking and education Clearly you want more events, both networking and educational. Nonmembers also are compelled most by programming and cited events a lack of events as a reason in part for leaving ASPP. Now that we’ve heard you, we are responding! The board is creating an action list to fulfill your requests: American Society of Picture Professionals

• Working with PhotoShelter as its generous sponsor and co-organizer, ASPP will immediately organize and provide four webinars (available to members anywhere!) every year on topics that most interest you: social media, changing business models, archiving, and business skills/contracts.

• ASPP has rolled out a brand new, redesigned website (currently in soft launch), which will provide members easier, faster access to current content about upcoming events and programs

• The national and chapter boards are convening special

• The first webinar is slated for September/October 2013 and will address changing business models • ASPP will offer a traveling program on copyright law around the U.S.

teleconferences to ensure that chapters provide you with more events—both networking and education

• All monthly ASPP board meetings will now include the magazine and other staff so that everyone producing The Picture Professional and other benefits and services have an ear to the ground—a good feel for members’ activities and concerns

• The magazine staff has incorporated all members’ feedback into future editions and will work hard to find what type of articles can better address the needs of members, including: copyright, changes in the market, and stock images

We on the national and chapter boards will continue to work quickly to address the needs that you expressed in the survey. We hear you and we are here for you! We also need your help. Many of you who completed the survey (32%) said that you might be willing to help organize an event in your area. Since both members and nonmembers want more programs and

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events from ASPP, please consider contacting your local chapter and volunteer to help in some way to organize an event—by making a few calls, arranging a space, or just to draft an email or two. Your help makes a huge difference, and being a member is much more rewarding when you participate. You ARE ASPP, so get involved! See the contact list on the website to find your Chapter email address. On behalf of the Board of Directors I’d like to thank you again for participating in our survey and for your membership and support of ASPP, a unique and wonderful community to which we are proud to belong. ✹

Canon Powershot A3400 IS 16.0 MP Digital Camera

Winner: Brad Engborg

Winner: Steve Morris

ASPP MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS SURVEY 2013 WINNERS Brad Engborg was the winner of the Canon point-and-shoot camera. Brad is a DC/South Chapter member of ASPP and works for National Geographic’s International Home Entertainment Department in Washington DC as the specialist in charge of photo research, editing, and photographic rights associated with all television programs and films released internationally in various formats, including DVD, Burn on Demand, and electronic download from sources like iTunes, XBOX, and Amazon. What a great job! Brad said it was a very fun surprise to learn that he had won. Steve Morris won a one-year accredited membership. He’s also from the DC area. Steve has been a graphic designer for nearly 30 years and photography has always been an important part of his creativity. He currently works as a freelance designer and in his free time, he enjoys creating custom toy designs. Welcome to the ASPP, Steve! Canon PowerShot A3400 IS 16.0 MP Digital Camera with 5x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom 28mm Wide-Angle Lens with 720p HD Video Recording and 3.0-Inch Touch Panel LCD American Society of Picture Professionals

CLICK.............

PHOTOSMITH / KOLOID / PHOTOEXIF

Photosmith – I’ve always wished that my iPad could be better put to use in my “serious” photography workflow. Photosmith allows the iPad to do just that! Instead of needing to sit in front of a computer to rate, sort, and tag your images, you can now do it straight from the iPad. Photosmith allows you to load full screen or full resolution images onto your iPad and get everything sorted and rated on the go (or on the couch). It’s a simple process to set up, just a quick plugin installation in Lightroom, then just click the export button and the images are beamed over to your iPad, ready to rate and tag. At $19.99, the price tag is a little steeper than a lot of apps in the app store, but the time saved by being able to tag and sort on the iPad could be pretty incredible. You can even sync images directly to the iPad using FTP or Eye-Fi, or from Lightroom. meaning you could have your images rated and ready to edit before you even get them on your computer! The app is simple to use, and I’ve yet to encounter any trouble with the image syncing. The developers are also quick to return an email, which goes a long way in an app that could be such a helpful element of your workflow. Now my first few passes through any given shoot happen on the iPad and when I finally get to sit down in front of the computer and edit, all the images from the shoot are already rated, tagged, and ready to be developed. Koloid – We’ve all seen plenty of apps that allow another way to filter your iPhone photos. The list of them is seemingly unending. That makes it extra exciting when I run across an app that actually comes at the problem from a different angle. In a take on collodion printing processes, Koloid allows you to develop your own black and white images. You just take digital liquid developer and roll it around an image, slowly developing

BY BEN HIGH

the spots where you hold the developer on and leaving the other spots undeveloped. Koloid isn’t as easy to use as a normal black and white filter. Rolling the developer around in the tray is somewhere between addictive and maddening. I’ve been able to add emotion and drama to an image and I’ve been able to completely ruin an image with Koloid. Over a little time and some careful tipping back and forth of your phone it’s not hard to come up with at least a few good results. At 99 cents, it’s worth the dollar just to play with a little bit, and since I first downloaded Koloid, there have already been two useful upgrades to the app, so hopefully it just keeps getting better and better. Photoexif – If you’re anything at all like me, Photoexif is going to change your life. It’s an app developed to keep track of all of your film cameras, what film is in them, and what’s on each roll, and then, when you’ve developed the images, bake that info as exif data into your scans. Just the features for keeping track of what film is in what camera makes the app’s $1.99 price worth it for me, but the added ability to add exif data to your film scans is super useful now as well. Now, I know, some of you may laugh at me and say, “I already have this! It’s called my notebook!” But Lightroom can’t read your notebook, and I don’t keep a notebook in my pocket every day. I do keep my phone with me at all times, though. Not only will I never forget what film I left in what camera, but now once I scan it, all the info I’d normally get with digital will be baked right into the files! No more guessing what lens or film I shot that old image on! It’s a surprisingly simple, but extremely helpful app for anyone who shoots film and brings it into their digital workflow. ✹

Interview with BING: Stephanie Horstmanshof and Michael Kroll BY APRIL WOLFE At the Barcelona CEPIC this past June, Stephanie Horstmanshof and Michael Kroll of the BING editorial team kicked off the festivities with a keynote covering the changing landscape of picture research and licensing, but also the finer points of image selection, an activity they do on a daily basis for the BING homepage. In contrast to other search engines, BING attempted to turn their homepage into a kind of “cover page” for a web magazine, featuring one single striking image everyday and crafting editorial content from their search engine to attract new users. The decision to focus on only a single image that will hopefully stay with the user throughout the day is a risky one, as there are many great pictures out there. But selecting only one to win or lose that day depends on a meticulous image selection process, and we’re happy someone’s taking the time to do it. So now we’re taking the time to interview Stephanie and Michael to bring a little bit of the CEPIC conference to you.

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About how long is the process for selecting an image, and who has the final say of whether or not it’s BING material? Do you select the images in bundles, or do you treat each one as a single project? [SH] Kristin Dean, Managing Editor of the Bing Homepage, is the person who is ultimately responsible for what gets published each day. She also manages our editorial calendar, which helps inform our programming choices. Each month Kristin sends our photo editors a list of upcoming events that she’d like to feature, along with ideas for subjects. Events make up about 30% of our programming. The rest of the content in each batch comes from a variety of subjects—travel, animals, culture, science, etc. The goal is to ensure that we’re not repeating ourselves or showing too much of any one thing. We work in two-week “batches” that Kristin finalizes 4–6 weeks before the content is actually published on the homepage. Kristin chooses which images will appear in a particular batch, then hands that batch to our designer for crops and our editor for research/writing. But our first pass at image candidates comes at our monthly image review meeting—once a month we gather the photo editors, our designer, and a few other select folks in a room and 48

we go through several dozen candidate images, and vote them up or down. It’s very democratic. The images that get a lot of positive response get saved in a folder for Kristin to schedule on a future date. The images that get a negative reaction or, even worse, no reaction get deleted from our queue. We can probably assume that you do at least some (or maybe all) curation through stock houses. Could you tell us what you’re looking for in the stock houses you work with? Is it masterful keywording that gets your attention? Customer service? Good reputation? Or maybe it’s image variety or specialty? [SH] Most of our imagery comes from stock agencies, although we do occasionally feature images from amateur photographers here at Microsoft (we have a pretty lively photography group amongst our employees). We’re also launching a photo contest in August aimed at non-professionals. And we’ve even reached out directly to photographers on occasion when we find something truly unique that we haven’t found through our normal channels. Our goal is to feature the very best of photography, regardless of where it comes from. And we really strive to show our users something new every day—something unusual or unfamiliar, which means really keeping our options open and continually looking for new sources. So I would say that image variety and quality are really the most important thing for us when we’re looking for partners. Accurate keywording and captioning is pretty high on the list, though. Very early in the project, we featured a gorgeous shot of Hawaii, at least that’s what the caption told us. But it turned out to be Bora Bora, which we found out after the photo had gone live and someone who had been to both places let us know about the error. Now we always double-check locations just to be safe.

image review meetings really sort that out. When we’re in the image reviews, certain images garner the reaction we want our users to have when they open the page in the morning and those are the ones that ultimately get approved. Can you give us a few reasons for why you might turn down an image? [SH] There are a lot of reasons why we turn images down: No focal point, too postcardy, subject or view is too familiar, too washed out, resolution isn’t high enough, elements in the photo clash with our page UI (e.g. if the upper part of the image is completely white, our logo and searchbox disappear), the main subject is on the wrong side and can’t be flipped (we like the main subject on the lower right portion of the image so that the search has a little room to breathe), etc. We also don’t feature people prominently—we only show people on the homepage to help show context or scale. So if an image focuses too much on the people as the subject, we’d turn that down. For picture professionals, our biggest motto to survive the necessary adaptations to economic fluctuations, internet piracy, and industry inflation has always been: Quality Over Quantity. How do you foresee this statement becoming more or less true in the next decade of internet curation?

If you aren’t working exclusively with stock houses, do you ever license directly from a photographer?

[MK] We think that quality is and will always be the most important factor in selecting an image. What will change, and has changed, is how and where quality manifests itself. In the early days of photography, what distinguished a snapshot my grandfather took from an Edward Steichen print was the craft and art that went into lighting the subject, focusing, choosing the right aperture, focal length, and exposure for the picture, as well as the chemistry and artistry to develop the film and produce a beautiful print. The difference in quality was very easy to see.

[SH] Although it’s rare, we definitely have reached out directly to photographers when we see something really unique. For instance, back in early May, we featured a beautiful underwater photo of tadpoles. Our video production manager had come across it on Facebook and sent a link to check it out. We liked it so much that we contacted the photographer and got rights to use it.

Today, an amateur photographer can pull out a high-end camera phone, and it will automatically do much of that work, and since the photo can be posted on Facebook in seconds and shared with hundreds of friends, there is no need to ever go into the darkroom and produce a print. So the superficial differences between a good and a great shot have become much smaller.

How big is your photo researching and editing staff? What are their criteria for selecting images, and do they ever disagree?

I think we’ve all seen some beautiful pictures of people’s dinners that prove that to be true. But in reality, as the advancement of photo technology continues and becomes accessible to more and more people, the art of taking a truly breathtaking picture is harder than ever. And what separates the true artists now is not how many megapixels their camera can capture or how big the lens is they are using; it is their conception of what they want to show, their sense of how to capture the precise moment and quality they want to communicate, and their eye for framing the shot for maximum effect. That’s the part that the camera will never be able to do by itself: the human element. That’s what we will continue to look for every day. ✹

[SH] We have several folks who work exclusively on homepage and several others who work on other projects as well. Our number-one criteria for choosing our images is: Does it make you want to find out more? Beauty is obviously vitally important as well, but an image can be beautiful but boring at the same time. We really want that extra bit of intrigue in our photos. As individuals, we disagree all the time on images! But the

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AN INTERVIEW WITH RALF STELANDER OF 1X.COM

BY KATIE BUNTSMA it’s hard to find the gems among so many photos on the other sites. On 1x, we want to create a real photo gallery experience— elegant, without distractions. The quality on 1x is so high these days that even the founders of the site have a very hard time getting their photos published!

EVERYONE FINDS HERSELF down the internet image gallery rabbit hole sometimes—sifting through mediocre images for hours, hoping to find that one diamond in the rough. It’s an inevitable fate. Or at least it was, until recently. A new company called 1x.com is attempting to revolutionize the industry by taking us back to the good old days of image curation.

1x offers personal photo homepages and unlimited HDuploads to your profile for paying members, so in those areas we compete with all the major photo sites. Since we only publish a few photos every day, each photo gets a lot of attention. Many emerging photographers have been discovered on 1x.

Image creators who use 1x.com are invited to treat their allotted space like a Flickr account, uploading images in a viewable gallery, but a membership with 1x.com takes it one step further. By employing eleven amazing content curators and sticking to rigid standards to cull from the flock, feature, and promote spectacular images, 1x.com pushes other 1x members to raise their game. Once images are published, viewers can create visual playlists of their favorite images, and 1x.com also serves as a liaison for sales of prints. Because 1x.com is exploring an interesting niche in the market, we decided to talk with them about the future of online image galleries. Here’s what Ralf, their founder, had to say:

Another thing that I love about 1x is the rich cultural exchange in our forum between our members from 180 different countries, who get together in meet-ups in real life as well. On 1x, you can make friends from all over the world, a have met a lot of people from many different parts of the world I would never have met otherwise. Who are these eleven professional curators, and how did you come to select them? The curators are among the best photographers of 1x. They have been selected for their expertise in different areas of photography; like architecture, creative edit, documentary, portrait, and street. The curators are also from different parts of the world to share their experience among each other and to gain different views on various topics. The curators are accomplished professional photographers with years of experience and some of them are judges in international contests. The expertise of the curators is what makes 1x really different from other sites. A popular vote tends to result in quite kitschy images, and can never be compared to the selection of real curators.

1x.com seems to combine the best of flickr, tumblr, and well-curated stock websites like Getty, Corbis and Trunk Archive—would you say that’s a fair assessment? There are a lot of good photographs on Flickr and the other sites you mention. Unfortunately, they are very hard to find because so many photos are uploaded every day. On Flickr alone, 3 million photos are published every day. On 1x, only about 30 photos are published every day, but each photo is world-class quality. 1x is the now the biggest curated photo website in the world. This means that each and every photo on 1x is really interesting and has a high artistic value, whereas, American Society of Picture Professionals

What’s the most amazing conversation you’ve seen transpire on your forums? We have a special forum section called “member in the spotlight,” where you can ask questions both about photography and the personal background of a certain member who wants to share his knowledge with everything from gear talk to photography ethics to philosophy. What is very interesting is how photography becomes more than just work or a hobby for our photographers and how it inevitable turns into a passion. Many of these discussions are quite deep and personal, where the members express their most inner views and feelings in a very honest way. One time we had a discussion about cameraaccidents that you laugh at later. Like when I accidentally dropped my camera in a river… Is there one photographer you’ve been especially proud to feature? Or one series you’ve been especially happy to see land on your website? There are thousands of very skilled amateurs as well as professional photographers published on 1x. One of our favorite professional art photographers is Martin Stranka. One of his images made the front cover of our 2012 annual limited edition coffee-table photo book called “No Words.” Matej Peljhan is another of our favorites. His very touching series is “The Little Prince,” in which he created the dreams of a 12-year old boy suffering from muscle dystrophy to realize his dreams about things he can’t do in photographs is just so moving. How did you get the idea for a photo “playlist”? That’s such a great idea to make the level of interaction with your website’s content creators deeper. Can people access their playlist offline? Is an app in the works?

Playlists was introduced in the big makeover of 1x in March this year. Since we now display photos in big HD-quality, playlists was a natural way to turn your screen into a photo frame with world-class photography. Our mission is to promote photo as an art form and to make photo art easily available for everyone, without having to go to a photo museum or gallery. Moreover, we believe that art is a basic human need. Coming home from work, relaxing in your sofa, hitting play on the front page of 1x is a great way to get your daily “art moment” and to relieve a lot of stress from work. Playlists makes it easier than ever to enjoy sublime photo art in big size without any distractions whatsoever. The goal of 1x is to find the best photos in the world and to make people develop as photographers. We want to find the inner gift that we believe everyone has. The next important step is to make 1x easily available in your smartphone and iPad with dedicated apps. Have members who sell seen real benefits from the critique forums and good sales? The 1x critique form is quite unique, because like in the rest of the site, we have high quality demands on what is written. We have a system to ensure that every photo uploaded to critique gets useful, thorough feedback. Also we have especially appointed senior critics who provide expert critique. Because of our long, in-depth discussions, many beginners, who have had a hard time to get their photos published on 1x, developed a lot as photographers. ✹

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THE LAW

JOEL L. HECKER, ESQ.

COPIES OF COPIES: THE FIRST SALE DOCTRINE

IN A SIX-TO-THREE DECISION, the Supreme Court of the United States has now held that the First Sale Doctrine of the United States Copyright Act applies to copyrighted works lawfully made abroad and not just in the United States. The decision dated March 19, 2013 appears in the case of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

pay for the remainder of his tuition and expenses, Kirtsaeng asked his friends and family in Thailand to buy copies of foreign-edition English-language textbooks at Thai bookshops—where they were sold at low prices—and to then mail them to him in the United States. He would then sell them, reimburse his family and friends, and keep the profit for his education.

The respondent, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is a publisher that specializes in academic textbooks. It usually obtains from its authors various foreign and domestic copyright assignments to the point where the court was able to refer to Wiley as the relevant American copyright owner for the works in question. Wiley often assigns to its wholly owned foreign subsidiary rights to publish, print and sell its English language textbooks abroad. Each foreign edition contains language making it clear that the copy is to be sold only in a particular country or geographical region outside the United States according to Wiley’s licensing arrangements. The upshot is that there are two essentially equivalent versions of a Wiley textbook: an American version manufactured and sold in the United States and a foreign version manufactured and sold abroad, although the foreign editions are usually of lesser quality, less expensive to manufacture, and sold at a cheaper price.

In 2008, Wiley brought this lawsuit, claiming that Kirtsaeng’s unauthorized importation of its foreign-made books and later resale of them in the United States constitutes copyright infringement. Kirtsaeng raised as his defense that the books he had acquired were “lawfully made” and that the First Sale Doctrine permitted him to resell or otherwise dispose of these books without Wiley’s further permission. In layman’s terms, the First Sale Doctrine, found in Section 109(a) of the Copyright Act, grants to the purchaser of a particular copy of, for example, a book or photographic print or poster, the absolute right to resell that copy without having to account to or obtain the permission of the copyright owner. Of course, this right does not extend to the copying or reproduction or other copyright rights, which are still reserved to the copyright owner. It deals only with the physical copy once it is first sold. Furthermore, it only covers copies “lawfully made,” which means copies made by, or with the approval of, the copyright owner.

The petitioner, Supap Kirtsaeng, is a citizen of Thailand who moved to the United States in 1997 to study mathematics at Cornell University. He then successfully completed a PhD program in Mathematics at the University of Southern California. Part of his education was paid for by a Thai government scholarship, but to American Society of Picture Professionals

In the 1997 Quality King Distributors, Inc. v. L’anza Research International, Inc. case, the Supreme Court had previously determined that copies lawfully made in the United States, taken

abroad and then brought back into the United States (commonly called a “round trip”) is covered by the First Sale Doctrine. However, that court decision did not directly address whether the First Sale Doctrine applied to copies made abroad and then brought into the United States, a one-way trip. The issue before the Supreme Court, then, was whether the First Sale Doctrine applies, protecting a buyer—or other lawful owner of a copy lawfully made abroad—if the copy was then brought into the United States for resale, or if the buyer should have legally obtained permission to do so from the copyright owner. For the Wily case, the District Court in the Southern District of New York originally held in the case that the First Sale Doctrine did not apply, in its view, to foreign-made goods even if made with the copyright owner’s permission. The jury, prohibited from considering the First Sale Doctrine defense, naturally found that Kirtsaeng had willfully infringed eight of Wiley’s copyrighted books and assessed statutory damages of $75,000 per work for a total of $600,000. The Court also issued an injunction to prohibit any additional transactions. On appeal, the Second Circuit Court agreed with the District Court, but when faced with the overarching implications of what this would mean, the Supreme Court majority had some valid fears. In sum, the Supreme Court majority accepted the plaintiff ’s interpretation of the words “lawfully made under this title” as imposing a non-geographical limitation and therefore applied it where copies are made abroad with the permission of the copyright owner, meaning that both the original 1909 Act and the 1976 Act had no intent to introduce a geographical limitation. The Court went further and took a very practical approach to the harm that might be created if it ruled the First Sale Doctrine did not apply to works lawfully made abroad. For example, a geographical limitation interpretation would mean that one who buys a copyrighted work of art, a photographic poster, or even a bumper sticker abroad would not be able to display it in America without the copyright owner’s further authorization. The decision also emphasized the potential horror raised by libraries, used-book dealers, technology companies, consumergoods retailers, and museums which pointed to various ways in which a geographical interpretation would fail to further

the basic constitutional copyright objectives to promote the progress of science and useful arts contained in Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Library collections in the United States contain at least 200 million books published abroad, and that a geographical interpretation would likely require the libraries to obtain permission (or at least, held the court, create significant uncertainty) before circulating or otherwise distributing these books. In addition, used-book dealers pointed to the fact that since the time when Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson built commercial and personal libraries of foreign books, American readers have bought used books published and printed abroad. The used-book dealers argued that they had operated for centuries under the assumption that the First Sale Doctrine applies to their industry. Furthermore, art museum directors asked the court to consider their efforts to display foreign-produced works by foreign photographers, painters, and other artists. They claim that a geographical interpretation would require the museums to obtain permission from copyright owners before they could even display the works, even if the copyright owner had already sold or donated the work to a foreign museum. All these examples would be exacerbated where the orphan works doctrine came into play (when the copyright owner was unknown or unable to be found). The Court concluded that these practical problems were too serious, too extensive, and too likely to come about for the Court to dismiss them as insignificant – particularly in light of the ever-growing importance of foreign trade to America. It is clear that there no longer can be any distinction made as to where the copyrighted work is made or created, so long as it is lawfully made. No distinction that is, unless Congress says otherwise. Whether or not Congress should or will act to amend the Copyright Act in connection with the First Sale Doctrine is anyone’s guess, particularly given the deadlock in Washington. As a precaution, though, Publishers and other creators or licensors of copyrighted work lawfully made abroad will be forced to adjust their manufacturing practices to reflect the new realities of the marketplace, including the importation into the United States of cheaper goods lawfully made abroad. ✹

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CHAPTER CAPTURE NEW ENGLAND

On August 1st, ASPP New England met at the West End Museum for an interesting film presentation. The West End Museum, founded in 2010, is a neighborhood museum dedicated to the collection, preservation, and interpretation of the history and culture of the West End of Boston. First, a little history: In the 1950’s, the West End was a workingpoor area with around 7,500 ethnically diverse residents. When John B. Hynes came into power as Mayor of Boston in 1949, he formed the BRA (Boston Redevelopment Authority). As part of the plan to create a “New Boston,” they set up projects to replace “slums” with neighborhoods that would increase tax revenues. West End residents received their eviction letters in April 1958. Tenants were assured that affordable housing would be found for them. After razing the West End in the name of Urban Renewal five high-rise complexes were built aimed towards upper middle class residents. Former tenants were relocated to substandard housing with higher rents. The destruction of the once thriving West End community led to a strong distaste for Urban Renewal in both Boston and New York City.

ASPP New England members with Executive Producer Duane Lucia at the West End Museum (l-r) Debbie Needleman, Sharon Donahue and Francelle Carapetyan.

music scene from 1981 thru 1984. Director Drew Stone and Executive Producer Duane Lucia showed clips of the documentary interspersed with lively discussion about their creative process. What started out as fifty oral interviews expanded to include never before seen footage, rare photographs, and a blazing soundtrack. ASPP members could definitely appreciate the difficulties involved in obtaining permission rights for this mixed media. One of the coolest techniques the West End Museum has used to add to their archive was setting up “Scanning Parties” and opening a West End Facebook site to encourage former West End residents to share their images of what they considered “the greatest neighborhood this side of heaven.” The museum also holds reunion parties for the old neighbors and walking tours of the current West End, showing tourists the most noteworthy buildings saved from the razing, like the Last Tenement House and Charles Bulfinch’s Harrison Gray Otis House, and their significance to West Enders over the last 200 years. For more information, please visit allagesbostonhardcore.com/wordpress/story and thewestendmuseum.org.

One of the current exhibits at the West End Museum highlights the work of Jules Aarons who photographed the West End between 1947-1953. His photography bears witness to the vibrant, close-knit old neighborhood before the ravages of Urban Renewal. Leonard Nimoy, who was raised in this community, recently dropped by the West End Museum and was surprised to see Jules Aarons’ photograph of his grandmother talking with her Irish neighbor. The evening’s film presentation was an interesting contrast to the black-and-white historical photo exhibit. The film, entitled, xxxALL AGESxxx, documents the early Boston hardcore American Society of Picture Professionals

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THE

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BOOK REVIEWS

Left: Eli Weinberg, Nelson Mandela portrait wearing traditional beads and a bedspread. Hiding out from police during his period as the “black pimpernel,” 1961. Courtesy of IDAFSA. Above: Jurgen Schadeberg, The 29 ANC Women’s League women are being arrested by the police for demonstrating against the permit law, which prohibited them from entering the town hall without a permit, 26th August 1952. Courtesy of the artist. Above rigth: Peter Magubane, Sharpeville Shooting, March 21, 1960. © International Center for Photography, gift of Dr. Peter Magubane.

RISE AND FALL OF APRATHEID: PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE BUREAUCRACY OF EVERYDAY LIFE Edited by Okwui Enwezor and Rory Bester Prestel Hardcover, 544 pages $51.49 After the elections of 1948, the National Party passed laws prohibiting interracial marriage, requiring racial registration and travel passes, segregating urban areas, and banning the Communist Party of South Africa. Nominally based on the idea of non-intersecting cultural and ethical spheres, the goal was to normalize a fiction of clean, organized, and civilized whites and squalid, barbaric Africans.

but is largely concerned with questions of the photographic relationship to a subject’s inner experience, crosscut with the image manipulation strategies of the South African government. Elsewhere, “Legitimizing Apartheid: Bantustans, Diplomacy and the Performance of Power” is a set of newspaper photographs of official state meetings, both those of South Africa and neighbors like Mozambique, where readers are expected to bring their own understanding to damning shots of President Carter and Prime Rise and Fall of Apartheid documents that structural experience Minister Thatcher with President Botha; outside of captions, no of apartheid, and the strong relationship that progressive text accompanies the section. photographers had with the resistance. The bureaucratic focus of the subtitle means that the book takes as its remit the full That primacy of images over explanation encourages readers quotidian breadth of South African life under apartheid, from to draw their own connections and conclusions, but it would “Native Studies” that set the tone for white interpretation have been helped by an index; so many of the images, events of Africans, to Drum magazine’s shaping of African cool, to and people are referenced from multiple vantages that creating the Sharpeville massacre, through the Bang Bang Club to a list of cross-references alone would be a solid undergraduate the post-apartheid rubble that still scars the landscape. The semester, and it’s a little unfair to expect any audience outside book is exhaustive in its scope, full of fantastic details (like of South Africa to bring enough contemporary memory to tie it how Sharpesville changed the popular resistor’s gesture from all together. Especially since the bureaucratic urge that Enwezor a thumbs up to a raised fist) and semiotic richness, like the and Bester chose as their motif lends itself so characteristically collection of state-authored apartheid signs. to indexes. The book is arranged by decade, but within that, the editors trust readers to be largely self-guided. Most of Ernest Cole’s “Human Bondage” series is included, but it’s only obliquely mentioned in Colin Richards’ essay, “Retouching Apartheid: Intimacy, Interiority, and Photography,” which draws from Cole, as well as Ian Berry’s coverage of the Sharpseville Massacre,

Rise and Fall of Apartheid tackles the almost impossible task of conceptualizing and presenting the single tragic theme of South Africa in the 20th Century, and does it with deft curation, incisive essays and, above all, incredibly powerful images about race, power and photography itself. —JOSH STEICHMANN

American Society of Picture Professionals

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8/15/13 10:05 AM

BOOK REVIEWS

PRICING PHOTOGRAPHY: THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO ASSIGNMENT & STOCK PRICES by Michal Heron & David MacTavish Allworth Press Paperback, 160 pages $18.29 Let’s start with the good stuff, of which there is plenty. The assignment pricing tables, which are probably a good deal less unpredictable than the stock charts, are certainly worth their weight in gold, if for no other reason than the fact that I know of no other resource where these sorts of figures are even available. Though only covering five pages (compared to the 40 pages occupied by stock prices), they offer up guidelines for a wide swath of professional photography, including suggested fees for shooting advertising on both a national and local level, corporate work (annual reports, company publications, public relations and more), and various types of editorial (books, magazines, etc.). All of these are split into three categories: low, medium and high fees, as well as additional charges for related post-production digital imaging. A bonus are the guides to helping you figure out suitable fees for additional usage beyond the original assignment fees when the client inevitably comes back later for “more.”

useful touchstones, which do an excellent job of breaking down the vast majority of potential uses on both the commercial and editorial sides of the picture business by such factors as repro size, press run, circulation, distribution, and all the other details you need to consider when calculating suitable licensing fees. As useful as both the assignment and stock pricing charts are, however, for my money the real value of Pricing Photography lies in the extensive portion of the book devoted to the underlying methods of coming up with a price in the first place, as well as the subsequent but often precarious process of negotiating a fee with your client that comes as close as possible to the one you put down on paper. Dilettantes will ignore the authors’ warning of “the temptation to skip the text chapters in this book and go directly to the price charts,” whereas the true professional understands that not only must the figures they quote be reasonable but that they “come from being able to articulate why you’re quoted that price and from knowing your bottom line.”

Let’s get to the anachronistic part. Back in the day (as in preInternet), you had pricing books available from these same authors as well as from ASMP, Jim Pickerell, and others. These were highly coveted because pricing for both assignments and stock had always been a bit of a “black art” with the specifics closely guarded secrets by the industry’s shamans. But now the 21st century is barreling right along, and I can simply go on to Alamy, Getty Images, Masterfile or any number of other stock sites to see what a similar usage would cost. And, the problem with printed prices is that once they hit the paper they’re set in stone; meanwhile, the market continues to evolve right along with “the going rates” for stock sales (although, if you want to be really depressed, compare some of the prices from the 10-year old edition of Pricing Photography with this new one: for example, the suggested licensing fee in 2003 for a textbook cover with a print run of less than 40,000 was pegged at $750. A decade later? Despite both inflation and ever-increasing costs for shooters, it’s still $750!).

Thus Heron and MacTavish’s emphasis on the multifaceted economics of photography, including the oft-ignored subject of “overhead” and it’s critical relevance to rational pricing (and, in case you have any doubts about the importance of calculating your overhead, the authors provide this unambiguous observation: “If you only consult pricing charts, without knowing your overhead, you are on a short track to nowhere.”).

The stock prices, despite my earlier misgivings about their long-term relevance in a printed format, are nonetheless highly

American Society of Picture Professionals

There is a misconception that professional photography is all about creating high-quality images. While that is certainly the crucial end result, what truly separates the pro from the wannabe is a mastery of the business side of making photographs. Despite some shortcomings that perhaps could have better bridged the decade from the previous version and thus made it even more useful in this full-blown digital era, the fourth edition of Pricing Photography, with its comprehensive discussion of the multiple elements of pricing, analysis of how to get what you want out of the negotiating process, and guideposts in the form of charts of specific suggested fees will doubtless help the professional photographer accomplish that most-prized of all business achievements: profitability. —PAUL HENNING

SEATTLE: A PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT II Photographs by Stuart Westmorland; text by Barbara Sleeper Twin Lights Hardcover, 128 pages $26.95

PROFESSIONAL

Seattle: A Photographic Portrait II, with photos by Stuart Westmorland, is the latest installment of Twin Lights’ series of “photographic portraits” of American cities. The publishers refer to the series as a “grand tour,” and judging by the appearance of a sequel, they liked Seattle enough to make a second visit. Westmorland is a “scape” photographer—landscapes, seascapes, cityscapes—and at its best this book invites the viewer to see the scale and diversity of Seattle’s surroundings. The most compelling photographs are the ones seen through a wide angle, at some remove, invoking the sublime Romanticism of Caspar Friedrich’s “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog.” In fact, one of the most evocative images is that of a lone fisher braving the mists beneath Snoqualmie Falls; the wanderer inverted and in thrall of the landscape above her. A similarly satisfying effect is achieved when Westmorland tackles Seattle’s vistas. Standouts include several shots of a snowy Mt. Rainier looming over the skyline, sometimes the centerpiece, sometimes adorning the background, but always there. Having spent several years living in the Pacific Northwest myself, this feeling of enormous pines, volcanic peaks, or rushing water that encroach on the city is one of its simplest gifts. Where the book sometimes falls short is in the stock photos or more guidebook-esque shots and descriptions of the city. This is a somewhat ornate guidebook, and photos of Pike Place, EMP, or the REI flagship store may be a necessary part of the project, but they are images that provoke a cursory “neat,” rather than the wanderlust Westmorland captures so well in his stunning “scapes.” Either way, the sheer expansiveness of this project does benefit from the tourist context. I spent a week moving the book around my coffee table. Arranging it on one corner, placing it next to various magazines, finding its proper place. It is after all billed as a coffee-table book, so more than anything it has to look inviting enough for guests to want to pick it up and flip through. More than once I found myself doing just that. So, even if the text and some of the images are merely functional, the book will serve as an attractive keepsake for those who have visited Seattle or an enticement for those who want to make the trek north and west, and its best images are a reminder that there is more to the Cascades than rain. —JOHN W. W. ZEISER 61

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BOOK REVIEWS

UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA: CONSTRUCTION AND DESTRUCTION IN PHOTOGRAPHY AND COLLAGE Yasufumi Nakamori with Graham Bader Yale University Press Paperback, 116 pages $29.95 Consisting of one hundred works from artists throughout the 20th century responding to the ideas of utopia and dystopia, this volume accompanies an exhibition of the same name curated by Yasufumi Nakamori at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. In the first passage of this book, Nakamori introduces readers to Walter Benjamin’s idea of the dialectical image. This thought explores how glimpses of “truth about a given moment” can be seen when snippets “from various circumstances in the past” coexist together in a work, like in a collage, giving an “instantaneous flash of cognition.” Collage, in particular, is the perfect form through which found and reconstructed images are all at once a reflection of our past, present and imagined future. The authors argue photomontage to be the defining art form of the times because of its ability to remake the world around us, like that of post-WWII, mankind having been cut apart and re-imagined going forward. The technique of photo collage also characterizes perfectly the kind of mash-up or cut-andpaste world in which we exist today and how we operate as a culture. One of the strongest examples included in this show is Martha Rosler’s collage titled “Patio View,” which combines shots of tanks rolling down a street in Vietnam with that of a typical American exterior setup of patio furniture. We see its historical reference to the Vietnam War, but at the same time realize it could be an image directly taken from Iraq or Afghanistan. Rosler’s point still rings true today and demonstrates how collage can represent multiple time periods concurrently. In the second half of this book, professor and scholarly essayist Graham Bader, delves into the history of photomontage with concentration on the dystopian political critique of German collage, utopian Marxist/Stalinist ideals of Russia displayed in their technical montages, and the imagined otherworldly within the everyday of Japanese works post-WWII. In Germany, photomontage was used like a weapon to confront people with the political duplicity of Hitler. Conversely, in Russia, these image constructions served to envision an idyllic view of a new society supported by Communism. After the invasion and occupation of Japan artists found themselves surrounded by American imagery in newspapers and magazines and found escape from their realities of destruction into the fantastical Surrealist-inspired worlds created with readily available printed materials. Jump forward to 1968 and Japanese artist Arata Isozaki’s “Re-ruined Hiroshima,” which takes the iconic photograph by Shomei Tomatsu of an almost completely destroyed city and layers with it drawings and photocopies of steel scaffolding. Nakamori suggests the technique of collage or photomontage is analogous to our present civilization because we cut and borrow from past theories and make them our own. This volume is an excellent illustrative example to prove her point. — ANGELA YONKE American Society of Picture Professionals

CONTRIBUTORS ISSUE 3 / 2013 THE PICTURE PROFESSIONAL

JOEL L. HECKER, ESQ. Practices in every aspect of photography and visual arts law, including copyright, licensing, publishing contracts, privacy rights, and other intellectual property issues, and acts as general counsel to photography and content-related businesses. In addition to writing for The Picture Professional, Hecker lectures and writes on these issues in PhotoStockNotes, the New York Bar Association Journal, and the association’s Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Journal. He is a past trustee of the Copyright Society of the USA, and past chair of the Copyright and Literary Property Committee of the New York City Bar Association. Tel.: 212.447.9600; website: RussoandBurke.com; email: HeckerEsq@aol.com.

PAUL H. HENNING was a professional location photographer for 15 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 The first time JOSH STEICHMANN got paid for photography was when days. Sometimes she indulges in bubble baths and canned peas and he turned a snack shack at a summer camp into a 12-foot by 12- forcing her roommates to eat her experimental baked goods. foot pinhole camera. Since then, he’s had a love of alternative processes, creative risk taking, and mural prints. Working as a writer, he’s covered everything from Elvis festivals to US Code ANGELA J. YONKE is an artist and art educator living in Bozeman, 2257, and plenty in between. As a photographer, he’s shown across MT. Yonke hails from Michigan, where she received a BFA Michigan, and can usually be found jumping Los Angeles fences in Photography and Art Education from Western Michigan University. She’s taught art in Michigan and Chicago, and with a home-hacked Holga. her personal work focuses on humor, gesture, and non-verbal communication through multi-media and sewn-photo pieces. BEN HIGH is an Iowan turned Angeleno turned Iowan. He used to be a music industry wonk and commercial photographer. Now he designs fancy (sometimes photography-related) jewelry and The first poem JOHN W. W. ZEISER wrote was a crude imitation of shoots Polaroid and instant film. You can see what he’s up to at William Blake’s “The Tyger.” Finding his elementary school benhigh.com. teacher audience receptive, he decided to keep writing. He is now a freelance writer and editor living in Santa Monica, California, where spends a good deal of his time documenting the growth of his heirloom tomatoes on a camera phone.

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LIFE IN FOCUS: WEALON BOUILLET

TPP found this shot by Wealon Bouillet in the Photo Critique section of the site 1x.com. Wealon wrote: “I was drawn to the image of blurred silhouettes and the giant clock of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. It may not be extremely subtle, but I thought it would give a good sense of time passing by. Then, as I took a series of pictures, this young woman stopped for long enough to be in focus a bit, even turning her face so I could capture it. The contrast between her and the rest of the people adds even more to the shot. That said, I am extremely distraught by the massive beam right across the top of the clock. What were they thinking?” Christian Bari, another poster on the site, responded: “Hello, it really is a wonderful shooting, long exposure and the black-and-white makes the scene incredibly ethereal...unlike your thinking, the colossal beam gives an idea of the weight of time on our lives and on the life of the girl in the scene...” What do you think? You can add your own critique of this image at 1x.com, and read our interview with 1x.com co-founder Ralf Stelander on page 50. ✹

American Society of Picture Professionals

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