Jain Lemos » Photography and Publishing

I’m passing on this call to action from the APA and the Copyright Alliance and I hope you will pass it on, too. I also suggest watching the video “Copyright in the Classroom” on the homepage. If you teach or have children in school, their study courses and teaching aids are excellent.

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September 29, 2009
Dear Friend of APA,

Advertising Photographers of America is partnering with the Copyright Alliance in asking you to sign a letter that is being sent to President Obama and Vice President Biden. APA’s advocacy efforts to support strong copyright protections for photographers and all owners of intellectual property are a vital component of our mission. With the threat of further erosion of copyright protections on the horizon, sending a message now to the President is an opportunity that should not be missed.

The Copyright Alliance is a non-partisan coalition of associations, creators and copyright industry leaders that give a voice to individual authors of creative content including photographers. This letter allows your voice to be heard in cooperation and inclusion with creatives from all areas of intellectual property.

Let the White House know that their support is critical to the protection of the rights of artists and the continued value of creative efforts in today’s society.

Go to www.copyrightalliance.org/letter/ to sign the letter. It is an easy process of entering your name, city, state, type of artist and email address. Click the sign button and you’re all done.

Once you have signed the letter please forward it on to your colleagues and friends in all areas of creative output.

Thank you.
Theresa Raffetto, President APA National
Stephen Best, CEO APA National

Mask Warning. Photo by Jain Lemos

Apparently some folks still are. Beate Chelette, who continually amazes me with her capacity for having her eyes on all things photography, gives us this Noteworthy Update on her Photosecrets blog. It’s the tale of an LA Times reporter, an attorney from Getty, a Long Beach travel agency owner, a website design firm and a “generic shot of a woman sitting in front of a computer.”

I took this photo at an antique mall last weekend, considering a new mask for my collection. I was wondering how I might use it in a little post.

Sept. 4: Speaking of what things cost, my Bay Area writer friend, John Joss, pointed me to this article on SF Gate by Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll. Note the cost of one NYT story was $400K. The editing cost of that one story was $70K. All the costs are outlined in the article. Also, read Jon’s conclusions as to the worth/merit of the story!

Photography Director Rob Haggart, over at his industry must-read blog “A Photo Editor,” posted two actual estimates for recent advertising shoots (click on the Full Screen button to view). To me, they appeared fair and right in the sweet spot of what all parties can comfortably manage. I shared them with one veteran corporate/advertising photographer and she agreed that these look like nice jobs!

I’ve produced big shoots for documentary books with million dollar photography budgets. Since I started working in photography publishing in 1988, I’ve seen prices go up and down and all around based on the “economy” but all along the way, it’s been mostly about the value of what you deliver in the end. Most clients will accept a reasonable bid (or near to) when you have solid explanations that accompany your estimate outlining specifically what they will receive for the price or why certain costs they might not have anticipated are really needed. Budgeting is both a big task and an art. Pulling numbers out of the clouds rarely works. There needs to be a formula behind all figures, including creative fees and how they relate to the rights granted.

Sharing budgets and pricing in a public forum as Rob has provided == not all the time, but every once in a while == I think helps photographers become more confident about their own estimating process. It’s great information and thanks to Rob and his network for sharing them with us.

I’ve just been invited back by photolucida to be a 2009 Critical Mass Juror. Shawn Records, Critical Mass Coordinator, reminds me that this a fun task! It is. Along with all of the other jurors, I’ll be reviewing the photos (and photo illustrations ) of 180 photographers this fall. Sean says CM 2009 is sure to be better than ever.

Also, this year photolucida will continue with their scholarship program by awarding free participation to five invited photographers from Italy. Sean asked jurors to make recommendations of Italian photographers, so if you know of any, let me know. (I wonder if they will invite photographers from Portugal for 2010?)

© Andy Freeberg, Céline Clanet, & Priya Kambli

I received this note from Kelly Sonora today:

Hi Jain, We just posted an article, “100 Useful Tips and Tools to Research the Deep Web“. I thought I’d bring it to your attention in case you think your readers would find it interesting.

Thanks, Kelly. This is a great resource. Photo people will find this post on the Read Write Web useful, too. It describes and provides links to some of the Deep Web visual resources available.

A while back, I mentioned The Deep Web, and how most all photo researchers know how to use it when it comes to finding images. Several people asked me what that is all about so I thought I’d explain a little more.

The Deep Web has also been called the Invisible Web, Deepnet or the Hidden Web. It is not the commonly seen Web that is driven (indexed/crawled) by search engines. According to some reports, the Deep Web is estimated to be several orders of magnitude larger than its counterpart, known as the surface Web.

What all this means is that the Deep Web provides a way to find databases on the Internet. Researchers can access any topic, such as photography as a broad category and then on to wildlife photography as more specific and so on as they drill down to find databases dedicated to imagery of their current research subject.

Since it is invisible, you will have to do some sleuthing to find it . Give it a try sometime. And thanks for asking!

In May, an opinion on Val Gelineau’s Blog is one we’ve heard bantering around for awhile: “Why pay $500.00 for an image when I can buy one for a few dollars?” Do editors believe that if image history isn’t that important, why pay for it? Are we at a point where we are going to just let this mindset become acceptable? Is this why PhotoShelter announced yesterday they will soon stop licensing stock photography on behalf of the shooters they serve?

A photographer friend just received her quarterly sales statement from a big agency. The amount was so much drastically lower than the previous quarter, she thought accounting had made a mistake! The agency’s response was something like this: “We had good sales in this quarter, but the average price per image has dropped by even more than 25% because Getty and the like are dropping prices plus the new microstock sales are so low. We had some big deals but these are many images at a low fees. This is not necessarily why you have a low payment, but with the stock industry in such tough times, it would be partially the reason for a decline.”

It often feels gloomy and doomy yet there are solutions. The demand for new photography is just as great if not greater than before. If you are willing to compromise a little in tough times and know how to provide clients with usage rights they find attractive, you will keep working. Meanwhile, I purchased this image from Fotolia for Blog use. The least I can do for the photographer is to provide a link to his/her/their website.

1. The most successful photographers don’t turn over their entire take to the client.
2. They also don’t publish their best frames until years later.
3. SEO is not a new corporate title acronym; it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
4. There is something called the Deep Web and most photo researches use it to find images.
5. I accept credit cards, checks or EFTs.
6. NPOs can and do absolutely pay for photography.
7. On average, 20 percent of your images will bring you 80 percent of your income.
8. The gas tank icon with a hose on the left or right does NOT always tell you which side your car’s tank is on. Darn it!

The last few days I’ve been writing about an insignificant issue: To have or have not comments on a Blog. Then I ran into technical difficulties!

There will come a time, most likely during the biggest shoot of your life, when technical problems arrive like mosquitoes on your son’s banana-smeared face. Your sim card won’t register, your notebook isn’t booting, your extension cord is too short, and that new assistant kicked the hair light you spent too much time positioning. Need I go on? Your subjects are twitchy, the magic light is over, the stylist is on her PDA writing a new invoice, and your fingers are swollen. Whatever: Something is broken.

So just how Zen will you be in a technical crisis? First, broadcast that you need to tweak something. Don’t explain, don’t complain and above all else, don’t apologize. Just make your announcement with big enthusiasm! Then quickly set up an amusement. You will have better ideas, but I am talking about simple and fast. Throw a hat in the middle of the room/street/studio. Dole out some playing cards and challenge folks to see who can flip a card right into the hat. This silly time waster will hold folks’ attention for about 8.5 minutes. If you need more time to fix your problem, divvy up the parking meter change and let the betting begin. Still not ready to shoot? No table limit.

Get up now to add a roll of quarters and a deck of cards to your Pelican Top Loader.

I (think) I now want to turn on comments! A few months ago I was trying to decide if I should do this or not. What changed my mind? Emails from readers suggesting mine is not a Blog if it doesn’t allow comments.

What does ProBlogger say about that? I have tried to turn comments back on. I checked all the right boxes but according to the terrific Blogger Help boards, since I have customized my template, I will need to scrap my changes and start over. Ugh! Could you possibly just continue to email me direclty with your comments? Does this all mean I am not a Pro Blogger? Am I only ***Sniff*** an Amateur?

“NEWSWEEK’s Sarah Kliff spoke with Long about why the credibility of photojournalism has fallen, whether or not doctored photographs are more likely to get caught these days, and how photographers can reclaim the public’s trust.”

Certain phrases bug people. I often use the term “elevator pitch” but I think I’ll drop it now. Here is a pitch-dedicated website allowing 60 seconds to make your case for startup funding. Some of these ideas were stale when the Romans were eating lions.

SmugMug gets a listing under the Popular tab. The comments on the pitch start off great and then begin to fizzle. So SmugMug’s avatar, Don MacAskill, feels compelled to explain that he did the video as a favor to “Mike and the guys at TechCrunch,” and that he’s not looking for investors. I think we should see Mike’s pitch to Don asking him to do the video.

Now that we have a photo selected for our shoe client, this month we need to calculate a usage license.

For purposes of this quoting exercise, you work for the stock agency representing this image, which falls under a Rights Managed agreement. Your agency receives 60%; the photographer receives 40% of the total license.

The art buyer has told you (under the radar) that the pick-up photo budget for this advertising campaign is USD $18,000. They have asked for Industry Exclusive for North American (NA) footwear companies. He’ll need to see your breakdown for each usage so he can present it to his boss who will determine what she may want to adjust or drop. But everyone really loves the photo .

Your task: Determine the costs (break it down) for all six elements of usage. Can you get to $18K without one usage being under priced if it was a standalone quote?

1. Three consumer and three trade magazines, single placement on any interior page, up to full page image, one insertion per publication, one year, total circulation all magazines up to 12 million
2. Art display, up to 4′x6′, one version, in-store poster at 150 locations, two years
3. eNewsletter usage, three electronic issues, six months, total 2 million circulation
4. Company website, home page for six months up to ½ screen, home page spot/link for six months up to 1/8 screen, secondary pages for one year, up to ¼ screen
5. Web banner ads, all Internet distribution formats, multiple placements on any pages, size up to 300 x 600 pixels banner, single version, two years
6. Trade show presentation, projected display at booth, single placement on screen, looped, up to full screen image, single version, any quantity of shows up to six months

You can use online pricing or other tools to check each individual license. There is no deadline or winner, but if you have questions or want to show me what you came up with, my contact info is over on the left. As always, should you or any of your force become caught or killed….

That’s $10,800 for the stock agency and $7,200 for not having to figure all of this out.

…how abysmal keyword searching has become. That was a top topic at lunch yesterday with PACA Exec Director, Cathy Aron. Maybe to the rescue is Shannon Routzahn and her new Words for Images venture. The topper topic was PACA’s incredibly successful test drive of their find-the-owner-of-this-Orphan project. The Orphan Search service uncovered the rightful owner of an image in under an hour. And without a keyword in sight.