Jain Lemos » Photography and Publishing

Photo Illustrator Corinne Geertsen has asked me to review her work. This piece, “Play with Fire” is part of a new series she is developing. Images from this project can be seen in her online gallery.

CG: Do you see any market for this type of image?
JL: The first application that comes to mind are book jackets as you show in one illustration (I am thinking of Stephen King or Catherynne M. Valente novels). Next, would be promotion and packaging for Wii-type games and other virtual reality/alternate world applications. They might be used in galleries, as posters, for clothing lines, in greeting cards, on album covers and in CD liners.
CG: Is the workmanship good enough? (I only began doing this last fall.)
JL: Your technique is well developed. Each piece looks fine and they are certainly adequate for presentation purposes. I imagine you might struggle with determining when you feel the piece is “done.” At this point, I would not question yourself on that too much. Trust your first thought and move to the next idea until you have a solid set of about 25 images.
CG: Do they hold your interest? How could they be better?
JL: They do hold my interest, however, I feel some are not original enough. It’s as though I have seen these before, and that happens when using elements from other artists. I suggest continuing with this style but finding ways to convey more contemporary social messages.

In April 2007, just before the worst twister season was about to hit Kansas, Allen Holder, the travel editor of the Kansas City Star, asked if I would revamp some of my digital photo tip articles to coincide with their annual photo contest. Allen felt that many of his readers were struggling with “organization,” or what we call “digital workflow.”

“Welcome to the club!,” I thought.

Of course, I could only begin to touch on the very basics of this complicated and evolving subject, which has become the bane of all but the most technically inclined photographers. However, I was able to highlight a few key habits for the successful processing of digital images.

Allen also asked me for a selection of photographs to run with the piece, and my photo below of a building in Berlin ran across the top fold of the Travel Section’s cover on Sunday, May 6. It was great to see the final tear sheets. In the middle of a statewide crisis the paper didn’t miss a registration mark!

Organizing your Vacation Memories
A digital camera can help organize, enhance and display photos.
by Jain Lemos, Special to The Kansas City Star
May 6, 2007

Digital cameras have taken some of the fun and surprise out of coming home and rushing down to the one-hour lab. But there’s a very positive tradeoff. If you used to expose 10 to 20 rolls of film on vacation, that’s about 400 prints. More than half were likely to be duplicates or missed shots. Digital photography allows you to return with even more great photos, enhance them, then display and share them in new ways.

Taking inventory. Getting images out of your camera and into your computer is the first step in organizing your vacation record.

Taking along a portable or stand-alone storage unit is a smart way to do just that. It allows you to view, edit and save pictures until you get back to your home computer. For a few hundred dollars, you can store thousands of JPEG images.

The camera automatically assigns a unique number to each photo and creates a folder on your computer that houses the images. Before you start editing, create a separate new master folder in an easy-to-find place on your computer, say “Italy2007.”

Then pull out your maps, guidebooks and caption information and create subfolders. Name subfolders by city or town (“Genoa”) and then by situation (“Genoa, Children Playing) or location (“Genoa, Museo di Palazzo Reale”). Add subfolders for “favorites” or “art shots.”

Start editing by opening images to the largest view. If you want to keep the shot, choose “save as” and file the image into the appropriate subfolder.

The art of correction. Almost all digital images can be improved with a little alteration. Your camera’s software has some basic tools. Typically, these allow for simple adjustments of color, brightness and contrast levels.

To maximize your efforts, you’ll need additional software. Adobe Photoshop is the leading program among pros and serious amateurs, but other, less-expensive and easier-to-use programs are available, such as Microsoft Digital Image Suite and Corel Paint Shop.

Many computers also come preloaded with some kind of photo-editing software. Programs include tools for red-eye removal, sharpening, tinting, panoramic assembly, adding text, removing objects, dodging, burning and dozens of other manipulating actions.

It’s safer to work on a copy of the original file. Remember, with JPEG images, every time you make corrections and then save, information is lost, so tread lightly.

Computer monitors have different color calibrations. Make some test prints, then note the differences between the print and screen. You may need to make separate color and cropping adjustments if you plan both to print and to share images electronically.

Natural and artificial light in your work area also must be considered. Check the overall exposure and make adjustments. If you have duplicate shots, compare them side-by-side and save only the best one. See whether converting color to black and white makes the shot more dramatic.

Cropping is a valuable tool, but be careful not to crop haphazardly — pictures shown in a collection look better when sizes are uniform.

Putting on a show. Adding structure and narrative to photographs is the last step in completing your picture-taking journey.

Place your images in a specific order for viewing, called sequencing. One way is to order the images by day and time, but other structures can have even more impact. Mixing close-ups with scenic shots, for example, provides balance. Or start with an establishing shot, followed by details.

Writing captions takes some thought, but if you have taken good notes during your trip, this will be easier. Establish a format and stick to it throughout the show. Complete sentences are best.

When you are ready to publish, try using some new technologies. PhotoJam (shock wave.com/sw/content/photo jam), FilmLoop (filmloop. com), Google’s Picasa (picasa.google.com) and Kodak Easy Share Gallery (kodak gallery.com) are fun and have free versions.

From postage stamps to tote bags to jewelry, digital images can be transferred to practically any surface. Dozens of Web sites allow you to create one-of-a-kind products.

Whether you print images for an album, set up a slide show for electronic sharing or invent a whole new product line, the choices are sure to keep you and your audience inspired.

Avoid these mistakes and don’t:

• Wait until after you leave to learn how to use your camera.
• Try to take shots your camera can’t handle.
• Get discouraged by bad weather or uninteresting settings.
• Run out of space or battery life.
• Forget to write down information about the places you’ve photographed.
• Take pictures only on the first or last day of a trip.
• Wait too long to finish working with your photos once you return home.
• Make changes to originals without backing them up or making a copy.
• Overcorrect images.
• Skip captioning and sequencing your travel images.

When people I meet find out that I work in the photography industry, they often ask me for advice about what camera to buy, which software to use and what the pro “secrets” are for taking great photos. So I wasn’t surprised when my friend Catharine Hamm, Travel Editor at the Los Angeles Times, asked if I would like to write an article for the paper’s Sunday travel section to share some tips for taking vacation photographs.

Catharine’s goal was to provide travelers with pointers on working with compact digital cameras to improve the shots they bring home. My article, For Better Digital Photographs, Focus Inward, appeared in the January 26, 2006 edition of the LA Times, and you can read the text below. A big thank you to Catharine for the enjoyable writing gig. Also, a special thanks to the people on the editorial staff at the paper who did such a great job on the layout of the print version.

For Better Digital Photographs, Focus Inward
Knowing your strengths and weaknesses as well as those of your camera will make for sharper vacation photographs.
by Jain Lemos, Special to The Los Angeles Times
January 26, 2006

Getting the most out of your new digital camera requires knowing about more than megapixels and compression. It also requires knowing your strengths and weaknesses.

Nature lovers often do well photographing rose petals or sunsets. Graphically oriented people recognize natural patterns or unique signs. Are you ultra-organized or carefree on a trip? Should you set aside extra time to take and organize your shots?

Acknowledging such things about yourself can help you prepare your camera equipment in ways that will help you get the most from your efforts. Know your camera’s strengths and weaknesses—as well as your own—before taking off for vacation. Here are some of the keys:

Practice, practice. Affordable compact digital cameras with professional features are finally here. For just a few hundred dollars, palm-sized models now come with higher resolution, longer battery life and larger capacity. They also have more menus to scroll through and option lists that can intimidate even tech-savvy users. Become familiar with your camera’s capabilities immediately, taking test shots over several days.

Start with the lens. Does it zoom, and to what magnitude? Practice zooming, then try duplicating the same shot by walking forward instead of zooming. Zooming causes more camera shake, so be sure to steady your shot by holding your elbows closer to your body. Also, turn the camera to the side or point it slightly upward for alternative angles.

Next, get in sync with the cycling between shots (called “shutter lag” time). Don’t get frustrated when you want to press the shutter button and the camera’s processor needs to recycle. Experiment with exposure times by shooting a moving subject on fast and slow speeds.

Built-in flash units on most compacts extend light only a few feet in front of the photographer, and red-eye or overexposure is often the result. Experiment with your flash indoors in low light and outside in shade.

Be sure to read the manual and visit the manufacturer’s website. Now is a good time for a more thorough review of the instructions. If the camera has preset modes such as macro, landscape and portrait settings, look at the instruction booklet examples and try to duplicate the shots.

This is also the time to understand the model’s various image compression settings to calculate how many images you can store on each memory card.

Finally, make a habit of running through a short mental checklist every time you pick up your camera:

• Check batteries.
• Check room on memory card or that you have an extra one.
• Delete unwanted images.
• Adjust settings for conditions.
• Switch to shooting mode.

Make it an activity. Part of relaxing with vacation photography is not feeling pressured to constantly record everything you see. Set aside an hour a day specifically for picture-taking, preferably during the magic hours around sunrise and sunset.

If traveling with companions, try going out alone some days. You’ll be creating a separate vacation within a vacation that only you experience, and your photos will become more personal and less static.

In the morning, gather your equipment and contemplate your day. Perhaps you previously visited a place you would like to capture better or differently. Ask a resident to help you get onto the roof of a high building or out to the nearest fishing hole—someplace you wouldn’t normally visit. Browse through local publications or your travel guide to see what images are being published of nearby attractions.

Digital photography also means you’ll need time for housekeeping. Deleting excess frames and making caption notes are good routine maintenance tasks to do before bed. If you have a laptop or some other separate storage unit, download images off your camera for editing later.

Framing, subject matter, composition and a relaxed state of mind are more important than perfect shooting conditions.

Create an assignment. It can be overwhelming to know what to shoot, even if prepared with a list of places and local contacts to help you. Having a theme in mind helps you link the pictures together in a unique way. Start with a clear idea even if once you’ve set out, something else appears. The pictures will have a common thread and convey continuity.

Some destinations are image gold mines; however, many present little else on arrival but a dismal sky, an old man and a not-too-attractive dog. It’s easy to get discouraged by trying too hard to make something out of nothing. Wherever you are, you must be scouting—visually scanning your surroundings—to see if this is where you can take your best photos.

Just as writers are advised to write about what they know, good photographers should take pictures of familiar subjects. For example, if you work one-on-one with people, chances are you will take natural-looking portraits. If you are more mechanically inclined, look for pictures of people at work or play using their environment as a significant background element.

Storytellers can concentrate on picture narratives that have a beginning, middle and end. Shooting one color or shape is also a challenge.

These types of assignments are for your own development and can be taken in addition to your standard photos of your loved ones in front of the fountain. (Don’t always center your subject.)

Enjoy experimenting with this new age in photography. Remember, you’ll never again worry about wasting film or have to wait to see how your images turned out.

by Jain Lemos for PhotoMedia magazine

With most photo news being handled by large wire-service and Internet conglomerates, some smaller independents, such as Polaris, WPN, and ZUMA, are making waves in the industry.

FOR MUCH OF THE LAST CENTURY, photojournalists have enjoyed a host of options for disseminating their images to the world. After World War II, several cooperative news agencies, such as Magnum Photos and Black Star, thrived and competed to promote the idea of presenting news through multi-layered photo stories.

As the millennium drew near, however, the number of agency choices shrank dramatically as a series of mergers and acquisitions whittled the photojournalism industry down to a handful of major players. Although the big three—the Associated Press (AP), Reuters and Agence France-Presse (AFP)—still dominated the world of global news-gathering cooperatives, Internet giants Corbis and Getty Images gained a stranglehold on the stock and news photography businesses by gobbling up vast photo collections.

Then a few small independent agencies, run by former photographers and photo editors, began to make an appearance on the grid of global news networks. One of the first was ZUMA Press, founded in 1995 by Scott Mc Kiernan in Laguna Beach, Calif., which recently relocated to larger offices in the nearby seaside town of Dana Point. Six years later in Manhattan, J.P. Pappis opened Polaris Images and Seamus Conlan launched World Picture Network (WPN).

All three approach the wire business passionately, specializing in news photos, but also aggressively promoting in-depth photo features in an effort to both resuscitate and preserve the sanctity of the picture-story model made popular by magazines such as Life and Look.

“We are journalists before anything else,” Pappis asserts. “We are very aware of the important stories that are going on in the world.”

“We don’t follow the pack,” Conlan adds.

Just as hard as these agencies work to project an elite, Magnum-like importance, market conditions continually force them to meet low pricing and high-delivery demands to succeed. To survive, they also sometimes traffic in the highly lucrative, sensational images sought by the celebrity press. From the outset, all knew that they would have to take advantage of the digital age and be prepared to fight toe-to-toe technologically with the big three and the Internet mega-agencies.

Making their marks. As photographers, the three founders have earned their stripes. Conlan is best known for his coverage of the 1994 Rwandan civil war and his ensuing humanitarian project to reunite some 2,000 displaced children with their families through his photographs. Pappis also has paid his dues behind the lens — most notably as a Paris-based photographer covering France’s social unrest in the early 1970s — and behind the editing desk at Sygma and Gamma Press USA. Mc Kiernan was a prolific shooter in his day, although the subjects of his work were somewhat a mixed bag: take some pet photos for Dog Fancy and Cat Fancy magazines, combine a little Oklahoma City bombing coverage with a JonBenet Ramsey scoop, sprinkle on some of the altruism he picked up at Black Star while under president Howard Chapnick’s wing, and the Mc Kiernan shooting style emerges.

WPN and Polaris are structured much like most photographer rep agencies, with a 50/50 split arrangement on stock image sales. Initially, Mc Kiernan attempted to use the co-op model (see sidebar), starting with 40 photographers under the name ZUMA Images, named after his pet Labrador. That worked for about nine months, and then Mc Kiernan, voted most likely to succeed by the group, took the reins and incorporated.

Even with all of today’s automation and instant Internet access, the photo news business still requires a hands-on approach. Mc Kiernan is picky when it comes to making sure that his surname is written with the space between the c and K, and his fastidiousness extends to every aspect of his operation, even if that means he has to handle things himself. He boasts about being instrumental in building the first online database that keeps track of images; indeed, ZUMA’s server room in its new Dana Point headquarters cranks around the clock. Mc Kiernan maintains a close watch on his image transmissions and keeps abreast of who is claiming what territory. “Getty has Blockbustered this business,” he says. “Quality is important, but distribution is everything. I’m no MBA, but I understand the street . . . that kind of experience you can’t buy.”

Conlan needed to jump-start WPN with several million dollars of investment capital, and he has been relentless in his quest to get his agency out of his living room and establish it on his own terms. His vision for WPN is to create an organization in which the photographers are involved every step of the way. “We are not doing sensational news,” he says. “We are not selling our images for a pound.”

It’s unclear what funds Polaris, other than a lot of hard work and talent. Quietly, the agency is building its reputation through the excellent work of the star shooters whom Pappis has known for years, as well as the new talent he has signed up. On the phone, Pappis carries on several conversations at the same time, putting people on hold a lot. It’s a bit as if he’s running a semaphore relay line in the background.

“We are constantly moving photographers from one place to the other,” he explains. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast dominated the news in recent weeks, but the situation in Iraq is still today’s major ongoing story, so war coverage is crucial to the agency’s success. However, when crises break out in North Korea, the Middle East or Afghanistan, Polaris shooters need to be ready to move, and that is what Pappis does best. He does not yet feel the need to sponsor “big idea” programs as has WPN; rather, he prefers the old method of pounding the New York pavement when it comes to promoting his shooters and their bodies of work.

Let slip the dogs of war. Terrible as it is, there is nothing like war to spur photojournalism. After the recent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the new independent agencies shifted into high gear.

WPN photographer Lucian Read began his military adventures in 2002, after Sports Illustrated photo editor Jimmy Colton introduced him to Conlan and his wife, Tara Farrell. Still working out of their home at that time, Conlan and Farrell were looking for photographers to start their venture. Read remembers those early days: “I’d sit on the living room floor playing with their children as they worked their connections to get financing.”

Soon enough, Read joined WPN and was sent to Camp Pendleton. He then left shore for Iraq with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, returning some nine months later. “I probably took more than 25,000 captures,” Read says. “My early photos, taken on the ship as we traveled to Iraq, were circulated by WPN. Response was good, but clients wanted to see what I had once I got back.”

Most of Read’s images were licensed as standalones, but MSNBC ran about 50 images in an online slide show. Despite some concerns from his family, the money was enough to draw him back to Iraq in September for another six months, this time adding an audio journal for broadcast applications to his technical gear.

Robert King, who joined ZUMA’s photography staff last year, has been covering news for more than a dozen years, cutting his teeth in Sarajevoin 1993 as a stringer for AP. Embedded with the 82nd Airborne Division, he did a tour in Iraq and then headed to Afghanistan in July of this year to cover that country’s parliamentary elections. Once there, he made his own travel arrangements and did his own assignment legwork, counting on ZUMA’s support in the form of commission checks.

So far, his photo stories aren’t selling that much, except to a few online magazines, including America Online’s Visions. He says that he is “pretty happy,” however, with the way that ZUMA has developed his stories, including providing him with credentials, moral support and financial advances when warranted. “They are eager to help photographers, and I get to own my copyright and my archive,” he says.

Like all overseas shooters, war correspondents must struggle with the time and costs involved in transmitting their photos back to their mothership servers in the United States. King figures that it costs about $10 per photo via satellite technology. “I spent three hours uploading 120 gigabytes,” he groans. “You pray the connection doesn’t snap.”

Read had it a bit easier; his military connections allowed him to transmit his images for free. “There are Internet cafes all over the base,” he says, “and I can just plug in and FTP or e-mail my shots back to my editor at WPN.”

Let the statistics speak. Shooters in the field may be competitive, but news agencies today are even fiercer when it comes to gathering and transmitting news photos for sale. The number of photos streaming in and out of the servers at each agency depends on the editing process, both in the field and at headquarters.

According to their websites, AP processes 1,000 photos per day and Reuters 650, while ZUMA processes 2,000 and WPN 1,500. Mc Kiernan admits that ZUMA does not edit as tightly as other agencies, in order to give his clients more choices. According to an April 2005 profile of Mc Kiernan in Laguna! Life & People magazine, ZUMA is grossing $4 million a year licensing 1,000 images a week at an average fee of $80 per picture.

Perceptions in the industry seem to be nearly as important as distribution. Pappis categorizes ZUMA as a paparazzi and “red-carpet” outfit. Mc Kiernan says that he sells more news in one day than Polaris does in a week, a claim that Pappis questions. Pappis also insists that Polaris is a traditional agency of around 80 handpicked shooters, differing significantly from ZUMA, which Mc Kiernan says represents 900 photographers. “How can he have 900 photographers?” Pappis muses.

Conlan distances himself even further from the pack, aiming to nurture careers and build a family business. On a weekly basis, he receives submissions from photojournalists in Russia, Albania, China, Bosnia, Peru and many other countries. WPN doesn’t use a big network of subagents like the others, instead preferring the control of selling directly into foreign markets so that photographers receive a bigger slice of the pie. “We only have two partners,” he announces, “which makes us the most adaptable to change.”

Newspapers traditionally pay low space rates for news photos, considering that the torrents of images they have access to on daily basis have only 24-hour shelf lives. Web reproduction fees are all over the map, with subscription prices depressingly low for a three-month display license. Calvin Hom, deputy director of photography at The Los Angeles Times, puts it simply: “We pay a monthly fee to AP, AFP and Reuters, so the bill is the same whether we run one of their photos that month, or a hundred. We have a great deal with Corbis, too. We pay a flat fee for any usage.”

Hom, who has worked on the paper’s metro and features desks for more than 10 years, says that the independent agencies market themselves assertively, calling when they have coverage of breaking news. “In July, when bombs went off in London, Polaris had a photo that the others didn’t, and we ran it on the front page,” he says.

Gossip is golden. One market segment that is buying with a newfound fervor is celebrity magazines, which appear to have no limits when it comes to publishing soft-news photos. Life & Style Weekly, InTouch, Celebrity Living Weekly, Us Weekly, Star and People, along with Americanized versions of the British OK! and Hello magazines, are just a few examples.

Insiders know that celebrity photos always have been the cash cows. Before being acquired by Corbis, Sygma once reported that celebrity shots accounted for 60 percent of the agency’s turnover, while their news photos earned less than 10 percent. Today, however, even the once-serious news magazines “are giving less space to more important news stories and substituting them for soft features,” such as entertainment industry gossip, Pappis complains.

ZUMA, which co-ops photos with hundreds of newspapers, stuffs its coffers with the Jennifers and Jessicas of the world, and Mc Kiernan is not afraid to be in the middle of controversy himself. His agency credit certainly was noticed when ZUMA distributed images depicting flag-draped coffins as they returned from Iraq, drawing consternation from the Bush administration and bringing tears to the eyes of many a soldier’s mom.

Shooting tabloid-style sometimes may paythe mortgage for five months, but it does not come without the occasional misstep. Veterannews and documentary photographer Anne Day, who took a high-profile, work-for-hire wedding assignment for WPN earlier this year, had a less than ideal experience. “The WPN editor they went to the location downloaded my flash cards and handed them back to me empty. After I got back home, I had to go down to the grocery store to see my photos in People,” she laughs. She was not amused by the lack of credit next to her photos, however, which were circulated to practically every Sunday paper around the world within hours of the event. “Seamus apologized, saying it was a mistake,” Day offers, and subsequent usages did include her name on the credit line.

Polaris works hard to maintain an old-world profile in a new-world environment, Pappis says. In order to compete, he admits, “we have to cover the universal stories, too.” This means that Polaris photographers often shoot the more trivial novelty or Americana events, from dog shows to hotdog-eating contests. “The red carpet stuff we shall leave to others,” Pappis says, “but if the tabloid story will make money for the agency and the photographers, then we can fund the more serious stories we want to do.”

Picture stories in peril. Although single news images and celebrity fare are selling relatively well, some agencies are lamenting the decline of the cohesive photo feature in U.S. publications. Tabloids may reproduce six virtually identical frames of one celebrity, but that kind of spread is hardly considered a photo story, to Pappis’ way of thinking. “It’s different in Europe, and we are still selling many features there,” he says.

Some European magazines that are still photographer-friendly include Paris Match, Stern, Geo, Figaro and the Sunday Times Magazine. Asia, too, is seeing a resurgence of multiple-image outlets, Conlan says. “Assignments are going through the roof,” he reports, with much of the demand originating from Japan.

“Time used to be this thick,” Mc Kiernan reminisces as he holds an invisible, hefty copy in his hands. “Even National Geographic had to rearrange how their photography department was structured to keep up with the times.”

Whole story packages are selling at ZUMA, but not as robustly as he would like, he admits. “We sell our share of sensational news, but we also do things we want to do,” Mc Kiernan says, including publishing DoubleTruck, a vanity-press magazine that won’t take any advertising dollars. His ZReportage division produces attention-grabbing, web-based title pages to announce features to clients through e-mail teasers on Tuesdays, provided that he has a story to sell that fits the format that week.

Staying independent has helped ZUMA help other photographers, says Mc Kiernan, who has been known to partially fund and help provide credentials for promising shooters who are low on resources. “Things can change on a dime in this business,” he says, “and ZUMA doesn’t have committees for committees, so we can stay flexible. We will consider submissions from any photographer who has a compelling photo story, or even a well-developed idea.”

Survival of the fittest. At the end of the day, volume sales, subscription deals and staying ahead of the digital curve may be the factors that keep these and other new independent agencies humming. US Presswire is one new agency looking to become a quality alternative to the big wire services, and more are cropping up every year. Splash News, Picture Agency and WireImage are picking up steam on the celebrity front, as well.

As for mainstream news, AP’s “Electronic AP” initiative—a new interactive network that will allow members to categorize, search and distribute vast amounts of multimedia news content, including photos and video feeds—is taking time to launch, but because AP controls such a large share of the business, it doesn’t need to rush, Mc Kiernan says. “AP is the 800-pound gorilla in this industry and anything they do is important, but basically they are a decade behind and are now trying to do things we started doing 10 years ago,” he says.

“Broadcast is the way to go, and that’s the way WPN is going,” says Conlan, who is premiering FilmLoop technology this fall, a continually updated tickertape filmstrip that will run across the bottom of subscribers’ computer screens to share WPN’s breaking news images. Clients will be able to click on any frame to get caption and licensing information; advertising revenue will foot the bill, he adds.

Mc Kiernan insists that a lateral move in the marketplace is what is needed to survive, and that means putting ZUMA’s fingers into a lot of pies. Recently, ZUMA acquired the 100-year-old Keystone Press Agency as part of Mc Kiernan’s long-term strategy to revive the influence that photo agencies had at their peakduring the 1940s and ’50s.

Be it hard or soft, news isn’t going away, and neither are the photographers who are willing to pursue good, solid picture stories. Pappis reviewed the portfolios of a dozen graduates of the school at the International Center of Photography this year and was impressed by half. “The material I reviewed was very high quality,” he says. “I’m very optimistic for the future of photojournalism. I’m not worried about finding new talent.”

Launching an independent photo agency is not just about investing in the latest broadband global area network equipment and perfecting digital workflow; it’s also about truly representing the best interests of photographers. Talent, and being in the right place, still has a lot to do with what gets published in the end, but photographers and reps know that pictures alone don’t make sales, good agents do.

Fall Issue 2005

A marketing rep from Microsoft contacted me to evaluate their Digital Image Suite 2006 software to get my opinion on its features and how it compared to the industry-standard Photoshop. It was fun to play with.

I wanted to put the program though all of its paces, so I devised a project that would allow me to test the scanning, cataloging, photo manipulation, and restoration features. I went into a back closet and pulled out boxes with hundreds of envelopes of prints. I was looking for portraits and found some favorite snaps of friends. I dusted off my flatbed scanner and went to work.

Here is my evaluation and some examples of the results:

The scanning set up was a breeze and I appreciated the automatic, “Do you want to scan another image?” prompt after each scan was complete. Once I had all of my 300dpi scans in TIF format organized into a project folder, I started making modifications. The Cropping Tool allowed me to make all of the scans proportionate, and I liked the grid feature showing the rule of thirds. Smart! Next, levels and exposure settings were easy to access, but in most cases, manual adjustment provided better results than Auto Fix.

For basic touchups, I used the Smart Erase feature on several images to remove people or objects in the background. It takes some practice, but once you get the hang of it, the feature is fast and fun. The Spot and Blemish Removal tool was really effective and the Wrinkle Remover worked wonders, even though my pals are already relatively wrinkle free . The Add Flash feature didn’t do much, but most of the images used for testing were not overly shadowed.

Overall, bang for buck, I’d say Microsoft has done a great job of assembling the most critical tools for consumers who need fast digital cleanups. Because I made major modifications to these snaps, most likely the images will look best in smaller sizes on the web rather than printed.

One final note: the program used a lot of memory so I had to close any other programs I wanted running simultaneously. But the program didn’t crash on me, and I was pushing it as far as I could.

by Jain Lemos for PhotoMedia magazine

Understanding the structures of today’s wire and news service agencies requires some knowledge of the industry’s long and storied past.

FROM NEARLY THE MOMENT that photography was invented, news agencies have been around to help manage the public’s access to photojournalism. The three oldest agencies are Associated Press (AP), Reuters and Agence France-Presse (AFP), all of which are still thriving. AFP was founded in 1835, followed by AP about a dozen years later and Reuters in 1851.

Around the turn of the 20th century, commercial picture transmission using radio waves began and, by 1921, Western Union began sending the first electronically transmitted photographs. A decade later, AP introduced a wire photo service, and the agency has dominated the field ever since. Most major city newspapers in the 1930s had an AP photo desk, staffed by an AP employee who received and printed photos for the paper and shared shots taken by the paper’s staff with other AP members around the world.

With AP in New York, Reuters in London and AFP in Paris, photographers began furiously submitting news images for their agencies to distribute globally. The big three cashed in on the fact that a single image could now be quickly reproduced hundreds of times in one day.

As news photography was spurred on by further advancements in telephone transmission of images, a new breed of photojournalistic entrepreneur arose to take advantage of the demand for newsworthy photos. Photographers who wanted control over their images began forming alliances with reps who knew the business andpromoted photo stories as packaged sets. In 1946, photographers Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour and George Rodger formed Magnum Photos, a cooperative agency that was owned by all of its members, a model that many other agencies tried to emulate. Over the next 30 years, numerous news-oriented photo-story agencies were launched, such as Black Star, Contact Press Images, Gamma Liaison, Matrix, Saba, Sipa Press and Sygma.

These reportage-style boutique agencies significantly advanced the photo-story cause. They fought for rights and day rates as their photographers covered wars, natural disasters, and poverty and human rights issues, often on a self-assigned basis. As government censorship laws relaxed following World War II, the public was able to view some of the most gripping and hardhitting images of the century. In those analog days, film flew back and forth across continents to labs and service bureaus, and news publications were busy competing with the recent innovation of live television.

In the mid- to late-1960s, AP started using faxes to transmit photos, which saved costs but compromised quality. Papers also received photos from the now-defunct United Press (UP) and International News Service (INS), but many syndicates sent prints though the mail. “We had access to hundreds of photos every day, even some in color, and way more than we could possibly use,” recalls Wilson Locke, news editor at The Oakland Tribune and then The Los Angeles Times from 1957 to 1991. When scanning technology was introduced, newspaper conglomerates such as The New York Times News Service, Knight Ridder and Tribune Media Services got into the business of recycling their daily photo contributions.

During this period, news and feature magazines were still presenting photographs the way they were meant to be seen: reproduced large and untouched, with noticeable credits for the shooters. Photojournalists were starting to be in demand by name, but the rules of engagement were about to change.

By the late 1980s, a more technical world had emerged, and soon a giant web was holding everything together. Internet-born photo agencies Corbis and Getty Images recognized that photography was the perfect digital vehicle. Leading the way with stock shots galore, they also wanted that editorial edge and went after it obsessively. When the dust settled, Corbis had bought Sygma and Saba, and Getty had claimed Gamma Liaison. Both agency giants spent fortunes on shooters, strategies and technologies to make sure that news photos could be delivered hourly to the monitors of picture editors everywhere.

It is in this daunting environment, in which only a few huge photo conglomerates and wire services have been left standing, that today’s new independent agencies are forced to compete.

Fall Issue 2005

by Jain Lemos for The Picture Professional magazine

Seasoned picture professionals working in any aspect of photography can bring great rewards to themselves and their proteges.

EVERY TIME you select an image or edit a photographer’s submission, you are mentoring that photographer. In an informal way, you are showing him/her how the photography works—or doesn’t work—for the application in mind. Mentoring is a natural and important part of our industry and it is happening all of the time. Seasoned picture professionals working in every aspect of the field frequently find themselves in the position to be a mentor, and taking it on can bring great rewards to all parties. There are no particular experience benchmarks—or age milestones—needed to qualify as a mentor; however, it is a good practice to limit your mentoring to your strongest areas of expertise. Mentoring in a focused and formal way will make you a better mentor, and you will get more out of the relationship as a result. Here are some specific strategies that can help you become an effective mentor.

Formalize the Relationship. Photographers with effective mentors have a critical component of their success strategy. Mentors take on many disguises and run parallel with coaches, reps, advisors, guides, consultants, sponsors, muses, experts, specialists, tutors, trainers, counselors, partners, teachers, fans and supporters. Of fundamental importance is that whatever you call yourself, both you and the person you mentor acknowledge the relationship. To structure such an association, you can offer your services on a contractual basis, hire a photographer to work on a project, or act as an agent. Veteran photographers often take on newer shooters as assistants or interns as a way of giving back to a profession that has been good to them. They share what they have learned and realize that they can use the mentoring opportunity to expand their own knowledge in a particular area. Whatever the arrangement, the relationship needs to have organization so the mentor can offer consistent feedback as the protégé develops new skills and broadens his/her awareness of the profession.

Understand Your Protégé. Oftentimes, photographers can’t see themselves or their work objectively enough to break through certain barriers to their accomplishments. Uncovering the emotional patterns and working habits of your protégé can help him/her to plan for the future. As your mentoring relationship is forming, learn all you can about the person you are helping. The key is not only to evaluate the images, but also to understand the protégé’s overarching persona as an artist (perhaps better done now than after historians are offering opinions). With this background profile, you can more easily point out any distractions or pitfalls that could hinder the professional objectives your protégé is working toward. Expectations, shortcomings, financial situations, personal philosophies, lifestyle choices, and immediate circumstances all have a bearing on success rates even before one photograph is taken. There might be times when your role turns to one of a quasi-therapist, and you’ll find yourself listening to personal problems or dealing with a current crisis. When these situations occur, gently steer the person back to the work as a way to refocus energies. The point is to objectively consider everything that is happening in your protégé’s life and then make specific suggestions to keep workflow on track. You’ll be helping your protégé to greet each day with a managed approach that allows for maximum creativity.

Addressing Fear and Rejection. One of the most difficult challenges that a creative person faces is overcoming fear. It is important to have a discussion about fears. Together, you then can take a practical approach to overcoming them. It’s possible that by the end of such a discussion, your protégé will discover that working as a professional photographer is not so desirable after all! More likely, such a conversation will allow your protégé to become more relaxed about embracing whatever the person feels is lacking at the moment. Most fears take the shape of an unknown future failure, which can have a paralyzing effect. Talking through examples of situations that professional photographers frequently encounter will alleviate some fears and provide your protégé with solutions to apply as needed. Rejection, since it is real rather than imagined, can be devastating and difficult to accept no matter how it arrives. Helping your protégé consider rejection as elimination and a chance to learn can decrease the amount of time lost mourning over what went wrong. If rejection is epidemic in your protégé’s life, chances are the person is more suited to a different type of photography. Going back to a time when a particular method was working for the photographer can help you identify positive steps that your protégé can take in order to move forward in a new direction with confidence.

Finding Inner Styles. Before anyone else sees their work, photographers instantly know which images are their favorites and which ones they think are terrible. When reviewing a protégé’s entire body of work, take special note of the images chosen as favorites. Look at the photos selected for portfolios and promos and the images hanging on the walls. Often, displayed works (like home and studio décor) are by other admired photographers, and these selections are revealing about your protégé’s own inner style. Ask your protégé to tell you in detail about the images he/she likes. You’ll likely find these frames were haphazard shots, ones taken to finish a roll of film or a flash card or, oddly enough, snaps the photographer doesn’t remember taking. Almost without exception, once you begin to dig into the “yellow boxes” or deep archives of a photographer, you will come across shots that you find are exceptional-but your protégé buried them simply because of a seemingly glaring technical flaw. Still, though, those images were kept for a reason, if only for someone like you to discover and evaluate them in a fresh way. As you edit and observe the collection, select a handful of images that illustrate the different styles, techniques or subject categories that your protégé has developed. Use these photographs as your gold standards for refining a more true vision.

Self-Assignments. Assignment editors know that photographers need to start with specific directions even if the plan falls apart once they arrive on location. The same is true for the directions you give as a mentor. Encourage your protégé to shoot something personal every day with an assignment in mind that you have outlined together. Be clear on a beginning, middle and end or predetermine a number of images that the resulting layout or project must contain before it can be deemed finished. The assignment doesn’t necessarily need to be photojournalistic; it just needs a framework. For example, shooting one color, one emotion or one species is an excellent self-assignment technique. Even if the idea changes mid-stream, the resulting pictures will have a common thread and allow your protégé to work on discipline and continuity. The protégé’s portfolios will look better, and he/she will be developing solid material for future articles, exhibits and books. Self assignments are critical to a protégé’s feelings of accomplishment and they will keep you on your toes-finding ways to challenge the photographer you are working with will help you grow creatively, too. Over time, your collaborations can produce new works that are bringing both of you recognition, income and pleasure.

Check-Ins. Consistency is a great way of helping photographers when they are ready to get serious about turning pro, make a change in style or genre, or start a new project. Regular phone calls or get-togethers are how you and your protégé can monitor progress. This provides a relaxed chance to run ideas by each other and discuss the successes and failures the protégé experienced since your last talk. Here is a suggested outline for check-ins:

• Ask your protégé to first tell you some great news-for example, an accomplishment, small or large.
• Review new images then compare and contrast them with the protégé’s pervious work.
• If the protégé is working on a self-assignment, ask about the next step to ensure he/she is clear about what to do next.
• Discuss any specific business problems that your protégé wants help with now.
• Review anything left to be done on current commitments.
• Talk about your protégé’s ongoing key challenge and its current status, including what progress has and hasn’t been made.
• End your session with new challenges for next time.

Responsibilities. Remember that when you mentor photographers, you have a responsibility to lead them into specific and predetermined territories of creativity and productivity that they know they can’t manage on their own at present. Don’t take on someone if you are too busy or in the middle of a change yourself. Be clear about how to accomplish the goals your protégée has in mind; if you don’t know what is best, admit it upfront and then do your homework. Effective mentoring is so much more than just pontificating about what you know from experience. You need relevant resources and alternative solutions at your disposal to handle a variety of challenges. Your protégés will more than thank you and you just might find that you, too, learn something along the way.

Issue 4, 2005

In trying to decipher what it is that makes someone like James Nachtwey tick—what makes him compelled to move in when others move away—the answers are as compelx as the images he makes and the tragic events that he covers. “I don’t know how to explain it, but photography chose me,” he insists in the book by Peter Howe, Shooting Under Fire: The World of the War Photographer.

Nachtwey, one of the world’s most honored war photographers, emanates a kind of quiet, humble grace for his tall and imposing frame. These aspects of his personality are reflective of his artistic style; his images are incomparable and contemplating the man behind the lens is an intriguing assignment on its own. As Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent, puts it, “He is a mystery.” Indeed, it is a challenge to comprehend exactly how Nachtwey finds the inner strength to take the riveting photographs he does, but his contribution to our collective awareness cannot be ignored.

Nachtwey is one of those gifted and rare people who do not seem to be aware of their affect on others in a self-conscious or egotistical manner. This must be why in tough war situations, he can get the kind of unprecedented access that he does. He finds the places no one else either can get to or wants to get to. The result is a mass of images of the most impossible magnitude.

Raised in Massachusetts, he studied Art History and Political Science at Dartmouth College. In the late 1960s, photographs from the Vietnam War had a powerful effect on him. Coupled with the unrest in America and the civil rights movement of that era, Nachtwey made a decision to become a photographer, teaching himself the craft while in the Merchant Marines. Never looking back, he has dedicated his life to documenting wars, poverty and social issues. His associations with the renowned Black Star, Magnum and VII photo agencies, plus a contract position for Time since 1984, are the rewards.

In the 2001 documentary film War Photographer, Nachtwey adamantly calls himself an “antiwar photographer.” At the 2004 PhotoPlus Expo in New York during a presentation of his images at a session featuring a panel of photojournalists, it was apparent that he was struggling to put a lifetime of unbelievably harrowing experiences into some sort of cohesive wrapping. In his introduction he revealed, “On September 11, 2001, my thoughts crystallized. For twenty-one years I have been photographing stories involving Muslim conflicts and I thought they were individual, separate stories about the people in those locations. But after this tragedy, I realized what I had been photographing all these years was actually part of a larger story.”

When Nachtwey began speaking that afternoon, the audience couldn’t hear him clearly. He was too far away from the microphone and clearly unaware of it until someone shouted, “We can’t hear you, Jim!” As he moved closer to the microphone, session moderator Peter Howe, former director of photography for Life, joked, “If you aren’t loud enough, you aren’t close enough.” This drew a chuckle from those familiar with celebrated war photographer Robert Capa’s famous line, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” Once Nachtwey began his slide show one thing was certain: He gets close enough.

His remarkable photographs have received numerous awards and countless recognition. A few nights before his presentation at the Expo he received a Lucie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Photojournalism. Sports Illustrated director of photography Steve Fine, who was presenting the Sports Photography Award to Walter Iooss, quipped, “I just saw Jim Nachtwey backstage and he said he’d rather be shot at than be here tonight.” But Nachtwey stuck out the uncomfortable-ness of the black-tie event that evening and went on to present the Visionary Award to Cornell Capa, founder of the International Center of Photography. The prestigious New York gallery has exhibited Nachtwey’s work on many occasions to facilitate social awareness.

Although he shies from taking the spotlight, Nachtwey’s work is notable enough that, like it or not, he continues to be acknowledged for the risks he has taken to tell the stories that need telling. “Photography can be perceived as the opposite of war,” justifies Nachtwey, who admittedly struggles with making a living off other people’s suffering. His work has taken him to the hotspots of our planet including Bosnia, Chechnya, Korea, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Kosovo and Korea. “But it takes a toll. You carry a weight, you carry a sadness, you carry anger and guilt. And it doesn’t go away; if you have a conscious, you carry it with you, always,” Nachtwey explains to Howe.

When viewing the gripping images Nachtwey puts forth, it’s hard to look away and we sense his sadness reflecting back. Even though his photographs are agonizing to contemplate we are compelled to confront some unbearable facts. Unlike watching the sanitized and over-produced war coverage on television, his frozen moments are hauntingly beautiful and powerful enough to propel positive changes and a new awareness about the consequences of war and conflict.

His 1996 photograph “Ruins of Kabul” is a fitting example of Nachtwey’s single subject style. The woman is clearly affected by her surroundings. Nonetheless, she proceeds to navigate life and survival in a war-torn nation. Although there is discrimination against her gender, Nachtwey captures her with a grace and Madonna-like presence as she floats among the ruins of war. The bright white of her confining burka appears translucent, so that the intention of her concealing garb actually reveals a side of the very womanhood and femininity that she is supposed to hide. Nachtwey witnesses a simple act, but brings a sense of desperation among a people who have seen horrors most of us can’t imagine. He found the gear to document horrific reality and kick it into stunning imagery.

Another photograph of note from that year’s coverage is “Playing Buzkashi.” Here, Nachtwey’s image of a group of Afghan horseback riders has a strange, arresting quality that few photographers master. He brings visual order to an otherwise chaotic setting. There is tremendous energy in this photograph, all stopped in a moment of visual clarity. Unlike the slow and tentative mood of “Ruins,” this image draws the viewer to the center of the action and the eye bounces. Both images evoke that unmistakable gasping pause present in Nachtwey’s portfolio.

Perhaps what distinguishes Nachtwey from other photojournalists is the degree to which he is concerned with his subjects more than his worry over how his images might be received. He makes photographs as an advocacy for people and their causes. According to Hans-Hermann Klare, Foreign Editor of Germany’s Stern magazine, “Jim is a remarkably un-cynical person.” Klare then adds this observation, “He has his own library of suffering in his head.”

Thankfully, he uses the power of photography as his medium for dispelling some of that agony.