Posts tagged with "picture library"
Tuesday, 23. October 2007, 14:17:55
stock agency, fotoLibra, picture library, picture credits
BAPLA runs an award for the national newspaper that runs the greatest number of picture credits in the year. It's usually won by the Times, Guardian, Telegraph or Independent.
fotoLibra insists on proper picture credits. But, ultimately, we are at the whim or mercy of the editors. Credits can be dropped for the oddest reasons, but the usual culprit is the designer, who simply forgets. He's not penalised for it, because where's the profit? The time taken to add the correct credit doesn't make the proprietor any more money.
In order to get proper credits we have to be nice to people. And as we are nice by nature, that's not too hard. But sometimes all our efforts come to naught.
We sold 11 out of 12 pictures to a major national calendar. They kindly sent us proofs, and we spotted a major error — all the photographs were credited ©Yvonne Seeley / fotoLibra. Now Yvonne is many things, but she's not a photographer, she's a picture librarian. So the correct attributions were hastily sent to the printer, the receipt was acknowledged, and we were assured the corrections had been made.
The calendars arrived this morning. All the photographs were credited to ©Yvonne Seeley / fotoLibra. What can we do? It's their calendar, and it looks great. The picture credit is insignificant and unimportant to them. It's not to us, or to our photographers. It's their fault, but we get to shoulder the blame.
I was asked to write the Foreword to a newly published book titled 'Bizarre Buildings'. I was sent a proof, in which the word 'Dalek' had been replaced by 'futuristic tanklike robot', and I had been described as 'Founder of the Folly Fellowship'. I made the corrections — everyone outside Canada knows what a Dalek is — and I was co-founder, not sole founder, of the Folly Fellowship. The corrections were received, acknowledged and ignored.
The book packager has expressed his regret, and has offered to write to the other two co-founders of the FF to admit the mistake was at their end.
I doubt we can ask the same of the calendar company.
Thursday, 13. September 2007, 14:34:24
security, stock agency, theft. fotoLibra, hacking
...
Nasty shock this morning when someone claimed he'd hacked into fotolibra and downloaded an image without paying for it.
Relief when we discovered he hadn't.
I'm not saying it's impossible and that we're more impregnable than Fort Knox (why is it always Fort Knox that's the blueprint of impregnability?), because I don't want to challenge all you happy hackers out there. I know I'd lose. But I'm sure it would be very time-consuming and rather tedious to do, and ultimately it's cheaper and more rewarding simply to buy the pictures legally off the site.
But to get back to the claim. Someone with a lot of time on his hands dragged one of our watermarked Preview images off the web page and then spent some more time in Photoshop trying to remove our visible watermark. If you want to try this, just Control-Click the image and fill in the Save As dialog box in Windows, or simply click and drag to the Desktop on a Mac. Then do the whole Photoshop palaver.
You'll end up, as our trainee cyber-crim did, with a 72dpi image of about 200K with obvious signs of distress by manipulation. As the resulting object isn't really marketable, we don't regard this as a security breach.
This is what we think:
1. This would only be a security breach if they had managed to download an original high resolution image from our database. This is not an image uploaded to fotoLibra, but an attempt at reconstructing that image from our lo-res generated Previews. The pirated image has clear traces of our watermark remaining, and is obviously doctored.
2. All the copyright and metadata information remains within the pirated image and can be seen with any metadata viewer such as File> File Info in Photoshop.
3. Professionals can usually buy a far higher quality image for less than it would cost them in time spent removing the visible watermark.
4. They would be breaking the law by trying to remove the watermark and stealing the image.
5. This particular original image from which the Preview was derived was uploaded before our minimum upload size was raised to 1MB (2MB from version 4.0).
6. Our new visible watermark (from version 4.0) is larger but less obtrusive, making it harder to remove.
7. The pirated image would be rejected by professional users, as a 72dpi 198 KB file would not meet current quality standards. The quality of the resulting image is so poor it would have no real use. It's a 72dpi 520 x 390 image with clear distortion. See fotoLibra's Submission Guidelines:
http://www.fotolibra.com/about/submissionguidelines.pdf 8. Buyers expect 300dpi 12MB JPEGs or 48MB TIFFs.
9. We apply all reasonable methods to protect our Members' Previews. But at the end of the day, the image, by definition, has to be "previewable". The only real way to prevent this would be to not show the image at all in any representation, which negates the purpose of a picture library.
10. We are in-line with (and often exceed) all industry standards in this area. We have to find the balance between offering what our buyers want (images they can preview quickly and easily), while preventing all but the crudest and time-consuming knockoffs such as this one. We are a commercial Picture Library here to present members' images to the professional public for sale. We are not a digital bank vault.
11. We are not aware of any other digital online picture library with more secure anti-theft protection than fotoLibra.
My reaction is a mixture of relief, anxiety, fear and irritation. If we can't protect our members' images, we shouldn't be in business. And we do all we can to do so.
But it's good to be kept on our toes. And after I had gulped back the tears of tantrum, I appreciated the concern and goodwill of the person who pointed this out.
Thursday, 30. August 2007, 16:43:22
stock agency, fotoLibra, picture library
We know as well as anyone that the launch of a website isn’t often seen as news.
But the new version of fotoLibra blurs the boundaries between an application and a website.
And a new application is News.
Here’s something that allows photographers to catalogue their images; file, name, rename, reference, sort, transfer, share, caption, arrange, add and delete them, and even view them by colour.
And them this something goes out and sells the photographs! And collects the money, and accounts for it, and remits it, and provides a Control Centre so the photographer is in complete charge of both images and accounts. Without really having to do anything more than take and upload the photographs.
Is it an application? What application can do all this?
Is it a website? What website could be so interactive?
It’s both. It’s fotoLibra Version 4.0. It could well be God’s gift to the world’s photographers.
fotoLibra. More than just a forklift truck company.
Tuesday, 28. August 2007, 08:53:39
fotoLibra, picture library, jobs, staff
Yet another new member of fotoLibra's staff to greet. Welcome to Dan Ashdown, who joins us today as Web Designer. He'll be working for our Technical Development Manager Neil Smith, putting the final touches on the forthcoming fotoLibra version 4.0, and he's based in Cardiff.
The design has largely been done, and Dan's job will be to integrate it across the board. When it's complete, we've got two more projects for him to start on which have been awaiting someone with his design skills.
You'll hear more in due course.
Friday, 24. August 2007, 12:17:10
stock agency, metadata, keywords, picture library
No apologies for going back to one of my favourite subjects. We're rewriting and rebuilding the fotoLibra site from the ground up for v4, and one of my tasks is to check all the advice pages on the site and tighten up the writing. I always end up adding more than I take away, so I'm splitting the pages into two Sections: SUMMARY — what you HAVE to do, and REASONS — why you must do it. It follows that SUMMARY is pithy and short, while REASONS allows me to go on at length. You don't have to read it, but it helps.
So here's an example of the new format:
Caption and Keywords: The Secret to Success
SUMMARY
Use dictionary headwords only — Nouns, Active Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs.
Separate them with commas or semi-colons. No sentences.
REASONS
Without relevant descriptive keywords, images can’t be found, and if they aren’t found, they won’t be bought. However wonderful an image may be in composition, subject matter, lighting or rarity, a researcher can only track it down by the caption and keywords associated with it.
The CAPTION is a brief image description, restricted to 36 characters – “Camel Face On” is ideal, “You lookin’ at me?” is not. You’re not captioning a cartoon, you’re helping a buyer find your picture.
KEYWORDS must describe the image in detail – what it shows, where it is, the emotions it evokes, the time of year – using single words or very simple phrases, separated by commas and spaces. They must be accurate, apposite, concise, correctly spelt, descriptive, precise and relevant.
An essay on the preferred prey, terrain and mating habits of the Siberian tiger is irrelevant if the image is a close up of the tiger’s head.
fotoLibra runs an automatic translation facility on keywords for non-English language picture researchers. So
“Lion,aggression, hunter, tawny”
is translated automatically into Russian as
Лев, агрессия, охотник, смуглавый
and back into English as
“Leo, aggression, the hunter, tawny”
which is close enough.
Whereas
“The saying that the female of the species is deadlier than the male is particularly true in the case of lions, where the adult females usually hunt down the prey while the males stay at home drinking vodka”
is translated automatically into Russian as
Высказывание что женщина вида чем мужчина определенно поистине в случае львы, где женщины взрослого обычно охотятся вниз с пока мужчины остаются дома выпивая водочкой
and back into English as
“Statement that woman it saw than man definitely truly in the case the lions, where the women of adult usually okhotyatsya downward from thus far the man tyuey ostayutsya house drinking by vodka”
which isn’t really helpful.
Imagine you don’t speak Hittite. You are looking at a picture on a Hittite picture library web site with Hittite keywords. You have a Hittite dictionary. Bingo! (or !Ognib, as they say in Hittatia). You look up the keywords and there is the complete, accurate description of the picture.
Write your keywords as if your market were monoglot Hittites.
Tuesday, 21. August 2007, 15:41:22
stock agency, fotoLibra, sales manager, picture library
...
Our new Sales Manager Zohir Naciri started with us yesterday. He's joined us from another picture library called Corbis, where he was Commercial Senior Account Executive.
Zo knows about selling pictures, especially for commercial rather than editorial use, an area where we haven't been as strong as we would have liked in the past.
But it means a lot of changes will have to be made. He's rejigging our price matrix to make us even more competitive (curiously, this means that sales prices are actually going up in a number of cases) and royalty free images uploaded to fotoLibra will all have to have full model and property release clearances, as well as being large enough file sizes to be capable of being throttled back to sell at various resolutions.
Exciting times here at fotoLibra, because at the same time the final page designs for Version 4 are being agreed upon, and I am nearly weeping with delight when I think how thrilled our members and buyers will be when they use it. It is a dramatic step forward, and it blurs the boundaries between an application and a web site. It does things we couldn't have dreamed it would do three years ago.
It's a lot of fun here. And it keeps us out of the cold. I'm wearing a sweater and a jacket this chilly August afternoon.
Tuesday, 14. August 2007, 10:02:41
stock agency, Digital Asset Management, DAM, picture library
While the rest of you are all on holiday we at fotoLibra have our noses pressed firmly on the lightbox. We have three new members of staff joining over the next month, and we're inching ever closer to the release of fotoLibra version 4.0.
We're currently going through all the copy on the site, trying to cut out the obsolete sections, add the new features, shorten the interminable whinges and drones about whatever took my fancy at the time (yes, you're right, I wrote most of it and it's much, MUCH too long). People want information instantly, and that's what we're trying to deliver. The blue pencils are out.
There are 26,000 words of active copy on the site. We want to halve that. It's still a lot of words.
One thing that's come to the fore is that fotoLibra's DAM (Digital Asset Management system, actually) has evolved to such an extent and become so sophisticated that it can challenge and in some cases surpass many standalone software applications. And it's all available online for free.
Strictly speaking it's not fotoLibra's system — it's licensed from the developers VisConPro Ltd (short for VISual CONtent PROvision) — but as they own fotoLibra there's not a lot of difference. The VCP DAM allows users to
Upload
Download
Store
Search
Sort
Select
Purchase
It arranges Deliveries, it handles Subscriptions, Payments, Membership and a raft of other services.
And we give its use away.
Will we ever be rich?
Friday, 3. August 2007, 11:40:28
stock agency, fotoLibra, servers, Xserve
...
Big journey next Monday. Pack new Proliant server into car, then London to Cardiff to collect the Teravault on which all the fotoLibra assets are backed up, then Cardiff to Manchester where our first rack is located.
We now have more terabytes of image storage than the entire US military had ten years ago.
We (or rather Neil) then install the servers and storage in Manchester, and I schlep back to London. I will crash out on the way. Hope the servers don't.
My job is to chauffeur and hump the avoirdupois of hardware. Neil is the magician who will make it all talk to us.
Meanwhile the Xserves and Xserve RAIDS will still be chattering away to us from Cardiff. They have been fantastically reliable, only faltering briefly when we were overloaded after being made Website of the Day on BBC Radio 2.
But we've all noticed that they're slower than they used to be. They're running way over peak capacity, and have been for some weeks. I hope everything will speed up next week when the new equipment is up and running, but I have a sneaking suspicion Neil wants to wait for fotoLibra Version 4 before releasing all this raw pent-up power.
Version 4 looks sensational. It will provide members with a slew of exciting new features, and will be a lot faster.
I can't wait to get your reactions.
Thursday, 26. July 2007, 11:35:41
microstock, royalty free images, picture library, stock agency
I heard a lovely story the other day. Two, actually, but I wouldn't dream of revealing the second.
A prestigious UK professional magazine, the name of which will be known to you, recently embarked on a cost cutting exercise. Part of the deal was that the picture desk could no longer buy rights-managed images because they were perceived as too expensive, a move wholeheartedly supported by the editor, whose main preoccupation was of course the words.
Instead they were forced to use royalty-free images and CDs from microstock agencies. After three issues the editor cracked and authorised the purchase of rights-managed images again.
He said the magazine looked tacky and artificial, with unreal people. This is because 95% of the RF market is directed at US publishers, who are desperately seeking models with GSOH — in this case Good Skin, Own Hair.
So they're now back to buying proper RM images, and the mag has come back to life.
It's surprising how little it takes.
Incidentally this doesn't of course apply to fotoLibra's RF images, which are as hard-edged and realistic as anything you could possibly hope to buy — and at a much better price, too. Of necessity this will be going up when version 4 comes out, so this insider trader advises you to buy as many as you can right now.
Thursday, 30. November 2006, 11:55:18
innovation, disruptive technology, picture library, picture libraries
...
From an article by Victor Keegan in today's
Guardian:
The emergence of truly huge banks of photographs has spawned a new industry. Companies such as istockphoto.com in the US and the much smaller fotolibra.com in the UK (not to mention Flickr) are undermining the business models of companies such as Getty Images and Corbis by offering high-quality images on practically any subject at a tiny fraction of the price charged by the big boys.
This may help to explain why Getty Images recently bought istockphoto. Video uploading sites such as YouTube grab most of the headlines, but in many ways they are less sophisticated and much less successful than their stills rivals in generating real communities. Photo sites are also largely free of pirated material. They are the web's true monument to user-generated content.
The full article can be seen
online here.Keegan has put his finger right on the button when he writes that sites such as fotoLibra are generating real communities. The amount of positive feedback we get is mildly embarrassing, and there is a strong sense of being part of that hateful buzzword usually used to describe any disparate bunch of potential voters united by a common grievance, a community. We're breaking down the barriers in the picture buying market in much the same way that Abebooks.com opened up secondhand bookselling to the world. Before Abebooks, secondhand booksellers were either your Sotherans or your Quaritches, or the local mid-terrace shop with a two mile reach. What Abebooks did was herd customers to those local shops. That was disruption.
In August I moaned on this blog that fotoLibra was being being labelled disruptive, but now I recall (it's the first thing to go) that ten years ago I publicised a book by Jean-Marie Dru titled
'Disruption: overturning conventions and shaking up the marketplace'. This is the first significant work on disruption, a topic usually credited to Clayton M. Christensen. But Christensen published in 1997, a year after Dru.
See? I was in at the start of it all. And in the excitement of fotoLibra I'd forgotten about it.
Thursday, 23. November 2006, 14:33:36
picture libraries, picture library, microstock, selling photos
...
It’s an irresistible offer, isn’t it?
Yet photographers around the world are flocking to do it. Not only do they get the chance to cut their own throats, they can cut their colleagues’ throats at the same time! Yay!
What’s this all about? Microstock photography. The ability to sell pictures on the internet has spawned a rash of dubious stock photo sites who offer (generally crappy) images to designers for a dollar a shot. There are dozens of these sites, with thousands of images available.
And at a dollar a shot, designers inevitably buy. They’d be stupid not to, even if the image only barely meets their requirements.
What does the photographer get? 20 cents, and the glory of knowing that their uncredited photograph will be flogged anonymously through every back alley in the world.
What will the designer expect to pay for the next purchase? Probably 95 cents. So the participating photographer, and all his colleagues, will get even less.
Yet the promise of scalability is what makes these poor suicidal photographers drool. Here’s one overheated imagination:
The concept for photographers is this: instead of selling one image at $80-$120 once, why not sell it for fifty cents 200 times? In the long run, the profit margin can even be much larger than simply selling it at a larger, fixed price. Can you really make any money off of selling images for fifty cents each? Well, if you make just five dollars a day (Sell 10 images on one site, or multiple sites) you will be raking in an extra $150 a month.
The math is fine, but I can spot two flaws in the reasoning.
Firstly, it is possible to get an offer of 50 cents per picture from some of these microstock agencies. Possible, but very rare. You are much more likely to get 20 cents, if anything.
Secondly, the line ‘why not sell it for fifty cents 200 times?’ Unarguable logic. With over 100 million photographs now for sale on line, what are the chances of the same lumpen royalty free stock photo being purchased once, let alone ten times? And 200 times? Hello? Their naïvety makes me weep.
So you put up ten photographs. If you have astounding luck, five of them sell. You make one dollar. You won’t get paid until you’ve made $30 worth of sales, or more — it’s really not worth writing a cheque for a dollar. So what if no more sell? You won’t see one thin dime. Eventually you’ll lose interest and drift away. But the agency still has your photographs, anonymous and uncredited by now, so they will be able to drive the price of a photograph down still further.
And now the designers won’t want to pay more than 75 cents per picture. And good, competent photographers who deserve a fair price for their work find the value of their labours demeaned and diminished.
The worm will turn, because it always does, but for the moment I cannot decide who are the real villains in this piece: the designers, for blindly wanting to drive down prices to the exclusion of all other parameters; the microstock agencies, for greedily fuelling the market; or the photographers, who by supplying adequate photographs are colluding and collaborating in their own downfall.
What is far more obvious is that the participating photographers are the big losers. The mentality of the lemming holds sway.
Price is one thing. Value is another.
Monday, 20. November 2006, 11:10:16
stock agencies, stock agency, picture library, picture libraries
...
When I first had the concept of fotoLibra I was very nervous about releasing the idea, because I thought it would be so easy to copy that I’d be trampled in the rush. fotoLibra wasn’t an invention — the pieces already existed — all I did was put the building blocks together in a different way to create something new. As the great essayist and aphorist Michel de Montaigne described an anthology he had compiled: “I have gathered a posy of other men’s flowers, and only the thread that binds them is my own.”
It’s strange to look back over such a short time and see how what is now considered the norm was so radical back in 2002, when the fotoLibra concept first surfaced.
—The first fully digital on-line picture library from scratch
—The first open access picture library
—The first successful subscription-based stock agency
—The first multiple aggregator and disseminator
Four things triggered the concept:
—The rising availability of scanners
—The falling cost of digital storage
—The rise of the digital camera
—The spread of broadband
Of course every business has its critics, and the major complaint about fotoLibra was that we actually charge for our service instead of giving it away for free. Well, we do give it away for free. Anyone can upload up to five pictures and not pay a cent. And when the pictures sell, they get half the net sales receipts. One free Trial Member picked up $1,800 from us. That’s proof of concept to me.
Proof enough for the world’s largest picture library, Getty Images. Last week they announced that, following the example set by fotoLibra, they were going to start charging for certain services.
They probably didn’t look at our pricing structure that closely. Did General Motors bother themselves about the upstart micro-vehicle manufacturer Toyota in the 1950s?
The radical step is that Getty Images are beginning to allow open access, just like fotoLibra always has. Anyone can now upload a picture to Getty Images. That’s the market fotoLibra has single-handedly created.
But whereas we charge Full Members a measly £6 a month to upload as many images as they like (within our huge 3GB limit), Getty Images propose to charge a staggering $50 FOR EVERY IMAGE UPLOADED!
And do you know, some people may very well do it. That’s the power of the corporation. But then when they find that Getty also limits them to uploading just 40 images, they may start looking elsewhere.
Maybe they’ll then find fotoLibra.
I think that’s enough boasting about fotoLibra’s pioneering glory. Montaigne had a final comment to add. "Don't talk about yourself, for you can never win. If you praise yourself, nobody will believe you; if you run yourself down, everyone will believe you."
Thursday, 16. November 2006, 10:53:47
daisy, bizarre, curious, strange
...
I learned a new word today. No, I'm not ashamed to admit it. Armed as I am with such a spectacular vocabulary, it's pleasant to come across words one hasn't encountered before.
This is how it came about. Jacqui sent out a Picture Call yesterday asking for pictures of bunnies and day-old chicks in long meadow grass with daisies and butterflies etc etc. Perfect for November.
I was looking through some of the submissions and my eye was caught by the most amazing sight: a grinning daisy. Ah, I thought, someone's just found the Liquify filter in Photoshop, and what's more he can't spell Fascinated.
I looked closer. It was a very fine piece of Photoshopping. Then I looked at the keyword Fasciated again. Fascinated didn't fit the context. So I turned to the dictionary:
fas•ci•at•ed
Botany: showing abnormal fusion of parts or organs, resulting in a flattened, ribbonlike structure.
Blimey. Maybe it was real. So I downloaded the image, checked it out and it's real. Not a hint of Photoshopping here. This actually exists. The only thing we did to the image was to correct photographer Mike Lester's spelling of Daisy.
What an amazing photograph. Well done, Mike!
Friday, 10. November 2006, 17:11:34
data centre, picture libraries, picture library, selling photos
...
In Wales.
That's the answer we give to anyone who idly wonders just what happens when they upload their precious images to the fotoLibra site. These words of wisdom are actually coming to you from Oslo (where I've never been) because I use Opera for my blog. And if anyone from Opera is reading this, you have a wonderful browser but the blog side of it still seems to need a lot of work.
But your pictures go to Wales. This is because I have been around the block a bit and seen data centres in London, Reading, Frankfurt, east and west coast USA, and the most impressive I've ever seen was in Cardiff, South Wales. So that's where I wanted fotoLibra to place its main servers and storage. It costs a fortune, but we wanted the best we could find. Here's an outline specification:
NETWORK CONNECTIVITY
Resilient Internet access via two diversely routed 500Mbs BTnet circuits.
POWER
Power is supplied by two separate diverse 11kV mains feeds, with 5 2mVa backup generators. It has its own power station in the courtyard.
UPS systems provide the assurance of clean power in the event of failure of both mains feeds AND the backup generators.
FIRE PROTECTION
Fire risk is handled by a very early smoke detection system, VESDA, meeting 2m wire burn standards.
Fire suppression is provided to the server and storage halls using an Argonite fire suppression agent.
SECURITY
Protected by a multi-layered physical security mechanism (this means guards with guns, probably).
BS7799 Part II compliance certification for the provision of hosting services.
Protected by over 50 CCTV cameras, guarded 24/7, with a security system approved by the National Approval Council for Security Systems.
All staff security vetted to HMG SC level.
No, I don't understand it all either. But I honestly don't think we could do any better for you.
Because yurr wurrth it!
Tuesday, 7. November 2006, 14:25:44
Michael Reichmann, photography tutorials, picture libraries, picture library
...
The other day I was writing about the pleasant things everyone tells us about the fotoLibra Support Desk. 'Legendary', a couple of Members have said, because people get the answers they want pretty darn quickly.
This is probably because we don't have anyone working in Support. We all do it, and there's competition to see who can answer someone the quickest. We want Members to be using fotoLibra without problems or downtime, so the sooner we can get any queries sorted out, the better.
Some pals of mine expressed interest as to how we became so expert in everything. Like Goldsmith's schoolmaster:
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew
That one small head could carry all he knew.
There's little point dissembling; we either know the answer or we don't. We usually do because support questions are often the same questions, and they're answered on the web site but it's less fatiguing to email a question than search for an answer. No problem. We're happy to help.
But occasionally — VERY occasionally — we're stumped ourselves. Where do we turn?
We go to the single most useful photography source on the internet. It's called
The Luminous Landscape, and it's compiled by a remarkable man named Michael Reichmann. On this site you can find tutorials, product reviews, galleries, location finders, the remarkable 'Understanding Series' and much more.
To give you a taste, the first ten subjects in his current 'Understanding Series'are:
- Understanding Soft Proofing
- Understanding Printer Colour Management
- Understanding Contrast Masking
- Understanding Raw Files
- Understanding Digital Unsharp Mask
- Understanding Histograms
- Understanding MTF Charts
- Understanding Digital Sensor Cleaning
- Understanding Digital Workflow
- Understanding Mirror Lock-Up
The site goes on and on, and there's a jewel after every click. It's hard to praise this site highly enough; it's an incredibly valuable resource and a true labour of love.
Reichmann is too modest to tell us about himself on his site, but I did some support research and came up with this:
Michael Reichmann has been both a professional photographer as well as avid amateur for more than 35 years. He is a Contributing Editor to Photo Techniques magazine, a columnist for American Photography magazine, and publisher and primary author of The Luminous Landscape web site – the world’s largest non-commercial site devoted to photographic education. Reichmann is also co-publisher and host of The Video Journal, the world’s only quarterly DVD-video magazine about photography. The Video Journal is now in its sixth year and has subscribers in more than 70 countries world-wide.
Reichmann teaches field workshops and seminars around the world. His recent workshops include trips to Iceland, Costa Rica, Namibia, Bangladesh, China and Antarctica, as well as extensive work in the USA and Canada. He is a frequent invited speaker at conferences worldwide.
Reichmann’s prints and portfolios are found in private as well as public collections in Canada, the U.S., and abroad.
It's a site worthy of your admiration and support. Michael Reichmann is one of the heroes of 21st century photography.
Saturday, 4. November 2006, 14:13:04
IPTC, metadata, CEPIC, Photoshop
...
OK, sorry about yesterday. There was more work needed on the Submission Guidelines than we forecast, but they've now been revised and the new version is online and ready for you to download. You can get it from
http://www.fotolibra.com/about/metadata.php along with downloads of the BAPLA / Pic4Press panel and the BAPLA Digital Guidelines.
It's worth reading the Metadata page before you upload images to fotoLibra. It's full of good advice.
I know. I wrote it!
Thursday, 2. November 2006, 17:40:00
metadata, IPTC, BAPLA, CEPIC
...
At last it's been released. Of course this means we now have to rewrite the Submission Guidelines which we only posted on the site last week. Still, we moaned about the pace of change in the document itself.
I'll put it up on the fotoLibra site and post a link to it from this blog tomorrow. It only works in Photoshop 8 and above, but we are working on a cunning plan to allow you to adapt and correct your metadata live on the fotoLibra site.
More information tomorrow!
Monday, 30. October 2006, 17:48:43
support, helpline, picture library, stock agency
Thinking about the time I spent hanging on to the Sky support line last week made me reëvaluate how we provide help and support to fotoLibra members.
Because we're not the biggest picture library in the world, we don't have a telephone support helpline. Well, we do, but we mislaid the number, so it's never been made available.
Instead we have three support features on the site, at the bottom of each page: FAQs, Site Map and Support. These three options almost always come up with the answer to every question. If not, you can email support@fotoLibra.com, where we take a certain delight in pointing you back to the site where you will find the answer to your question which was there all the time. If you'd looked.
We all work on the Support desk. When a query comes in, there's a race to be first to answer it. This accounts for the fotoLibra support service being described as "legendary" by no fewer than three fotoLibra members. Thank you. We're proud of it.
Now we've got 13,000+ sign-ups with one or two hundred new arrivals every week, and I am delighted to report there was NOT ONE support query over the weekend. First time ever.
fotoLibra just works. Isn't that what it's supposed to do?
And yes, Llanelli DID beat Ulster. Good old Sospan Fach.
Now for Toulouse. Gulp.
Wednesday, 25. October 2006, 09:27:09
opera community, submission guidelines, BAPLA, stock agency
...
In amongst all these mutterings about Metadata, it occurred to me that many peripheral questions were answered in the fotoLibra Submission Guidelines, which we sent out to members who had repeated questions about file sizes, megapixels, captions and the like.
So I looked at them, and as they'd been assembled in response to various questions at various times, I saw they were a little messy.
We've tidied them up and presented them in a neat PDF format which you can download from the site right here:
fotoLibra Submission GuidelinesIt's an active PDF file, so it has a handy index and the links to external sites work. If they don't, please post a message here and I'll get it fixed.
This also gave me an opportunity to address the huge irritation of all PDFs — they're supposed to be read on the computer screen (landscape). So why are 99% designed for print (portrait)? The fotoLibra Submission Guidelines are designed for you to read on your computer screen. It should automatically appear in readable double page spreads, without you having to scroll. Again, if it doesn't, please let me know.
The picture libraries' trade association, BAPLA (British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies) has produced a Best Practice document for digital libraries. I warmly recommend it to all fotoLibra members. Follow this implicitly and you will find it very hard to go wrong. Here's the PDF to download:
BAPLA Digital Guidelines Launch EditionThere hasn't been a blog post here since last Friday for a couple of reasons, by far the main one being that I haven't been able to get on to the Opera community site where the blog is hosted. If you can read this you're clearly not having the same problem, but if you've had it in the past could you let me know? And before I can access Opera, I always have to type the following line into the terminal: sudo /sbin/ifconfig en1 mtu 1458. Otherwise I can't see it at all. Can anyone explain this to me? Jeff figured this out but forgot to tell me why.
Friday, 20. October 2006, 16:45:43
picture library, stock agency
We have a redoubtable employee in Jacqui Norman. She stands no nonsense from anyone and it's all I can do to stop her tearing the throats out of members who ignore her wishes. I daren't let her anywhere near our picture buyers.
But she does send out Picture Calls with reasonable grace.
Yesterday a publisher wanted photographs of a cracked and dried-up lake from a low POV. Jacqui obliged.
Today, another publisher wanted photographs of toddlers. Jacqui obliged.
This afternoon she called me, barely able to speak through tears of laughter. One of our members, whether by accident or design, has managed to combine both picture calls in one. So, Jana Trzilova from Zlata Praha, you are a genius.
I really hope we sell it for you. Congratulations!
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