More Copyright Conundrum

The latest court decision (in Chicago) on taking pictures of copyrighted works rules that it would violate the copyright of the object being photographed to sell such a photograph.

Read all about it on the Patry Copyright Blog (here).

MediaPhoneBook.com

Help everyone out and leave contact info about a magazine or advertising agency over at mediaphonebook.com (here). To get people started I created an anonymous account:
Name: anon
Pass: anon1234

ESPN Adds Fashion

“The magazine plans to increase fashion coverage, has hired its first style director and will begin running fashion credits. Right away, one of the new covers (there are 10 in the anniversary issue) points to the changes: Venus Williams is wearing a white Emanuel Ungaro gown and sister Serena appears in a white gown by Donna Karan. “People want to know what athletes are wearing to and from the ballpark,” said Steven Binder, vice president of magazine sales. “ESPN should be doing this.” It’s also a great opportunity to tap into those fashion ad dollars, although the current economic climate might make that more difficult. Binder said the magazine is also seriously considering putting on an event in Milan during the spring shows.”

Via, WWD.com (here).

Magazines Will Change How They Measure Their Audience for Advertisers

“The Magazine Publishers of America will propose new metrics designed to convert buyers over the next couple of years to an audience-based model from one based on circulation.”

“…yardstick to measure reader exposure to magazines on an issue-specific basis, broken out by key demographics like age, gender and income; issue-specific engagement with ads based on recall of specific ads; and self-reported consumer purchase intent and action taken as a result of an ad.”

Via, MediaWeek (here).

Mario Testino in The Independent

“My photos are very simple. I believe the magic of photography is capturing the moment that doesn’t exist a moment before or later.”

Read it all (here).

Ansel Adams Prints at Auction

On April 11 Christie’s is scheduled to sell about 200 silver-gelatin Ansel Adams prints from a corporate collection in California. It is among the largest Adams collections in private hands.

Via NYTimes (here).

Art Buyer Blog

’bout time. Heather Morton who hails from Toronto and claims the lonely title of the only *Freelance* Art Buyer in Canada has a much needed addition to the photo blog world (here). As a bonus she’s got a follow up interview with Clay Stang about the consultation we did here.

10,000 Hours to Become an Expert

The author of This Is Your Brain On Music (here) notes that people have found it takes 10,000 hours or 5 years at a 40 hour work week to become an expert at something.

Via, J-WalkBlog (here).

Atlantic Monthly Heads For Redesign

“Michael Bierut at Pentagram to oversee a sweeping redesign of the 150-year-old magazine.”

“It is still believed to be losing $3 million to $5 million a year.”

Story in the NY Post (here).

National Geographic Website Revamp

“…part of a revamp the venerated brand has been undergoing since last Fall with reorganizations, repositioning, management changes and new sales programs. Many of the new initiatives are on its Web sites, which have seen traffic soar since early last year. A significant part of the growth has been from user generated content, especially the “Your Shot” area on the National Geographic Magazine Web site, where people submit photos that are sifted by editors and voted on by users. A select few get published in the magazine.

The magazine’s NGM.com site traffic has grown from about 5.6 million page views last January to 22.4 million last month, according to internal numbers provided by the executives. Your Shot accounted for about 14 million page views.” (your shot here)

Via, Jack Myers (here).

Photo Directors Wanted

I just checked Media Bistro and 3 major publications are looking for Photo Directors. Business Week, Details and Men’s Health (here). Where did all the DOP’s go?

The Growing Trend of Private Commissions

“We fetishize homes now, in a way that we never used to,” said Todd Eberle, a photographer whose work appears in Vanity Fair and in prominent museums. He has been hired by many celebrities, including Martha Stewart and Bill Clinton, to document their homes and offices. His clients, he said, want him both to memorialize their homes as they really are, and at the same time to “take it to a different level, and somehow improve upon the reality.”

“…Often, the decision to hire a photographer, for fees that can run to $75,000, is made when someone buys an architecturally important house or oversees a painstaking renovation.”

From a story in the NY Times (here).

Ranking Photographer Agents

AVS (AVisualSociety.com) has ranked the the top 5 photographer agencies in 3 categories: fashion, commercial and boutique (here).

Top honors go to Art + Commerce, Stockland Martel and AFG.

Sam Jones In The Telegraph

Hollywood is not the place he had imagined as a child – forget spontaneity and pass that BlackBerry. “You know, one of the things I probably romanticise most is the freedom that photographers had before it became such a marketing and advertising machine.”

Read it (here).