Category: Blog News

Big win for The Whale Hunt photography story (see it here) in the Personal Web Site category. National Geographic picked up two for Best Use Of Photography and Magazine. See the entire list (here).

Patry Copyright Blog points us to this 67 1/2 page treatise on The Happy Birthday Song:

“‘Happy Birthday to You’ is the best-known and most frequently sung song in the world. …However, it is almost certainly no longer under copyright, due to a lack of evidence about who wrote the words; defective copyright notice; and a failure to file a proper renewal application.”

“It also reveals collective action barriers to mounting challenges to copyright validity: the song generates an estimated $2 million per year, and yet no one has ever sought adjudication of the validity of its copyright.”

Read all of it (here).

http://www.apnews.com/

Via, TechCrunch.

Steve Frye. In a sidebar in the current issue of Publishing Executive titled The State of the Printing Industry Frye drops this bomb:

I think we need to change our philosophy of what a magazine is. We are no longer a cheap means of dispensing information, and that’s what we were until the Internet came along. Now we are an inefficient and expensive means of distributing information. … We need to reinvent ourselves as a luxury item that people want and are willing to pay for. And until we change our own image of who we are, we’re going to find out that our vendors are gong to change it for us. Because, right now, postage is a premium. Paper is a premium. Soon printing will be a premium. How long can we buy at a premium and sell at a discount? We can’t.

Via, Michael Turro (here).

Heather Morton made a cool video about a photography project Derek Shapton is working on (here).

Nova releases the raw footage shot for NOVA’s “Car of the Future” documentary.

“This experiment marks the first time we have ever made raw video available to the public, and we’re eager to see what you make from it. It’s because of viewers like you, as the saying goes, that we’re able to produce NOVA. In this age of new media we’re pleased to be able to work more closely with you to make our programming more engaging and to be able to offer you more.”

See it (here). Via TWIM (here).

The American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP) New York Chapter presents

PHOTOGRAPHY MEETS BOOK COVER DESIGN
Prominent book designers Ann Twomey and Henry Sene Yee discussing the role photography plays in their work.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008 from 6:00 pm -8:30 pm
Laura Parsons Pratt Conference Center
281 Park Ave South at 22nd Street
Space is limited. Please RSVP by May 5, 2008 Go (here) to register.

Who Owns This Image?
Art, Access, and the Public Domain after Bridgeman v. Corel

Tuesday, April 29, 2008
6:30 – 8:00 pm

New York City Bar Association
42 W. 44th Street, New York City
The Great Hall

Read more on the Patry Copyright blog (here).

“Many of Mr. Lois’s covers were controversial, not so say irreverent or deliberately provocative. The Liston cover cost the magazine $750,000 in dropped advertising. But they were immensely successful at drawing attention, on the newsstand especially.”

“What was remarkable then — and seems even more so now, when virtually every magazine cover is a thicket of text lines running behind or on top of one celebrity or another — is that the Lois covers were virtually textless.”

“When Mr. Lois learned that Esquire covers were conceived and assigned by an editorial committee, he likened the process to gang rape…”

Read the whole story at NYTimes.com (here).

Interesting experiment over at Vincent Skeltis’ blog where he’s looking for input on the redesign of a magazine called Foam (here). I’d advise them to hire Noe Dewitt to shoot the covers (read the demographic to see why) but then they’d probably run out of cash after the first photo session. Go big or go home I say.

Mikhail Prokhorov — whose wealth is estimated at around $22 billion — plans to spend $150 million setting up a magazine, website and television station called Snob, the general director of the new venture told Reuters on Wednesday.

“It’s for people who are successful and those who want to be successful,” said Andrei
Shmarov, who will run Snob.

Via, BoSacks Newsletter.

June 12-14, 2008. Another great way to bring quality photography to the masses (here).

Advertising is on a self destructive path where you need more louder ads to break through the clutter which in turn creates more clutter. Referral from trusted sources will soon become the way most people find things.

Asking another photo editor has always been one of the best ways to find a photographer.

Read all about it on Copyblogger (here).

Daryl Lang at PDN writes “There are photos on the front of today’s Wall Street Journal! Photos that aren’t mug shots! Above the fold! Three columns wide! In lifelike color! What next, cats chasing dogs?” Read it (here).

The secret to making anything better has always been to add photos. Glad they finally saw the light.

Hoo Boy, David Hobby hit it big with a story in USA Today (here). Wonder how many new readers he has now. Pressure is on David. Good luck.

Thanks John.

John Harrington has a blog post on email tracking and google site analytics (here) if you want to learn more about it.

500 submissions edited down to the final 20 for this new print publication of contemporary photographers. See the finalists (here).

Worth a visit becuase the work is outstanding.