Some complain that Getty only returns 20 to 30% of each sale to the photographer. Others complain that Getty is undermining Creative Commons Licenses by forcing photographers to change their CC licensed works to an "all rights reserved" status. Still others are complaining that Getty is too aggressive in going after publishers who might accidentally republish a work from the Getty catalog.

Some of these complaints are inevitable, akin to the complaints that accompany virtually any change to the flickr service. Other complaints are legitimate. Getty Images is a huge operation built around exclusivity. Exclusivity isn't a necessarily bad thing, but it is certainly at odds with Flickr culture. Even the most die-hard, watermark slinging, copyright maximalist on Flickr retains control over who they license their photo to, and when. Signing up with Getty requires a relinquishment of control that is likely to bother even the most commercially oriented photographers on the site.

At day's end, most of these complaints will subside, as they always do. More photographers will make money than before, even though it is increasingly clear that very, very few, if any will be able to make a living off the arrangements Getty makes with Flickr photographers.

I knew I wanted to write a post about the crash, since a good deal of attention has been directed to how twitter and Flickr members posted the first photos of the disaster. What i found most striking when going through the Flickr search results, was just how many copied and re-posted versions of photos there were. People were uploading images lifted from news sources, or posted to twitter and other services.

Still, some Flickr members were posting their own photos, many of which were comparable in quality to the pool photos that had been illicitly uploaded to Flickr alongside them.

Interestingly, the cross pollination of images runs both ways. The media borrows from the people, and the people borrow from the media. The photographer of the image that illustrates this post noted that CNN had republished his photo in a slideshow on their site. I'm not sure if they had his permission, as the photo was under a non-commercial creative commons license. The photographer has since contacted me to say that permission to re-post was sought by CNN

One photo on Flickr, uploaded by a rescue diver has only one line in its description, "*Do not use this photo without permission*". It's a really good photo from a source close to the action, so he probably has quite a few people asking.

It is interesting to watch the back and forth flow of images play out in the search results and comment on Flickr. You can visualize in your head all the emails, Flickr mails, file nabbing, screenshotting and other methods of securing these photos and republishing them in every available nook and cranny of the web.

After some research, he discovered they were likely based on the work of the multi-talented Lumiere Brothers, from Lyon, France (in photo, a wiki commons image), both, as was their father, true pioneers of photography and cinematic photography.

The name of the artist is not known, as the item was a gift from a friend, who had "found" it in a store room at his art school. Web searches proved fairly fruitless, although it does appear that there is an artist making similar pieces in England, known as shardcore (there is a rumor that this artist is a former cast member of "Real World: London!), but it is doubtful that this is his work. shardcore's work, which exists "at the intersection of art and science" is, however, worth a look. His photo stereo synthesis cubes look gorgeous!

Flickr has dozens of stereo groups, however, there is no mention of this sort of work that I could find. I believe that these circumstances are what is sometimes called "a mystery wrapped in an enigma". I cannot even show you a photograph of his cube, because the last time that we spoke, the cube was destroyed during his last move. My interest is definitely piqued.

After announcing that it was closing its doors, the company received a fair amount of publicity and peculiar postings started to appear on influential tech-blog TechCrunch.

First, they announced that JPG was for sale, and could be saved within the week. Then they announced that Flickr, Smugmug and "Others" were bidding to buy the magazine. Heather Champ responded flat out that flickr had no interest in the magazine, while Smugmug clearly isn't capable of acquiring the magazine on its own, asking for financial help in making the acquisition on friendfeed of all places. The "other" potential acquirer listed in the TechCrunch post was apparently later rejected as a bidder. It would be very difficult for TechCrunch to be any more incorrect in its reporting than it was.

Now JPG is announcing that it will be saved after all. By who? They won't say. But we'll know within a week! .. "or so".

I can't help but think this all smells of fish.

We've been brainstorming ways of using a variety of social media tools to collect stories from people related to President-elect Obama's inauguration.

---Andy Carvin, NPR Digital Media Team Inside NPR.org

Washington D.C. is preparing for an inundation of people (some sources estimate at least five million people will be in the city), which is already underway. Millions of cameras and video cameras will be recording everything; the amount of imagery which will be be created boggles the mind.

Check the Digital Media Team blog for detailed information about how to correctly tag your trip images. An unofficial dctrip09 group has also been created on Flickr.

What will you be doing during the Inauguration? Take our Utata Poll!

The news was posted on the Flickr Blog today and the launch includes an interview with Shelley Bernstein, Chief of Technology at the Brooklyn Museum.

There's many more interesting articles, interviews and posts in the works, so subscribe now!

Discussion veered into what makes a photograph a piece of art, the qualities and fidelity of the final product according to the equipment used and the use or non-use of post-processing on images. Gear lust and gear competition was soundly derided, while creating art with even the simplest of camera was applauded. Deciding whether the final product-the photograph-was "art" or "craft" was agreed to be judged by the beholder, and of course opinions widely vary over the definition of art, in all mediums.

Let's just say this, about Gearheads vs. Photographers vs. Artists:

The best camera in the best hands: It must be art?
The worst camera in the best hands: It'll still be art, right?
The best camera in the worst of hands: Maybe the lucky so-and-so will rise to the occasion?

Anything else we might say would be a guess. But guessing sometimes works in the realm of art.

Lu_ says:

in the last 12 months, likely lost advertising revenue (like every other magazine) and subscriber base and newsstand sales (like every other magazine). Magazines are getting hit *very* hard since the end of the summer. Lots of previously financially healthy magazines are going under.

Linus Gelber disagrees, saying:

Yeah, I also never looked back at them after they got rid of [founders] Derek and Heather.

It's why the magazine is failing now, I reckon; restructured businesses often fail, since they are based on a short-term view rather than the long-term pipe-dream model that most from-the-basement projects are founded on.

I say, confidently astride the fence, that it was some combination of these two factors.

What say you?

In the world of Flickr, some folks consider making the ranks of Explore a measure of their success and popularity, others see "Explore" as an evil algorithm biased in favor of kittens and cheesecake, and we can assume that there are some don't think or care about Explore at all.

Some Dada artists considered their work to be anti-art and were often amused and even angered by their so-called success and rewards. They weren't in it for approval, they wanted to change the status quo, often by ignoring aesthetics and aiming instead to shake up sensibilities. Success?

What is the role and influence of competition in art? Does an artist feel more successful when a piece of their beloved work is rewarded? Is the act in itself ever reward enough, or do we need approval and applause to validate our art? How do we judge, for ourselves, with no outer influence, if our work is a "success"?

If a masterwork of art is never seen by anyone else but the artist, can it be a success?

I'm not sure whether this trend will continue, or whether other mobile phones will join the fray, but it is interesting to see a mobile device reach this level of popularity.

One of the problems with photo sharing is that there's still somewhat of a bottleneck on the desktop/laptop when it comes to uploading. Casual uploaders need to sort though photos, attach transfer cables, choose photo-management software or set up a filing system. Compact cameras, though inexpensive, are awkward to remember to bring with you, keep batteries charged and so on.

Mobile camera-phones seemed to present the solution to this, but cameras were low resolution, UI atrocious and upload speeds frustrating.

It seems that the iPhone and other smart-phones of its breed are solving these problems. For the first time, the casual photographer has a camera that they carry with them all the time, is always charged and ready to go, and will upload to the web with just a couple taps. Finally, a camera and workflow that is as simple on creation and upload side as flickr is on the publication side.

I'm curious to see how this all plays out, going forward.

Setting up your own professional website is a great place to start, but then one has to find ways to steer viewers to your spectacular gallery and encourage them to buy. Start with search engine optimization, but certainly do not stop there!

David Meerman Scott has written an e-book about new on-line marketing strategies that make the best use of what he calls "word-of-mouse". The subtitle is "spread your ideas for free", but it can be applied to spreading your "work" for free, as well. It's not just "giving it away", it's more like hoisting up a flag for all the world to see, so that they can find their way to you, so that they will admire and talk about and actually buy your work.

E-books have a great deal of importance to readers. People can instantly see the value of a
product that looks like for-purchase content but can actually be downloaded for free.


---David Meerman Scott

Even people with basic layout skills can use existing software to create a small book to promote themselves and their work. Convert it to PDF and you have a cross-platform, instantly deliverable super-content business card that can convey who you are and what you do in a compact and compelling format. It's like having an entire, portable website, without having to learn even one line of HTML. Think of it as a teaser; you give a little bit away, but it should be such a tantalizing bit that your potential fan will, of course, want more.

A quick web search for "ebooks" brings back pages of results-places where one can share and distribute your own work. Viral marketing strategists will tell you that your ebook should be posted on your blog (and all of your other social/sharing sites). The viral part begins when folks start talking about and distributing your e-book for you through links, discussions and even emails.

Once you get the ball rolling, you can create an more elaborate ebook that folks can actually purchase and download on a site like E Book Mall, or get it published on your own with a "print on demand" publishing company.

It's free, it's viral, and it's all happening NOW!

We don't often take photographs "for history", and yet the potential to record history is one of the most compelling attributes of photography.

George Oates once put it this way, before she began work on The Commons:

The bigger Flickr gets, the more I'm seeing it as a huge historical corpus of our lives. Particularly interesting to me is the visible history of the mundane on a massive scale - dude on couch with mates, bee up close, the back fence, my new pants, etc. I think the thing I like most is that I can see so much of the world: both from an individual's perspective and through the lovely, incidental collections that "just happen" through things like tags and time.

What fascinates me about The Commons is that it is a "huge historical corpus" of an earlier time. It is a way to understand the past in a broad, personal way. It is not about viewing the past through a handful of "great" "famous" photographs, but to understand the past through that "visible history of the mundane" .. every day depicted through the the lens of the everyday.

The world as it is, is currently submerged in economic turmoil, war, and continued struggle for civil rights. We are told by our leaders to look to the past and understand how we've overcome these struggles, to help us through our current problems. The Commons is, in my mind, a tremendous means for doing so.

The Commons represents a very broad view of history that has been very difficult to access in the past. The potential volume of the collection is staggering but it is the diverse nature or the imagery that appeals most to me, and how sometimes the more mundane images can serve to connect this history to our own lives, in all our contemporary struggles and joys.

Of course, Like many Utatans, I've been heading out of doors, day and night, to capture the beauty of the cold, the snow, and the ice. I now have a weatherprooof camera, so heading out into inclement weather is not the worry that it used to be. But my hands get so cold! After 15 minutes in well-below freezing temps, my fingers really suffer.

I have some thin leather gloves that I try to work with, which is alright if I don't need to anything more than hit the shutter button. If small buttons are involved, even thin leather makes it difficult. Silk liners are very sensitive, but also very slippery on their own.

Lowepro offers a $29.95 pair of black knit lycra photo gloves that have rubber-nubby covered fingers and palms, which solve that "slippery" problem. They are unlined and of medium thickness. They are thin enough to slip underneath a pair of heavier gloves in between shots, thus avoiding annoying switching back and forth.

Freehands makes gloves allow you to interact with all of your small high-tech devices with their especially clever gloves. The parts of the gloves covering the index fingers and thumbs can be folded back so that your actual fingers make contact with touch screens or buttons. The finger caps even have little magnets to keep them out of your way while you "work it". Choose from 3 models (all black); lycra stretch, priced at $20, micro fleece at $30, and fleece lined leather at $40.

Perhaps it's to late to get these as holiday gifts this year, but with 3 months of winter weather ahead of us, it could be very worthwhile to simply buy them for yourself!

They look surprisingly stylish, and are an inventive way to recycle at least part of a dead lens.

If I were a camera lens and someone dropped me from the top of the stairs, this is definitely how I would like to end up.

re:vision Focus and Aperture ring bracelets

Not surprisingly, lots of folks have leaped into digital and never looked back because they love the immediacy of digital, as well as the savings in time and film costs.

Typical reasons why Utatans flocked to digital:

"You can shoot as much as you want to and not worry about per frame costs". "You can store your work on a relatively small hard drive and forget about messy shoeboxes." "No more nasty chemicals down the drain, and no dust all over the negatives." "It's great to see your shots the moment you shoot them, leading to more experimentation and faster learning as a result."

Folks delving "back" into film seem to enjoy the artisanal feel of working with tangible materials, and to make use of the unique variety of sensitivities and characteristics available in film and transparencies.

So, let's get statistical. Take the Utata Poll and let us know just where you stand on the film vs. digital question.