Elevation Photos Blog

Elevation Photos Lands Cover Of Life & Style Magazine!

Great to see today's issue of Life & Style Magazine gracing one of our photos on the cover!

 

We got hits in People, OK! and over the weekend a full page in the WSJ Weekend Edition  with Izsaac Mizrahi! 

 

 

(Kim Kardashian By Adam Orhcon/Elevation Photos)

 

 

(Kim Kardashian By Adam Orhcon/Elevation Photos)

Are Institutions Too Big Too Fail Or Just Too Big?

As much as I would love to have taken credit for the question posed to lead off this blog post, I really need to credit Zanny Minton Beddoes who works for the Economist.  She is from England but is a real Washington insider who writes about global finance, etc. The question she has posed about are institutions too big too fail or plainly just too big has never been more poignant now during these tumultous economic times.

It's interesting to see what's going on with Finance and Media companies.  All this talk about the government not bailing out CIT, letting Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley collapse while at the same time justifying billions to save the likes of AIG, Merryl Lynch and the the auto industry all seems like one big poker match.

Let's apply the question above to what appears to be happening in Media. The re-invention of AOL under new CEO Tim Armstrong seems to be heading towards a more leaner, smaller efficient company that will soon shed more jobs yet focus on having it's company employees do more with less. Gone are the overly ambitious days that AOL once used to command but instead admittingly saying to themselves we have become too big and need to become smaller.  I sense that the big media conglomerates will soon need to disband and break themselves apart to survive during these times.  So, spinning a company off like My Space may actually work out better for Fox and My Space.  Or GE selling off NBC to go on its own will probably allow for a leaner company that can make faster decisions that wouldn't hurt GE"s bottom line. 

The photo industry, I believe, will soon be headed towards this path of becoming smaller yet using already established larger networks as its feeder.  It makes sense, is more efficient for all parties involved and for the end user provides more variety, different content and better images to choose from.  The market realites for giants like AP and Getty will soon lend themselves to become smaller, more efficient and using third party content as their main suppliers.  Sort of what it was like before the whole binge of having wholly owned content seem to take over everyone's mindset. For now, and I stress for now, they might have the best networks for distribution but technology, innovation and lower cost points will soon change this. That's when it will become interesting.

Until then, it will be interesting to see what happens to some of the larger media companies out there.  Will Microsoft and Yahoo merge? Or they better off just producing web content and feeding it in to Bing?  When will Movie Studios start merging? And what happens to the indy film market? All issues that I think we will start reading and hearing more about over the next 2 quarters.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

 

With an image like this, in times like these with a person of this stature makes me feel like we as a country just took 3 steps back after finally moving 5 steps forward with the election of Pres. Obama.  Race relations in this country are so out of whack I can't begin to explain and it's something dear to my heart that should be on everyone's mind.  As a minority myself, it's even that much more frustrating to see something like this happen.  More on that later.

What has come out of this was not only this image but the one shot and distributed by DEMOTIX (www.demotix.c0m)  with Prof. Gates being taken away in cuffs. You may all have your thoughts about citizen journalism, its place, its quality, it's role in the world of professional news agencies but no one can't deny the power it has had, it will have and what role it will be moving forward in our lives and how we, as citizens, view the world.  Because not only does that image evoke thoughts and emotions about race in this country but it also says alot about the society we live in. I find myself more interested, to some degree, about the person who took the image. Was he/she black, white, asian?  Did they take the photo because they thought it was wrong or because they thought they can somehow make money from it?  Did someone say to that person, " wow, you should really send that image out, you can make money from it" OR , " that's a powerful image and you should share that to the world because of the injustice it shows." My own thoughts about these images aren't as important as what they represent. If images can speak a thousand words then I would hope that looking at these images can spark a discussion that can find a place in Cambridge, Kentucky and even in LA.

And for some reason I can't help to think about the industry we are in. Who runs it, what the race make up is and why?  Is the equipment too expensive for minorites to purchase? Are there enough programs in inner cities that help budding students to become photo journalists? What does Canon, Kodak and Nikon do to make that leap for inner city kids to even consider photo journalism a profession.  I know Getty Images does some great work with grants but what about everyone else?  Why is it that every major photo agency I have ever worked not one minority is in executive management positions?  What does that say about their recruitment efforts and why is it so hard to fill those positions with qualified, sesoned minorities.

These are hard questions with no easy answers.  What I do know is that the entertainment event world is skewed mostly to male caucasian photographers who dominate the industry and control a lot of the access.  Why was a recent award show based on a minority network photographed  by white photographers?  Does it matter? Or doesn't it? Is that the fault of the network or they weren't given a choice?  Why does it seem that minority photographers aren't taken seriously?  Why doesn't PDN ever do a feature on the lack of minorites at Corbis, Getty, Reuters, AP?  All fair questions in my view. But does anyone care?

I hope and pray that society as a whole will learn from what took place the other day with Prof. Gates. But until any of us challenge the industries, communities and people we know to make changes then might as well hand cuff each other. 

What's the value of photography on the web?

 I hear it all the time, everyday, every minute of every day.  What should images be valued at, priced at for usage on the internet?

Is an exclusive image on TMZ's home page more valuable than if it were to land on a home page of a lesser known internet site?  Is there a difference between a site that comanda a million hits versus one with half a million?

Some say yes, others say know while the metrics of figuring it all out seems more like a poker game with  a bunch of " so called" experts who think their solution makes sense.  Content generators asking for more, web sites/portals paying less but drawing the traffic.  A picture is worth NOTHING these days if there isn't a story behind it, fact checkers, verifies and the lot. Invetibaly, users want to know what the image is about , where it was and the story behind the photo.  If you think about it, people read stories with no images just because that's the hunter gatherer in all us us who want to enrich themselves with information (some useless, some not).  People won't just flip through exclusive and non exclusive images just because they can.  What all of us want is what isn't happening now which is a million readers reading about a story driven by one of our images and being equally compensated. 

It is just too early for one formula to be instituted and everyone saying, " yes, of course that makes sense to get 20 cents off an image using a technology I didn't create but someone else did." On the other hand, content generators will want to believe the polar opposite," 20 cents is ridiculous, it should be $4 instead based on this new formula that has been created that says it will work in our favour!"

I don't have a solution and I am more than happy to be open and transparent about that but what I will honest about is the fact that no way in hell will Elevation submit to a pricing model that pays cents on dollar when I know the image should be worth more.  And while there are companies that want many of our images to land in their space, I tell said images to think twice about entering that business plan because something tells me you are being taken for a ride that actualy costs you more than what you are getting back.

These are questions all photographers are asking  and it's what's driving many conversations these days.  It's just too early to tell how the transition from print to digital will shake out in the end. But for some reason, the price of images seemed to have taken its own course and driven itself right out of f the edge of a cliff!

Saturday Morning Follies

It's been such a dead event week on both coasts due to the July 4th /Michael Jackson over photographed week that I thought this might be the only post that has nothing to do with Elevation Photos or Photography...don't worry our event coverage and assignments are kicking in starting next week!  And no, I didnt cover any MJ funeral events.  All the wire services did an exceptional job and the LA Times are always solid and did quality coverage as well....

 

FIRST-  I found the best FACEBOOK news feed editing tool that only lets you see the people you want to know about when they eat a ham sandwich and drink a coke. The rest of them won't populate the feed but it won't take them off your list....not that I care anymore about Facebook ( when will the fad die off?) updates but this will make them easier to swallow and make reading them more interesting 

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-filter-out-facebook-friends-without-them-knowing-2009-6#step-1-1

 

 

SECOND -  I haven't bought a Kindle yet ( just wait the price will drop faster then the I PHONE did and will eventually be $99) but when I do I am not sure I will subscribe to any of these newspapers until they start charging on the internet or shut off free service on my Blackberry or I Touch.

 

Having said that, if 500,000 people buy the NYT monthly subcription rate at $13.99 that comes to a total of $6,995,000 a year for the Grey Lady!  As print moves to digital on all fronts the question becomes how much will images cost a year from now? ...5 years from now...food for thought..

 

 

 

 

U.S.

The Denver Post Kindle Price: $5.99	The Baltimore Sun Kindle Price: $5.99	USA TODAY Kindle Price: $11.99	Orlando Sentinel Kindle Price: $5.99	The New York Times Kindle Price: $13.99
Los Angeles Times Kindle Price: $9.99	The Boston Globe Kindle Price: $9.99	San Jose Mercury News Kindle Price: $5.99	The Wall Street Journal Kindle Price: $14.99	Houston Chronicle Kindle Price: $5.99

International

Shanghai Daily Kindle Price: $5.99	Handelsblatt Kindle Price: $14.99	The International Herald Tribune Kindle Price: $9.99	The Irish Times Kindle Price: $5.99	Diariocritico Kindle Price: $9.99
Corriere Della Sera Kindle Price: $9.99	The Independent Kindle Price: $14.99	The Times Kindle Price: $9.99	Frankfurter Allgemeine Kindle Price: $14.99	Le Monde Kindle Price: $14.99

Supply Side Photonomics!

Now more than ever, the dearth of images available to photo buyers/editors is unbelievably overwhelming!

The battle being waged right now to get images published is as intense and challenging now more than ever for everyone in the photo business.  Other than the big three (although equally as difficult), the lines are being drawn in some cases between photo agencies who feel entitled to being in business, those who believe they have worked hard and earned the right to stay in business and those who are completely new to the industry and want to use technology to carve out a piece of the pie for themselves using content off of other people’s back.  Coupled with the fact that technology has caught up with the professional and the price point for launching an agency has been dramatically reduced.  Yet, even for those agencies who have unique and original content it seems as if those opportunities are few and far between.  The spaces are getting filled in quickly.

There are arguments on all sides of the coin about the state of the industry at the moment. And sometimes the questions that have been poised from all of us have often times been more important than the answers themselves.  For instance, the obvious ones such as is there enough demand for all these images?  Are we pricing ourselves out of the market?  Too high?  Too low?  As a freelance photographer are you diversifying yourself?  What does agency loyalty mean? Does it matter? Is the fight for 5 more cents from a blogger worth the fight at all? And while all this is taking place at grease lightning speed, the chatter in the photosphere world rages on about what the future holds for all types of media as we know it. Some of it realistic, while most of it tangential at best.   We just don’t know. Nobody does.

What we do know is this; suppliers being harangued by the buyers over pricing and suppliers not innovating enough to produce unique and quality content. Mediocrity is being rewarded to all of us by what images are being priced at, the value of our content and what separates this photographer from that one.  All of a sudden the gate keepers of the content have been flipped over and taken for a ride all the while no one asking the tough questions and wondering how the hell did we get here?  It’s almost as if the train left the station but no one asked what direction is was going in.  This, I am certain of, needs to change and it will.  The how, why, when and where’s still need to be decided on but I have no doubt it will change. For in order for this industry to survive, hard choices need to be made, leaders need to emerge and the old playbook needs to be thrown out.  Passengers need to pay, conductors need to responsibly oversee and the train needs to get back on the right track.

But the buyers you ask? What about them? Are their decisions based on price? Is the sea of images just too much to swim in? Has the dwindling economy forced buyers to purchase this quantity in bulk while sacrificing quality?

As agencies, we need to continually ask them these questions. We need to challenge them to go left instead of right. On our end we need to produce better images, unique content and hold the value of these images as hard as one can.  While not easy at all, it’s something that will truly separate one agency from another.  We are not in the commodity business as some may argue. We are content generators who provide a product that drives millions of people to your website, home page or publication. While some are excellent at it, others not so much. The next 6 months are critical and I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  The industry not only needs convergence driven by innovation but most importantly it needs many of us to think hard about our business, where it needs to go and how we need to get it there.

On that note, have a great July 4^th weekend!