We’re offering 3 PDN subscribers the chance to get an objective, constructive review by Web designers and  a client who reviews photo Web sites regularly.  We’ll publish photos from the three Web sites, and the reviewers’ critiques and suggestions, on PDNOnline.  

The three reviewers are:

Stella Kramer, freelance photo editor and consultant

Richard Koci Hernandez, photojournalist, Web design professor at University of California Berkeley’s journalism school

Brad Kuhns, VP/Customer Service, IPNStock and designer of photography and stock web sites

As in our July article, “Is Your Web Site Friendly or Frustrating to Clients?”, the three reviewers will offer their suggestions about image sizes, interface, ease of navigation, use of technology and search engine optimization.

For instructions on how to submit your Web site to get a free review, PDN subscribers should visit this page:  Have Your Web Site Reviewed on PDNOnline.  Send us your submission by noon EST on Monday July 26. That's when PDN editors will pick the 3 entries to send to our reviewers. 

Today's New York Times includes a story about a jury verdict and $20 million judgment against Corbis for stealing trade secrets and defrauding a Seattle start-up company called InfoFlows, which had been hired to help the stock agency develop an image fingerprinting and tracking system to fight online infringement.

It's a compelling David-and-Goliath story about an entrepreneur named Steve Stone who entrusted Corbis with his company's unpatented technology secrets back around 2005. Stone later claimed that Corbis was patenting that technology behind his back as their own intellectual property, as they were pumping him for information. 

"The irony is that Corbis is an intellectual property company, and here they are stealing someone else's intellectual property," Stone tells PDN.

One problem with the Times story, though, is that it is last summer's news. The jury verdict came down in August 2009. The trial court affirmed the verdict last February. And now, almost a year later, the Times glosses over the date of the verdict as if it happened yesterday (yeah, we missed it, too).

Corbis spokesperson Dan Perlet says Stone "has been seeking coverage on this for ages and finally convinced the NY Times." Stone says he just started speaking publicly about the case because his talks with Corbis to settle it (and avoid their legal appeal) finally broke down.

In a statement that Perlet provided, Corbis says the court applied an erroneous legal standard in upholding the jury verdict. "The terms [of a contract between Corbis and InfoFlows] were clear that Corbis would pay InfoFlows to build a license management solution conceived and designed by Corbis, and that Corbis would own any resulting intellectual property."

We'll see about that when the appeals court rules. And we'll try not to miss it this time.

An editor at The Economist  insists the decision to Photoshop a news photo for its June 19 cover was made for the sake of design, not politics. A version of the same photo was also used to illustrate an opinion piece critical of President Obama for being too harsh on BP.  

“If he sees any impropriety in politicians ordering executives about, upstaging the courts and threatening confiscation, he has not said so. The collapse in BP’s share price suggests that he has convinced the markets that he is an American version of Vladimir Putin, willing to harry firms into doing his bidding.”

Want tips on shooting on location, breaking into destination wedding photography, or managing your workflow on the go?  PDN and SanDisk have launched a new column, Ask the Experts, in which photographers share their expertise and answer questions from PDN readers about a variety of photographic problems. 

To start things off, Matt May and Suzanne Ricca are answering questions about workflow on the go. The duo behind Matthew May Photography have shot weddings and travel images in China, Europe, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas. They have a lot of experience capturing once in a lifetime shots under pressure, and they've learned how to deal with customs officials and airline baggage restrictions. 

Says May, "For overseas weddings, we team up to pair down the duplicates. For example, we might bring one 85mm lens instead of two, and share it. This saves us room that is needed for bringing additional computer gear that is required for overseas weddings — extra hard drives, USB hubs, cables, etc, that is needed to make back-ups on location as opposed to a local wedding where we could drive home and do all this work that night."

To learn more about May and Ricca and see some of their location shots on our Ask The Experts page. To submit a question or talk to May and Ricca about the challenges of working on location, email editor@pdnonline.com. 

In coming months, Ask the Experts will be hosted by other members of the SanDisk Extreme Team known for their nature photography, portraiture, post-production retouching, and shooting under extreme weather conditions. 

Edith Shain, who claimed to be the nurse embraced by a jubilant World War II sailor in the famous Times Square photograph by Life photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, has died. She was 91, according to several news organizations reporting her death.

Eisenstaedt's photo shows the sailor clutching the nurse as he kisses her, and captures the joy of the nation over the end of World War II. But the identities of the two subjects has always been in question because the subjects' faces are obscured, and Eisenstaedt never got their names. Several women claimed to be the nurse in the photograph years later when Life magazine tried to identify the subjects.

Shain said in interviews before her death that she had gone to Times Square to celebrate the victory over Japan on August 15, 1945 right after finishing her shift at a New York hospital. She didn't know the sailor who grabbed her and kissed her, but she told the AP in a 2008 interview that "I didn't mind because he was someone who had fought for me."

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We have lots of party pictures from the PDN Photo Annual Party, held May 20 at the Tribeca Skyline Studios!

We have so many photos, in fact, that if you were among the winners, contest judges, sponsors and friends who attended the PDN Photo Annual party, be sure to check out our online galleries of party photos.  You’re likely to find a photo of yourself.

Richard Marot took some great photos at the Sony Studio. (Offer people a few props and the assistance of fashion stylist Ian Heath, and they can’t wait to strike a pose.)  Brendan Remler also photographed guests throughout the evening, both from the party floor and up on the deck of the Tribeca Rooftop, where guests enjoyed views of the Empire State Building, the Hudson River and the moon. And PDN thanks all the guests who served as paparazzi that night, taking photos with the dozens of Instax cameras that FujiFilm gave away.

You can also see Richard Marot’s time lapse video, hosted by Vimeo, showing the party space from set up through clean up.  Thanks for the memories!

(Photo © Richard Marot/Sony)

Getty Images, which has been licensing a selected collection of Flickr images since March 2009, has opened its licensing doors to the Flickr masses.

Flickr members can now "opt in" to a program that makes their images available for licensing through Getty. That doesn't mean Getty will promote the work of every Flickr member who opts in, though. Instead, the agency will simply handle the licensing transaction whenever an image user clicks on a "Request to License" link next to the images of a participating Flickr member.

"Customers have been coming to us asking about [Flickr] imagery that we would never invite into the collection. An example would be an image of an obscure travel location that isn't the most genius picture," says Erin Sullivan, Getty's director of content development. "And some Flickr members get tired of people asking to use their images for free, which happens quite a bit. So this program addresses both sides of that equation."

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Photographer and educator Joe Deal, who was instrumental in the development of the landmark exhibition "New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape" in 1975 and was the subject of several solo shows, died June 18 at a hospice in Providence, Rhode Island. The cause of death was cancer, according to his gallery, Robert Mann Gallery in New York.

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Photographers Doug Gordon, Catherine Hall, Laurie Novak and Photoshelter’s Allen Murabayashi are among the speakers sharing their advice and business insights during PDN’s next Virtual Trade Show, taking place May 24 and 25. You can attend all these webinars for free.   Just  register in advance to get a password, then log in during the two-day virtual event.   Registrants can also visit vendor showing off new products,  answering questions and offering free samples — all from the comfort of  your desktop.