PDN Pulse and PDN Photo of the Day have both been named among the winners of LIFE.com’s first annual Photo Blog Awards.
The winning blogs, selected from more than 300 sites, include sites that report on the work of professional photographers, including the New York Times Lens Blog, Time Magazine’s Lightbox, and PDN Pulse, which judges cited for its “on point stories” by “seasoned editors” (“seasoned” makes us feel slightly weather-beaten, but we’ll take the compliment). Also honored were large-format photography blogs like The Atlantic’s In Focus and PDN Photo of the Day, which was praised for its “global reach and sky-standards”; online magazines showcasing photo essays, including Burn, acurator.com, and American Suburb X; and blogs that bring a critical eye to recent photography exhibitions and photo essays, BagNewsNotes and Conscientious.
The full list of winners can be found at Life.com.
Congratulations to all the winners. We’re delighted to be in the company of so many blogs we admire and enjoy regularly.
Getty Images has announced its acquisition of PicScout, an Israel-based company that developed image identification and tracking technology that is widely used by stock photo distributors to prevent unauthorized use of images.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, and the company declined to comment on a report that the deal was worth about $20 million.
Getty said in a statement announcing the deal that it will “leverage PicScout’s technology in developing new image identification tools for customers.”
The company says it will continue to make PicScout’s services available to its competitors. And Getty CEO Jonathan Klein says, “Getty Images does not plan to change pricing as a result of the transaction.”
Corbis, a PicScout customer and one of Getty’s largest competitors, said through a spokesperson, “We don’t really have a comment on this [acquisition of PicScout] as it was just announced.”
Here’s something we somehow missed during the tumult that was CES 2011. A 31MP concept camera that looks like a combination iPhone and EVIL digital camera.
Called a WVIL (Weevil?) camera, the concept product is allegedly built around a mobile operating system similar to what you’d find in most apps-laden smart phones.
And what does the acronym WVIL stand for? Wireless Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens camera, according to the below video. The designers have purportedly built a 31MP, full-frame CMOS sensor into the removable lens. When you take off the lens, it acts as a wireless viewfinder, sending live video footage back to the camera body.
Yes, this is all kinds of vaporware bull-cocky but we think it’s wrong that some people have labeled this YouTube clip and the camera concept as fakes. Though the video looks staged, it appears to come from a real prototype design company, the Seattle-based Artefact Group.
The WVIL concept (here’s the website) is also quite clever and camera manufacturers who have seen the point-and-shoot market get eaten alive by smart phones that let you easily share photos via wireless networks, might want take note.
(Our favorite part of the below clip is the unexpected cameos by PC Magazine‘s PJ Jacobowitz and Picture Business‘ Mike McEnaney.)
Here is a trailer for the promotional video produced by Magnum Photos to promote Bob Dylan’s 2009 record, “Together Through Life.” When Dylan’s management contacted Magnum Photos about licensing an image from Bruce Davidson’s iconic “Brooklyn Gang” series for the cover of the CD, Magnum’s director of publishing, broadcast and film, Michael Shulman, pitched Dylan and his record label, Columbia Records, on the idea of producing a multimedia piece to promote the album. Producer Adrian Kelterborn, a member of Magnum’s in-house multimedia production team, Magnum In Motion, worked with Shulman and the label on the piece. It was shown on Amazon.com to draw attention to the album release.
This and other image licensing projects were featured in “(Re)Sales Opportunities,” in the January 2011 Money Issue of PDN. Subscribers can log in to PDNonline to read the story here.
Photographer and “Strobist” blogger David Hobby noticed TechCrunch grabbed one of his photos from his “all rights reserved” Flickr stream for use in a blog post today. He’s not happy about it and called the AOL technology news Web site out on taking his work without permission.
“Tell you what. Just ask me for permission to use this picture in these comments and I will grant it,” Hobby wrote in the comments below the TechCrunch article, which was about Twitter’s new look. “[H]aving [my photographs] taken from a place where there is even an ‘all rights reserved’ notice RIGHT NEXT TO THE PHOTO is not cool—even if you run a linked credit.”
Given the subject of the TechCrunch article, Hobby is appropriately also using his Twitter feed to point out the copyright violation to his followers.
Update: TechCrunch and the author of the article have apologized for the infringement and asked permission to use the photo.
A year ago, we asked PDN readers to nominate the 30 most influential photographers of the decade, and then stirred up a hornets’ nest when we posted the results: The voting put popular bloggers such as Becker and Jasmine Star well above photographic pioneers like Robert Frank and William Eggleston. Passions ran so high that we had to shut down reader comments after a few days.
So why would we want to stir things up again? Because Google Labs has posted an amazing and addictive tool–called “Books Ngram Viewer”– that allows you to search for phrases (and names of people!) published in millions of books over the last 500 years, and plot how often those phrases (or names) appear in books over time. (Keep reading to see the charts…) (more…)
Film Processing Timer for iPhone, iPod Touch & iPad
The Massive Dev Chart app combines the world’s largest film development database from Digitaltruth Photo with an advanced multi-step timer, creating what is probably the best tool ever made for film development.
Its smart and easy-to-use interface includes access to over 8,000 preset development times which can be adjusted for temperature compensation, preferred processing methods and customized agitation sequences.
The timer provides separate optional steps for Development, Stop Bath, Fixing, Hypo Clear and Rinsing. Each step shows a progress bar and continuous display of the elapsing time, accurate to 1/10th of a second. Audio and visual indicators can be set for agitation sequences and alarms notify the end of every stage of development. Other features include a dilution calculator, a facility to save your favorites, and safelight modes.
Multi step development timer helps you to achieve consistent development results and convenient sound notifications remind you to agitate your tank while listening to your favorite iTunes music.
The Massive Dev Chart app can be downloaded from the App Store.
One of the central questions of the seminar “10 Things You Should Know About Magazine Publishing Today,” which took place yesterday afternoon at the PDN Photo Plus Expo in New York, was what exactly defines the term “magazine” in the current media marketplace?
Moderator Michelle Dunn Marsh, co-publisher of Aperture magazine, put the question to the seminar panelists, which included Rolling Stone senior photo editor Sacha Lecca, photographer Lisa Kereszi, New Yorker photo editor Whitney Johnson, and Bonnier Corp.’s Gregg Hano, publisher of Popular Photography, American Photo, Popular Science and other magazines.
Dunn Marsh offered two definitions for the term magazine from a pair of sources. One progressive definition acknowledged that magazine companies are branching into tablet editions; online articles, videos, multimedia slideshows and other features; standalone special issues and other forms in order to reach readers. The other defined the magazine as a strictly print product. All of the panelists appeared to agree on the former definition, and a great deal of the seminar was spent contemplating evolving online and tablet media.
This year, LaCie will be exhibiting its range of professional solutions at the PDN PhotoPlus International Conference and Expo at booth #479.
LaCie’s external storage products have always been popular with photographers, and our new products are no exception.
The LaCie 2big USB 3.0 is a great way to get capacity, speed, and security; it features up to 4TB of storage and three RAID modes for flexibility. It’s recyclable, eco-friendly, and compatible with USB 2.0, making it the most complete USB 3.0 storage device on the market.
For photographers or small offices that need even more storage, the LaCie 5big Backup Server and 5big Storage Server are both ideal solutions. Delivering seamless, full-featured backup for up to 10 PCs and 25 Macs, the 5big Backup Server offers robust performance and Microsoft storage software. With up to 10TB of capacity scalable through USB and eSATA connections, the 5big Backup Server offers total storage to back up all your office’s workstations. It’s even compatible with Time Machine.
If your office is a bit larger, consider the LaCie 5big Storage Server. It’s a professional desktop file-sharing server designed to manage file-sharing activities for 25 to 100 PC, Mac, or Linux workstations, and can even manage more. For a full range of accessibility, the 5big Storage Server supports major network protocols such as SMB, AFP, NFS, and iSCSI. Additionally, HTTP and FTP accessibility means that your data can be accessed from anywhere.
But we’re more than just storage here at LaCie—we also focus on professional color solutions like the LaCie 324i LCD Monitor, which features a P–IPS panel for a uniform presentation. Its color is rated at an impressive 102% NTSC and 98% AdobeRGB. With such wide gamuts, graphic artists can be confident that the 324i gives them true colors that maintain the integrity of their work. The 324i stand has an easy 90º pivot, allowing for the flexibility to work in portrait or landscape modes. The 324i’s IPS panel also has a 178° viewing angle, which means that the display is visible from multiple axes without a change in the picture or losing any of its millions of colors.
Harvard law professor and Creative Commons co-founder Lawrence Lessig has responded on Huffington Post to the brouhaha over his call for copyright reform two weeks ago at the Vimeo festival in New York.
As we reported here, Lessig called on re-mix artists to push for changes in the law to make it easier to re-purpose, transform and re-mix the copyrighted works of others to make new works. With criticism raining down upon him ever since, he used Huffington Post to elaborate on his provocative and–I dare say–not entirely unreasonable position.
As he points out, he’s not advocating for the starvation of photographers or other creators, much less the destruction of civilization. He’s appealing for changes to copyright law that enable a thriving culture of creativity in the digital age–especially by amateur artists–while still preserving the profit incentive of commercial artists, including photographers. (Creative Commons says its licenses “provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for creators, artists, and educators.”)
There are, of course, copyright hard-liners who see re-mix as a step onto a slippery slope. Some won’t tolerate so much as a discussion. Lessig called out a couple of them, citing their ad hominem attacks against him on Twitter. (The sticks-and-stones title of his post, though, is “The ‘Imbecile’ and ‘Moron’ Responds: On the Freedoms of Re-Mix Creators”.)
Lessig refers to our story in his piece, saying: “The inferno was ignited after the talk when a reporter covering the panel quoted the language I used… without making clear the context within which I was speaking.” Lessig also says his words were “ripped from their context and intended meaning.” For the record, the PDNPulse story explained the context (Ah hem. Link please, Professor Lessig!)
That said, his lengthy explication sheds more light on the nuances of his arguments. And it’s worth noting that “the inferno” he complains of no doubt helped him take his case to a bigger public forum, where it arguably deserve a lively debate.
