Instagram Lessons Learned: Vote With Your IP

Here’s our take on the Instagram debacle of recent days.

If we have learned anything from this egregious rights-grab on users’ assets [link to original story], followed by the quick back-track in the face of widespread outrage, it is this: social media is great, but do it with your eyes wide open. Be very careful who you share with and understand their motives.

© Hill Street Studios/evolveimages.com

We would all tell children to be wary of who they trust to go for a walk with. And yet a billion of us have gaily uploaded our lives to Facebook – and anything it cares to buy, such as Instagram – with rarely a glance at the small print.

At Evolve, we are 100 per cent behind the sentiments expressed in PACA’s letter to Instagram. [See below.] But we know that the evolution of digital media will continue to stretch the boundaries of the personal and the public, bringing culture and commerce into conflict. We are going to have more stories like this.

So if there is one guide point it is READ THE SMALL PRINT. Small print is rarely small to help the reader.

If there is a second guide point, it is ACT FAST AND STRONG when anybody does an Instagram. There are other good platforms out there that take images and offer effects, and there are services to help you strip that content out of Instagram and put it elsewhere.

Vote with your IP!

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Letter from  PACA to Instagram:

DECEMBER 20, 2012

Via Email and First Class Mail

Kevin@instagram.com

and support@instagram

Kevin Systrom,CEO

Instagram 181 South Park Street, Suite 2

San Francisco, CA 94107

Re: Instagram’s Terms of Service

Dear Mr. Systrom:

The undersigned trade associations, representing professional photographers, graphic artists, illustrators, visual journalists, videographers and other content creators and their licensing representatives, have received numerous objections regarding the proposed change to Instagram’s terms of use which provide Instagram with a perpetual right to sell users’ content without payment or notification and further requires the content owner to represent and warrant to Instagram that Instagram’s use will not violate any third party rights, including publicity and privacy rights. We are pleased that Instagram is listening to the complaints and we are willing to work with them and review any proposed terms to avoid new terms that are confusing or misleading. For example, it is unreasonable to expect any content creator to have obtained releases from third parties depicted in the content, or to indemnify Instagram for any third party rights for any commercial use of the content.

To be clear, even if a service states that the content owner retains copyright to content uploaded, the undersigned visual art associations object to terms of use which require users to grant the service provider with broad perpetual rights in the content that exceed the rights necessary for the user to enjoy the service, and in particular any grant of commercial use to either the service provider or any third party which may violate third party publicity rights. Instagram and Facebook are platforms for communities to share photographs for personal and professional use. Any grant of rights to commercialize photographs without informed consent of the creator and/or payment violates the norms of this community, including the rights of photographers, artists and their licensing representatives under our copyright system, as well as the rights of third parties.

Sincerely,

Nancy E. Wolff, on behalf of

Picture Archive Council of America, Inc (PACA), The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), Professional Photographers of America (PPA), National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), American Photographic Artists (APA) Graphic Artists Guild (GAG)

Putting the Photographer Back Into Stock

[Originally published in the Fall 2012 edition of Photo Media Magazine, this post comes from Lewis Blackwell, Chief Creative Officer of Evolve Images.]

Here’s an idea from the past, reborn:  it’s time to invest in stock photography. Not as a distant investor, but as a photographer.

With massive deals going through to buy up or float some of the industry giants in recent weeks (Getty Images, Fotolia, Shutterstock, all in play), there is clearly a presumption of good money for somebody. Why can’t it be so for photographers again?

After years of decline in artist earnings, and artist share, that may seem unlikely. But you can’t have great photography without a good photographer or two. It may actually serve the customer to encourage the better photographers to get back into the industry after years of top guys moving out to be replaced by crowdsourcing and photo-factory producers. Or, at least, those customers prepared to pay for quality would appreciate some targeted efforts on their behalf.

© Beowulf Sheehan/evolveimages.com

While the volume end of the market is a huge fight around low-pricing, subscription packages, and the rest, there are many customers who are not all about price. Customers who buy by the image, not by the numbers but use their eyes first rather than their calculator. They may only occasionally resort to buying the $100,000+ license that went through recently at one major agency, but good license fees are there to be had. The industry will need to reshape itself further to better serve the interests of the valuable license rather than the bulk purchase. In an age where there are numerous sites offering millions of poor images, the need from the better class of customer is for quality,  curated images, rather than sites that are lightly filtered image depositories.

This can be an opening for photographers and suggests we may be at another turning point. One where prices go up not down, and image supply shifts from quantity back to quality.  We can see signs of this even at  microstock level, where new more expensive collections are being offered as a way to both raise revenues quickly and build brand difference.

© Kimberly Sue Walker/evolveimages.com

The real opportunity may be for new players. There is a rising generation of talented photographers who are looking for what stock  can mean in their portfolio but are uncomfortable with much of the business model. They don’t want to give up their images and see them shifted across licensing type and end up in a subscription package. They do not want to lose their reputation and rights with pile ’em high corporate policies. They want their pictures handled respectfully, with rights managed service, and they want a relationship with those who sell the images. They prefer to see good prices over chasing volume at all cost.

And so now there is an emerging range of stock agencies that cherish the photographer concerns, respect their identity, and look to maximise the value in each image. Instead of commoditizing the artist, agencies can work more like a representative. This may include features such as photographer directories for assignment services, as we have just launched at Evolve Images. With search engines and shifting SEO rules at times weakening the grip of the large players, there is the opportunity for new groupings and networks to compete.

The secret for the photographer looking to move into or  return to stock is to assess where it is best to put their images. Do they have an appetite for producing a lot cheaply that can compete at the bottom or middle?  Or should they focus on bringing a few well-crafted and more individual images to market?  In general, it pays to know your niche and target it ruthlessly. That doesn’t necessarily mean a narrow range of subject matter, but it does mean identifying how competitive the image might be. Technically, the more information and finesse in the image then the more potential there might be for sale. On the other hand, there is a growing market for iPhone images, which often have a content and aesthetic that is refreshingly outside of the standard stock shot.

© Joson/evolveimages.com

The savvy stock photographer has always leveraged other resources, other productions and facilities, to ensure the shoot is highly economical. But there are new ways of doing this – whether playing with new capture devices, or putting together new kinds of street-casting and the like.  But the artist should also pay attention the post-production, in particular their role in ensuring the metadata is all it could be. Keywords and description embedded within the image are key to the sale – the image is found and largely understood by what tags are there.

For photographers already in the main stock photo market, the emerging quality niche is an opportunity for them to pull out a reserve line of their best work and try for higher pricing. For professional photographers outside of stock, this is the logical part of the market to start in – a place where your talent and investment may be defended rather than eroded.

As the total demand for stock photography worldwide continues to expand (in sheer volume of sales, if not $), the opportunity and pressure grows for a more differentiated market, with more varied offerings. This opens the path for the new kind of stock photographer within a new kind of agency. Together they can realise the value that clients place in the imagery, and by better targeting of client niches, realise the greater value that some customers will pay for.

The highly-curated, rights-managed world is something we are pledged to at Evolve Images, where I am Chief Creative Officer and a partner, but there are also other agencies with related values.  There are other players that I admire and together I would like to think we could be a small movement, one where a photographer gets a better deal and the client gets a better experience.

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Lewis Blackwell is Chief Creative Officer of Evolve Images. He is also the editor-at-large at publisher PQ Blackwell, where his books include Photowisdom, The Life and Love of Trees, and More Than Human (a monograph on the work of photographer Tim Flach).

Ron Fehling: Seeing Beautiful Light

Ron Fehling is an accomplished advertising photographer creating images for BMW, Coca Cola, Kelloggs, Nike, Walmart and many others. When Ron first approached us about representing his work we were thrilled. Rather than provide us outtakes from older shoots, Ron immediately went to work and produced a series of new images now available exclusively from Evolve. We asked Ron to share with us his creative approach and the backstory on how these images were created:

“Originally from the Okanagan in British Columbia, I initially started a pursuit towards architecture, but photography a side passion pulled me towards the world of advertising. After photography schooling in Vancouver, I relocated to Toronto. With the help of several exceptionally talented creatives & crew, we created several award winning ad campaigns and editorial spreads during the last many years. The West Coast lifestyle and Vancouver pulled me back, where I now reside. When I’m not shooting, you can find me either on the snow, or the water enjoying my other passions, snowboarding, windsurfing & surfing!”

© Ron Fehling/evolveimages.com

“For me it’s really all about the light. That’s what I love to see and capture. I get excited about shooting a still life to large complex set-up as long as we can create or capture gorgeous light! With this image it’s was shot as the light broke through the clouds, but yet still dark enough for the shine of the oncoming headlights to reflect off the the wet road. And captured all in an instant with the iPhone!”

© Ron Fehling/evolveimages.com

“The sun crosses my kitchen counter beautifully in the summer, making everything I cook look awesome! Take a simple pasta dinner with few fresh basil leaves off a plant on my deck, add the evening sun and voila! A quick rustic food shot of spaghetti.”

© Ron Fehling/evolveimages.com

“An almost daily occurrence for some of us, something we don’t really think about, but still can be photographed in simple beautiful way. I’m usually not a big fan of direct flash, but seems to work in this iphone image, as the small phone flash creates more of spot effect around the chin, and falls away beautifully to create shape and contrast on the face.”

© Ron Fehling/evolveimages.com

“The combination of the late day blue window light with the warm desk lamp on my glass desk, peaked my interest again.  Capturing a simple daily object we may see, but not really notice, as the shapes and tones created by the different light sources and shadows makes it interesting.”

© Ron Fehling/evolveimages.com

“Again viewing the natural window light streaming in across the bathroom sink set up for a nice punchy shot of some toothpaste on a brush. Using similar toned props, adds to the blue feeling of the overall shot.

In all these everyday items, it’s the light that makes the mundane interesting. It’s seeing beautiful light occurring naturally and being able to capture it before it disappears keeps my passion of photography exciting as the watching the first images appear in the darkroom.”

See more of Ron’s images on Evolve.

The Nature of Images

‘Art is the affirmation of life’, so Alfred Stieglitz once said to Ansel Adams.

And at Evolve Images that’s how we feel when we get to see great photography.

As we’ve been editing into our collection some conceptual landscapes of late, thoughts were  in the zone to inspire reflection on Ansel Adams. A keystroke or two delivered a discovery on YouTube, where you can watch 20 minutes of a beautiful archive documentary:

It starts with a wonderful sequence of Adams playing the piano (he first trained to be a concert pianist)  before then giving a detailed breakdown of the approach he took to his work. We see extensive kit, which  he packed into an eight-seater limousine with roof platform for shooting from. We see him on location, exploring and composing an image. And later we see him dodging and burning prints in the darkroom, his hands moving with a grace similar to that he showed on the piano keys.

Technology-wise it is a world away from how most images are made today – and yet has a strange relevance. For all the change in tools, and for all that Adams was a very practical and rigorous man in his work,  the prevailing truth is that art transcends its materials and its media. What Adams saw and captured in his images is as powerful today. It is in part thanks to his contribution to environmental awarenesss that many of the views seen are little changed today.

And, of course, the artistry, the concepts, and the documentary of the images all survive as powerful forces that transcend their method of manufacture.

The same survival measurements chart whether we make powerful communications today. For any image, or ad, or magazine cover, and so on, we have to ask ourselves: Is it fresh, meaningful, truthful in some regard? It has to hit those filters if it is to stick in our minds and emerge from the innumerable other images that flow through the digital ether.

And so, recharged, back to the editing… we’ll post a gallery or two of our best landscapes soon but on this occasion we commend you to try and find a moment to enjoy the Adams film.

post by Lewis Blackwell, Chief Creative Officer, Evolve Images