Landscape, Nature and Travel Photography

I’m a bit overdue in my review of Digital Railroad and PhotoShelter… so overdue in fact my review will cover how each of these services died rather than what they offered photographers.

Both PhotoShelter Collection and Digital Railroad aimed at bucking the trends of the traditional photo stock market giving more to photographers on each sale. Unfortunately for both of these companies they were not positioned to weather a fast declining economy and shrinking credit market.

Photoshelter Collection

In the case of the PhotoShelter Collection near the 1 year mark of the service most members were surprised to learn that PhotoShelter would be abandoning Collection. As to the reasons why Read more… »

Some very exciting services and applications launched today including a new search engine Cuil.com and Adobe Lightroom 2. Having used Adobe Lightroom 2 Beta I’ve been very impressed and opted to buy Lightroom 2 at the first notice of its availability. Unfortunately after purchasing the Lightroom 2 Upgrade per the install PDF I was unable to get the program started. I was not given the option to reference my existing install and my Lightroom 1.0 serial number was not considered valid. Later I received an email that provided the upgrade serial number. Once entered then my old serial number was entered and then the application loaded. If only the install notes set my expectations correctly. Adobe gets the Good and the Bad reference in my post.

The Ugly is reserved for the new search engine Cuil. Cuil was getting tons of press today and was being blindly praised as the new kid on the block to challenge Google. As most found out today who tried Cuil it was far from impressive and probably could be considered to have one of the worst Web 2.0 lauches of all time. Why the hate on Cuil?

As noted in my first observation of the search engine via my post on FriendFeed:
“Not very impressed with Cuil.com and the seemingly random association of photos to results. Very confusing”

I wasn’t alone in thinking so. Later as I delved into the search engine even more I became even more troubled. When searching for my name in Cuil I knew it wouldn’t be pretty. There are two other Jim Goldstein’s that come up often when searching my name. Lucky for me! One is Jim Goldstein and his Band of Angels. Doh! The other is an eccentric Jim Goldstein with a house often featured in architecture magazines and in sports magazines due to his fanatical attendance to various pro basketball games. Flip a coin as to which is most inappropriate to my photography oriented web site. Sure enough the architecture/basketball Jim Goldstein has his image associated with my web site in Cuil search results. Even worse someone else’s photo of the Golden Gate Bridge is associated with a commercial site of mine.

My two biggest complaints…
First I don’t want another persons photo associated with my web site. The last thing I need is someone confusing my site with that of some eccentric.

Second I don’t want my commercial efforts being negatively impacted because inferior photography is being displayed and randomly associated with my commercial site.

I wrote Cuil about my concerns and due to the frenetic nature of their launch today they never wrote back. If and when they do I’ll follow up on this post. I later found out through another post that they were blaming much of what was being perceived as inaccurate results on technical problems due to a larger than expected spike in traffic.  See Cuil shows us how not to launch a search engine via CNET

Today definitely wasn’t dull. Upgrade problems aside Lightroom 2 is worth a look and if you’re a glutton for punishment check out Cuil.com to see what kind of whacky results are being tied together for your site or photography.

Technorati Tags: Cuil, Lightroom, upgrade, search, technology, software

The 18th episode of EXIF and Beyond has been released.

This episode features an interview with Leila Boujnane, CEO and co-founder of Idée. Discussed is the recent release of Idée’s image search engine TinEye. Although out for only 4 weeks now and in a private Beta, TinEye has captured the attention and imagination of the photographic community. Leila discusses the current capabilities and future direction of this groundbreaking image search engine.

Need an invite to TinEye? I’m happy to share those I have or go directly to TinEye and submit a request.

Download the latest episodes:
EXIF and Beyond: Leila Boujnane

For the non-iTune listeners a streaming version of this podcast can be accessed here.

Technorati Tags: EXIF and Beyond, podcast, interview, Leila Boujnane, Idee, TinEye, photo, image, search engine, technology

Up until recently it’s been nearly impossible to know for certain where your online photos might end up on the Internet. As we’ve heard over the years a growing vocal minority will be the first to jump on photographers complaining about online image theft stating “Get used to it. You put it online. That’s how it is.” This argument is anything but true and frustrates the hell out of photographers who know better.

It’s become clear there is a growing interest in new technologies to address the current “wild west” nature of image theft on the Internet by stock agencies and individual photographers alike. Google recently released a research paper on VisualRank that like text search assigns a weighting and ranking to images while also leveraging image-recognition software methods. Although Google is the 800 pound gorilla of search they’ve been beat to the punch by Idée Inc. who recently released a private beta of TinEye. As you’ll see in TinEye’s demonstration video they’ve created an image search that is as simple as a Google search. All an end user has to do is reference an image online or upload a low resolution image and TinEye returns results of where that image is currently found online. What is most impressive is their image matching technology that will match similar images even if they’ve been cropped, resized or Photoshop’d.

I am a born cynic, but after putting TinEye to the test with some of my photos I’ve quickly become a believer and can’t wait for them to expand their search index and hopefully implement a Google Alert like service. At the moment they’ve indexed a relatively small portion of the Internet (roughly 500,000,000 images), but they’re asking beta testers to recommend sites to index. The service at the moment is rather narrow, but I can see where this has legs to quickly expand.

Just to show an example I decided to search one of my more commonly referenced photos of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in New York City. The blog post containing this image has been accessed nearly 50,000 times and it is one of my most popular photos. With out a doubt I knew this would end up somewhere it was not supposed to. In the past by monitoring my web site log I’ve caught a few people using the image with out my knowledge, so I figured this would be a perfect example to test on TinEye.

Click to Enlarge

Sure enough I referenced the image on my blog and found a few more sites (see above) that had slipped by me who have been using my photo without my knowledge or permission.

Granted the jury is still out with TinEye, but my initial experience has been a good one. The simplicity of the interface, the image-recognition capabilities and speed at which it finds images has caught my eye. I’ll definitely be watching TinEye as it develops and provide feedback through its beta stage.

If you’re curious to try TinEye let me know in your comment to this post. I have 50 invites that I can share.

Technorati Tags: copyright, photo, image, search, theft, technology, TinEye

The 16th and 17th episode of EXIF and Beyond has been released.

These episodes feature an interview with Jeff Sedlik, President and CEO of the PLUS Coalition (usePLUS.org), current Professor of Photography at the Art Center College of Design and also a past president of the Advertising Photographers of America (APA).

Discussed is the Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS). Although relatively young by comparison to other photographic standards bodies, PLUS is tackling tough contemporary issues facing photographers. Both episodes are packed with valuable information every photographers should be aware of.

Part I of the interview covers PLUS Standards including the PLUS Glossary, License Generator, PLUS – IDs and the differentiators between PLUS, IPTC, and Creative Commons.

Part II of the interview covers machine readability, pending Orphan Works Copyright legislation, metadata, the PLUS Artist & Licensor Registry and the future of PLUS .

Download the latest episodes:
EXIF and Beyond: Jeff Sedlik Interview Part I and II

For the non-iTune listeners a streaming version of this podcast can be accessed here.

Technorati Tags: EXIF and Beyond, podcast, interview, Jeff Sedlik, PLUS, Picture Licensing Universal System, PLUS Coalition, IPTC, Creative Commons, usePLUS, standards, Orphans Work

This past week Adobe launched beta of Photoshop Express, a little over 1 year since Adobe announced its intention to put Photoshop online (see Photoshop In A Software As A Service (SaaS) Model?). Unfortunately for Adobe what proved to be most noteworthy about this new application is not its functionality, but the rights grab they’re making for each image that is processed in the online application.

Adobe makes available a very short and general Terms of Use document for Adobe Photoshop Express users to review. What new Express users see initially during the registration process is only the higher level Adobe.com Terms of Use. Surprisingly Adobe buries their Photoshop Express Terms of Use in a link from their general Terms of Use document concealing the following information:

8. Use of Your Content
a. Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

For myself a few questions came to mind immediately after reading this.
1. “What the hell is Adobe thinking?”
2. “Are corporate lawyers really this out to lunch?”
3. “Why wasn’t greater thought put into supporting the rights of their users and managing the trust behind the Adobe brand?”
4. “Why would Adobe bury the meat of the Terms of Use as they’ve done?”

For the sake of full disclosure I have worked with creative agencies that have done work for Adobe in the past. It’s been a over 18 months since I last worked on anything Adobe related, but one thing is well known about Adobe… they take their brand very serious. By “brand” I mean the corporate perspective of what Adobe stands for and the reputation that they project. From a “brand” perspective this rights grab dramatically undermines the foundation in which their brand had been built upon namely “trust” and “empowering the creative professional”.

I’d like to think that Adobe’s lawyers made a mistake, but knowing how corporate lawyers work every clause of a contract is meticulously reviewed and approved. Nothing a corporate legal team does is an accident. Someone defined, reviewed and approved the terms with a lot of thought. What is certain is that effort was not brought in line with those that manage Adobe’s brand and products. With out a doubt Adobe’s staff was likely under the gun to produce and to give credit where credit is due… to turn out a product like this in a little over a year is an impressive feat. I have the greatest respect for Adobe to accomplish this, but with out hesitation I can say that Adobe really dropped the ball with their Terms of Use. In this day and age as an amateur or professional creative it is nearly impossible to not use Adobe software on a project. To this point an implicit bond and trust has been in place between Creatives and Adobe. If you can’t trust Adobe then who can you trust?

To quote Adobe from their Acquisition of Macromedia FAQ:

“What is Adobe’s mission?
Our mission is to revolutionize how the world engages with ideas and information. By acquiring Macromedia, we are strengthening this mission by making it easier for customers to create, manage, and deliver their ideas and engage with information of all types — in print, on the web, in video, and across mobile devices. We believe in enabling powerful, effective, and meaningful digital experiences across multiple operating systems in the broad span of diverse industries we serve.”

Adobe consistently walks a fine line on many issues facing their customers and partners, but in this instance they have egregiously treaded on their customers rights. To give Adobe credit they’ve recognized their mistake and are trying to make right as noted in John Nack’s blog post A note about PS Express terms of use. None the less once treaded on users undoubtedly will be and should be sensitive to this point and should rightfully keep a close eye even on Adobe.

I hope that Adobe is able to avoid making this mistake twice and given their leading role in this industry perhaps to re-establish their trust and leadership they could take it upon themselves to spearhead defining thoughtful standards and Terms of Use that are respectful of the rights of Creatives; standards and terms that other companies might then adopt as the norm rather than the exception.

Now to watch how quickly Adobe moves to revise and correct their Terms of Use. How fast they move surely will be a sign of how serious they’re taking the issue.

Kudos to fellow JMG-Galleries blog reader Ben Bailey for raising my awareness to this development.

Technorati Tags: Adobe, Photoshop Express, rights, copyright, software, technology, web, terms of use, rights grab

I don’t talk about it much, but in addition to photography I’m also a web strategist with over 10 years of web marketing experience. On a day to day basis I’m constantly exploring and using a variety of web services and technologies that enable me to more optimally market my photography, track trends and track instances of copyright infringement. I’ve begun to take some of the core services and technologies I use on a daily basis for granted, but a recent conversation with a friend refreshed my perspective on this. As a result I wanted to take advantage of my recent epiphany and share 5 services/technologies I think are invaluable to photographers marketing their work online.

5. Google Reader
This online and free RSS reader is extremely well designed and easy to use. First and foremost RSS readers in general are a great way to access and read articles quickly minimizing the time it takes to open and load web sites individually. At a minimum I would recommend using this RSS reader if not any reader for that matter to improve ones productivity. One nice thing I finally took the time to do is to create a custom tab to display the top 7 sites I like to keep tabs on. The end result is a fast way for me to check the latest additions to 7 sites in one quick glance.

4. Del.icio.us
Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. Rather than keeping your bookmarks tied to a local machine you can save your favorite bookmarks to this web site. If you’re on a machine different than your own you can login and access your bookmarks anywhere. In addition you can tag bookmarks, add friends to your network to view and share recent bookmarks and you can also employ widget functionality on your blog to display recent pages that you’ve bookmarked. At a minimum I use this to consolidate and improve the searchability of my bookmarks. The site has been invaluable as I move back and forth between different machines.

3. Flickr
For all its flaws I’m still a believer in Flickr. Why? Pure and simple ease of use and traffic. The site is dirt simple to use… sometimes to its detriment as people pilfer photos from the site, but as a photo publisher/fan you can’t beat the ease of viewing and searching photos. This leads to my point about traffic on Flickr. Flickr is the 800lb gorilla of image sharing sites. With 2+ billion images in their system a lot of eyes are drawn to the site. As a marketer there is a saying… “fish where the fish are”. Casting a line out to see if you get any bites for sales/licensing opportunities is hit or miss, but as time has shown it does happen. My recommendation to fellow photographers on Flickr… avoid giving your work away for free and learn when to cut your losses with someone inquiring about using your work. If someone is contacting you about using your image it has value to the person, recognize this and negotiate.

2. Technorati
Technorati is a blog search engine. It’s a great resource to look for content, track blogs you like, track your blog authority, fans of your blog and set up keyword based Watchlists. Technorati is but one of many blog search engines, but it is one that is particularly well known. If you’re putting your photographic work online it pays to use the service to track references of your name and/or domain. In the process you may just discover your images being used without consent or in ways you might not approve of.

1. Google Alerts
Similar to Technorati Watchlists I’ve set up Google Alerts for my name and my domain name. Google Alerts then sends me regularly scheduled emails identifying new content including my specified search terms. Links are provided in the email to click through to see the page containing the specified search terms. This has been the number one tool I’ve used to identify inappropriate use of my photography online.

Google Alert Sign-Up Page

Google Alert Email

Technorati Tags: Google, alert, Technorati, services, technology, photographer, photography, photo, copyright, infringement, tracking, Flickr, RSS, reader, Del.icio.us

This weekend I got to take a peek at the Photophlow site that is now in a limited beta and experience the Flickr community like never before. At the moment the site is growing through an invitation only process not unlike Googles Gmail back in the day. What is unique about Photophlow is the truly real-time discussion of photography in a very clean interface.

It’s not often that a site comes along building on Flickr’s API that in itself is superior to the original. Photophlow has a very intuitive and clean user interface that enables multiple people the opportunity to navigate, search and discuss photographs collectively. These discussions occur in rooms, not unlike the old IRC model for discussion rooms, that are open to the public in the instance of the “Welcome” or “Photophlow” room, are tied in parallel to existing Flickr groups or are rooms of the individual user.

The photos display from small thumbnail to a small preview with the ease of a mouse over and clicking on an image will load the medium size image for all to see in a particular discussion area. Users can discuss the image in the room and/or comment/fave the image which is also registered on Flickr. Along with the medium image display is basic image, EXIF, copyright licensing information, description, tags, photographer and the person that initiated the discussion about the image.

A very cool feature is the embedded search terms that highlight automatically as links with in discussion entries. This is a great mechanism for free form exploration of the Flickrsphere and takes the powerful search in Photophlow to another level. Notification features are also embedded in the site so that users can be notified of activity via email, IM and Twitter. If you have a Tumblr account you can port interesting photos to your tumblog. All this functionality combined with the active photographer community equates to a very addictive environment.

If you’re big on photography and are part of the Flickr community keep your eyes peeled for available invitations.

Photophlow Screenshots: Read more… »