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 If your best client came to you and said "learn Spanish, or you're no longer going to get hired by us." Would you? If your best client came to you and said "The slang and odd language you use isn't condusive to a constructive dialog when we're working together. If you can't speak proper English we won't be able to work together anymore." Would you drop the street talk and keep the client? If you answered no to either of those questions, you need to think again. This is business, and if you want to do business, and keep doing business, you need to set aside any attitudes like "Who he think he is tellin' me I can't talk street, yo?" and realize that businesses do whatever they can to keep their clients. It's not personal, or an affront to you, it's just business. When a client thus, comes to the determination that the language you've been using to describe your licensing is the equivilent of ambiguous street language, and decides that they're tired of intepreting what "collateral" really means, and in turn, they specify the use of the Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS) system be incorporated into the licensing agreements you convey to them, you'd better step to it. That is exactly what's happened with the top three image licensees in the US. These three major publishers have called for the adoption of the PLUS standards by picture archives, photographers, illustrators and all other image suppliers. Representatives of McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Pearson each announced that they will adopt the PLUS Picture Licensing Glossary definitions in their contracts, and that they encourage image suppliers to begin embedding PLUS license metadata in all images within one year. (Continued after the Jump)
"We are very pleased that these major publishers - the largest image licensees in the industry - are aligned in their support of the PLUS standards," said Maria Kessler (LinkedIn: Profile), President of the Picture Archive Association of America.
Bonnie Beacher (LinkedIn: Profile), Senior Director of Contracts, Copyrights and Permissions at McGraw-Hill Education, said "The PLUS standards
benefit publishers and their suppliers by simplifying and clarifying the process of licensing and managing images. We are in the process of implementing PLUS standards, and we would find it very useful for our image suppliers to adopt PLUS standards as well."
Jeff Sedlik (LinkedIn: Profile), President & CEO of the PLUS Coalition, said "The PLUS standards will allow publishers to leverage embedded license metadata to increase automation and more efficiently manage images in their digital asset management systems."
What this means is that the Getty, Corbis, Alamy, et al licensors of the world will now be implementing PLUS language into every type of licensing that they do. The license will have to be PLUS compliant, because they won't know if the person browsing their site is a McGraw-Hill person, or a magazine photo editor, as they are filling up their cart full of images, and selecting the licenses they need. So, when the client is considering your work, you'll have to use the same words as the Gettys of the world so that a client can properly manage all images in their digital asset management system.
Clients have already specified to you they need an invoice before they can pay you, and it needs to say "Invoice" on it, be dated, and have your contact information, and so too, the need your tax id # (SSN, EIN, etc). There's little difference here in the standardization of the language for licensing.
When it comes to licensing language clarity, and agreement cross-industry, PLUS is a monumental collaboration, and one we have hearlded from this soapbox for some time. As an individual photographer, it's free for you to use, and you would do well during your down time - like excising the street from your talk, to get to know PLUS better. Your clients are demanding it.
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 I love books. If I were to have only one regret this life, it would be that there wasn't enough time to read all the books that I want to. My reading list is a long one, and so often, new books have to fight hard to cut the line. I also collect books, and nestled amongst my signed editions of Ansel Adams' The Negative, The Print, Natural Light Photography, and Artificial Light Photography (note: I am still seeking Book 1), several Sam Abel books, signed limited editions of all the great surf photography books, and books like Csikszentmihalyi's Flow, is a book by the legendary Howard Chapnick - Truth Needs No Ally: Inside Photojournalism .  I was honored to have him sign mine, and yes, be represented by his agency, Black Star. Yet, there's no bias here - his independent status as a legend probably preceded my birth. So, it is with reverance that another Chapnick - John Chapnick - comes forth with a new book - Photojournalism, technology and ethics - What's Right and Wrong Today? Oh, and get this - it's a free eBook! Hit this link for the PDF. (Continued after the Jump)
In the book, Chapnick states the obvious. Obvious, that is, to those of us who have been doing this awhile. Things like "altering photographs is unethical." Then there's "Staging photographs is unethical." Now, I know these things, yet I see these things happen all the time, and we read time and again about altering photographs and then their appearing in newspapers. Yet Chapnick delves into these issues, citing the policies of wire services and newspapers around the country, and then proffering the thought process:The rhetorical justifications for these axioms center on public service. Rather than simply selling newspapers or attracting TV ratings, journalists have a higher calling—to provide their audiences with the knowledge required to be informed contributors to a democracy. And this can only happen when the public believes in the newspaper’s authority.
Ahh. Now some lightbulbs are going off in readers' heads. So, where does the money trail meander? Chapnick goes on:Beyond this consideration, credibility is essential to mainstream news organizations from a business standpoint. If audiences don’t believe they can trust what they’re reading—and seeing—it’s the equivalent of a broken product. And consumers don’t buy broken products for very long. Indeed!
Chapnick then goes on to address the excuses we're hearing from our motion picture brethren, that staging is justified "for purposes of editing", or "for purposes of time", or "for purposes of storytelling", even when the audience is not told of these "re-creations". One field notorious for staging photography is in the field of nature/wild animal photography, with all manner of baiting, pens, and so forth creating a reality that never existed, but which yielded a cover photograph on the front page of the most prestigious magazines of our time.
In the end Chapnick also offers solutions for the digital era, and it's a solid read, primer (or reminder), for anyone who professes to produce editorial images. So, hats off to John Chapnick for a well written and thoughtful perspective on the issue of technology and ethics in photojournalism today. While ethics need no ally, its' furtherance surely needs this roadmap to ensure that tomorrows' photojournalists earn and keep the reputation of truth-telling - no more, and no less.
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 Below you will find formal notice about DRR's suitor - Newscom - recinding it's interest. Of particular interest is the following: "The creditor will have all information erased from the storage devices and then sell the equipment at auction." The concern is that someone will simply do a simple erase, and anyone with recovery tools can recover ALL of our images. ALL OF THEM. Stories abound about people's private information getting found on a company's old servers ( Government probe launched after details of one million bank customers found on computer sold on eBay, 8/28/08, among others). Here, we have images which will be recovered and then someone will decide they have this huge library of images to do with as they please. Someone needs to get information on just how they plan to do the erasing. Formal notice after the jump: (Continued after the Jump)
November 10, 2008
To Digital Railroad Members and Customers;
As reported on October 31st, Digital Railroad (DRR) had received a letter of intent (LOI) to purchase specific assets of DRR, namely its hardware and application software used to store and retrieve images. This LOI was rescinded on November 5th.
On November 6th, a second company became interested in purchasing some of the assets of DRR, but late on Friday, November 7th this company also ended its negotiations.
Without a commitment for the purchase of its assets, DRR’s senior secured creditor will move to take physical possession of the hardware on which the intellectual property of DRR and the copyrighted images of its customers and partners reside. The creditor will have all information erased from the storage devices and then sell the equipment at auction.
Digital Railroad had hoped that it could preserve the images on the storage devices so that the owners of these images could recover them. Unfortunately, this was not achievable. We apologize for the difficulties that this has created but without additional resources we have no other recourse.
With regard to images in Marketplace that have been downloaded and/or used, and for which the publisher has not already made payment, we will work, with the assistance of photographer associations to have the publishers pay the photographers directly.
Please check the Diablo Management website www.diablomanagement.com for regularly updates regarding Digital Railroad. The DRR link is at the bottom of the DMG Home page.
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 Thanks to a reader of the previous post on StockShop, who alerted me to the fact that Pixish has ceased to exist. We wrote rather critically - Pixish, Stupid is, as Stupid Does (2/12/08), about their business model, because, well, it was a bad idea. (Continued after the Jump)
So, we tried to visit their site, and it's dead. Blank. Goes. And? Oh right - Good Riddance!
A cached version if their notice, found on Google, posted on October 31st (scary),reads:
Pixish will be closing its doors at the end of the month.
Why? Mostly because of personal stuff. Pixish was created by four people as a side project. Between us, the last year has brought births, deaths, and too many job/client changes to remember. As a result, we have not been able to give the site the time and attention it deserved.
On the other side of the equation, the site's community never really gelled. In nine months we only grew to about 5,000 members. With time short and usage low, we've decided it's time to pull the plug.
What went wrong? In a sense, nothing. We had an idea and wanted to try it out. We did it on our own time, without spending much money. I'm proud that we were able to learn a few things without going broke. People have spent far more creating much less. And I'm happy that some people had fun as part of the site.
In another sense, of course, we made some mistakes. Here are my top three.
We launched too fast. I'm a big believer in launch fast, get feedback, make changes. We launched fast, got more feedback than we could handle, and failed to make changes. You can't expect people to wait for you to get it right.
We didn't describe what we wanted to do clearly enough. When I told people the idea in person, they always really liked it. But when they came to the site, they didn't get it.
We underestimated the "spec work" issue. People feel strongly about it, and as a professional designer for over a decade, I get it. In hindsight, we could have dealt with it better.
The startup experience can't be taught, only learned from experience. Here are a few things I learned from Pixish.
In community-generated media, trust is everything. When you ask for submissions, contributors go through an instant internal calculation: "Do I trust these people with my work?" When your site is brand new, you've got no record to rely on. And with more shady "user-generated content" schemes popping up every day, people have their defenses up (as well they should).
Our proposition was made even more complicated because we were trying to create a maketplace. When a magazine opens for submissions, you're submitting to that magazine. But Pixish was one step removed - anyone could make an assignment. So even if you trusted Pixish, you didn't necessarily trust the person who posted the assignment.
We should have done more to earn that trust, and help members trust each other.
There's a difference between building a community and a network. When musician Jonathan Coulton posted a t-shirt contest, people in his community were stoked to participate, but people outside of his community were like, who's this guy and why should I give him my work?
Pixish was designed as one community, but it really was a network of unaffiliated communities. The assignments that worked best happened because the publisher brought in their own people. The site was not optimized for that. We should have had more tools for assignment creators to tie their contests to their existing communities.
Launch fast, but not too fast. That old cliché about not getting a second chance to make a first impression? Corny but true. When you stumble out of the gate, it can be hard to regain your footing. We should have done more testing of both the core idea and the site itself.
Money matters. I've now started companies with both with, and without, venture capital. When you've got money, you can take more time to do it right, but you've got higher expectations for returns, and a whole host of other complications. When you go it alone, you've got the freedom to do whatever you want, but it's hard to stay focused when the project is always competing for your attention with other, usually paying, work. There's no right answer here - it's just a matter of finding the approach that best matches the project.
It's all about the team. I will continue to sing the praises of the amazing team that built Pixish: Jason, Dan, and James. The decision to end the project has nothing to do with their awesomeness. The only thing I really regret is that we were never able to build some of the really cool stuff we had planned.
I know there's a place for a wisdom of crowds approach in the publishing world, but publishers and artists are still figuring it out. For now, it seems like a direct submission model is what people are most comfortable with.
If you're a Pixish member, thanks for giving the site a try, and I'm sorry our time together was so short. You've got until the end of the month to download anything you need, though I assume you've still got it all on your hard drive anyway. If you're looking for something similar, try Crowdspring or 99designs.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
Whew! One down, how many to go? Damn, these things are popping up like weeds in an untended yard!
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 Don't people learn? When we wrote " nOnRequest - This is Not Your Father's "Agency" (6/20/07), we quoted Daryl Lang over at PDN, who wrote in his article " Revolutions That Never Happened", " Sometimes bad ideas take care of themselves. OnRequest Images never backed down from custom stock, but the idea was hard to explain and held little appeal to art buyers... Another custom stock service, iStockPhoto.com's BuyRequest, also failed to capture much interest and was quietly discontinued last year.", yet, "genius" repeats itself, with StockShop On Demand, which suggests: On Demand is StockShop's newest feature. Can't find exactly what you're looking for? Let one of our talented photographers capture it for you! (Continued after the Jump) Are you kidding me?
Wasn't it already tried by several companies who, no doubt, have smart people working for them? This idea is (and remains) just plain bad. However, I guess this is what happens when people have time on their hands, and decide they will fill it with "custom stock" projects. Projects that, quite frankly, are ASSIGNMENTS that should be commissioned by the clients, with all expenses paid, and so forth.
We wrote back in July of 2007 - OnRequest - Realizing the Obvious, "David Norris, the head of OnRequest, after building a business around the CustomStock Model...said of the CustomStock model:""that model was interesting, but didn't pan out." And again, the refrain rises: WELL, OF COURSE IT DIDN'T!
Yet, again, we have a company that thinks they can do it better. Think again.
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Photo editors often get a bad rap. They're often (incorrectly) blamed for the bad contracts they are required to foist upon us. Sometimes, it's their idea, but usually, it's not. It's usually the legal department making things harder for them to get talented work to sign things like work-for-hire, and so forth. Thus, when a photo editor does the right thing, as is the case here, we feel it of value to hearld it from the treetops, so to speak. This is the case of a photo editor who licensed images through Digital Railroad for several books, with over fifty images. They'd downloaded them, and had recieved an invoice from DRR. Yet, when they were about to pay it (the books have not gone to press yet), they learned that DRR was in trouble, and likely closing their doors, so they waited before cutting the check. Imagine my pleasant surprise when they called me and shared this story, and said "we want to pay you directly, since we know that if we pay them, you'll never see the money." I was eager, of course, to help. They are also looking to finalize their contacting of other photographers whose images they had selected. We've offered to help them find anyone who they can't locate, and await any information from them on that front. So, three cheers for Brad Epstein, of Michaelson Entertainment for his effort in doing the right thing. Thanks Brad. (Comments, if any, after the Jump)
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Newscom, reportedly the company that submitted their letter of intent to acquire the assets of Digital Railroad ( From Bad to Better - Likely Acquisition of DRR Assets By Newscom A Good Thing, 11/1/08), has taken themselves out of play as a party interested in the final disposition of those assets. "We looked at it long and hard", said Bill Creighton, Managing Director of Newscom. "We were the company that had expressed an interest, but after we looked at the numbers - the cost to operate the system, and the fact that many of the subscribers had left, it just wasn't workable", said Creighton. Newscom was the one company who had expressed an interest in paying cash for the assets. Another rumored company was proposing an equity stake, but that has, to date, remained a rumor. "We're no longer interested in Digital Railroad. We wanted to be, but it just didn't make sense from a business standpoint, and that's what this is about - business." (Comments, if any, after the Jump)
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 There were just a few outcomes for what remains of Digital Railroad, or so I thought. One was closing it's doors, another, being acquired by PhotoShelter, then there was potential suitor liveBooks, Mark Ippolito, and then the never-was-gonna-happen Getty and Corbis. What hadn't crossed my radar was Newscom, when rumor spread Thursday evening of a company with cash to buy the assets. A number of people got calls from me, including several at Diablo Management. I wrote in an e-mail to them :"I have heard that Digital Railroad was acquired this evening in a cash transaction, and I would like, at the very least, to know if you can confirm that." The response I received Friday morning, first thing, was "No comment regarding your assertion. We will however have some news later in the day." When they wrote in their statement, describing the suitor, but strangely, not naming them, I pondered who fit that bill. Daryl Lang, over at PDN had the only viable name to fit that bill (I s Newscom about to aquire Digital Railroad Assets?, 10/31/08), and I have to agree with him. So, what exactly does this mean? (Continued after the Jump)
Like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, this is a good thing. No, let me get that right, this could be a great thing. This entire piece will be a dissection of the problems that the other suitors likely would have had, and how Newscom is great for everybody, save one.
First to PhotoShelter. The only real reason PhotoShelter would have benefited from the aquisition would be because they could have used the aquisition to get 1,400+ new active photographers. To date, several hundred have already made the switch. However, the demands by WTI for a price-point made that deals' value minimal, at best. Further though, PhotoShelter wasn't really focused on agencies to use ther platform (although they have the capability to take them, if they wanted to). So, for PS, it was all about new members.
Next to liveBooks. LiveBooks could have used the technology as an add-on to their current capabilities, but the question first was of valuation and then of integration. Following that was the concern about the debts that were outstanding. There was the $1m to WTI, then right around $80k to another lender, and then $120k or so owed to photographers, and taking on those debts made this deal unpalatable, for sure.
Next to Ippolito. Mark would have been a good fit, except that people would have been leary that he could keep it going, and they would associate him with the unexpected failing that just happened, and lastly, he likely had a hard time coming up with the money that Diablo/WTI wanted.
Getty and Corbis already have platforms they are happy with, and for them, it was likely a question of acquiring several million more images, but then again what to do with all the agency deals that were there. So they too, not a good fit.
Then, the morning of October 30th, Newscom sent out this missive:
Dear Former Digital Railroad Customer:
With the unexpected closing of the Digital Railroad business, Newscom and Mainstream Data have been receiving many calls from photo agencies and professionals like yourselves asking if there is anything we can do to help them – and do it quickly. The answer is Yes!
Mainstream provides premier hosting and distribution services, software development, and web platforms for prominent photo agencies including Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, the European Pressphoto Agency, the German Press Agency (DPA), the Dutch Press Agency (ANP), the Spanish Press Agency (EFE), the Portuguese Press Agency (Lusa), UPI, and many photo plus video agencies like Splash News, AdMedia, Featureflash, Sipa Press, Ace Pictures, INF, and Jupiterimages. Moreover, unlike some of the other companies offering refuge for Digital Railroad customers, Newscom and Mainstream have been key players in this business for more than twenty years, are profitable, and offer you the security and functionality you need to be successful and to be able to sleep at night.
We provide both Internet FTP push delivery and hosted web portals for delivery of your photographs to subscribers, and we also operate the largest multi-agency marketplace for digital media in the world (Newscom).
Our managed FTP service is called MediasFTP; it is our automated FTP distribution system that reads the IPTC data out of your photographs, categorizes the photos for delivery to groups of users, and then simultaneously delivers the photos to your partners, customers, and agents at very high speeds. Our customers for this service include Sipa Press, AdMedia, Featureflash, Ace Pictures, and Splash News; they use this system to insure that their photos arrive first at their customers, for, as you know, speed is everything these days!
To replace the hosted photo website that Digital Railroad has provided, we also offer what we call, ‘Newscom Minisites’, using the same technology that more than 5,000 newspapers, magazines, broadcasters, and web sites depend upon every day to license images for their publications. You may already be familiar with Newscom as the one-stop digital media marketplace where users have instant access to almost 25 million rights-managed and royalty-free photos, graphics, illustrations, news stories, and features created by the world’s foremost publishers.
What you likely didn’t know was that more than 150 content providers use Newscom to reach a secondary market for sale of their content. Newscom is the digital media marketplace of the future—today.
A Newscom Minisite provides functionality similar to the Digital Railroad web portal in that we provide your customers password protected access to your photo archive where they can search, browse, and download photos and other multimedia content. We can also provide some customization of the front page of your Minisite by using your logo and contact information.
We would love to tell you more about our services and show you a demonstration, including a WebEx Internet broadcast in the next few days for those who have interest.
Don’t jump out of the Digital Railroad frying pan only to find yourself in the fire because you have chosen yet another unstable vendor.
To find out more about how Newscom and Mainstream can help, please send us an email at drroffer@newscom.com. Alternatively, please feel free to call one of us at the numbers provided below:
North and South America and Asia
Greg Weeks
Vice President, Mainstream Media Services
u.s.a. | work: +1.801.584.3989 | mobile: +1.801.915.2768
Bill Creighton
Managing Director, Newscom
u.s.a. | mobile: +1.703.850.5711
Europe, Middle East, and Africa
Richard Buckler
European Sales Director
u.k. | work: +44.1293.561120 | mobile: +44.7711.717935
Thanks, and we look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards,
Your Friends at Newscom and Mainstream
While that's a nice offer, and one worth considering, it defines in very clear terms what Newscom is, and does. I can tell you that I have an account with Newscom, and I use it on a fairly regular basis, and it has generated revenue for me, and I think highly of its' services.
  You may not be familiar with them, but you're familiar with Knight-Ridder, and Tribune Media? This press release informs you about just where their foundations lay and that were, in fact, a joint venture of Knight-Ridder and Tribune, before being sold to Mainstream Data last Summer. That's pretty solid backing, to be certain. So, when I learned of this possible outcome, I began to think about all of the good things to come of it. Let me walk you through a few of them:
 1) I think the biggest benefit is that Newscom is a conduit for countless other image providers. Getty, UPI, AFP, Black Star, and many others have images that flow through their image pipeline. If you want to go check things out, visit: http://www.NewsCom.com, and click the "Login" link. NewsCom allows anybody to browse their images as a guest, (login: NCFOTONA, Password: Guest) and they provide the login information to do so without having to sign up. A search for "Palin" yields images from many sources, including, yes, AFP and Getty. In fact, check this link (once you're logged in), to see their partner sources, and above, right, you can see that I am listed, alphabetically right above Jupiter Images.
2) In addition, much of NewsCom is "push" technology. What that means is that those images are in browsers at newspapers and other content users, at their fingertips. To them, a search on their desktop is as if they are searching their own computer's hard drive, with instant results, and instant download/usability. Previously, DRR's Marketplace would only get a sale if someone knew about DRR, and navigated themselves to DRR, set up an account, and then began their search - that's more like "pull" technology.
3) NewsCom has a wide collection of images, just as Getty/etc does. Sporting events of all types, celebrity events, portraiture, and so forth. They have a fat pipeline of a wide variety of images, and they have numerous sources for those images. While they are seen as predominantly news, they have creative (i.e. non-editorial) images, as well as graphics, illustrations, cartoons, and so forth. Look around the publications you have nearby you right now - I'd bet that there is at-least one credit for NewsCom in it somewhere.
4) What NewsCom really doesn't have was the individual-photographer-archive capability that DRR has. Yes, NewsCom has their MiniSites, but the back-end and client services capabilities that the DRR architecture would offer would be great for them.
Ok, so that's all the good things - are there any bad? Well, it's not a bad thing, per se, but a question - what will the rate structures look like? I can say that my revenue from image licensing has been fair and reasonable, and I doubt that would change with the integration of the DRR platform and services, but it does remain to be seen what the rates will look like.
Additionally, it's clear that Newscom wants the architecture/intellectual property. It's unknown at this time was the final dissolution will be of the reported $120k in monies that are owed to photographers from images sold/licensed. I know that Stock Artists Alliance is on the case on this. That said, if Newscom is just looked at the assets, it's likely they won't take on the $120k owed photographers, but who knows. Perhaps there are images that were licensed, but the bills not paid, and Newscom may facilitate that final payment, if the balance due DRR/Newscom is still outstanding? We'll need to wait and see on this point.
Then, let's return to PhotoShelter. I think this is a potential problem for them. They closed the PhotoShelter Collection, and they have various degrees of image licensing available, and they use the FotoQuote pricing structure, modifiable by each photographer, to license images. Yet, you have to come to PhotoShelter to get the image - a form of "Pull" technology that requires the person needing the image to come to PhotoShelter. PhotoShelter's archives previously had a large number of sports images there, due in large part to the earlier partnership between them and SportsShooter, and the natural use of PhotoShelter by the large SportsShooter member community. While their image library has grown over the years, this puts them in a bit of a challenging position. Digital Railroad has a few features that PhotoShelter doesn't, but it suffered from a problematic user interface and client interface. PhotoShelter has a much more intuitive and easier to use interface, but is that enough of a value proposition to keep people?
Down the line, I think you will see a merger of both PhotoShelter and liveBooks, which will be a remarkable union for the photographer that is primarily an assignment photographer who has clients that need for an integrated website solution, client download capability, image licensing, and hardcopy prints. I don't expect NewsCom will get into the website business, and who knows about the ability to obtain an 8x10 of an image a client wants.
So, when will the NewsCom deal happen? It either will, or it won't, by mid-week, according to our sources. At this point, it's just a "Letter of Intent", and noting more. As a variation on what I wrote before - fasten your seatbelts, this is where the ride gets really interesting.
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Here is the official statement from PhotoShelter, regarding Digital Railroad:
PHOTOSHELTER CLARIFIES DIGITAL RAILROAD SITUATION WITH DIABLO MANAGEMENT GROUP:
COMPLETE DRR SITE SHUTDOWN PROBABLE AT 11:59PM PST ON OCTOBER 31
Photographers & agencies to get more time to save their work
New York, NY, October 30, 2008 – In an effort to bring some clarity to the Digital Railroad shutdown situation, PhotoShelter CEO Allen Murabayashi has engaged in multiple discussions with Diablo Management on behalf of the community of over 1,500 Digital Railroad customers. The outcome of these discussions is an understanding that more time will be provided for Digital Railroad customers to access their work. The official statement from PhotoShelter and Diablo Management reads: (Continued after the Jump)
“As part of the process of terminating the business operations of Digital Railroad, Diablo Management Group has informed PhotoShelter of their intent to shut down the DRR site as early as 11:59PM, PST, on Friday October 31. After this point, it is very likely that all the images located on the Digital Railroad servers could be permanently inaccessible. Given the strong possibility of this event, PhotoShelter, on its own initiative, is strongly suggesting that customers migrate their files from Digital Railroad immediately. Digital Railroad, at the present time, has no plans or resources to accomplish this task.”
Upon announcing the termination of operations on Tuesday, DRR stated it would provide only 24 hours of server access. Across the industry, this tiny window of time was deemed unacceptable. Although the extension through October 31 is brief, it will provide more time to help photographers find backup options and transition their online presence. This statement also represents the latest definitive information to be shared with impacted customers, directly from the group that is controlling DRR. Both parties stress that the situation is highly fluid and this deadline could be altered with little or no notice.
Since the announcement, PhotoShelter has welcomed DRR customers with a special 3-month free offer and ftp solution to help migrate their images. The offer can be found here: http://www.photoshelter.com/mkt/200810/drr.html.
PhotoShelter management encourages all DRR photographers to use this time extension to access their images and ensure backup using any chosen method. And, PhotoShelter calls on photographers industry wide to help contact peers travelling in the field who may not yet have heard the news.
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So, my good friends at liveBooks have got a great deal for you, and I'll just put the number out there, so as to not bury the lead: 25% off a liveBooks site if you survived Digital Railroad's demise and now need a web presence. (Continued after the Jump)
You have until November 14th to take advantage of this deal. Previously, you had to be a member of a trade association to get a deal, and that maxxed out at 15%. liveBooks is NOT PhotoShelter, and PhotoShelter is the best solution for archiving, and image licensing/sales. For a website, liveBooks is a top notch solution.
“Many Digital Railroad clients have come to rely on their DRR archives as de facto websites, thanks to the ability to easily upload photo galleries and share high resolution images with clients,” said Andy Patrick, president and CEO of liveBooks. “With Digital Railroad recently ceasing operations, these photographers face the prospect of a substantial disruption in their client workflow, as well as the loss of potentially their only online presence. By extending this offer, we can help DRR clients create a professional, powerful web marketing presence that will enable them to sustain and build their businesses, and also maintain some continuity in their work with clients even in these difficult economic times.”
Of course they have a great website capability, but you can also produce galleries on the fly from a shoot that are password protected, and also deliver images via FTP. So, check them out. If you were looking for the best discount possible to make this happen, you've just found it.
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 Well, it seems that Fast Company is none-to-concerned about Jill Greenbergs' bad reputation ( Jill Greenberg: Open Mouth, Insert Foot, 9/12/08) and has assigned her to photograph Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane for their latest cover story. It surely helps, that the opening paragraph of the article ( Seth MacFarlane’s $2 Billion Family Guy Empire, 11/08) describes MacFarlane's work - "Much of the animated sitcom's purpose seems to be to stoke the opposition, to offend the easily offended." So, perhaps they are two peas in a pod? Kindred souls? (Continued after the Jump)
The online article includes other images Greenberg produced as well as her signature (and dare I say, now looking a bit passe) lighting style.
Perhaps, though, Greenberg shot this piece back before the controversy erupted? As we move forward in these interesting editorial times, it will be interesting to see if Greenberg remains "assignable." Certainly, if this was done after "the incident", MacFarlane surely has no problems with Greenberg, since 10 days ago, his Family Guy show had this suggestion that McCain/Palin supporters are Nazi's, with this in it:
If you'd like to see the video segment with that in it, click here.
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If you are looking to preserve your website's look and feel, in order to transfer to a place like liveBooks, or hire a designer, while your site is still up, go into Adobe's Acrobat Professional program. Go to the "Advanced" drop-down menu, and choose "Web capture". Choose "create PDF from/Append web page...", and enter in your URL, and how many clicks in you want it to capture. Good luck. (Comments, if any, after the Jump)
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The front page of DRR says: When you visit the Digital Railroad website, this is the message you get: MEMBER ANNOUNCEMENTS Digital Railroad Suspending Operations – Added Oct. 28, 2008 To our valued Members: We're sorry to inform you that Digital Railroad (DRR) has shut down. On October 15th we reported that the company had reduced its staff and was aggressively pursuing additional financing and/or a strategic partner. Unfortunately, those efforts were unsuccessful. Therefore Digital Railroad has been forced to suspend all operations. Digital Railroad has attracted a loyal set of customers and partners, and we regret this unfortunate outcome. Without sufficient long-term financial support, the business had become unsustainable. Thank you for allowing us to serve the photographic community these past few years. All questions pertaining to claims should be addressed to: Digital Railroad, Inc. c/o Diablo Management Group 1452 N. Vasco Road, #301 Livermore, CA 94551 (Continued after the Jump)
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 There are 1,900 or so of you out here that need to read this message. The rest of you can just ignore it. The problem is, those that need to know what I am writing about have buried their head in the sand. As I am writing this, my own migration from Digital Railroad to PhotoShelter is in progress. I am benefiting from under-utillization of the DRR bandwidth, but you will not, because the doorway you all will be trying to pass through is only so wide, and only so many people can fit through the door at the same time. Where are you in that line? How long do you have? Ok, let's, for the sake of conversation, conclude that, for whatever reason, you don't want to go to PhotoShelter. THEN DON'T! But, you better have those files archived somewhere. And you better migrate any that you don't, FAST. The NPPA sent out this alert to it's members, this morning: In the past, the NPPA had a partnership with Digital Railroad offering our members a service discount. In light of the current news on Digital Railroad we recommend that if you are a Digital Railroad customer, you take action immediately to protect your work. In researching what is available, your three best options are to:A) Personally back up all of your work stored at Digital Railroad
B) Take advantage of the deal PhotoShelter is offering DRR customers to migrate their data: http://pa.photoshelter.com/mkt/200810/drr.html
C) All of the above For more information please see the Digital Railroad article the NPPA published, updated this morning, on NPPA.ORG:
http://www.nppa.org/news_and_events/news/2008/10/digitalrailroad.html
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Jim Straight
Executive Director
NPPA Below is a step-by-step for you to begin the process, and remember, those that begin this process FIRST, will get the bandwidth necessary to save their files. (Continued after the Jump)
I am going to do the step-by-step in PhotoShelter. Come on, don't get all uppity - everyone knows these two were the only comparable platforms, and both were competing for customers. So, there's really no other option, unless you're downloading to your own computer at home (and good luck with that.)
| The first thing you need to do is set up a "receiving" folder on the PhotoShelter system. Click the "Archive" tab in the Photographer Area on PhotoShelter, as seen below. |
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| Then choose "Create New Folder". Here, I've chosen the name "Digital Railroad Transfer". Might I suggest you create one folder to receive all "Private" groups, and one folder to receive all "Public" groups. If you have any "UnPublished" groups, so too, a separate folder for those too. |  |
| That done, next click on the "Upload" tab at the top, and you'll see something new - the "Incoming FTP" option. |  |
| Click that (1) and then choose (2) "Add a new incoming FTP user". |  |
Next, you'll see this screen, below. It will have pre-populated the username (1) with something applicable to you, but you may change it to whatever you want. So too, will the password field (2) be prepopulated with a password. Again, feel free to change it to suit your needs. Take extra note of the (3) "Active" checkbox. You are only allowed to have ONE FTP account "active" at a time. As you set up more than one archive folder, you'll want a comparable number of FTP accounts setup, because different logins sent the photos to different destination folders on PS.
As noted, choose the destination folder (4) for this account. |  |
| As you can see below, we've got two accounts set up, one for the "Private" files, which go to the generic "Digital Railroad Transfer" folder, and one for all the "Public" images. |  |
| Next up you'll want to head to Digital Railroad. Log in, and on the left-hand side, choose the "Syndication Management" link, and choose "Create New FTP Destination". |  |
| Choose (1) your Destination Name, and in the "FTP Host" (2) enter "ftp.photoshelter.com", and then (3) the user name you were given (or chose) from Digital Railroad, and so too (4) the password. Make sure you (5) check the "create new folder" checkbox, which will create sub-folders on PhotoShelter that are named what you have them named on Digital Railroad. Once you've done this, click (6) "Test", so that you know it worked. You'll confirm that the FTP test was successful when you see the line (7). Note that if there is an extra space in the FTP (2) field, you could have a problem, so check that if you get an error. |  |
| Next, go to your "My Site Production", and choose the group you are working on. I suggest you do as below, and "right-mouse-click" (or control-click if you have a one-button mouse) and open that link in a new window. By doing this, it's easy to keep track of where you are in the process, because with the new window open, you can begin the transfer, and then just close the window and move on to the next one. |  |
| Next, from the My Site Production menu, choose "Syndicate Group". |  |
| Your options to syndicate come up, and all you have to do is place a check in the "Transfer to PhotoShelter" destination (1), and click the Syndicate (2) button. |  |
| Once you've clicked the "Syndicate" button above, you will see the confirmation, as below. Click the "View Syndication Details" text, to see that the FTP is taking place. |  |
| The next screen you will see is the details of the syndication. You will see the progress, and if there are any errors. If you see an error, just click the "Retry" button, and it will restart. Where you see "PENDING" below, the other options are "SENDING", "ERROR", and "SENT". Use the "Refresh" button to watch the transfer take place. |  |
| If you look at the above screengrab, you will see that the text "syndication management" is clickable. When you click that, you see all of your transfers, not just the single one. Below you will see multiple transfers in progress, from my DRR archive to my PS archive. One thing to note - it was my experience that if you opened too many transfers at once, there was an error in the transfer, and it stopped, and further, did not attempt to re-start. When there is this kind of error, you will see a red number in the "Error" column. Just click the individual group in progress, and then click the "Retry" button. |  |
That's it. Sit back, watch for errors, and retry where necessary with a right-mouse (cntrl) click and open a new window to retry.
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It looks like the VC's that bought into the Orient Express that was Digital Railroad have a bit of a problem on their hands, snapped in half by the mousetrap spring they didn't see coming to crush them. In an effort to stem the burn-rate of what rose at points to be $800k a month, they took out a loan with a bank of upwards of $1M. The problem is, with a burn rate that high, that was a stop-gap solution that did not include the reining on of expenses, or atleast ones that never materialized. What is remarkable too, is that a startup was willing to pay reportedly between $400k and $500k for it's CEO, Charles Mauzy. While there are suggestions to the contrary where we detailed a similar pay structure for it's President, Maris Berens, a review of further documentation shows his salary at approximately $136k, and then under $125k after he took a pay cut as a part of belt-tightening at DRR. What startup pays that amount of money to a CEO? Certainly, both had a track record and contacts that were worth that, but that's bad form for a startup to pay that figure. What's not a part of the reporting of those salaries is what they had as an added equity stake that is now worth less than the paper it was printed on. There is speculation that the development of the DRR platform on an entirely Microsoft solution, coupled with bringing in Mauzy, a Microsoft veteran, was positioning them for an acquisition by Microsoft (and hopefully a big payday), but that never materialized. One of the messages I overheard several times in the booth at liveBooks, where I spoke for an hour each day during the just-concluded PhotoPlus Expo was how much people wanted an integrated solution not just to facilitate an attractive facade in the form of a website, but to also be able to serve their clients with image delivery, and a licensing vehicle. For over two years, both liveBooks and PhotoShelter have been in talks to have at-least some form of bridge between the two, and it may be that there were also merger talks and the past two years have been just the courting phase. The fact is that you can get a great design integration between liveBooks and Photoshelter today, and if this all goes south maybe more will develop. However, for now however nothing more than visual integration exists. (Continued after the Jump)
Months ago, the VC's of Digital Railroad were shopping around the platform, but too much in the way of expectations for what they would get for the sale, as well as a number of unreasonable (relatively speaking) demands were made, and they failed to realize that the clock was ticking, and ticking fast.
As we reported last week (Digital Railroad Likely Being Liquidated, 10/15/08), DRR is likely being liquidated. Every member of the board has, in fact, resigned, and the company is controlled by Diablo Management, with a few of the former senior management or officers remaining on as just employees, with no official officer roles. Yet, that changes today, Monday October 26th. With a negative balance in the bank account, there is no more money, we are told that all staff were sent an e-mail from Diablo telling them not to report to work today. Yet, Andy Parsons, and a few other senior staff apparently will stay on, through the week, as volunteers, without pay. What a new month brings, remains to be seen. Absent the spigot being opened at PhotoShelter to receive FTP'd files as we'd provided advance how-to on, approximately 1% of the 2,300 DRR photographers have either cancelled their accounts, or migrated their files off of the DRR platform. It seems that everyone that is a paying member there is in denial about the realities of the dire situation DRR is in. Just like Uber.com, the clients have been asking what they can do to help this ship from sinking.
DRR has just two options - file for bankruptcy, or get acquired at firesale rates. The decent rate on this nosedive is just too severe. There are just a few possible players for the company at this time - PhotoShelter, former senior management member Mark Ippolito, and, PictureMaxx. Perhaps too, this could be of value to liveBooks.
Surely, the opportunity to pick up this platform at a firesale rate is attractive. However, PhotoShelter doesn't need it since they have, what is in effect, certainly a better user interface, and cleaner programming code, as looked at from a code jockey and software engineering standpoint. That doesn't mean that the DRR platform is bad per-se, but a central question will be what work needs to be done by the acquiring company. All PS needs is to bleed the lifeblood out of DRR in the form of the free migration for DRR members between platforms, and that is expected to ramp up this week, as PS flips the switch on that capability. How many people do that remains to be seen. Further, DRR has an active Marketplace for aggregating and licensing images, a capability that PhotoShelter launched a year ago, and closed down last month. An acquisition of DRR by PS would mean that they would be back in business with PhotoShelter Collection v2.0, and I don't see them liking that idea at all.
The altruistic and well meaning Ippolito is no-doubt having a hard time securing financing, but he's facing a far less insurmountable challenge, with the company worth less than $1m, and VC's having invested over $20m, all together. Where Ippolito could find $1m, and also the money necessary to continue the company, remains to be seen. Evan Nisselson, the company's founder, tried to re-acquire the company, and failed. Ippolito could do a good job, but won't likely get the chance.
PictureMaxx, which we recently wrote about here (10 Questions for Tom Tinervin, 10/21/08), is not likely to be interested in the acquisition. They have their own, completely different platform, and the ability to integrate the features of Digital Railroad into the PictureMaxx platform is highly unlikely. Further, they would be entering into direct competition with some of their current customers, so that's not likely either.
So, that leads us to this question - is there any real potential buyer out there? Perhaps the final player in the game could be liveBooks. Within the past year, liveBooks was approached by DRR, but there were some unreasonable requests and a starry-eyed valuation that, at the time, probably turned liveBooks off to the idea. LiveBooks certainly could use the platform, since their "Client Access" feature for their websites is clearly lacking in the robust capabilities that both PhotoShelter and Digital Railroad have to offer. Yet, both PhotoShelter and Digital Railroad do not have the functionality and optimization that liveBooks' platform offers for a facade. If liveBooks were to acquire the platform - and that looks like a decision that will based upon how well the liveBooks CTO can untangle the coding that is within the DRR .net platform, and integrate DRR into the liveBooks architecture. In doing this, they then would have a solid platform that could meet prospective clients' needs, and provide a monthly revenue stream from the DRR monthly fees, beyond the pay-once website design model, giving liveBooks a true archive capability and a more complete solution. However, what is liveBooks willing to pay? It's highly unlikely that liveBooks will write a check, but perhaps they don't have to. With sufficient cash-positive flow, and a healthy company, they could take over the code, clients, and, perhaps even run the Marketplace, and do so in exchange for a small equity stake in liveBooks, taken in lieu of payment by WTI. Their acquisition of the company would also give them a possible revenue stream from Marketplace sales, where 20% of the sale goes to the company. One question though, would be that since liveBooks is so single-photographer-centric (they only have a few agencies), how would all the agencies that DRR has on-board, be handled? There are few solutions out there. Surely, they could jump ship to PhotoShelter, code-it themselves, or, then, as noted above, there's PictureMaxx, which we previously wrote about, and DRR's Tom Tinervin is bringing PictureMax to the US, so that's quite a possibility too, since providing a platform for each of the current DRR agency clients would not be as much of a conflict as running the Marketplace themselves.
Whomever acquires the assets, they will get a core code worth, at best, $500k, and you can expect the name to go away. There will be no more Digital Railroad. This will be no merger. This will be the acquisition of the assets of a company. The bank holding the note - WTI - will have the final say. Since they're a secured creditor, and the only real one, they will be the recipient of whatever proceeds come from the dissolution of the company, from a platform sale, as well as the sale of the designer chairs by the auctioneers. The VC's are SOL.
So, will the second mouse get the cheese, in the form of a debt free company with an existing paying client base and image licensing platform? Will liveBooks be the savior of the potentially-soon-to-be-left-at-the-station Digital Railroad subscribers? And what will the fallout be between the very friendly companies of PhotoShelter and liveBooks, who would now be competing - in one way, or another? Or, will Ippolito pull a rabbit out of his hat? Or, will a bankruptcy happen, and PhotoShelter drains the subscribers from DRR, and PS and liveBooks will continue their courtship for synergies? Hang on friends, this is going to be a bumpy ride, and this will be happening fast, since this likely needs to be wrapped up before November.
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 This, the November 3rd issue of Time Magazine, has on its cover a Diebold voting machine, shot on a white seamless. Or, was it? (Continued after the Jump)
 It looks like it wasn't. Here's the first issue - the two adjusting clips on each leg do not form a cross-bar, yet the "shadow" that was laid down suggests that it is a cross-bar. If the light were coming from the left, as the shadow suggests, there would be nothing that connected the two legs. Each of those clips wrap around the leg.
 Next up is the leg highlight. It is coming more from the center, and ever so-slightly from the right, as shown in the highlight on the leg. That shadow that Time created, clearly skews significantly to the right. Further, the shadow clarity - the edge and so forth, is just much too crisp and clear.
None of this would be a problem if the photo credit inside read "Photo Illustration", yet here's how it reads:
 Clearly, it's listed as a photograph. Once I did a little more research, and I couldn't find it on the Getty site, I stumbled across the exact image in an article here, from 2006.
Here, we see that the shadow is at the top, in a severe fashion, and not likely a cover candidate. Further, the background seamless that photographer Henry Leutwyler used is right up against the back of the machine, not in some spacious studio, as appears in the cover image.
Time Magazine had an issue a few years back with the alterations of shadows, as commented on by the NPPA here:
Now, this shadow adjustment on the Diebold machine here doesn't have the racial implications of the OJ cover, or does it? Are we to believe that Diebold will be the reason that Barack Obama loses? That somehow the Republicans would dictate to Diebold how to throw the election? That that is even actually possible?
I am of the opinion that this image does not meet the ethical test of being a photograph. It is a photo illustration, and should have been identified as such.
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Yes, let's call it what it is. Corbis, not content with taking 50% of a stock sale for housing images on it's servers, has decided that that's not enough, and they now want another 10%. What with Bill Gates having retired from Microsoft, he's likely paying more attention to his other daliances, and now his attention is directed more towards Corbis, which he wholly owns. This won't happen overnight, but when a Corbis photographer's contract comes up for renewal, they'll get a letter dictating that they'll be earning less during the next contract cycle. As laughable as it sounds, the man charged with delivering the news, Don Wieshlow, conveyed, as reported by PDN's Daryl Lang ( Hard Times for Stock Continue: Corbis to Cut Royalty Rate, 10/25/08): ... he {Wieshlow} stressed that royalty rates are not the same as revenue. He said Corbis hopes the change will eventually lead to higher payouts for photographers – as Corbis invests in growth, expands its market share, and earns more revenue. (Continued after the Jump)
I wish I had been inside the room where that sentiment was conveyed. Anyone I spied nodding their head in agreement to that malarky I would have shared with them my super-secret deal on Florida Wetlands, before loading those bobble-heading onto a bus so I could show them what piece of the Brooklyn Bridge I was offering for sale as well. Other than preserving their own salaries and bonuses, what goes through these executives' minds when they decide to take more money from their content producers?
The one upside is that the contracts were fortunately written so that the percentage was not changable during the duration of the contract. So, those of you who have 6 months to three years to get out better start looking for other platforms to license your work. Hopefully, in a year or two those platforms will mature more and produce substantive revenue for stock sales.
Then, as Lang reports, Corbis CEO Gary Shenk said “This is not our company” and gestured to the four other Corbis execs. He then gestured to include the audience. “This is our company together.”
Actually, no, it's Bill Gates' company. More specifically, it's Gates' servers, desks, and chairs, and the valuable content is owned by the photographers. Unless, of course, the new contracts will actually give photographers an equity stake in the company. That remark was an attempt at a kumbayah moment that really sounds more like psyco-babble. Paul Melcher has a comparable take on Shenks remark that's worth a read here.
I call shenanigans on this one folks. Be thankful that Corbis' legal department was incompetent enough to write a contract that precluded them from lowering these percentages during the term of the contract, or you'd all be stuck with a change effective immediately. Get while the gettin's good folks.
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Photographer Tim Mantoani is working on a labor of love - Behind The Photographs. A an auspicious project documenting the photographers behind well known photographs, along with the photographs themselves. He writes on his blog about them here - and we had a chance to catch up with him while he was inbetween portraits during the 2008 PhotoPlus Expo, and then were able to see him make an image of photographer John Reuter, who has run the Polaroid 20x24 studio since 1980. It's a remarkable process to see one of these images processed and produced - yes, still in 90 seconds. (Comments, if any, after the Jump)
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The final day of PhotoPlus Expo 2008 brings interesting information from ImageSpan, and more from the newcomer on the Pro SLR block - Sony. (Comments, if any, after the Jump)
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Day 2 brings several other interviews, including a chat with Contact Press Images Founder David Burnett, Christina Mittermeier and Sony's new camera, Grover Sanschagrin of PhotoShelter with some amazing new technology, and Quest Couch of Lumiquest with a neat flash adapter. (Comments, if any, after the Jump)
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If your best client came to you and said "learn Spanish, or you're no longer going to get hired by us." Would you?
