Photographers usually are so busy lining up their next shoot that it’s tough for them to find time to deal with another aspect of their business: distributing royalties.

LicenseStream removes a lot of the pain of collecting royalties for the principal content creator or owner, since its automated licensing service typically accepts payment upfront.   It goes a step further by providing a service to distribute royalties directly to anyone collaborating on a LicenseStream user’s image or project.

For example, say you regularly rely on help from a food stylist and a lighting assistant to shoot a mouth-watering image of a glistening steak for a magazine cover. You want to keep your assistants happy by ensuring they get their share of payments for each assignment on a timely basis. However, you may not have enough time between tightly-scheduled shoots to calculate and send checks manually to all of your helpers.

With LicenseStream you can easily set up royalty profiles for each of your assistants so they receive their royalty splits automatically via mailed check. Simply log into your LicenseStream account, go to the Business/Store Manager and click on the Manage Royalty Profile in the lower right-hand box.

Then: 

• Go to Options & Tools in the right margin, click on Add/Edit Royalty Profile and the bar will open up and prompt you to provide a Royalty Profile name. Provide a name and click to Add Royalty Profile.
• Click on the Royalty Recipient tab. The Royalty Recipient tab will open up and prompt you to add the name, city, state, country and zip code of a royalty recipient. In the example below, we’ve named her Mary Lightbright, a name which then appears on a list on the right side of the page under Edit Content Provider Share.  We then added a couple of other fictional characters (John Ham the food stylist and  Imogen Maker the videomaker)
• Type in the royalty share for each recipient – 10% each for Mary, John and Imogen. Click Save Royalty Profile and – voila – you’re done!

There are 3 areas where you can apply the Royalty Profile you just created to one or multiple content items:

• After uploading an image.
• On the Prepare Content page, where you may select one or multiple items.
• Under the License & Royalty Information area, where you may select the appropriate Royalty Profile, add/update other metadata and then click Prepare Content on the bottom of the page.

To apply an existing Royalty Profile to an existing single image or other piece of content:

• Click on the Manage Content tab at the top.
• Locate the image you want to associate with this royalty split.  Mouse over the image and click on the Edit tab.
• On the Edit Content page, click on Licensing and scroll to the bottom of the page to Manage Content Splits.
• Under Manage Splits, click to Add Imogen, John and Mary to the Manage Content Splits side of the page and assign them 10% each.

To apply an existing royalty profile to multiple existing pieces of content:

• Click on the Manage Content tab at the top.
• Select the content to which you'd like to apply the Royalty Profile.
• Under the Actions area, select Add Selected to > Batch Content Editor.
• Under the License & Royalty Information area, select the appropriate Royalty Profile.
• Click to Save Information on the bottom of the page.

Alternatively, you may define and apply an entirely new set of recipients and percentages for the next shoot.

Have questions or comments about this blog post? Please feel free to share them by clicking on the “Comments” link below. 

Yesterday’s LicenseStream blog post delivered five tips for writing grants that might help you secure the funding you need to keep body and soul together while you pursue a personal photography project.

Now that you have a basic overview of the steps to take, this is a good time to start looking at specific funding sources. Below we list five sources of specific grants and awards for the 2010-2011 year. Deadlines are listed at the end of each description. For more information about each grant, click on the name of the grant or funding source. In addition, see below for links to sites that list a range of grants. Good luck!

• Aaron Siskind Foundation Grant: The Aaron Siskind Foundation is offering a limited number of fellowship grants for the 2010 Individual Photographer’s Fellowship of up to $7,000 each, for individual artists working in still photography and photo-based art. Grant recipients and award amounts will be determined by a review panel based on artistic excellence, accomplishment to date, and the promise of future achievement in the medium in its widest sense. Recipients will be notified of awards in the late summer of 2010. Application period: March 1-May 17, 2010. 
• Inge Morath Award: Named for an Austrian-born photographer who was associated with the well-known photographic cooperative Magnum Photos for nearly 50 years and who devoted much of her enthusiasm to encouraging women photographers. This annual prize of $5,000 awarded is by the Magnum Foundation to a female documentary photographer under the age of 30 to support the completion of a long-term project. One award and up to two finalists are selected by a jury composed of Magnum photographers.  Winners are announced in July 2010 on the websites of the Magnum Foundation and the Inge Morath Foundation. Deadline: April 30, 2010.
• Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography: Since 2005, Getty Images has awarded five Grants for Editorial Photography annually to professional photojournalists. Each grant provides $20,000, plus editorial, logistical and promotional support. Getty Images also awards four student grants of $5,000 per year to photojournalism students at accredited schools. The goal is to enable photojournalists to pursue projects about which they are passionate and that focus on significant social and cultural issues. Deadline: May 1, 2010.
• The W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography: W. Eugene Grant  was a photographer born in the American heartland (Wichita, Kansas) and perhaps best known for brutally vivid World War II photographs.  The award named for him is presented annually to a photographer whose past work and proposed project follows the tradition of W. Eugene Smith's concerned photography and the dedicated compassion he exhibited during his 45-year career as a photographic essayist. It provides photographers with the financial freedom to carry out major photographic essays. For 2010, the amount of the grant will be $30,000. An additional $5,000 in fellowship money will be dispersed, at the discretion of the jury, to one or more finalists deemed worthy of special recognition. Awards will be presented in a ceremony held in New York City in early October. Deadline: May 31. 2010.
• The Alexia Foundation: Known by her peers and professors as one of the most promising photojournalism students at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, Alexia Tsairis was a victim of the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. She was returning home for the Christmas holidays after spending a semester at the Syracuse University London Centre. The foundation offers a grant to students and professionals who want to produce a substantial picture story that furthers the Foundation's goals of promoting world peace and cultural understanding. The professional Alexia Grant recipient will receive $15,000 for the production of the proposed project. Application period: December 6, 2010 - January 14, 2011. December 6, 2010.

Click on the links below to find sites that list a range of grants, including some whose deadlines have passed:

• Photo Histories: Photo Grants of 2010 
• Photojournalismlinks: Awards, Grants and Competitions 
• Art Deadlines List: March 2010 

Have an award you'd like to highlight that is not covered in the links above? If so, please suggest it by clicking on the "Comments" link below. 

In a photography rut? Tired of shooting stock? Need a way to reawaken your artistic soul by plumbing it with a challenging project?

Perhaps it’s time to pursue a personal photography project. Such a project allows you to pick a subject you truly care about, something that may require you to explore new territory and even travel great distances to shoot the best pictures ever taken of the subject you choose. The great thing about a personal project is that it allows you the freedom to pursue work you feel passionate about and determine the size and scope of it, including how much time you’ll put into it and how you’ll tackle it.

All of this freedom is bookended by some hard work. At the outset, there is the challenge of securing the funding – most likely a grant – that will cover expenses and help you keep body and soul together while you pursue your passion. At the close, there’s the tricky business of choosing the very best 10-15 photographs that will allow you to tell the entire story.

To help you get started, we’ll give you five favorite grant-seeking tips. Tomorrow, we’ll follow up with links to Web sites of organizations that are now soliciting grant applications from photographers.

First the tips:

• Start by looking at a wide variety of types and sources of grants. Think out of the box: look not only for photo grants but also any funding or equipment source that may be related to your themes, your geographic area, or even your ethnic, religious or sexual identity. Look beyond photographic institutions to arts foundations, academic groups, political groups and of course corporate bodies. You may find that a major camera manufacturer or equipment supplier will help out by donating materials to you. You also should look to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as UNICEF, CARE, or UNHCR that may pave the way to other opportunities and even write a letter of reference for you – a must-have for successfully securing many grants.
• Consider teaming up with a scientist. As photographer Chris Lindner points out on the liveBooks Resolve blog, if you want to photograph science and be paid for your work through a National Science Foundation Grant, you’ll probably need either to partner with a researcher submitting a proposal or get your own science education grant.
• Track deadlines. Create a calendar – or better yet a spreadsheet – of grants that interest you, their deadlines and their award dates. Take the deadlines seriously. Be sure to track the date of each submission and the responses you receive. If you’re rejected, note the next date for reapplication and move on.
• Create a toolbox made up of submission building blocks that you store on your computer. These include:
  • a one-to-two page statement that describes your project and that can be easily revised to meet each grant application’s requirements;
  • a short and compelling autobiography that captures all the key points of your resume. As Jon Anderson points out in his excellent Lightstalkers blog post, Grant Writing 101, this gives you a chance to introduce ideas about photography and your work that may not fit into your proposal essay, but that may give the judges additional reasons to support you. Again, plan to alter these essays based on the requirements of the target grant; and
  • a file of folks you can call on for that all-important letter of recommendation.
• When writing your grant, look out for stylistic crutches that may put the judges to sleep. Keep sentences short. Avoid passive sentences whenever possible. Most of all, make your entry enjoyable and easy to read. A way to check your application for flaws is with readability statistics. If you use WORD, this is an invaluable feature.         

• Here’s what these statistics tell me about what to look for when editing this document:
  
  • Words per sentence: 15.6. That’s wordy, and tells us that we need to revise sentences that include more than one thought and perhaps break them in two.
  • Sentences per paragraph: 3.1. That's low and low is good. It means we're breaking own ideas into digestible nuggets. However, it may be skewed by our use of bullets.
  • Passive sentences: 7%. Not bad! It means that we’re writing in the active tense. The closer you can get to 0, the better.
  • Flesch Reading Ease Score: 60.9. This score rates text on a 100-point scale, and the higher the score, the easier it is for readers to understand. Experts aim for a score of about 60-70 for standard documents, so we’re within range.
  • Kincaid Grade Level: 8.6. Rates text on a U.S. grade school level, and this score indicates an eighth-grader can read this with ease.   

To learn more about this feature visit the 79 Grant Writing Resources blog. 

Check back to see tomorrow’s blog for a list of Web sites now soliciting grant applications from photographers.

Also, click on the “Comments” link below to share an idea or leave a question.

An illustration sometimes works better than a photograph. It can more easily be manipulated to convey an individual style, a mood, an abstract concept or an attitude.  Drawn to work together, illustrations can lend a book or a website consistency. An illustration can be a sketch, a simple line or a detailed drawing. It can be either hand drawn or computer generated. It can consist of simple black lines on a white page or ornately colored and intricate as the illuminated characters found in the Book of Kells.

At ImageSpan, we work with so many photographers that it’s easy to overlook the illustrators who use LicenseStream's automated licensing and royalty payment services. One such user is Lisa Sage, an illustrator based in Limerick, Maine. A former computer programmer, Lisa fell into a career as an illustrator in 2008 while – ironically – trying to learn more about photography.

“I had been in the photography forums, trying to learn all I could, and within one forum had answered questions from a woman named Judy about the difference between photorealistic illustrations and vector art,” said Sage, whose website, Sage Family Studios, features illustrations, paintings and photomontages. “To explain the difference, I used images out of my portfolio. Then out of the blue I received a call from someone at Oxford University Press and it turned out to be this same woman! She was looking for really detailed illustrations and asked me to be part of the upcoming project.”

© Lisa Sage/Sage Studios LLC   “Within” was chosen for a new edition of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series

Sage’s illustrations are regularly uploaded to the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) site, where she participates in the forums. One of her images, highlighted for an Image of a Week award on the NAPP site, caught the attention of the visual effects director for a horror thriller called “The Gates of Hell.” Sage soon found herself creating digital matte paintings for the film. While Sage was working on the film (released in 2008), the movie’s visual effects director suggested she launch an email campaign to various art buyers who might be interested in her illustrations. Sage sent postcards to art buyers at various publishers. An art director from Chooseco, a publisher in Waitsfield, Vermont, fell in love with an image on one of the postcards. It turns out the art director wanted it for the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series of chapter books for pre-teens that Chooseco was republishing and that were popular in the 1980s.   “As the art director from Chooseco went through galleries on my website, he was able to click on the images they had fallen in love with and go straight into LicenseStream,” said Sage.

“I was at Photoshop World last year when I received an email from Chooseco’s art director asking to negotiate pricing. Understanding that this art director was with a small publisher – instead of a large New York press – I went into LicenseStream to adjust the drop-down menu pricing, making it easy for the publisher to license the images at the prices they wanted. I re-sent emails to the art director several times before I received a note back from him saying that the images already had been licensed. It happened so easily, that I wasn’t sure – and couldn’t believe – that it had actually gone through!”

To top off that success, Sage went on to win the international Guru Award in the Photomontage category at that Photoshop World in March 2009. Sage now is working to finish a bachelor’s degree in information technology with a specialization in project management. Her hope is to take on larger and more complex projects. Meanwhile, she believes there is plenty of work out there for illustrators. "A buyer can spend a lot of time searching stock images that just aren’t obtainable because they’re too difficult to get,” she said. “For example, often a photo buyer needs an image of a happy family – but one not looking directly at the viewer so they look natural.

© Lisa Sage/Sage Studios LLC  "All That I See” caught the eye of a film’s visual effects director. It later won a 2009 Guru Award

Perhaps you need an image of someone cooking dinner or reading a book.  Or say you’re putting together a document that explains a process, such as the difference between people paying for credit cards and people paying with cash.  These all sound simple but it’s amazing how much time people spend just trying to get the right image.” 

In addition, an illustrator can create a series of images with a uniform look and feel. “It’s hard to make photographic images feel consistent across a Web site,” Sage added. “With branding, illustrations are often easier to work with because you are creating them. Also, anything geared towards children is typically done with illustrations instead of photos.”

Instead of commissioning an original illustration or photo, art buyers also can now search for an image by Sage via a major search engine or go directly to Sage’s LicenseStream store, choose the image they want, and license it with a few mouse clicks.

“With LicenseStream, everything is so simple that you can shoot out a license very fast,” said Sage. “I’m relieved that it takes so much pain out of the process of licensing my work. That frees up time for me to focus on what matters – creating the images.”

Have a question or an observation?  Click on the “Comments” link below to share your ideas. 

Trends alter the way we as consumers view the world we live in and the products we use every day. For example, 2009 saw the rise of the “netbook” computer as an auxiliary device for the home or travel, and 2010 has already seen the first launches of tablet-style computers.  As these devices proliferate and we become increasingly reliant on Web-based applications for everyday business, the paperless office and the wireless world we once dreamed of are becoming a reality. At the same time, growing adoption of these various devices means that demand for new content is greater than ever.  
 
What does this mean for me?

Keeping an eye on trends in the marketplace is essential to making your work as a content creator relevant to buyers. For example, trends in the technology sector change not only the way we do business but affect the way we spend our free time. Staying one step ahead of the curve and identifying trends in images that may interest corporate and other clients, including art directors at marketing and advertising firms, editorial outlets and other businesses that use images, may seem like an impossible task. But with all the resources available on the Web it should be part of your business strategy.

Last year, we talked about how in today’s photo marketplace, it helps to cultivate a specialty. Whatever your specialty, trends affect every aspect of your work and how it will be received in the marketplace.  This is the first in an occasional series that will identify upcoming trends and what they may mean for your business. Listed below are some of the big trends from 2009 that will continue to influence us into 2010 and beyond. In future posts, we’ll explore some of these trends in more depth. Meanwhile, keep these trends in mind as you market yourself to clients in the months ahead: 

Going Green Green may be an overused term that covers a very diverse range of industries and topics, but in 2010 there is no denying that it affects all of us. Whether you are talking about renewable energy, reducing carbon emissions or upgrading the windows in your home to save money on power, the thinking behind going green is simple. Save money, create jobs and make the most of what we have.

The Cloud Cloud computing is the phrase of the day in the IT world with more companies moving to cloud-based solutions. Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering a hosted service over the internet. Software, infrastructure and development platforms are run as a service. All a consumer needs is a computer with an internet connection. Cloud-based computing greatly reduces the cost of running and maintaining servers, software and IT support. The ability to access enormous amounts of data from multiple locations at very low cost is allowing companies across the world to build elaborate applications with easily scalable virtually unlimited amounts of computing resources, customer storage and IT services.

Are there any trends you’re seeing that are important to photographers and are not mentioned above? If so, please let us know by posting them in the comments section below.

Apple created such a buzz around the launch of its latest hot product -- the iPad -- two weeks ago that sites and services all over the net slowed to a crawl and some suffered outages for upwards of 20 minutes. At the AlwaysOn OnMedia conference in New York a few days later, Apple’s new product remained a hot topic. Consider the amount of discussion about how this new product will not support flash by participants on a single panel, “Online Video…Who Profits?”

This kind of awareness is not created solely by the Apple PR machine, but is a clear indication of the widespread interest in changing the way we as consumers experience media. The demand for a real interactive experience and a thirst for new information mean the demand for high-quality, easily licensable content has never been greater.

Just look at the impact of the iPad. Although not as revolutionary as some had predicted, Apple's 10-inch touch screen iPad tablet packs a mighty punch. Along with the ability to surf the Web and handle email, the device can stream video from sites like YouTube and Vimeo and is capable of running powerful applications like iWork. In addition, Apple introduced iBooks.  The ability to download books is nothing new, but the iPad reader app adds a fresh look and feel to the idea of reading from a digital device.

Among the print publications featured in Apple’s official demo video for the iPad were LicenseStream customer SPIN magazine and The New York Times. At launch, Martin Nisenholtz, a senior vice president at The New York Times showcased a version of the paper on the iPad that displayed just like the regular paper, but that could be manipulated by the user to zoom in to read articles, flick through pages and access video right from within news articles. Nisenholtz’s declaration that “this is just the beginning,” makes it clear that the executives at Gray Lady are embracing the iPad in a big way.

WHY DO I CARE?

Companies such as The New York Times and other large publications already use massive amounts of visual content on a daily basis. They also face the growing costs of producing this content. In addition, advances in digital fingerprinting, watermarking and tracking for online content are forcing changes in the media industry as they require greater accountability by sites and publications that otherwise might use content illegally or without proper licensing.

Demand for content will continue to grow exponentially as newspapers, magazines and other media companies form business relationships with companies that are creating new conduits to the consumer – whether it’s Apple’s iPAD, Amazon’s Kindle or Barnes & Noble’s Nook. As a result, the ability for media companies such as The New York Times to search for and easily license digital content is more important than ever.  Just as important is the need of the photographer or videographer to be fairly compensated for the original content he or she creates.

ImageSpan's LicenseStream with ImageSpan's partners already provide the tools to make your digital media license-ready, and to monitor, manage and monetize unauthorized usage.

In addition, ImageSpan and its partners are making it easier for potential purchasers or your content – such as The New York Times – to monetize the content they publish. Instead of relying solely on advertising – which is a reactive model as ImageSpan CEO Iain Scholnick pointed out during a recent AlwaysOn OnMedia conference  panel in New York titled, “What's the Online Monetization Strategy that Will Save News & Publishing?”, content creators and owners should play to their strengths – which is leveraging their creative content more efficiently and effectively.  To actually monetize the content, he added, content developers need to be able to link into a licensing backbone, such as the one LicenseStream provides, from any iPad (or for that matter, iPhone) applications they’re creating to distribute content.

The upshot? LicenseStream offers content owners of all sizes a powerful solution that makes it easier for editorial and other media companies to find and license the content they need.

In case you missed it, ImageSpan this week with arvato finance services Limited announced their platform collaboration. This collaboration enables LicenseStream to deliver a global content clearinghouse that unifies, drives and accelerates the trade of digital content, including video, images, audio and text.

What does this mean? That we’re rolling out the first global solution to monetize content – ever!

The new global content clearinghouse combines ImageSpan’s automated content licensing, publishing and tracking platform, called LicenseStream, with arvato finance’s PaymentLounge premium merchant services consisting of global billing, accounting and payment components. 

This may all sound a little lofty, but it solves the real-world problem facing many owners of large stores of content: how to monetize content efficiently on a global basis. As a result, the thousands of individual photographers and illustrators who’ve chosen LicenseStream to help them make money with their content now are being joined by marquee publishers and media companies. The Chicago Tribune and The McEvoy Group – a publisher whose brand media properties include SPIN magazine and Chronicle Books – already are beginning to develop new markets, direct customer relationships and drive incremental revenues via the joint solution.

To learn more about this new global content clearinghouse and what it delivers, check out this week’s ImageSpan announcement.

Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Deanne Fitzmaurice  defends the very graphic nature of the images coming out of Haiti as its people – helped by teams of international aid workers -- dig out from the debris that rained down on them after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the island Jan. 12, killing at least 150,000 and leaving millions homeless.

Fitzmaurice also worries about the plight of Haiti’s people as news coverage of it inevitably fades.  

“There was just one column on the front page about it in this week’s Sunday The New York Times, and so it seems to be quickly dropping off in terms of the news cycle," said Fitzmaurice, speaking by phone from her home in the San Francisco Bay Area. "And that means everything the news coverage helps drive – the donations, the relief efforts, everything – will decline.”

Debates continue to take place online and in other media over the usefulness of photographers and journalists in the disaster zone, over their roles once there (should they be taking photos or bandaging the injured and distributing water?), and even over whether the images they’re taking are just too graphic for the folks back home to absorb. Acknowledging these debates, Fitzmaurice cited several reasons photojournalists need to shoot and send back honest photos of what is happening in Haiti. 

“The images coming out of Haiti have played a big part in how people have responded to this disaster,” said Fitzmaurice. “Seeing those images has really moved people both in the U.S. and around the world to donate money, time, and other resources.”

She added that it is the duty of photojournalists, after all, to bear witness and record history.

“As a photographer, you can’t sensor yourself while you’re shooting,” she said. “You need to just be there, get the images and send them back. Then let the editor for each publication or news website determine whether the images are appropriate for their audiences.”

Fitzmaurice knows something about making split-second decisions about what to photograph and what to let go in a difficult environment. She had many such moments while taking photos for the Pulitzer Prize-winning essay she created for the San Francisco Chronicle of a nine-year-old Iraqi boy who was badly injured when he picked up a bomb, mistaking it for a ball.

“I went in and photographed him having brain surgery and there were times when I had to decide, ‘Okay, don’t shoot this,’” she said. “You have to be aware of your surroundings and think about whether the image you shoot may be strong enough to risk upsetting people and possibly jeopardizing the more compelling images that you may be able to get later on.” 

However, when she’s in the middle of a shooting a situation that may be difficult, she added, “I’m very focused on the fact that it is my job to be photographing the story at hand.”

As for the images coming out of Haiti since the earthquake, Fitzmaurice said she has been most impressed with the images sent by Damon Winters, a photographer for The New York Times. “I think he was one of the first people there and has documented everything, and shot images with compassion and integrity," she said. "I think his pictures have been very powerful.”

Fitzmaurice has been trying to get to Haiti herself since the earthquake and has been in touch with various foundations, non-profits and other non-governmental organizations that may need a photographer to get the word out about the work they’re doing. But covering the current breaking news story isn’t that important to her.

“I’d be happy to go in a couple of months or in six months from now,” she said. “These people’s lives have been drastically changed – these are people who have lost everything. So I’m drawn to those stories.”

Does she have a specific framework in mind for telling a story once she gets there?

“A lot of times it’s nice to have some kind of an idea of what you want to do, so you have a framework,” she said. “But I think real life is way more interesting than anything I could preconceive and so I like to let stories unfold.”

To be a good photographer and a good storyteller, she added, “I think you have to go towards stories you are passionate about, that you really are about. That’s when you do your best work.”

Fitzmaurice said she currently is drawn to the story of the children and the orphans of Haiti. “I’ve contacted NGOs who work with children," she said. “To prepare, I’ll try to do as much research as I can before I get there. Right now, everyone is in emergency mode, trying to solve problems, saving peoples’ lives.”

As efforts shift from search and recovery to rebuilding infrastructure, she added, “I think a lot of different types of stories will emerge, and there will be opportunities to go deeper. It’ll still be important for the people of Haiti, and for the people of the world, that photographers are there to tell those stories.”

For those interested in hearing more from Deanne Fitzmaurice, you can catch her at the following events:

• March 4:  ASMP Tucson 
• March 9: WPPI in Las Vegas - Presenting Masterclass on Photojournalism and Multimedia
• March 8-10: WPPI Convention in Las Vegas with Think Tank Photo (a camera bag company that Deanne co-founded)
  

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that shook Haiti to its foundation last week and the aftershocks that followed – including the magnitude 6.1 quake that hit Haiti this morning – have dominated headlines of many photography sites, blogs and forums as photographers struggle to understand the extent of the damage and how to respond.

There were thoughtful posts and stories on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and PDN (Photo District News) websites over the motivations behind and the wisdom of photographers – especially freelancers without professional or relief group affiliations – rushing to Haiti, a country now struggling with a lack of food, water, energy and other supplies.

There were similarly heated discussions within threads such as Heading to Haiti, and Is anyone on the ground in Haiti on the Lightstalkers forums that highlighted a rift within the photographic community between those who expressed concerns that travel by outsiders to such a resource-strained country was simply exploitative and self-serving, and others who defended the moves, noting it is the duty of photojournalists to bear witness and document history.

In fact, there was plenty of support for the latter argument stirring images both of destruction and deliverance began to appear online. The Big Picture posted a series of candid scenes in the earthquake’s wake as did a post highlighting the work of photographer Jan Grarup on the Danish site Fotobloggen. Grarup’s images even came with a warning urging viewer discretion. On the other end of the spectrum, a link to updates from NPR Photographers in Haiti chronicled stories of hope, including one of the now-famous images of Sharla Chand of New Jersey who was pulled smiling and in good condition from the rubble of the collapsed Montana Hotel in Port-au-Prince.

We and others, including our friends at liveBooks, were impressed by the response of many photographers who came up with creative ways to generate donations and encouraged others to do the same. Notable among them was Miami celebrity photographer Brian Smith’s list of five places to donate for Haitian Earthquake Relief, and a link by fashion photographer Nick Zantop to an International Committee of the Red Cross site that allows you to register to locate missing relatives.

In addition, Bay Area photographer and photography rights advocate Lane Hartwell spearheaded an effort by San Francisco Bay Area photographers to collaborate on a fundraising magazine for Haitian relief.  Called Haiti: Oné Respe, the $12 magazine’s title comes from a traditional Haitian greeting meaning “honor and respect.”  It includes images from pre-earthquake Haiti and combined with essays and it is being produced by MagCloud, an HP web service that prints on demand and that reportedly donated its printing costs. Proceeds will go to the American Red Cross International Response Fund for Haiti relief.  

Do you know of other photography-related relief efforts not highlighted here? If so, please post them in the comments section below.

With images traveling at lightning speed across the Internet, photographers, graphic artists, media companies and other content producers seek more ways to open their content for business on the Web in a way that protects it and maximizes its value. There’s a lot of buzz lately about technologies for tracking and finding copies of images on the Web. Specifically, we’re seeing a lot of interest in watermarking and digital fingerprinting. So what is the difference between these two methods and which approach is best for you?

To help you understand the difference, here’s a look at how each of these image detection technologies address the problem of protecting your content on the Web in a way that allows you to manage, monitor and maximize its value.

What is an embedded digital watermark?

If you’re a photographer or any other type of content creator, ideally you want to be sure your ownership and contact information remains permanently attached regardless of where they may end up. 

An embedded digital watermark does exactly that and provides a sure-fire way of identifying an image as yours. It is a persistent, yet imperceptible digital identifier added to your images to communicate your copyright ownership and help locate where they are used online.  Because it communicates your ownership upfront, an embedded digital watermark can turn your catalog of content – wherever it resides on the Internet – into multiple marketing agents that point traffic back to your website.

Like a nightclub handstamp that is visible only under an ultraviolet light, an imbedded digital watermark can be detected by a digital watermark reader but is generally imperceptible to the human eye. 

It also is like metadata that is invisible and attached to an image. However, it is much more difficult to remove than metadata and it stays with the image even through copying, manipulation, editing, cropping, compression and decompression, encryption and decryption — all without affecting the quality of the image — or the enjoyment of consumers. 

Since an embedded digital watermark allows additional information about the creator to be hidden, it can alleviate some of the tension and concerns tied to potential orphan works legislation. (Orphan works bills have proposed that certain uses be allowed if an author cannot be found after a reasonable search.) 

How is watermarking different from fingerprinting?

An embedded watermark is a “proactive” solution that begins tracking your content from the moment you watermark it and make it accessible on the Web. 

A digital fingerprint is a “reactive” solution that analyzes image content and then creates a unique image fingerprint. Very much as human fingerprints rely on the patterns of unique arches and swirls found on an individual’s thumb or forefinger, digital media fingerprints rely on a unique ID to track your content across the Web. Both types of fingerprints require the maintenance of a large database against which to match image fingerprints found on the Web. They also both require technology to quickly match fingerprints found in the wild against those in the database. 

Like embedded digital watermarking, digital fingerprinting remains effective even if the image has been altered. However, there are instances where changes to an image will cause a fingerprinting system to miss it (though the technology is advancing and some now need only a few pixels to identify an image). Also unlike an embedded watermark, fingerprinting does not proactively communicate your ownership. Instead, it locates usages of your content wherever it may travel on the Web.

So the biggest advantage of fingerprinting is that it can track any image, including those already published to the Web. There’s also no need to watermark or prime an image in any way before publishing it online.

The advantages to embedded digital watermarking is that it ensures ownership is established up-front and, like indelible ink, and stays with the image no matter how much the image is manipulated, altered or distorted. 

Which solution offers the best protection?

The answer to that question is “both.” Watermarking and fingerprinting can complement one another to protect and track your content effectively as it travels across the Web. And since either solution can identify unauthorized uses of content, both can provide the intelligence you need to identify new markets and pursue untapped opportunities for licensing, advertising and distribution.

To see how LicenseStream is leveraging content tracking technologies to help content owners monitor and monetize their valuable assets, just click on Content Tracker.