Yesterday, we took a look at what  photo metadata is, why it’s important, and how it benefits photographers. The information came out of a presentation on metadata by ImageSpan with liveBooks and the Bay Area-based Renegade Meetup photography group that drew nearly 30 photographers to an after-hours event at liveBooks last Wednesday evening.

Today, we’ll continue to share what we learned in that Metadata Meetup. We’ll touch on how to apply metadata, how to make the application of certain types of metadata more efficient, and why applying metadata is critical for your business. We’ll also include links to websites where you can learn more about metadata.

Attaching Metadata

There are several ways and methods for attaching metadata to an image. In addition to embedding metadata as images are published to the Web, through services such as LicenseStream and liveBooks, photographers can associate metadata in several other types of photography workflow software, such as Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom™ . In fact, photographers using Lightroom and the popular Adobe Creative Suite® 3 software can upload all of their images along with metadata applied in those programs to LicenseStream via plug-ins.

Travel photographer David Sanger,  who presented a great overview of what metadata is and how it works, said that there are instances where social media sites will strip out metadata. He added that even some major search engines will not look at metadata to help anyone searching for an image find it.

To ensure that the image is searchable, Sanger recommends photographers associate a caption as well as keywords with their images. Search engines, Sanger said, “primarily look at the text on the page associated with an image.” That said, he added, “If somebody finds your image and the metadata survives, then they can identify the image as yours and they can license it.”

Applying Keywording

Brian Pobuda, a corporate photographer who also consults as a digital asset management specialist, said that to make applying metadata more efficient,  he often applies a first round of basic keywords to a group of content. For a recent shoot, for example, he labeled a batch of images “City Center, Las Vegas, 2010,” and then applied more specific keywords to those images he expects clients to use.

Sanger said his keywording practices depend on the image destination.

“For example, with Getty I provide conceptual keywords and they do the rest of the keywording,” he said. “When I know an image will be put on Google Images, I want lots of keywords because I want as many people to find it as possible.” Other stock agencies may penalize you for having too many obscure keywords, he added, because your ranking depends on your click-through ratio which may fall if too many obscure keywords are attached.

There also are situations when additional keywords may not be desirable.

“If I have a picture of a sunset, it won’t necessarily say 'San Francisco, Baker Beach, June 2003 sunset 4 p.m.,'” Sanger said. “I may just say 'Sunset on Ocean,' because an image buyer may just be looking for a generic image. Similarly, he doesn’t always apply a date. “There are times specificity can work against you,” he said.

PCWorld Senior Editor Melissa Perenson, who served as moderator at the Metadata Meetup suggested a good, common-sense method for applying keywording. “Just think about how you would find an image if you were doing a search,” she said.

In fact, keywording specifically and metadata applications generally can still vary widely. Major stock agencies all have their own methods of applying metadata. Some use IPTC – a standard that came out of the newspaper world. A more advanced standard which includes additional fields emerged when Adobe moved to XML, Sanger said. “Then there is a third way to do it, which is to have the captions or metadata in a sidecar which is a separate XMP file that can accompany the photo,” he said. In addition, there’s a fourth standard called Dublin Core®.

Because there is not yet complete standardization as to what fields are used by various agencies or within various software programs, Sanger said, “it helps to stick with the simple ones that are used in your tools unless you have reason to delve more deeply into it. You can overdo it.”

As for keywording hierarchies, Sanger recommends Controlled Vocabulary, a site run by metadata master David Riecks. “David's site not only has more than you need to know about structured vocabularies,” Sanger said, “he also has links to a variety of products that will allow you to structure your keyword hierarchy.”

A Critical Tool for Tracking Your Business Efforts

While metadata is used to identify, license and monetize images, Sanger also suggested photographers think of metadata as information needed to operate their businesses. It can include your sales results, where the images have been submitted for licensing, where the images have been sold, which stock agencies or services have a certain image or group of images, and which clients commissioned them.

“This is important information because if you have an exclusive contract with one agency you have to know which images are with that agency and can’t go elsewhere for sale or licensing," he said. "While that information isn’t usually in the image itself, the ability to track sales and revenues relies upon identifying which images have been sold or licensed. It all goes back to the file name or the ID portion of the file name.”

Finally, for additional information on metadata, Sanger suggested the following sites:

• www.photometadata.org
• www.StockArtistsAlliance.org
• www.controlledvocabulary.com

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

 

If you shoot, distribute, license, sell or post digital photos to the Internet, associating metadata with those images should be a key part of your workflow.  

The topic of metadata is so important that ImageSpan, with liveBooks and the Bay Area-based Renegade Meetup group hosted a presentation on metadata that drew more than 20 photographers to an after-hours event at liveBooks offices last Wednesday evening.

Digital photo files can include descriptive, technical and administrative metadata. Virtual compartments in image files can hold several types of data – from pixels that make up an image to the text that identifies and describes the image. Metadata contained in an image file can list an image’s creator, copyright holder, source and description. It can explain rights released and available to an image. It can list how and when an image was created, its size, color characteristics and more.

PCWorld Senior Editor Melissa Perenson launched the metadata meeting last week with an example that illustrated why metadata is so important.

“Somewhere I have a photo of my parent’s surprise 40th anniversary party, but when it came time for their 50th anniversary party, I couldn’t find it,” Perenson said. “It may have been in a filing cabinet or on a hard drive that is long-since dead and I didn’t even realize it.”

Had she been able to use metadata to more efficiently identify and store her now 10-year-old images, Perenson said, she may have been able to locate them more readily.

“This demonstrates how metadata is critical both for the retention and preservation of our images,” she added. "It’s also critical if you want to do something with your images, such as find or license them.”

So what is metadata?

Travel photographer David Sanger noted that metadata “really is any information associated with an image.” 

He projected an image on the room’s video screen of a slide with an older-model automobile on it labeled “1986 Chevrolet Caprice, Big Rim Miami.” Said Sanger: “This is the way we used to do it, by putting a slide ID and a caption on a sticky label.”  With the rise of the Internet and advances in photo workflow software, Sanger added, things have changed dramatically.He projected an image of Einstein as a boy and an associated computerized page that displayed a staggering amount of data on who else was in the photo, when it was taken,

a list of keywords the size of a pocket dictionary, and information about how and where it can be licensed.

“The principal is that you want the metadata at a minimum to describe the ‘who, what, where, when and why’ – the basic rules of journalism,” he said. “The first place to start is with a file name. File names ideally describe the content in the photography so you know right away from looking at it what it is.”

Sanger noted that with some cameras, the moment an image is shot it gets a number associated with it that stays with it and with every version of that image, whether it is a JPEG, a TIFF, or a NEF. Such cameras also may attach technical metadata, such as the shutter speed, location-specific information using GPS, and even the serial number of your camera. In addition, some cameras allow you to apply a copyright directly into a file when the shutter is pressed.

Brian Pobuda, a corporate photographer who also consults as a digital asset management specialist, agreed that file naming is the most critical place to begin. 

“To me, metadata starts right there,” he said. “Never let out an image without least your name and the date and the subject matter, because it’s a way to keep track of your babies. I always consider photos babies and you want to give them a good home, so put a file name on them because any good digital asset management system will pick up file naming as keywords, and that’s very useful. You’ll never regret it.”

In addition to helping a photographer identify his or her image files, metadata can also help a him or her track files and speed workflow.

Benefits of Metadata

So why else attach metadata?

“Well, copyright is one reason,” said Sanger. “If you have an image and it has a caption, keywords and a copyright, major search engines such as Google Images will pick that up, too.”

Rafael Solis of ImageSpan said that “if you don’t have metadata associated with your image, then there’s a dis-connect between the buyer and the content owner. In other words, anyone who is looking to buy or use your image may not only be unable to find it, but they won’t be able to find you to license it.”         

That’s why LicenseStream enables its users to apply a range of metadata, including the creator’s name, Web address, keywords and captions. Solis pointed to a LicenseStream screen that showed an image of a sunset titled “San Francisco Purple Haze,” and noted the image is accompanied by a unique identification number. “That unique ID if decoded essentially communicates who owns the image, what are the different license types available for that image, any restrictions.” Once your work is published to the Web, metadata can help protect you’re your rightful financial compensation.

“Great metadata enables tracking,” Solis said, “which goes hand-in-hand with the ability to search for it, query it, and facilitate a transaction to monetize it.”

In fact, LicenseStream Content Tracker with Digimarc for Images uses metadata to track and find images that are uploaded through LicenseStream. Digimarc for Images adds an imperceptible digital watermark to communicate copyright ownership and information on how to contact the owner wherever the image is found online.

Content Tracker can then find the owner’s images and report back on where and how they are being used so the creator can take steps to address unauthorized uses. The creator can then opt to send an email requesting that the image be licensed, linked back to the creator’s website, or that the author be credited.

Tomorrow, we’ll take a closer look at the application of metadata, why it’s important for your business, and provide links to websites where you can learn more about metadata.

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

March 20^th was the official beginning of spring and with that comes the annual tradition of spring cleaning. As a content owner or creator you no doubt have archives of analog content in various states of organization. The question is, what to do with it?

There are a number of options for getting your images and analog media into a digital format in the market place today.

Creating a clear plan outlining what you want achieve by digitizing your media assets is a good place to start.

Why digitize? Why should you digitize your images, especially since they require a fair amount of storage? Because we live and work in the digital age, when prospective imaging consumers – and more than 60 percent of image buyers or licensees – go on the Web to find their content.

Digitizing your images also allows for them more easily to be used, standardized, manipulated and distributed in ways that are not possible with analog images. 

In addition, digitization allows you to:  

• Improve organization and management of your media assets
• Add digital content to your stock image collection from your analog archives for monetization
• Preserve your content from deterioration

If you plan to invest your own time in this process, start by doing a cost-benefit analysis. Calculate the value of your media assets now and in the future and determine whether they are worth the investment in time, equipment and supplies to digitize them yourself.  The following are a few things to consider in determining value:

• Marketplace value
• Historical archive value
• Personal value
• Relevance as Image Stock

What’s next?

Once you have a clear vision of what you want to digitize and why, the next step is to decide on an approach.

I can do this!

Plan to buy your own equipment and handle the process yourself? Be sure to check out all the scanner options before choosing the one that best suits you. Most retailers offer online user reports and reviews. It always pays to start your search online and narrow down your options. Once you have your machine, follow the manufacturer’s instructions on cleaning and do it regularly! Also try to create a work environment that is as dust-free as possible.

If you plan to go it alone, estimate how much time it will take you to digitize all your content and ask yourself if you’re ready to dedicate the time to completing your project.  Professionals in the image scanning industry estimate 10 to 15 minutes per image as a fairly good processing rate for a commercial operation. Based on that estimate, you may be looking at a significant time investment to digitize your images.

I don’t have time, who do I choose?

If you decide to go with a service provider / vendor to do the scanning, be sure to do some research and look for online reviews. There is always a risk that your raw assets could get lost or permanently damaged when dealing with a vendor so choose carefully.  Below are a few factors to consider when choosing a company:

• Good security around shipping and processing
• Quality control safeguards (well defined standards on image quality and Pricing)
• Good customer reviews
• Images are scanned and cleaned by people (Auto-fed machines can damage your image assets permanently and the human eye is a better judge when it comes to cleanup and retouching).

Is it worth the hassle and cost?

Your analog assets are not working for you nor are they being accessed by potential licensors when they are sitting in a box in storage. Worse yet, they are probably in danger of being permanently damaged by the elements.  And while your analog content may not generate immediate revenues as digital stock, gaining easy access to and protecting it from deterioration are key steps toward preserving future value.

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.

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: 

Buy Local One big consumer shift that continues to grow is the move to organic and locally sourced foods and other goods. Consumers have begun to show opposition to prepackaged items and are moving in numbers towards locally-grown produce, baked goods, as well as goods from local wineries, locally-operated bookstores and coffee houses as independent businesses band together to get consumers to spend their dollars closer to home. The shift to “buy local” highlights how more people are shying away from the big brands and looking closer to home for fresh alternatives.  It also highlights how communities are looking to insulate local businesses from the worst of the downturn.

Latin Culture With 46 million US Latinos and purchasing power projected to grow to $1.3 trillion by 2013, the Latino culture will exert a stronger influence and the Latin community will become more politically mobilized. In 2010 advertisers will spend more time and money trying to win over this ever-growing customer base.

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.

 

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.   

Looking for a little insight on that photo lens you’ve been eyeing for purchase? Want to know where in New York to rent a photography studio on the cheap? Seeking a lead for your next assignment? Thanks to a wide range of forums, Tweets and other online resources, photographers can find most any type of information they need with a few computer mouse clicks. Within most photography forum sites, you can peruse posts until you become a certified mouse potato. If you can’t find exactly the information you seek, many forums allow you to post your own query, though you may need to register with the forum’s site. This also usually is true if you want to post a photo for peer review and feedback. Once you’re registered and you've posted your query or photo, sit back and wait for the information or critiques to roll in. Call it crowdsourcing for career advice.

Feeling too shy to engage with an online community? There’s no need. While occasionally you may encounter a wisecracking response, out-and-out flames are rare in these forums. Most participants post because they seek information and reply because they want to help.

Below is a sampling of our favorite online destinations for connecting and sharing information with fellow shutterbugs. We suggest you visit a few to see which ones appeal to you:

• Photo.Net is a massive very active peer-to-peer educational site that attracts more than 3,000 new posts daily. Topics range from photography accessories to tips for photographing weddings and discussions of how much to charge during tough economic times. Beginners can find counsel on a range of topics, from which light meter to use to how to get extra-long exposures.
  
  A nice feature of this site is the “Discover-Photo Gallery” featuring a “Photo Critique” forum where you can post your images for comments and suggestions for improving the image or your technique. There’s also a “No Words” forum, where anyone can start a thread with a theme and an image and encourage others to submit images that may fit the theme. For example, one thread titled “Favorites from November” resulted in submissions that included images of a trio of Chihuahuas – all in colorful coats – while a “Favorite from December” series included a wonderful image of a winter moonrise with a bare tree in the foreground, and another of sleeping otter. These types of forums are a nice way to show off your work, and anyone who posts an image will have their name appear with it. Visitors who click on the name will be linked to a page with more information about the photographer. This can include contact information, such as a link to a LicenseStream store or other online Web site.
  


• Digital Photography Review offers a smorgasbord of topics, from a "Beginners Questions Forum" (e.g. help with selecting a first camera) to a “Pro Digital Talk Forum” that includes threads on a wide range of issues, such as one on Protecting Images on the Web. Depending on the posts, contributors may delve into more specific topics. For example, in the “Pro Digital Talk Forum,” one recent thread focused on how a high-end landscape shooter makes money while another thread discussed software accounting programs. A recent query about using lightstands at weddings for off-camera flash elicited 31 responses within a day. Another query about good studio light kits for under $400 quickly received 17 responses. One response came from a forum user in the same geographic area. He offered to let the person posting the query try out lighting equipment. Have a question about tripods, lens features, sports shooting or the features of a range of cameras? This is the place to go.
  
  
• Lightstalkers: If you’re looking for information on topics of interests to photojournalists, you’ll find plenty of information on this site which is operated by  Kuwayama Design and November Eleven, a nonprofit organization supporting independent media, research, and humanitarian aid efforts.  For example, here you’ll find a request for photographs from Afghanistan, and information on upcoming art contests and fellowships. You'll also find practical queries, such as a question about “Dust, Moisture and Cameras” that returned multiple responses, many of which read like adventure stories in themselves. For a little fun, click into an amusing forum called “Unexpected Nature” consisting of a string of unrelated images documenting flora and fauna found in a variety of contexts. 
  
  
• National Press Photographers Association naturally focuses on topics of interest to editorial photographers, including those who also may shoot commercially. As a result, this forum constantly addresses issues that affect photographers engaged in both editorial and commercial assignments. For example, one query asked if it was okay take a photo of a property shot for a local newspaper story and re-use it for commercial purposes, given that the photographer has all copyright and rights to the image. The advice? Doesn’t hurt to secure a property release. One of the most-viewed posts, asking whether someone in his early 30s is too old to start a career in photography, drew dozens of posts offering encouragement and very practical advice. There also are specific forums focused on still-image journalism, video photojournalism, and Web multimedia. In a forum on photo management, posts range from discussions of software workflow and management tools to discussions about ethics in journalism. 
  
  
• Digital Photography News 360: Prefer to get your information in bite-sized bursts via mouthful-sized thread posts? Check out this Twitter feed. Consisting of links to a variety of photo blogs and news outlets, including ThePhotoForum.com, Best Digital Camera Buys, Digital Camera Accessories, it flags and delivers links to other sites that include news and essays by and for professional and amateur photographers on cameras, memory cards, lenses, lighting photography courses and critiques and advice concerning specific images.
  
  
• Stock Photography, buy and sell images on LinkedIn is a forum that has attracted a nice mix of high-profile photographers, photography association leaders and even buyers. It delivers news of interest to photographers and posts on a variety of specific topics, from where to promote your Web site to tips on events, portable lighting set-ups, and online services and software.  As with many such sites, it also features an ongoing debate on the best way to sell stock (including mentions of LicenseStream). While a “Jobs Board" has yet to include any job postings, we expect that will change as additional contributors join this forum.
  
  
• Pro Photo Forums: the Business of Photography: In contrast to the vacant “Jobs Board” on the Stock Photography site referenced above, the first thing a newbie to the “ProPhoto Forums" site notices is a "Photographer’s Support" section that includes several posts seeking photography assistants. Within the separate “Pro Business Forums,” you’ll find a very active discussion on photo marketing. In “Pro Tech Forums” you can peruse posts ranging from those focused on technical gear, to tips on photographing food (replete with luscious-looking examples) and even detailed posts on storage, processor speeds, and a very amusing thread on high-speed photography. Also amusing is a comment by the moderator of the “General Technical Discussions” forum: “First person to start a Canon vs. Nikon or Mac vs. PC thread will be banned. Have a nice day!” Need help with finding food stylists, studio rental services, or other resources? Check out the “Photo Business Related" links within the “Resource Directory."
  
  
• Shutterbug Forums: Moderated by editors and contributors to Shutterbug magazine, the forums on this site cover a broad range of interesting and useful  topics. Threads are nicely organized, making it easy to find information. For example, there’s a “Digital Camera Wish List” that lists posts about ideas for features, functions and camera designs participants would like to see. Another forum on airline travel enables participants to share tips about airline travel with photo, film and digital gear. This site also features user groups for a full range of cameras. Looking for feedback on a manufacturer, the best photo art shows, or information cameras, lenses and photo techniques? Spend few minutes browsing the threads on this site. 
  

What additional online photography forums have you found most helpful? Click on the “Comments” link below to share your favorites.