Lotsa Little Things Are Actually Really Big Deals
While we have been swamped to the far ends of our bandwidth here at Photo Business News, lots has been happening. Just because we've not been commenting daily, does not mean we haven't been paying attention.
The magazine world is turning upside down. Video is becoming stills, and ad revenues are slashing frequencies of publication. While it's cool to see Esquire innovating like that, we predicted the Red Camera would do just this just over a year ago - One more nail in the coffin (3/18/07), with sports being in the cross-hairs. Now that a COVER was done, doing inside pieces are now demonstrably a piece of cake, and events (yes, that means sports, for sure) that are regularly covered by TV will find red cameras being used to allow for you to be able to choose the best moment in time.
The world of Search Engine Optimization has, for photographers, exploded. Previously, SEO was limited to people who just knew how to optimize websites. liveBooks has made white-hat SEO a cornerstone of their website offering, and they are, by far and away, the best of the photographer-centric website providers to do SEO. Blake Discher has been traveling the country for ASMP for some time, doing his presentation - Is Your Web Site Making You Money?, and recently, PhotoShelter threw the doors wide open, with a Free SEO Toolkit, took on website designers when it comes to SEO, in their piece - Is Your Web Designer Full of Crap?, taked about the importance of page titles, and even went into the importance of URL legibility, in Make Your URL's Like Your Photos: Beautiful. If people actually read what they were writing, and actually acted upon the information, they would be kicking ass and taking names on website positioning on Google. Now, Seth Resnick, who is probably just as insane when it comes to web optimization and SEO as I am, has jumped (back) into the game, with a program at the end of next month through his seminar on search engine optimization in Miami. Seth has been doing SEO as long as I have, and he knows his stuff. The key to learning from him is to figure out a way to shift his speeding-Ferrari mind down to like first gear with the clutch not fully engaged so that you can understand what he's talking about. If you go, bring a tape recorder, because you'll learn about 10% while listening to him live, and 10% more the next time you listen, and so on. Seth comprehends SEO like few other people I know.
Meanwhile, the good folks (and an advertiser here at PBN) have just released FotoQuote Pro version 6, that include 86 New Pricing Categories, including 35 Video Stock Footage Categories, and over 30 Dedicated Web Usages as well. If you know these folks, they're the real deal and they know what they're talking about when it comes to pricing, and the coach feature for each usage is really really insightful.
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12 comments:
Can someone explain what it is exactly that Livebooks does as far as SEO? The photographers I know who use them don't seem to know what Livebooks is doing for them, one was convinced they're doing a great job because if you search for her by name, her site lists top of the results. They tout this a lot, I'm wondering who benefits how - if you search for a wedding photographer in New York are Livebooks subscribers really doing any better than others and how about the competition within Livebooks?
Is there a translation for this?
The magazine world is turning upside down. Video is becoming stills, and ad revenues are slashing frequencies of publication. While it's cool to see Esquire innovating like that, we predicted the Red Camera would do just this just over a year ago - One more nail in the coffin (3/18/07), with sports being in the cross-hairs. Now that a COVER was done, doing inside pieces are now demonstrably a piece of cake, and events (yes, that means sports, for sure) that are regularly covered by TV will find red cameras being used to allow for you to be able to choose the best moment in time.
This doesn't make sense. Who is going to edit a sports events, shot at 25 fps, to find the right image? when sports event used to be filmed by film ( not video or digital) cameras, no one, no one edited to find a still frame.
Your projections are wrong and misses the point on the fundamental differences between film ( movement) and stills.
Are you sure you are a photographer?
Consider that you might film specific sequences with a Red system at 25 fps (i.e. batter swinging). At 25 fps, you can scan through the frame sequence to get that exact frame where the bat is deforming the baseball and have it tack sharp. I'm not advocating it. I'm just illustrating the perceived benefits.
I think the point to be taken here is that with the rapid advancement and merging of video/still technology, one person is able to take a frame "grab" and use that for your ad, article, whatever while also shooting live action for that youtube thing, web video and so on. I've lost out on a few jobs where the client decided that they could just use these frame grabs instead of going to the expense of hiring a photo crew.
It stings, but that's the way it is.
Nikon, Canon, Red are seeing the light, and so, hopefully, will photographers that wish to stay active in this industry.
Since the advent of digital, photography has evolved to a game of numbers rather than craft and timing. It is therefore no real surprise that an internationally recognized magazine has taken a bold move to shatter the stigma of video; at 24fps you options for edits grows exponentially.
As for who is going to weed out the selects, well there are all those unpaid interns.
Is this a "nail in the coffin" sure is if you don't start adapting now.
While the RED looks like a really cool concept, I kinda wonder why everyone's so excited over it's still capabilities.
Firstly, I can't imagine using a still camera with the shutter speed locked at 1/25 (although I bet they've come up with a frame averaging and sharpening algorithm to account for motion blur).
Secondly, I can't imagine why people would use a video camera when the final use of the image will be still/print. Sure, it never hurts to have more information, but the costs here seem to outweigh the benefit.
We already have excellent still-capture technologies (that also generally require much less equipment and human overhead to operate), and we have excellent video rigs.
Call me a luddite, but this seems like building a dumptruck to haul the dumptruck that hauls the dirt.
I'm sure all this will get worked out as the technology develops.
Or it won't.
I guess that's the joy of the business. There's more than one way to do the job.
with a frame rate on a Cannon Mark II at 30 fps, it would be ridiculous to use a video camera to shoot a baseball player. And its only going to go faster.
And to say using interns to edit a 3 hour game shot at 25 fps to find the perl is also insane: that is 270,000 images to edit per game. And it still doesn't even guarantee you will get the shot.
there is much more to photography than shooting volume in the hopes to grab the image. You make it sound like its an odds game.
As a photo editor, I would personally NEVER hire a photographer that relies on machine gun shooting to get his images. NEVER. and I am surely not alone.
I think it more about convergence.
Stills are perfectly fine for print, but lack something in our TV/flash stimulated world.
Interactive, motion, and hybridized presentations (still with video/audio) will be the standard. By shooting with a 4k camera and the proper ancillary equipment (sound/lighting), you have true convergence opportunities.
For example, a media producer (Reporter/field recorder/videographer/photographer) with a 4k camera provides more information than a still camera, after returning from a shoot you have video, audio and stills. The stills are available for print/web, the video for TV/Web, the audio for radio (NPR).
With regards to "machine gun shooting", photogs regularly shoot 100s of images in a short period with digital, if they shot film you would never see such numbers.
Video to still editing would never come down to looking at every frame, but honing in on the important moment and selecting appropriately.
I'm not obtuse, I understand that photography is much more than shooting volume in the hopes of getting the right image, but video certainly opens image making and image presentation to new frontiers.
Searching through a game video stream to get the gems is not necessarily all that time-consuming, as some people might be tempted to think. For instance, you will usually know the minute/second timestamp that significant events happen at - a home run swing, a touchdown, that spectacular shot from waaay out. Therefore, you can jump to that timestamp and it then becomes a matter of scanning just a few frames in each direction.
Yup, I can see how high-quality video will give us new options for ambient light shots. For low-light conditions, the need for video-style lighting will introduce all sorts of challenges - no doubt surmountable, but things get more complex and expensive.
Rather than be offended by the general idea of rummaging through high-quality video streams for choice stills, I suggest we would do well to figure out how best to take advantage of it when it's possible and makes sense.
It's just another technique - no more, no less. It will have its "sweet-spot", and it'll probably pay to understand well what that is.
Carrie Wilthsmore rocks! You got brass balls and you speak the truth.
I agree with The Journeyman Photographer. Searching 170,000 frames of a video is not like searching 170,000 still images (not traditionally anyway)
With a scrubber you can quickly scan through the video at 5x to find the general mark then scrub through to the event and find the frame you want. Not much more time spent than looking through slr shots. You jsut have to think like a video editor rather than a photographer.
Personally I will be surprised if big ticket events don't start using these methods to get their web and print images from. There will still be photographers there of course and not every event will have RED cameras or the like (or video at all)
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