Rob Haggart at APhotoEditor.com has been on a roll lately: Ask Anything – Does a photographer need a rep and do they really get you work?, The Value Of A News Photograph, Ask Anything – Should You Tell Your Clients If You Are Pregnant Or Have A Life Threatening Illness?, the editorial staff’s perspective on Negotiating The Editorial Contract, Ask Anything – How Do You Get Started Photographing Fashion?, Photographers- How To Deal With Infringements, a survey of Commercial Photographer Income, Ad Agency Guide To Photography Usage Terms, Ask Anything – Should Photographers be Unionized?, Ask Anything With Amanda And Suzanne – How Not To Blow The Face To Face Meeting, Ask anything with Amanda and Suzanne – How Much Money Do Commercial Photographers Make?, and especially the most recent post, Stop Accepting $200 Assignments. All well worth a read, discussion in the comments usually is worth a look, too.

Image results searching for Che on bing.com

The Guardian has an interesting, if brief, backstory on a photographer’s heir trying to enforce copyright on the ubiquitous iconic image of Che Guevara seen on t-shirts, posters, and messenger bags the world over (above).

“For decades the Argentinian-born Guevara’s adopted spiritual home of Cuba did not recognise copyright. It was only following the collapse of the former Soviet Union that Cuba joined the World Trade Organisation and legalised copyright.” -Row rages over iconic image of Che Guevara in the Guardian

It’s now been 50 years since Cuban photographer Alberto Díaz “Korda” Gutiérrez, who died in 2001, made the image. Now Diaz’s daughter has been going after advertising companies in an attempt to recoup license fees for widespread usage of the image.

I always love knowing the stories surrounding iconic images…

(via Politics, Theory, and Photography)

The Copyright Corner

I haven’t gotten a chance to look through the site too much, but it looks like The Copyright Corner will be a useful resource. From the site:

As an artist or designer, you are passionate and serious about your work. You should be just as serious about learning about copyright, because copyright allows you to protect your work, or to share it with others, if that is your preference. This site, dedicated to the creative spirit, aims to be a source of accurate information, and a corner for debate and dialogue about copyright and other important intellectual property issues.

File this next to Stanford’s Copyright and Fair Use Information Center, Carolyn E. Wright’s Photo Attorney blog (and see her recent guest post at A Photo Editor on dealing with infringements), The Copyright Zone, and Matt Slaby’s Legal Left, Meet Creative Right column.

With all the layoffs we’ve seen in the industry in the past few years, what surprises me most, however, is how common it is for a staff photographer to be “surprised” with the news of their own layoff. They are very often leaving themselves totally unprepared for life as a freelancer. -Grover Sanschagrin/Photoshelter

Photoshelter’s recently posted a useful list of 10 things all staff photographers need to do right now (and also 10 things a recently laid-off photographer needs to do right now), covering the basics of getting ready for life outside a newsroom. It’s some common sense information–get your own gear, grab copies of your clips, establish your freelance rates, decide if freelancing is right for you–but it’s worth repeating. Be sure to watch Photoshelter’s blog; they periodically post practical and useful information and tips for working and aspiring-to-be-working photographers.

Freelance Switch is another great resource for making a freelance business work.

Duwei, drummer for the Nanjing-based punk band Overdose, rests in a park with friends before a gig at the small YuYinTang rock club in Shanghai, China.

I’m excited to announce that one of my prints, above, is on the block in Daniel Cooney’s iGavel Emerging Artists Auction. The reserve is US$200. The auction began Jan. 14, and will continue until Feb. 4.

The rest of the auction is worth a look, too. Among the photography, I particularly like the photos by Jody Ake, Ina Jang, Shane Lavalette, Wayne Lawrence, Nicole Lloyd, Michael Marcelle, Kelli Pennington, Irina Rozovksky, Jake Stangel, and Lyndsy Welgos. If you’ve got some spare wall space (and some cash burning a hole through your pocket), make a bid.

• Banjo extraordinaire Danny Barnes (I don’t know his music) has a great essay on “How to Make a Living Playing Music,” and he might as well be writing about making a living taking pictures. He starts “if you are a very materialistic person, skip this article, i don’t think you are going to like what it says.” The article is partly philosophical–don’t gossip, avoid people who talk about gear, “all the trouble in the world is going to come for you in two ways. the things you say, and the things you agree to do. be very careful about these items.”–but mostly practical–”the main business strategy is to build your own audience,” “don’t be afraid to do other things to make money in the short term,” and
  

  “be totally square on your taxes. render unto caesar that which is caesar’s. if you try to fudge on this, it will come back to bite you every time. get receipts for everything, 1099 everyone no matter what, unless they are a corporation.”

  The whole thing’s a fascinating insight into what allows a successful musician to keep doing what he loves, and has many parallels to photographers working on a career.

• Kenneth Jarecke’s “2009 – Year of Transition” has a great analysis of what 2009 meant to many freelancers. He explains why he turned down editorial work (a first for Jarecke), talks about new strategies for distribution, cogently analyzes the havoc caused by editorial layoffs and how it will affect the future, and the stupidity of photographers signing “work for hire” contracts for $1200 a day with big clients.
• PDN talks with the Aftermath Project jurors to find out “What It Takes To Win An Aftermath Project Grant“
• Joerg Colberg’s excellent “We’re all Zapruders now (but that doesn’t make us journalists)” examines what it means when everyone has a camera and how that’s different from journalism.
  

  “I don’t ever recall hearing or seeing anyone describe Abraham Zapruder as a “citizen journalist”. He was seen as what we was: A chance bystander who happened to have a camera (and use it) the moment the American president was shot and killed.”

  The piece ends with strong argument for what society stands to lose by getting rid of professional journalists.

• Magtastic Blogsplosion surveys many perspectives on upcoming tablet devices and what they may mean for magazines in “The revolution to come.”
  

  “The industry also wants to avoid the newspaper dilemma – publishers were so excited to give away their content for free in the early days of the web, that there was no thought to an industry business model – and the toothpaste is proving difficult to push back into the tube.”

  And check out Magtastic’s collection of groups using the newspaper format in innovative ways in “What Newspapers Did Next” and “What Newspapers Did Next (2).”

• The New York Times covers big media companies’ likely plan to begin charging for online content in “Adding Fees and Fences on Media Sites.” Among the problems faced by the old guard,
  

  “It is the established media, with their legacy of high operating costs and outdated technology, that face this problem. Leaner, newer online competitors will continue to be free, avidly picking up the users lost by sites that begin to charge.”

• PDNPulse talks with the Wall Street Journal photo department and examines how the newspaper’s attitude toward visual journalism has changed under Murdoch. PDN reports: “The good news for photography is that our editor, Robert Thomson, is a very visual person,” says Jack Van Antwerp, the paper’s photography director. And while you’re at it, check out the Wall Street Journal’s 2009 Year in Photos, which includes many friends.

D ernière victime de la crise des agences de presse photographiques, L’Œil public déposera le bilan en janvier 2010.” – Le Monde, Dec. 23, 2009 (google translation)

There’s sad news this holiday season. Oeil Public, a small and very interesting French collective photo agency, will file for bankruptcy in January 2010 (original French). The reasons are familiar: declining assignments, declining fees, shrinking space for photography in print, etc. It’s sad to see this one go. The collective showed much promise over the past decade and had a great roster of photographers. Thoughts of a Bohemian has some analysis.

Be sure to check out Oeil Public’s 2009 Photos of the Year.

(via Thoughts of a Bohemian)

Newspapers are dying for a few reasons. Readers don’t want to pay for yesterday’s news, and advertisers follow them. Your iPhone, your laptop is muc more handy than the New York Times on Sunday. …. It’s enough to bury any industry. So, should we rather ask, “Can anything save newspapers?”…We started to redesign [newspapers]…I wanted to make posters, not newspapers….Design can turn your company upside down.” -Jacek Utko on newspaper design

Recent news in the decline of newspapers and magazines reminded me of the above video of Jacek Utko explaining his successes in reinvigorating European newspapers through design. By radically transforming the visual culture of newspapers in Poland, Estonia, Russia, and elsewhere, the newspapers’ circulations jumped between 30 and 100 percent. In Russia, circulation jumped 29%, in Poland 35%, a Bulgarian newspaper saw a 100% jump in circulation just after a visual redesign.

OpenGoo

Pictures are the easy part. A great deal of success as a freelancer is figuring out how to efficiently run one’s business. It’s a constant struggle keeping track of clients and leads and deadlines and tasks and invoices and estimates and late payments. A number of fee-based websites can do this, and Google has Calendars and Docs and Wave.

I’ve just found out about OpenGoo, and it seems like an extremely useful tool, especially for photo collectives, independent one-off festivals and exhibitions, and other endeavors lacking considerable financial backing. It installs on a webserver using the same technology as an average blog, supports multiple users, and handles calendars, tasks, contacts, and documents, among other features. It’s still actively being developed, but it’s already a pretty robust office management system. Definitely worth a test-drive.

None of this solves the problem of invoicing. A simple wordprocessor only works for so long. Blinkbid’s great, but tough to use if you need to access invoices on the road and it’s on another computer. I like SideJobTrack, which unfortunately no longer allows new signups. Here’s a decent survey of online invoicing systems. Invoice Journal is one free online invoice system, and a few open-source installable invoicing systems exist, as well: MyClientBase, Simple Invoices, and Bamboo Invoice all seem promising.

On July 28, 2009, the Guardian announced new contractual terms soon to be forced upon contributing freelance photographers. In emails I’ve received about the matter, photographers liken it to the fight against the New York Times freelance agreement a few years ago. A petition has been started. Essentially, the Guardian is trying to escape usage fees for the unlimited re-use of images from commissioned assignments. Traditionally, Guardian News Media has paid for subsequent usage after initial publication. From the petition:

At a time when press photographers are suffering severe hardship as a result of the economic downturn, it comes as a further blow to be informed that [Guardian News Media] demands unlimited re-use of our photographs free of charge.”

Even if you don’t regularly shoot for the Guardian, please sign the petition in support of your fellow freelancers.