Photopreneur has taken a look at some interesting research from Enquiro Research on the use of photography online and its limitations. "The company has found that when placed on Web pages, images can act as barriers to action rather than the sort of eye candy that generates sales when placed on magazine covers. Users don’t just ignore them; they try to look around them. Worse, when action buttons (or “triggers”) such as subscription fields or purchase links are placed near or even on those images, users look straight past those too then click away."

However, the research shows that photographers are better at using their images than their clients are. But when it comes to getting a visitor to contact you, the best way to achieve this, according to Enquiro, is to have a contact page without any images, "a practice that most photographers seem to follow anyway."

Read the entire post here.

A new photojournalism website has been launched - The 37th Frame.

'The 37th Frame is dedicated to bringing readers the best of the photojournalism on the internet.' The site creators search web sites of newspapers, magazines and the best independent photojournalists around the world and post links to the work.

Visit www.the37thframe.org.

With 17 days left before the US presidential elections, Magnum Photos has launched its Insight America project.

The project, which is expected to be the first chapter in a long-running initiative, sees Magnum photographers explore questions such as 'what is the American dream today?' and 'Are some of us really all blue and some all red? Or are we mostly shades of purple?'

'Using the Web to update their observations daily, InSight America is a collage of personal investigations and reflections that attempts to capture the things preoccupying Americans during the weeks leading to Election Day,' Magnum says.

This month-long, web-based project has been designed to confront a critical moment in US history, using photographs, audio, video, diaries, blogs, podcasts and statistics, Magnum says.

Insight America is led by Mark Lubell, Magnum Photos' New York bureau chief, and edited by Fred Ritchin, a professor at New York University and the director of PixelPress (www.pixelpress.org). It sees photographers such as Paolo Pellegrin, David Alan Harvey, Alec Soth and Thomas Dworzak travel around the US or Iraq and report on the state of the country.

Magnum's Insight America blog can be found here. And check back later on 1854 for a full interview with the blog's creators.

Photographer Kenneth Jarecke recently posted something quite interesting on his blog. He argues that online content is starved for quality, specifically referencing Vanity Fair’s list of the top 25 news photographs as a ‘terrible excuse for content’.

But according to Jarecke, the Vanity Fair website is not alone in its misguided efforts. ‘A dozen different big-time magazines’ are at fault as well.

Jarecke’s view is that online advertising is simply about the number of views and clicks, which to him explains Vanity Fair’s top 25 list.

‘Right now, publishers (and the editors that work for them) are attempting to create online content that moves pages through your browser. That’s how the money is counted. It isn’t measured by the quality of the content, just the dispose-ability,’ writes Jarecke.

He blames Vanity Fair for its poor choice of photographs, which are documents of monumental events throughout history. ‘Most of the images look like they were chosen by word people. That’s not how photography works. Sometimes you can discuss something without actually showing what a word person would define as the key moment.’

In other words, instead of a direct shot of Martin Luther King delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech, Jarecke would prefer an image of the circumstances leading up to that moment in history, which can have more significant meaning.

He believes that the explanation of Vanity Fair’s choices lies in the fact that online content needs to be ‘cheap and readily available’, as editors do not have the time or money to conduct a thorough search or pay too much for an image.

‘At some point advertisers will demand that they are charged by how long someone keeps their eyes on your page, not by how many times their ad flashes by. Until that time, I don’t see the quality improving,' comments Jarecke.

Posted by Deborah Sterescu

Check out this video of Magnum Photographer Bruce Gilden hunting for characters on the Streets of New York City. The video is produced by WNYC radio, which had a street photography project a few months back.

Digital Observer has a fascinating account of a lost suitcase (not Mexican this time) full of images showing the devastating effects of the 06 August 1945 Hiroshima bomb.

The photographs, discovered amidst a pile of rubbish by Don Levy in 2000, have now been identified as having belonged to Lt. Robert L Corsbie, a US Navy officer and a member of the Physical Damage Division set up by the US Army to document the effects of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

'When I opened the suitcase that night I knew what I was looking at almost right away,' Levy told Digital Observer. 'I felt pleased to have found them but at the same time I was saddened by what I was looking at.'

'We see death and disaster all over TV but these photographs are different, maybe because they are physical objects' Levitt said. 'They don’t represent the horror, exactly, because there are no bodies. They’re clinical. But the power of them is really intense. Why is that? I think it’s because I can’t help but place myself behind the lens. What was that guy feeling when he took the photos? He was clicking and whirling, clicking and whirling. These photographs seem real, connected to the event. They have a power in them. I never would have thrown away that suitcase on purpose.'

The 701 images, date back to the weeks following the US attack, and after some investigation it has emerged that they had been accidentally thrown out by Marc Levitt, who had acquired them from a friend in 1972.

Adam Levy’s (no relation) interview with Don Levy can be read in full here.

Today, The Guardian published a column by Wendy Grossman on the alleged 'heavy-handed tactics picture agencies use when pursuing payment.' She cites the case of a church in Lichfield, Staffordshire, that was recently asked to pay a £6000 bill by Getty Images for using two photographs on its website.

When creating the church’s website, a volunteer had included a couple of images sourced from Getty, without paying for them. A couple of months later, Getty sent the church a demand for £6000, according to Grossman.

Apparently, many small businesses have come across the problem of copyright infringement. And many have complained about the ‘heavy-handed’ enforcement tactics used. But Alison Crombie of Getty explains that ‘the thing we try to do is just have a conversation with the customer. We make them aware that it has happened, and that they need to look at addressing it and making sure it’s licensed.’

And one wonders why a lot of photographers are still afraid on the Internet.

Read the column here.

Nell Freeman’s intimate account of her work in DR Congo, published this week on the BBC website, sheds a positive light on the power of photography in combating AIDS in the war-ridden Democratic Republic of Congo.

Freeman, a photojournalist from the UK, working alongside Christian Aid, turned 12 HIV-positive digital camera novices from Kinshasa into professional photographers in just four weeks.

Working towards the goal of familiarising the participants with the digital equipment, Freeman carried out workshops in still life and commercial photography, thereby allowing the 12 activists to train others from their villages once the program had reached its end.

Dispelling all scepticism of the project’s success, Freeman recounts how, thanks to their training, the participants have continued to work as photographers and are now all able to afford the anti-retroviral drugs.

Celebrating the phenomenal success of the project, the student’s images were displayed in an exhibition that attracted coverage from all over the country. Check the images on the BBC website.

The New York Times is reporting this morning that CNN plans to launch its own wire service to provide coverage of big national and international events at a lower cost than the Associated Press.

CNN is hoping to capitalise on the discontent of local newspapers that are threatening to leave the Associated Press because of its high subscription prices. However, while CNN does not plan to carry photography on its wire, its new service could force the AP to lower its prices, which, in turn, could impact its photographers.

Full story on the New York Times' website.

Kenneth Jarecke posted a hilarious video on his blog of Tina Fey. The video is a promotion for the January 2009 issue of Vanity Fair. Fey made the cover with images taken by Annie Leibovitz. Here is the video:

The US-based magazine American Photo has announced it's annual selection of the best emerging photographers. Gallery owner Debra Klomp Ching, curator and writer Susan Bright, and art director Catherine Talese selected 13 photographers. Among them are Edith Maybin (BJP, 24 May 2006), Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Martine Fougeron and Olivia Arthur, who will be profiled in next week issue of BJP.

To see American Photo's list and comments from the judges, visit the PopPhoto website.

Since the immortalisation of Che Guevara in Alberto Korda’s image Guerrillero Heroico, and the subsequent dissemination of the iconic image throughout countless city landscapes, there has been an undeniable symbiosis between photography and graffiti.

And it seems, according to today’s Metro newspaper, that history is repeating itself.

Although Jon Cartwright, an amateur photographer and web manager from Southwark in south-east London is no revolutionary, his self portrait, which first appeared on the website Flickr, has become an inspiration for Christian Guemy, a Paris-based artist.

Guemy, known on Flickr as C215, decided to use Cartwright’s photo as the base for a stencil which he plastered on the walls, skips and doorways of New York, Paris and London.

Apparently Cartwright was just conducting a lighting experiment with his camera and did not expect the image to gather such momentum until Guemy sent him a cryptic message reading, “This is a great picture of you. I will provide you sooner or later a surprise.”

To go from virtual obscurity to worldwide notoriety in the shake of a spray can must certainly have been more than Jon Cartwright could have bargained for.

A French photographer, Francois-Marie Banier, is expected to receive nearly €1Bn from the L'Oréal matriach Liliane Bettencourt, now 86. The chief shareholder of the most successful cosmetics company is reported to have funded life insurance policies worth that amount to the benefice of the jet-set photographer. The eccentric Banier, also a philosopher and playwright, is apparently 'worth it', according to Bettencourt. But now, her daughter is challenging the legitimacy of the insurance policies, claiming that her mom is vulnerable to abuse. The Independent has the full story here.

Last year, a few weeks after the death of esteemed photographer Philip Jones Griffiths, BJP wrote about how the Philip Jones Griffiths Foundation planned to collect the photographer's images, books and writings together in a permanent space called the Philip Jones Griffiths Foundation for the Study of War, ideally located in Wales.

At the time, Neil Burgess, who runs the NB Pictures agency and is also at the helm of the Foundation, told BJP that 'there were still discussions going on with institutions in Wales as it was very much Griffiths' desire, if we found a permanent home, to have it in Wales'.

Apparently, the Foundation is still looking for its home, at least according to this short audio piece by BBC News Wales. Check it out here.

RELATED ARTICLES
Welsh home for PJG's archive? - 23 April 2008
Philip Jones Griffiths dies - 26 March 2008

You can also see Philip Jones Griffiths' last appearance at the Frontline Club, where he talked about his Vietnam Work.

How are advertisers responding to the doom and gloom or the recession?

By producing uplifting campaigns, of course, which urge consumers to take a break from the credit cruch and bite into something positive.

Coke recently launched a new global campain with the tag line, "Open Happiness" – a change from the "Coke Side of Life" line introduced just three years ago – which will be rolled out globally in the coming weeks and months.

"Times are changing, and what people want and need right now is a time to pause and hit the refresh button, so to speak, and rediscover life's simple pleasures," Joe Tripodi, chief marketing and commercial officer for Coke told Ad Age recently. "We're not here to say Coke is going to solve the economic problems of the world or the Middle East crisis. Our view is that Coke is a small moment, a simple moment of pleasure in people's very hectic day. ... When you look back at the history of Coke, for a hundred years it's been that optimistic spirit. And that has certainly been reflected in the work."

And T-Mobile's wonderfully executed flashmob at Liverpool Street Station in London has proved to be one of the most successful viral campaigns of recent times, generating millions of hits on YouTube.

One of the funniest takes on the G20 protests comes courtesy of Vice Magazine. And while the cynical take on the politics involved (on either side) reveals a disturbing apathy among the nation's trendy youth, it's also pretty smart, and includes some interesting snippets for media-watchers.

'There seemed to be so many more journalists than protesters at this point that I almost ditched my camera for an acoustic and some Birkenstocks just to make up the numbers. All the camera men were shouting things like: “Break it!” “Smash them!” and “Kill the pig!” to try and rile the protesters,' writes James Knight, while photographers James Pearson-Howes (aka Queenie) and Jamie Teate's images provide a mordant take on proceedings.

The age-old question for pro-photographers: to find a niche, or to diversify? Yorkshire based We Shoot Bottles had decided the niche route is a winner for them.

The clue is the name when it comes to their business; anything that comes in bottle form of any shape or size they will shoot in their studio, from mouthwash to Reggae Reggae Sauce.

Simplicity is very much the key in the company’s outlook, sticking to the less is more theory, and existing purely on the Internet. In fact the entire website exists on a single page, capped at no more than 150 words.

Unusually for a photographic studio, all the pricing is clear and up front, £30 is the starting price, reducing to £20 for large quantities of bottle photography, with every shot retouched.

An example of photographers who in a harsh climate haven't bottled out when it comes to their business model.

Computer Active, our sister publication here at Incisive Media, has reviewed the iPhone 3GS. The new phone now sports an improved camera. Computer Active's editor Paul Allen had this to say about the new features:

More people now use phones to take photos and the 3GS has an improved 3-megapixel camera. It has auto-focus built in so that you can tap a specific part of the screen to bring that area into focus.
The iPhone also adjusts colour and light settings to suit. The quality is fair for sharing photos digitally, but prints larger than 6x4in were average at best.
Users can also take short video clips and trim them. Once complete, photos and videos can be sent using MMS or email, while videos can also be uploaded to a Youtube account.