TV Spot for new Seinfeld show uses my uber-low-priced RF image
This weekend while I was sitting in front of my TV watching my beloved Dallas Cowboys kick the tar out of Philadelphia in the first round of the NFL playoffs, a promo for Jerry Seinfield’s new show, Marriage Ref, came on the tube.
It includes an image I shot for Getty Images’ RF collection several years ago of an older woman in curlers eating popcorn on a bed.
The Decline of Journalism Continues
James Rainey’s January 6th LA Times piece about the plight of the freelance journalist, “Freelance Writing’s Unfortunate New Model,” is worth a read, if you can handle a little more depressing news about the news. Among the highlights:
- “An estimated 31,000 writers, editors and others have been jettisoned by newspapers in just the last two years.”
- Web publications are trawling Craigslist for writers who will work for bread crumbs, or for everyone’s favorite: “recognition”
- Writers are learning to act more like small business people and less like artists
- There’s no telling the important stories that have been missed, or the ones that will be missed, as journalists leave the profession.
- Some hope is offered by new approaches to online journalism: ProPublica; Spot.Us; and True/Slant
We know the trouble that today’s newspapers and magazines are in isn’t a new story, but it’s worth taking a moment to think about it from the perspective of our fellow creative professionals. Personally, we know that a nationally-known trade magazine is offering $500/month for blogging 5 days a week, including writing regularly scheduled columns.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure you need a model release for this one
In case you missed it, outerwear company Weatherproof has put up a billboard in Times Square with an AP image of President Obama wearing one of their coats. I expect it will be down soon, but I was interested in this quote from a company rep in the
Latest Portrait Project
This week I will be posting images from my latest portrait project:
Portraits of Senior Members of our society in the early stages of Dementia.
Here is the first image.
Using Google to Sell Stock or Fine Art Prints?
In my never-ending quest to increase the Google Rank of Greg’s photography business, I’ve started trying to use all of Google’s products, on the theory that they all link to each other. That’s a long post for another time, but today it led me to this: Google Base and Google Merchant Center.
At first glance these are ways for Google to cut in on Amazon’s territory and allow merchants of goods to sell their widgets online. I’m not sure if they will help me sell services, but apparently they DO help some photographers sell stock, or they did. Here’s a blog posting from 2006, admittedly hopelessly out-of-date by today’s standards of timeliness, about photographer David Sanger’s success with the service. Here’s another post from 2006 about the same thing, and I cannot find anything after that.
Do you really want to teach Photography?
Recently, Rob at APE posted the following prediction for 2010 on his blog:
More photographers will get into the workshop, book writing and teaching side of the photography business. This is proving by all appearances to be super lucrative, but will get very crowded and competitive as people with an impressive oeuvre enter the market.
About once a month I hear from a colleague in the field who has been a professional photographer for quite some time.
What a rep can do for your business, Part III
Different reps offer their services to photographers in a variety of ways.
* Most reps take 25% to 30% of your “Fees.”
