Friday Happy Hour: Google Revamps Its Image Search

Friday Happy Hour: Google Revamps Its Image Search

This week we have some tech news from Google Images, a featured story on an outstanding military photographer, and some inspiring images from winners of the Magnum Emergency Fund grant. Take a look!

Google to revamp its Images search

Google announced in a blog post on Wednesday that they plan to soon roll out a “faster” image search, which will display larger images in an inline panel that let’s you flip through using your keyboard. Google will also display the image metadata directly underneath the image. (via Mashable)

Other changes include:

  • Featuring the title of the page hosting the image, the domain name it comes from, and the image size.
  • New buttosn to visit the page the image is hosted on (they note that they’ve seen a net increase in the average click-through rate to the hosting website, as a result).
  • Faster load time, and improved webmaster metrics such as pageviews.

What does this mean for photographers? An easier search experience could mean more visits to your website, and perhaps even an improvement in your images’ SEO. Which is a lot better than Google’s move last month to offer Getty images on Google Drive, unbeknownst to the copyright holders…

Artists fight back against Getty & Google with “D-Day”

Google and Getty’s move last month to offer Getty images on Google Drive, without (apparently) directly informing the copyright holders and paying them next to nothing, has seemed to spark some long-held anger toward Getty and its counterpart iStockphoto. On February 2nd, a group of artists and photographers are vowing to deactivate their photos and images at iStockphoto. The idea started in the Microstockgroup forums, and have been fired up by Yuri Arcurs, who claims to be the world’s top selling stock photographer.

“Any deal that Getty is getting money in their pocket for, made possible by my (and your images), but that we do not collect a royalty on, is a scandal and deserves attention,” wrote Yuri.

The anger also comes from photographers who have seen their commissions drop to as little as 15% over the past few years. Are you considering participating in the deactivation on February 2nd? (via Warmpicture Blog)

Photographer and Sgt. Stacy Pearsall featured in NY Times, says, ‘They Didn’t Care That I Was a Woman’

Staff Sgt. of the Air Force & PhotoShelter member Stacy Pearsall is on the front page of The New York Times today. It’s an incredible article about her role in Iraq as a photographer, her bravery to help the wounded, and the military’s recent decision to allow women on the front lines of combat. The story comes out just days after General Martin Dempsey made moves to open combat unites in the U.S. military to women. The NY Times article called attention to the fact that military women are already acting in the same situations as men:

“During [Stacy’s] four-month Iraq tour in 2007 — cut short by injuries — she went on patrols almost daily, wearing the same heavy body armor and Kevlar helmet as the men, while lugging camera equipment. She, too, came under fire. She, too, fired back. She, too, saw friends die.”

We featured Stacy in one of our member profiles, where she told us, “My primary goal was getting real-time combat imagery from the battlefield to the Joint Combat Camera Center in Washington DC. The President, Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff used my pictures to make informed decisions on military tactics and maneuvers in the battle space.” Stacy has hundreds of thousands of photos in her PhotoShelter archive, which she shares and sells to clients all over the world.

Photo by Stacy Pearsall

Photo by Stacy Pearsall

Matt Eich’s thoughtful shots explore the crossroads of a nation divided

Freelance photographer Matt Eich has been dutifully working on The Seven Cities, a photo project exploring the military industrial complex in his Virginia hometown.”[This] will be my most personal body of work to date,” says Matt. “It will examine the place that I was raised and now raise my own children, my family’s connection to this community and our region’s reliance on the military industrial complex…The disenchantment my generation exhibits is reflective of our nation’s transitional status from superpower to something less absolute. While it may be considered ‘anti-American’ to even utter this perspective, the images will confront the notion of American superiority and shape our self-perceptions.”

Photo by Matt Eich

Photo by Matt Eich

Matt is currently looking for support to help prepare for his first solo museum show at The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in the Fall of 2013. Check out Matt’s images on his Emphas.is campaign, and consider supporting in return for postcards, limited edition prints, books, mix-tapes and more.

Magnum Emergency Fund announces 2013 grantees

In 2009, the Magnun Foundation started a fund to award annual grants to photographers from around the world to help support anticipatory work that sheds light on under-reported issues and communities. It’s a response to the shrinking opportunities within established media for long-form, in-depth, socially conscious storytelling, is now in its fourth year of grant-making.

This year’s 10 winners were selected from nearly 100 photographers nominated by fifteen international photography professionals. The grant will help fund the photographers to return to the communities where their projects first started – whether that’s in Europe, the flow of immigration in the aftermath of the Arab Spring; in Libya, an investigation into war atrocities; and an intimate look at an alternative aspect of Palestinian daily life in the West Bank.

Photo by Tomoko Kikuchi

Photo by Tanya Habjouqa

Photo by Giulio Piscitelli

Check out the winner’s in TIME’s exclusive Lightbox.

Kike Calvo’s 10 big rules of photography

In a post on National Geographic’s News Watch blog, editorial photographer Kike Calvo wrote an inspiring post proclaiming his “10 Big Rules of Photography“. The post comes after Kike slipped on a bridge in a rainy jungle, and spent time recovering and reflecting during his resulting injuries. Here’s one of our favorite:

“2. “Nobody is perfect except the CAPTAIN”: The recent creation of a blog dedicated to the memory of my father, helped me remember, after reading a note from my brother Nano, that he used again and again, which said  “In photography, as in life, nobody is perfect”. We are all seeking out a dream or using photography as a means of artistic expression, or maybe just as a hobby, using our IPhone and other various programs such as Instagram to share with friends. But regardless, we need to help each other. The future of our beloved profession is intimately linked to the respect of the work of others.

Ahn Jun’s balancing act is beautiful and frightening

Photographer Ahn Jun recently graduated from Parsons The New School for Design and was named one of BJP’s 20 photographers to watch in 2013 – and we can see why. Her self-portrait series is unsettling and dizzying, yes, but also quiet and beautiful. (via Feature Shoot)

Photo by Ahn Jun

Photo by Ahn Jun

Photo by Ahn Jun

Photo by Ahn Jun

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There are 3 comments for this article
  1. Shawn Lynch at 4:13 am

    I am a little disappointed in Google’s announcement to include metadata in their image search. Listing the website the image comes from and the size of the photo is hardly the metadata I would want included in a search. I would hope that they would include more useful information like the image creator, copyright information, and contact info. Without these pieces of information, this change means little to photographers.

  2. Dom at 7:08 am

    “An easier search experience could mean more visits to your website, and perhaps even an improvement in your images’ SEO…”

    It would have been good to coordinate this news bulletin with the findings of Andrew’s SEO audit maybe?

    • Lauren Margolis at 7:19 am

      Hi Dom! I decided to post this in Friday Happy Hour because Google announced it that week, but we’ll definitely keep everyone updated on PhotoShelter’s SEO happenings.

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