I first came upon Alec Soth's work a few years ago at a Chelsea art gallery that was displaying images from his Sleeping by the Mississipi project. His brand of contemporary portraiture is spartan in nature, and made me feel like the world is a lonely place. It was work that I was immediately attached to because of its quiet, evocative nature.

Today, I came across his blog, and found this posting:
http://alecsoth.com/blog/2006/10/13/on-the-forums/

It seems that the blokes on the infamous DPreview forums got a hold of one of his images and started going to town on how it lacked merit, was poorly executed, and was nothing more than a snapshot masquerading as art. When it was pointed out that Soth was a part of Magnum and had won two prestigious awards, one pundit downplayed it by saying that Magnum used to be prestigious and he had won some awards as well.

Technology is wonderful for connecting humans together like never before. E-mail, IM, texting, skype have all revolutionized the way we communicate. But message boards, ah message boards...people gain a level of confidence and obstinateness that is unmatched by other forms of communication.

I'm not so arrogant to presume that I know "art" any better than the next guy, but it's ridiculous to denigrate a successful artist who not only has garnered critical acclaim, but financial success as well. Fortunately, Soth is good-natured about the incident, and points out that blogging is "no less nerdy" than hanging out on the message boards.

So I tip my hat to Soth for refraining from an artist's rant, and for continuing to create beautiful snapshots masquerading as terrible art.

I certainly am not the first pundit to observe this trend, but I think it’s very relevant to photographers. When the world was dominated by newspaper and magazines, photography and photographers had a very solid footing. The outlets for photography were limited, but the circulation was enormous. Rights-Managed usage made a lot of sense, and photographers could be economically successful without necessarily being very business savvy. They didn’t have to worry about distribution to multiple media because print was it.

But the Information Age changed the game dramatically because of a few factors:

1. Information dissemination became trivial
   
2. Technology became so cheap that laymen could afford it
   
3. Technological tools became easy enough that laymen would use it
   

These factors led to the rise of the Internet, iPods, cellphones, PDA and many other technological devices that permeate western culture today. These technologies have also shifted the way that we interact with content in significant ways.

Chris Anderson astutely notes in The Long Tail that these developments translate into much more choice for end users. The days of the mega pop star are over because we can now find niche music to suit our tastes exactly, rather than just being limited to artists that bricks and mortar retailers and radio stations promote.

The same is true for images. The rise of cheap digital cameras has led to a democratization effect. Even hobbyists can create professional quality images now because cameras are cheap, there are no film processing costs, and tools like Photoshop have allowed millions of people to create non-destructive edits to images.

The diversity of content creators means that we no longer have to be content with agency collections of 25 million images when we can potentially access hundreds of millions of images.

Is there demand for these images? We believe there is. The best of the best will continue to sell images at a high dollar through traditional outlets, but the majority of photographers will have to learn to diversify their thinking about what constitutes licensing. This is because the destinations for images will become much more diffuse.

You might not sell $250 stock images to magazines anymore, but you might sell 100 cellphone downloads at $1/piece, a web usage, and a thumbnail inside of Second Life. I’m not promising that this new math will allow photographers to make equivalent money, it’s simply an observation that the dynamics of both creation and delivery are changing significantly before our eyes.

We also believe that the old economics of agency stock sales will change dramatically. The large stock agencies are pursuing wholesale acquisition of content because paying photographer royalties is expensive. PhotoShelter takes the opposite approach. We don’t own anything. We allow you to collect the proceeds of a sale. It’s impossible to tell which model will ultimately succeed, but we believe empowering the content creator will have positive effects in the long term for both buyer and seller.

What do you think?

Grover spends a lot of time speaking to photographers, and has a great non-PhotoShelter-specific talk about what photographers want, and how sharply their desires can conflict with those of image buyers (I'd highly recommend seeing him speak if you can).

For example, it seems as if every photo student takes a class on web development, then immediately tries to go out and build their own website. In doing so, they feel compelled to create something unique, which almost inevitably involves Flash and some obscure navigation mechanism. The desire to be unique is at odds with the audience’s desire to find content quickly.

An oft-cited analogy is restaurant websites. Most users visit a restaurant website to find 1) hours of operation, and 2) the address and directions. Yet, most restaurant websites suffer from the arrogance to think that their logo should dominate their homepage, and we should click a few times to find this basic information.

So what do image buyers really want? Here’s a few ideas to ponder:

• prominent navigation options
• forward/back buttons that don’t jump around
• readily accessible licensing information
• searchability
• e-commerce

In business, when we don’t have a core competence internally, we outsource. For example, we outsource all our bookkeeping. Our time is more valuable than trying to do everything ourselves. Photography is no different, so when you’re contemplating creating your website, you should consider that there are companies that specialize in creating websites who have thought through the issues of what’s important to your audience, as well as optimizing the code that creates the site. You might have a compelling design, but your code execution might undermine the efficacy. Flash is a great tool, but in the hands of a bad programmer, it can be disastrous.

The chasm between photographer and buyer extends even further. Many PhotoShelter photographers don’t price their images. I’m sure there are a million legitimate reasons why this is the case, but none of them matter when an image buyer is ready to initiate a sale. Having to contact you only adds friction to the process. And everyone has encountered an e-commerce enabled site where they got so frustrated that they bailed out of the process.

So as we enter 2007, put yourself in the shoes of the buyer, and prosper accordingly.

After a few months of heavy development, the Rights-Managed module with fotoQuote® is here. We have extensive documentation within the Subscriber section, but here's a few quicktime videos that you can watch to introduce you to what is possible.

• Creating Rights-Managed Profiles with PhotoShelter and fotoQuote® [5MB Quicktime]
• Pricing and Negotiating an RM Sale [6MB Quicktime]
• Creating an Instant Sale [3MB Quicktime]

PhotoShelter is now the ONLY online service that will allow an individual photographer to handle all of the three major licensing types: 1) print (both automated fulfillment and self-fulfillment), 2) royalty-free, and 3) rights-managed. This doesn’t mean some lightweight inquiry form – we’re talking a fully automated sales solution where YOU set the pricing.

So let’s recap what we have that no one else does:

• Support for over 400+ image file formats, including RAW and PSD image files.
• Local and geographical redundancy with mirrored datacenters means your files are safe.
• Integration into professional workflow applications like Photo Mechanic and Aperture.
• A customization system that enables you to match the look/feel of any website for a truly seamless integration of PhotoShelter into your site.
• Pricing plans that start at $10/month with no sign-up fee or annual commitment. For $49/month, you get 100GB of disk space, not just 20. (The $19/month plan will get you 35GB of space.)
• A completely free, limited storage account that you can use indefinitely to manage your professional photography.
• A fully functioning e-commerce marketplace since the day we launched.

2007 is going to be a huge year for us. So look forward to more announcements that will shake things up.

"TOKYO — Momofuku Ando, the Japanese inventor of instant noodles — a dish that has sustained American college students for decades — has died. He was 96."

I remember eating Cup Noodles as a child at my Grandma's house. First, my sister and I would rip off the outer cardboard packaging, and then fumble with the cellophane wrapping. The whistling of the tea kettle would signify that it was time. We peeled back the top to the dotted line — no more, no less. Grandma would pour the water in for we were too little to handle boiling water, and then she placed a plate over the lid to allow it to cook.

The package says three minutes, but who's to know what three minutes is? I was so tempted to peek under the plate, but was fearful that something would go terribly awry. Terribly awry. So we waited patiently until Grandma said it was ok, then uncovered the plate and pull the cover back completely. Perfection.

How did the morsels of vegetable get so tender and saturated with color? Clearly, this must be good for you. But alas, there is no time to ponder, it is time to eat.

Sayonara, Mr. Noodle, we'll miss you very much.

"Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. Give him ramen noodles, and you don't have to teach him anything."

— LAWRENCE DOWNES