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September 28, 2006
'ORPHAN WORKS' BILL DIES IN COMMITTEE
Independent photographers and illustrators are breathing a sigh
of relief: The latest Orphan Works bill (the Copyright
Modernization Act of 2006, HR 6052) appears to have died in
committee. On Wednesday, Sept. 27, the bill's sponsor, Rep. Lamar
Smith (R-TX), announced that he was withdrawing the bill from
consideration at that markup session, which is likely to be the
last one this year. He said that he did not see any reasonable
chance that it would be signed into law in the current Congress.
He also said that he plans to introduce another bill when the new
Congress convenes next year.
The efforts of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP)
and its allies in representing and organizing members' opposition
to the bill, bolstered by many expressions of concern from
individual photographers and illustrators, played a significant
role in stopping the legislation. In addition, Rep. Smith's move
of tying the Orphan Works legislation to a digital music
licensing bill appears to have created the additional opposition
needed to stop the bill in this Congress.
ASMP president Clem Spalding said, "Our efforts have paid off!
This is great news! Now, ASMP will continue to work with our
allies in an effort to improve future Orphan Works legislation
and diminish the potential liability and burden for visual
artists."
This battle has been won, but the war is not over. ASMP will be
watching closely to be sure that the bill does not suddenly
reappear in any late-fall, "lame duck" session. And we will start
drafting our own version of a new bill, favorable to
photographers and artists, for possible introduction in the next
Congress.
For further information, contact:
Eugene Mopsik, Executive Director
215-451-ASMP (215-451-2767)
email mopsik@asmp.org
ABOUT ASMP
Founded in 1944, the American Society of Media Photographers
(ASMP) is the leading trade association for photographers who
photograph primarily for publication. ASMP promotes
photographers' rights, educates photographers in better business
practices, produces business publications for photographers, and
helps buyers find professional photographers. It has more than
5,000 members, including many of the world's greatest
photographers, in 39 chapters nationwide.
Posted by Pat at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2006
Our Newest Images - September 27, 2006-Families, Babies, Dogs, Candy, Illustrations, Swimming pools, Bikini's, Weddings, Christmas, Business People, Europe and Asia
We are always adding new, fresh images to our already spectacular collection. Take a look and see the newest images we have added.
Our newest Rights Managed Images
Our newest Royalty Free Images
Check back to see a whole new set of images next week.
Posted by Valerie at 02:53 PM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2006
Beautiful Women
Women are beautiful worldwide. This is demonstrated by a new Index collection of images by NMW1.
NMW1 shoots and produces a line of swimsuit model calendars featuring exotic swimsuit and bikini models from Asia, Latin America, Europe, and Africa.
Copyright NMW1
All of their models are shot on location in each of the models’ countries at locations that are culturally and/or historically relevant to the particular models’ culture. The concept was to combine the historical and cultural perspective of a particular country with the contemporary aspect of a swimsuit model originating from that country. Their calendars have been written about and featured extensively in GQ, MAXIM, and FHM magazines, as well as being the only swimsuit calendar line in the world featured in a segment on the popular U.S. entertainment T.V. program, “EXTRA,” and as a set-piece on the hit T.V. series, “C.S.I.”
Copyright NMW1
Their shooting locations include The Great Wall in China, Ayutthaya in Thailand, Presidential Palace in Taiwan, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Brecheret Monument in Brazil, Fuente San Miguel in Uruguay, Vina Santa Carolina in Chile, Hacienda Tetlapayac in Mexico, the Swiss Alps, the Charles Bridge in the Czech Republic, the Castillo de Coca in Spain, the Kaiserburg Castle in Germany, the Nile in Sudan, the Black Volta River in Ghana, Sao Lourenco Fort in Mozambique, and Mount Kenya.
Copyright NMW1
Enjoy more images:
http://www.indexstock.com/store/search.asp?SearchStr=///direct 4200
Posted by Pat at 10:39 PM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2006
BNSF Railway Archival Photo Collection
New selections from the BNSF Railway archival photo collection are now available online at
www.photos.bnsf.com.
The site launched with 170 historic images, and now 75 additioal rare images are avaialble to collectors. Photos include such subjects as Northern Pacific trains of the 1870’s, Great Northern steam engines of the 1920’s, and the famous Santa Fe Super Chief.
Copyright BNSF
Copyright BNSF
Collectors can purchase everything from prints and mouse pads to coffee mugs featuring images of classic locomotives, trains and railroad scenes. The images also are available for editorial or commercial publication through Index Stock Imagery at www.indexstock.com/store/search.asp?SearchStr=///direct 4118
Copyright BNSF
See the original release at:
http://www.indexstockimagery.com/archives/2006/05/bnsf_railway_hi.html
Copyright BNSF
Posted by Pat at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2006
ASMP TO PRESENT SEMINAR SERIES AT APPLE STORES
ASMP will present a seminar series by 18 extraordinary member
photographers this fall and winter. The talks, to be held at the
Apple Stores in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, are part of
Apple Computer's Pro Sessions event series. Mark your calendars,
coordinate your schedules!
On September 25, the first three in the series will take place.
The downtown Chicago Apple store will feature Victor Skrebneski,
whose diverse body of work has included everything from wildly
inventive fashion images as the exclusive photographer for Estee
Lauder, to starkly revealing portraits and haunting cityscapes.
On the same day, the San Francisco Apple store near Union Square
will play host to Morton Beebe, who has covered the world,
combining advertising assignments for his corporate clients with
editorial assignments for Travel & Leisure, National Geographic
and others. And in the New York Apple store on Prince St. will be
Jay Maisel, whose name has become synonymous with vibrant color
photography that uses light and gesture to create countless
unforgettable images for advertising, editorial and corporate
communications.
At each session, the presenter will show slides and talk about
portfolio marketing, assessing the needs of photo editors, and
ways of succeeding in this challenging field. Admission is free
and open to the public; space is on a first-come first-served
basis.
Further events in the series are set for the same places in
October and November:
New York City:
Michael Furman October 23
Chase Jarvis Nov. 20
Chicago:
Steve Grubman Oct 23
Nick Vedros Nov. 20
San Francisco:
David Hume Kennerly Oct. 30
Robert Beck Nov. 27
Full details of the fall seminar series will be posted on
Apple's web site at www.apple.com/go/asmp
A winter seminar series will begin in January at the same
locations; the dates and names of speakers will be announced
later.
For more information, contact: Eugene Mopsik, Executive Director
215-451-ASMP (215-451-2767)
email mopsik@asmp.org
About ASMP
Founded in 1944, the American Society of Media Photographers
(ASMP) is the leading trade association for photographers who
photograph primarily for publication. ASMP promotes
photographers' rights, educates photographers in better business
practices, produces business publications for photographers, and
helps buyers find professional photographers. It has more than
5,000 members, including many of the world's greatest
photographers, in 40 chapters nationwide.
For more information on ASMP, visit http://www.asmp.org
Posted by Pat at 02:57 AM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2006
KNOWING YOUR GRANDFATHER Part III
PART III
Paul Katz is one of Index's top artists and also a story teller. Enjoy his 'quick history of photography' in 3 parts. The following is Part III.
KNOWING YOUR GRANDFATHER
Some thoughts about photography
Digital and otherwise
By Paul Katz
Review Part II:
http://www.indexstockimagery.com/archives/2006/09/knowing_your_gr_1.html#more
At this point of our story we have to make a little side trip to Menlo Park in New Jersey. Here Thomas Alva Edison when asked about a film size for the new motion picture camera that his engineers were developing, held his fingers apart and someone remarked that it was approximately 35mm in width. With that simple gesture the 35mm standard was established. Quickly moving to the motion picture film industry in Germany, a camera was developed to utilize 35mm motion picture film for still photography. Does the name Leica sound familiar? This 35mm format has become the prominent film format for most amateurs and professionals. Utilizing a mirror and a prism the single lens reflex camera was born allowing the photographer to view and focus through the actual lens taking the picture. As film became finer grained and more sensitive, camera makers were busy developing cameras that could read the amount of light on a subject and adjust the proper exposure, as well as automatically focusing the lens. Somewhere along the way film went from black-and-white to color negative as well. Two young men, musicians, in a darkroom/closet in the Bronx, NY, put their heads together and invented a color transparency film (Kodachrome), which today most people call slide film. This allows us to sit in a darkened room and with a slide projector throw images onto a far wall not unlike the early viewers of the camera obscura, though far more brilliant and sharply defined to be almost lifelike.
For the past one hundred years or so film was king, photography took many long strides forward as film and equipment reached the point of absolute perfection. There were high quality cameras that could fit in your shirt pocket, cameras with motor drives that could photograph eight to ten frames a second. Large format cameras with flexible bellows that allowed you to twist the lens and film plane's to achieve maximum distortion corrections and sharpness. Advanced equipment and lighting allowed photographing and stopping a bullet in flight as it punctures a balloon. The film of Mr. Eastman was improved on and improved on again. Small fine-grained negatives could be enlarged to gigantic proportions and maintain their sharpness.
Suddenly in the late 1980s as quickly as the computer displaced many things that we have taken for granted, such as the typewriter, architectural drawing, graphic design, spreadsheets, file maintenance, image manipulation, communications, law enforcement and just about anything else that touches our lives, digital photography was born kicking and screaming and looking to replace film as the medium for recording the photographic image.
Digital photography the new buzzword! In the photography world there are people marketing digital tripods, digital camera bags and even digital lighting systems. As long as the name "digital" is applied it makes the item up to date, cool and vital. What is digital photography? Basically it is the writing with light photography that those people who were sitting in the camera obscura saw. The optics, the focusing system as well as the exposure adjustments although improved, remain pretty much the same. Digital photography is the replacement of film as the medium for recording the image. Where light falling on a film plane created an electrochemical change in the Silver based emulsion to be developed later, light now falls on a silicone wafer containing millions of recording pixels that measure the intensity and the color of the light. A highly sophisticated miniature computer within the camera reads these individual points of information, processes it into numerical information and stores it on a recording device in the camera, where it is eventually downloaded for further use. Everything else is pretty much the same as using a film camera.
We are in the infancy of digital photography and have been for somewhat less than the last twenty years. Digital photography and digital cameras have advanced rapidly during this period of time. The advancement has been continuous and rapid improvements come along constantly. The ability to make an exposure, transfer it rapidly to a computer where digital imaging software is used to make corrections that reflect the insight of the photographer and then output to a printer for a final print is well within the grasp of everybody.
Good photography is now within everybody's grasp. The real differences in photography are not so much the equipment, which will only get better and better, but as it has always been, the differences that are in the eyes, imagination and passion of the person who is capturing the image are what count. So, make use of this new digital photography and its way of fixing images for the people in the next century and beyond to reflect upon. Think about the image, framing, focus, light, and from your distant caveman need to communicate, utilize the increasingly sophisticated digital systems for image capture. But always remember the history of photography, where we've been and where we are going, but most of all remember your grandfather.
http://www.indexstock.com/store/search.asp?SearchStr=///direct 174
Posted by Pat at 07:51 PM | Comments (0)
Our Newest Images - September 13, 2006-Musical Instruments, Food and Wine, Foreign Currency, Wildlife animals, Black and White vintage portraits, Bicycle riding, Yoga, Lake of the Woods, Canada, Easter Island, Chile, Europe and India
We are always adding new, fresh images to our already spectacular collection. Take a look and see the newest images we have added.
Our newest Rights Managed Images
Our newest Royalty Free Images
Check back to see a whole new set of images next week.
Posted by Valerie at 03:18 PM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2006
PhotosIndia, Exploring a New World
Jack Hollingsworth - Media Producer
To the US economy, India, Asia and China represent the new world of opportunity, creativity and technological growth. What better company to represent this unexplored frontier than PhotosIndia, the charm of the stock photo world.
PhotosIndia is the brilliant brainchild of two top business men, Jack Hollingsworth and Manav Lohia. From different parts of the world they met at a US convention a couple of years ago, and conceived of the ideal venue to bring the modern lifestyle of India to the world advertiser’s doorstep.
“Uniquely India” aptly describes this beautiful 15,000 image collection, highlighting the people of India as they blend into the business and high tech world of today. The images are colorful, fun, contemporary, yet poignant for their conceptual framework and realistic lifestyle.
Jack is the Chief Creative Officer, and Manav is the Chief Technology Officer, and powerhouse behind all the Indian production. Amit Narain is the Chief Executive Officer. The collection is Royalty Free and production offices are both in the US and New Delhi. Emetaworks, Manav’s business, is the foundation of support, providing full post-production in India. This is the epitome of modern US outsourcing. Over 2000 images are produced a month by Jack and there staffers. The collection is represented by Getty Images and up to thirty worldwide resellers.
It’s fun to get an inside seat to production, which is possible at the upcoming November Pushkar Camel Fair. Http://www.t2india.com/pushkar-camel-fair.php .
Pushkar, known for its religious temple, Lord Brahma, is the ideal setting for golden sand dunes, vibrantly dressed people, dancing and singing, and decorated camels to buy and to race. Jack hopes to return with over 500 “killer” portraits. As he puts it: “We’re going to set up a small make-shift studio right smack in the middle of the campgrounds-then ‘bark’ people our way!”
Enjoy a tour of PhotosIndia at www.photosindia.com.
http://www.indexstock.com/store/search.asp?SearchStr=///direct 1652
Posted by Pat at 03:18 AM | Comments (0)
September 06, 2006
KNOWING YOUR GRANDFATHER
PART II
Paul Katz is one of Index's top artists and also a story teller. Enjoy his 'quick history of photography' in 3 parts. The following is Part II.
KNOWING YOUR GRANDFATHER
Some thoughts about photography
Digital and otherwise
By Paul Katz
Review Part I:
http://www.indexstockimagery.com/archives/2006/08/knowing_your_gr.html#more
In 1839 a professor at New York University, Dr. William Draper, went up to the roof of the University and photographed his sister-in-law, making the first known photograph of a human face. His sister-in-law probably had to sit quite still for a number of minutes because of the long exposure time necessary. Nevertheless, man was now able to record a person's face by using light alone to paint the image. Photography had really arrived! People were now able to capture images of their loved ones, their properties, their cities, bowls of fruit and any other object of interest to them.
Continuous experimentation and development made way for shorter exposures, though the need of a neck brace to steady the head during the exposure still existed because exposures still ran into minutes. The daguerreotype was the standard for the newly created Professional Photographer.
The professional photographers came into being and opened photographic studios all over the United States. A 25cent daguerreotype portrait was probably costly at that time but it allowed recording for posterity people who would never be immortalized by an artist with a paintbrush and canvas because of the expense. It allowed people to send images of themselves to other people as a form of introduction and I wonder how many European and East Coast mail-order brides captured their frontiersman future husband's heart by sending a photograph. With the creation of this new industry the entrepreneurs jumped in with both feet. Samuel Morse, inventor of the Morse code and the telegraph, was a portrait photographer. Two gentlemen by the names of Anthony and Scoville thought that people would have a need for photographic supplies and equipment, so they created the company called Ansco in New York City. There were many more of these photographer/entrepreneurs, some whose names are remembered and some who have disappeared in the dustbin of history, but all of whom have been part of the development of photography as we know it today.
One extremely successful photographer, the darling of the society set, noted for his portraiture, Matthew Brady emerged during the Civil War as one of the earliest combat photographers in history. Of course, the Brady's photography was still limited to long exposures. By this time, he was using photographic emulsions coated on a glass plate. The sensitivity of the material was greater when wet. To perform his wet plate photography, Brady would drive his horse drawn darkroom wagon to the battlefield, set up his tripod and camera, frame and focus the scene and then prepare his photographic material in his darkroom wagon. It has been discovered recently that Brady sometimes moved bodies around to make a more poignant or compositionally better photograph. After making his exposure, he then went back into his wagon, where he developed and fixed the image. Brady had other photographers working for him under his name. One of the most notable of Brady's photographers was a man named Timothy Sullivan who later went on to document what was then the Wild West. Sullivan's photographs when seen back east stirred people's imaginations and helped open up the West to adventurous, prospectors and homesteader's.
As with all technology, photography and the methods for accomplishing it improved as people experimented with different techniques. There were a number of different methods of photography that people experimented with, some of them very successful and some quite bad. But the sensitive emulsion coated glass plate became somewhat of a standard.
In the late 1800s, George Eastman had the brilliant idea of coating celluloid with a photographic emulsion, which allowed him to make a flexible based film that could be rolled up in the camera in varying lengths. This allowed the photographer the freedom of loading multiple exposure rolls of film in his camera and not having to worry about glass plates and individual plate holders. Mr. Eastman thought long and hard and made up a name for his company, Kodak. The Kodak Co. made film, cameras and the associated equipment that was needed for engaging in the process of photography. Everybody I am sure knows of Kodak's preloaded film cameras that were sent back to the Kodak Co., where the film was processed and the pictures as well as the reloaded camera were returned to the customer. I believe the slogan used was, "you press the button, we'll do the rest". It was at that time in photography that film became king!
The reign of king film was long and important, allowing humans to write with light, recording and fixing images of ordinary life, important events, happiness and sadness, achievements and disasters as well as the faces of the average man. We can look at the faces of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. In fleeting moments captured we can see the evil in the eye's of Nazi propaganda minister Gobbels and the unyielding defiance in the face of Britain's Winston Churchill. An American flag being raised in victory by United States Marines on a remote mountaintop in the Pacific stirred our patriotism. We can rejoice with the sailor and nurse amorously celebrating the end of the Second World War in Times Square. Photography became a selling tool, advertising photography showed us not only the steak but the sizzle as well. A close view of a swirl of toothpaste on a toothbrush, created by a photographic artist becomes a work of art. The camera and the photographic process let us travel the world visually and examine through the eyes of journalistic photographers other cultures, allowing us to understand more about our world and our fellowman. Film has allowed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of us to record the histories and mysteries of this world and become photographers.
Look for Part III coming.
http://www.indexstock.com/store/search.asp?SearchStr=///direct 174
Posted by Pat at 05:39 PM | Comments (0)
September 05, 2006
Jim Oltersdorf
Great new photos of Jim Oltersdorf in action in Alaska
See his story at:
http://www.indexstockimagery.com/archives/2006/07/jim_oltersdorf.html
(c)Jim Oltersdorf
(c)Jim Oltersdorf
See more images of Jim's at:
http://www.indexstock.com/store/search.asp?SearchStr=///direct 2498
Posted by Pat at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)
Robert Cattan
Robert Cattan is a leading artist at Index Stock Imagery. Enjoy his gallery show coming up:
John Allan's in Tribeca presents new works by Robert Cattan
September 21 to December 21
Opening Cocktail reception on September 21st from 7:30 to 9:30
Location: 418 Washington St. NYC, between Vestry and Laight
http://cattan.typepad.com/photography/
www.cattanart.com
cattan@mac.com
http://www.indexstock.com/store/search.asp?SearchStr=///direct 392
Posted by Pat at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)
