Blue Planet Photography

The fiasco of Modern Postcard has come and gone. They rectified their mistake with an apology and cancellation of their partnership with iStockphoto. A grand move, in my eyes, since a distributor like Getty only wants to dominate the marketplace and own all of its content, taking the photographer completely out of the equation.

I received some angry emails from other photographers when I suggested sending a thank you to Modern Postcard for their change in plans, giving iStockphoto the boot. Their rationale was they were burned once, why give them a second chance?

This from Getty photographers who are willing to accept continual cuts in the percentages gained from license fees, who keep agreeing to lower and lower rates (now a one-year, $49 web use license for 500K-sized files from ANY of its images regardless of brand or pricing model).

I think you’ve got to look at the big picture. A photographer can keep fighting against the pressure to lower fees, to accept lower license fee percentages, to accept greater rights uses for less, or they can jump on the bandwagon of giving away their work for low fee because “if I don’t do it someone else will”. Granted, we all have to eat and it’s a pisser that we have to put up with this at all. The big distributors, like Getty, are not helping one single bit by insisting on rights-grabbing contracts and pressuring photographers to provide content for nearly nothing, all in the rush to make more money for themselves. Hopefully, this mentality will come crashing down one day soon and a great sorting out will occur, a leveling of the playing field, a return of ownership of the content to photographers rather than the giant sucking void that exists now.

I’m angry at the photographers who thought that Modern Postcard should go down for this mistake, but who continue to feed Getty because they feel it’s the only game in town. The monopoly has them by the balls and they’re afraid. Modern Postcard is an easy target because there are other printers they can go to. There are other stock photo outlets out there as well. And many have quit Getty and are doing rather well distributing their own work. It’s not really a monopoly unless you give in to it.

I’ve never used Modern Postcard, but I likely will in the near future because they truly seem to be photographer friendly, especially by their actions of ending what was probably a lucrative partnership after receiving many customer complaints.

I’ve never contributed to Getty and never plan to because photographers can complain to Getty until they are blue in the face and Getty will just point to the door with their jackbooted foot cocked for launch.

So why put up with that?

On 8/24/07, at 2:52pm, I received an email from Modern Postcard an announcement that they were partnering with iStockPhoto, entitling Modern Postcard customers free images, free image credits, and a 10% discount on iStockPhoto credit bundles over $20.

The notice goes on to say “So, skip the expensive photo shoot and create direct mailers with high quality images from iStockPhoto.com!”

 Needless to say, professional organizations, such as the Stock Artists Alliance, and their members (including myself) promptly wrote back to Modern Postcard expressing their disdain for this partnership and the apparent disregard to a large segment of their client base, professional photographers. Many photographers, including myself, wrote saying Modern Postcard wasn’t the only fish in the pond and if something wasn’t done about this, we would take our business elsewhere.

At 7:27pm, another email from Modern Postcard was a hat-in-hand apology for the “skip the expensive photo shoot” remark and that Modern Postcard is “…intensely loyal to the photography profession. Our partnership with iStockphoto was in no way intended to replace photographers and the talent they bring to a direct mail or advertising campaign.”

Today, 8/27, at 8:56pm, I received an email from Photo District News (PDN) that Modern Postcard has ended its relationship with iStockPhoto. This is great news, not only from the standpoint of a full-time professional photographer, but from the customer service side. Modern Postcard, which has a reputation for quality work and excellent customer service (and started by two professional photographers as well), has listened to its clients and made a business decision to satisfy them rather than opt for what may have been a lucrative affiliation.

I’ve sent my thank you to Modern Postcard for their prompt action. I think it’s only right to do so after sending a complaint letter.

You could say it never ends. There will always be something better, and it comes when what you have still works just fine. It’s called forced obsolescence and it can be extremely irritating since it can force people to dispose of perfectly operational equipment because the manufacturer has a new model that it ceases to support. Not that this is happening yet with Canon and the earlier 1Ds models, but it’s something to think about when spending your hard-earned cash on a new camera.

The first 1Ds came out in 2001. At 11 megapixels and sporting a full frame sensor, it was the hands down leader in 35mm DSLR technology. I purchased mine in 2003, not long before the 1Ds Mark II, at 16 megapixels, was released to the market. Now, the 1Ds Mark III breaks the 20 megapixel mark with a 21.1 megapixel sensor, dual DIGIC III processors, ISO to 1600 with a bump to 3200, plus a few other goodies, like 5 frames/sec, a 300,000 exposure shutter, 3.0″ live view LCD preview screen with 100% viewfinder coverage, live histogram, grid overlay, and image magnification, CF and SD card slots, Wifi, and other nifties.

For a comprehensive look, see http://www.dpreview.com/previews/canoneos1dsmarkiii/

I’m going to seriously have to think about this one. Anyone want to buy a well-taken-care-of 1Ds?

Most of our current industrial and other manufacturing processes follow the cradle to grave pathway, where once a product has outlived its usefulness or breaks dow it’s thrown out, usually to the local landfill. Its component parts, metal, plastic, organics become waste, often toxic waste, that ceases to be part of a useful thing and now threatens the environment, human health, and is a containment management problem.

Why can’t the products and machines we create and use go safely back to the soil or back to industry? That would be true reclycling, or even “upclycling”, where the product being recycled returns as the same thing. Authors William McDonough and Michael Braungart ask this and other questions in their 2002 book Cradle to Cradle. Why not, McDonough asks, design a paper plate, which will end up back in the soil, with a little nitrogen so when it’s thrown away the farmer wants it? Cars and computers want to go back to being cars and computers but instead they end up as toxic waste in a landfill. Closed cycle recycling and a conscious, societal and industrial, decision to figure out how to reduce waste and engage in intelligent manufacturing, is a key point in the book.

Going back to the Industrial Revolution, which was really a series of independent events, we can see that there was no planning, no design, no idea, what the future would hold, what effects carbon and sulfur emissions would have on the environment. There was no plan for recycling worn and broken things. There was no past history from which to learn. No data to show what was being done was harmful or that there were other ways it could be done.

Now we know. We have the data, we have the knowledge of the long-lasting effects. But we’re so entrenched in that singular way of doing things that it’s going to take a “re-evolution” of the processes and pathways of manufactured items like paper plates, water bottles, cars and computers. 

McDonough and Braungart use nature’s example that living things need growth, free energy from sunlight, and an open system of chemicals for the benefit of the organism and its reproduction (that are safe and healthy). They ask when do we find ourselves in kinship with the natural world? When do we find ourselves as part of the natural world? We need to integrate human technology (in terms of our comfort) and our ability to thrive as a species with the natural world without destroying it. We become part of the human resource of the natural world instead of simply seeing nature as natural resources for the human world.

Conservationist Aldo Leopold said it over 60 years ago. Humans are not separate from nature, but plain member and citizen of it. Those of us that have an understanding of the workings of the environment (even basic understanding) realize this. Children grasp it without any education at all. It intuitively makes sense to them. What will it take for the rest of human civilization to recognize this simple fact and make the change(s) required to remove waste from our culture, to turn cars, buildings, water bottles, toasters, bridges, clothing, and more, into environmentally beneficial (at least not harmful) products, to recreate the cradle to grave process to a cradle to cradle process?

We have the technology.