The growth of blogging, self-publishing, and content-marketing means that more people than ever before are involved in producing online articles, e-books, webinar presentations, and publications. Many of these new content publishers haven’t been schooled in journalism, graphic design, or photography and aren’t aware of copyright laws that protect images on the Internet. Even if they are aware of copyright laws, some people believe that the Internet is public domain and that all images can be used for free.
A new website called StockPhotoSecrets.com intends to clear up some of this confusion, while teaching both new and seasoned buyers about their options for buying stock photography. StockPhotoSecrets.com is designed to be an international, comprehensive guide that connects new users, industry professionals, and stock photography agencies.
“Stock photography and the buying stock photos has been complex for years, and it is our goal to make it user-friendly for all stock photo purchasers,” says StockPhotoSecrets founder Amos Struck. He is also the founder and editor of Stock Photo Press, a publishing company that operates several German and international magazines that teach people how to buy and sell stock photos.
Some of the articles on StockPhotoSecrets.com explain:
how to pick the right photo for your blog or website
when you can use editorial image licenses
how to purchase photos from Flickr
how to order the right size for printing posters
Other features on the site include reviews of various stock-photo agencies, special offers, and video tutorials on working with stock photos.
As more people learn about the benefits of buying stock photography, the market will grow and photographers will have to worry less about having their copyrighted images used without their permission.
Any creative professional who wants to design or produce museum exhibits should pay attention to how museums are adapting to today’s socially networked, multimedia culture. For example, here are three news items that caught my eye.
Reinventing the Museum Experience in the Digital Age
Maggie Burnette Stogner, a professor in the film and media arts department at American University, is helping exhibit producers use new media technologies to create immersive storytelling experiences at cultural museums.
While many museums continue to display artifacts in cases with small text labels, others have started using high-definition videos, photomurals, 3D computer animations, and digital audio for voice, music, and soundscapes.
Immersive exhibits have enabled museum visitors to explore the pirate ship Whydah with its captain Sam Bellamy, view 3D CT scans of King Tut, and take an intimate tour of Egyptian artifacts guided by Cleopatra.
American University’s Maggie Stogner films Mayan hieroglyph expert Simon Marting. Photo: Helena Swedberg
“This engagement is critical at a time when cultural museum attendance is seriously declining,” said Stogner. “Younger generations learn in very different styles than the traditional approach offered by many cultural museums. They are growing up in a media-rich, networked society, and have different expectations.”
She points out the immersive exhibits also appeal to ethnically diverse crowds
and older visitors. Compared to text labels and tour guides, integrated multimedia exhibits can provide a more effective educational experience to persons with visual or hearing impairments.
“Culture is all about our human stories,” says Stogner. “It is how we, as humans, share who we are, what we believe in, what we fear or love, what we hope for, and how we live. We have communicated our culture through multimedia storytelling from the earliest cave drawings and stories around the fire pit. Immersive media technologies are an evolving means to tell and share those stories.”
“Today’s new media technologies have tremendous potential to enliven and give meaning to ancient cultures and historical events of the past,” said Stogner. “But they must be used with a strong commitment to content research and quality.”
Digital Images of Yale’s Cultural Collections Now Available for Free
Yale University’s new open access policy will give scholars, artists, and other individuals around the world free access to online images of millions of objects housed in Yale’s museums, archives, and libraries.
So far, more than 250,000 images that in the public domain have been made available. No license will be required for the transmission of the images and no limitations will be imposed on their use. As a result, scholars, artists, students, and citizens around the world will be able to use these collections for study, publication, teaching, and inspiration.
George Stubbs, “Zebra,” 1763, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art
Increased access to high-quality content and new linked data technologies will revolutionize the way people search and relate to cultural objects, says Meg Bellinger, director of the Yale Office of Digital Assets and Infrastructure.
Press Release: Digital Images of Yale’s Vast Cultural Collections Now Available for Free
Museum Asks Visitors to Comment on Rarely Shown Works
Earlier this year the Mobile Museum of Art gave visitors a chance to review, describe, and photograph artworks for possible future use in upcoming museum publications and displays.
In an exhibit entitled “Art at Random: Selections from the Permanent Collection,” the museum curatorial staff displayed some of the 9,500 pieces that museum has accumulated through gifts or purchases since 1963. A random number generator was used to determine which of the items in storage would be put on display.
Visitors were invited to share their thoughts and feelings about the displayed pieces and make suggestions about the type and amount of information contained in the text panels.
Museum visitors were also invited to write detailed descriptions of the artworks or use their camera phones or other cameras to photograph the exhibited items. Visitors could email these images and descriptions to the museum staff or upload them to the museum’s Facebook page.
The curators at the Mobile Museum of Art is using the feedback to help them understand what type of information visitors would like to see, both in gallery exhibits and in the searchable, online database they are developing for the collected works.
In a blog post on al.com, reporter Thomas B. Harrison quoted museum director Tommy McPherson as saying, “People have a longstanding curiosity about museums and what’s in storage. Traditionally, we only pull things out when we have an academic purpose for it.”
Thus, many of the works in the “Art at Random” exhibit had seldom been exhibited. McPherson said one of the goals of the exhibit was to help people better understand what accredited museums do for their communities.
Al.com Blog Post: Art Museum Allow Visitors a Peek Into the Vault
Press Release: New Exhibition Gives Visitors a Chance to Help Museum
Whether you publish a blog to build a following, attract traffic to your website, earn money, or simply express yourself, blogging involves more than selecting a template and uploading a few posts. Success in blogging requires a commitment to the project and knowledge of tools and techniques that can help you be efficient and productive.
Here are some resources that can help you get started or refine your approach. If you
have other resources that might be particularly helpful to authors, designers, artists, or photographers, please let us know.
101 Essential Blogging Resources
If you’re assembling a blog on your own, you might be surprised to see how many options are available. A post on Blogtrepreneur.com currently lists 122 resources, including 5 domain registrars, 6 different hosting services, 7 content management systems, 6 services for competitive analysis, 9 feedreaders for blog-post research, 11 sources for monetization and advertising , and 12 resources for customizing the look of blog. The list
also includes resources that can help you get statistics and promote your blog online. (The post started out as a list of 101 resources, but has been expanded to include resources suggested by readers.)
Darren Rowse, who publishes the most popular site about blogging (www.problogger.net), has published a new guide for anyone who is either starting their first blog or wants ideas on how their second or third blog can get off to a faster start than their first blog.
In seven practical chapters, he presents 32 achievable tasks that can get your blog moving forward.
Day 1: Set solid foundations.
Day 2: Publish and build presence.
Day 3: Concentrate on content.
Day 4: Understand your blog as a product.
Day 5: Put yourself out there.
Day 6: Define and demonstrate quality.
Day 7: Strategies for success.
The book assumes that you already understand the technicalities of setting up a new blog and focuses on what steps to take after the blog has been set up. He explains systems for planning content, building a social media presence, establishing a workflow, and maintaining quality.
Blogs can be a terrific way for photographers to their websites, deepen relationships with customers, and build a bigger following. But some photographers wonder if a blog is really worth their time. PhotoShelter’s 35-page Photography Blog Handbook presents strategies and tactics that can make blogging worth your time.
The 35-page e-book demonstrates how to use a blog to attract new visitors to your website and connect with existing clients. It explains elements that can make or break a photography blog, and includes case studies and examples of smart blogging tactics used by photographers from different specialties. The guide also shares content ideas that will attract more visitors, influence social sharing, and boost search engine optimization.
Also included are tips on choosing the best blogging platform, designing your blog, and outfitting a blog with features that will make photos look outstanding.
Eleven professional photography associations have launched a worldwide campaign to help promote the intellectual property rights of creative people in all disciplines—photography, video, film, fine arts, music, writing, design, etc.
The campaign centers around an Artist’s Bill of Rights that outlines a set of ethical principles that enable individuals to control how their creative works are used. It updates a document that the international Pro-Imaging Organization initiated in 2008 to protect the rights of individuals who enter photography competitions.
The Bill of Rights is helping to raise awareness of the practice of “rights-grabbing” in which some competitions harvest unlimited usage rights, or even the copyright, of the works submitted by contest entrants.
According to campaign manager Gordon C. Harrison, “The worst type of rights grabbing is where the terms and conditions for a contest require the entrant to assign the entire copyright and other rights for any works submitted to the competition, and to waive their moral rights. These practices are not uncommon. We have documented 35 cases of copyright grabbing, 26 cases where moral rights have to be waived, and 7 cases where both occurred.”
If the practice of rights-grabbing continues to spread, it will devalue photography, art, music, and creativity as a whole by reducing the need for organizations to commission or purchase creative works.
A key aim of the Artist’s Bill of Rights campaign is to educate the public about the importance and potential value of their intellectual property rights. The campaign can also help educate contest organizers who might unknowingly be asking for more usage rights than they actually needed to conduct and promote the contest.
The Artist’s Bill of Rights campaign is presented through a website that is now available in over 40 languages.
Campaign Aims
The campaign has the following aims:
To provide a means whereby all artists’ associations can unite around a common set of standards for preservation of their rights.
To promote the Bill of Rights’ standards for the preservation of artists’ rights in competitions and appeals seeking creative works.
To promote organisations who support the Artists’ Bill of Rights and to promote their competitions and appeals.
To educate the public about the purpose and value of their intellectual property rights and to enable them to recognise when they are being exploited.
To publish reports about the extent of rights grabbing and to analyse and quantify the rights grabbed by the private, public, charitable, and non-profit sectors.
To press for legislative changes that would protect the public from unfair and unethical terms and conditions that seek to exploit their intellectual property rights.
Campaign Supporters
The eleven associations currently supporting the campaign include:
Advertising & Illustrative Photographers Association (New Zealand)
Association of Professional Photographers (Iceland)
Association of Photographers (United Kingdom)
Australian Commercial & Media Photographers
Australian Institute of Professional Photography
British Institute of Professional Photography (United Kingdom)
British Photographic Council (United Kingdom)
DJ:Fotograferne, photographers within the Union of Journalists (Denmark)
Editorial Photographers of United Kingdom and Ireland
Pro-Imaging Organisation (United Kingdom)
The National Press Photographers Association (US)
In addition to these associations, many private and public sector organizations have proclaimed their support for the principles, including the Society of Authors. All of the supporters are listed on the campaign website. All artists organizations are invited to participate, and contact the campaign organizers through the website.
The website also lists photography competitions that comply with the principles in The Artist’s Bill of Rights and those that don’t.
If you or your studio or organization want to show support for the principles in the Artist’s Bill of Rights, you can grab the appropriate logo below, and link it to: http://artists-bill-of-rights.org
LINKS
Website: Artist’s Bill of Rights
Resources on the Artist’s Bill of Rights Website
Guide to Rights & Licensing
An overview of copyright, types of licenses, moral rights, and the consequences of rights grabbing. As the authors of the website point out: “Rights grabbing devalues creativity by acquiring creativity for nothing.” Rights grabbing can also damage your reputation if your work is used to promote products, services, or campaigns of which you don’t approve.
Organiser’s Guide to The Artist’s Bill of Rights
This section of The Artist’s Bill of Right website explains how contest organizers can write competition terms and conditions that will give them the rights they need for their own publicity and promotion requirements while respecting the rights of the entrants.
Rights-Grabbing Statistics
Spreadsheets on this page attempt to calculate the extent of the problem and pinpoint the sectors in which rights-grabbing occurs most frequently. An analysis of current statistics estimates that more than 6,000 images are being grabbed each day.
broaden your funding sources through grants, awards, artist residencies, fiscal agents, and individual contributors.
explore exhibition, commission, and sales opportunities beyond commercial galleries.
Reflecting how many artists think, the guide covers many of the day-to-day issues of running any self-directed business such as planning, budgeting, managing finances, marketing, and pricing your work. For example, Battenfield advises against setting prices under pressure. As she puts it, “The worst time to figure out a price is when you are taken by a surprise offer to buy a piece.” She suggests making a complete inventory of all your works with prices attached to each piece.
In the guide, she explains in great detail how to write an artist’s statement, document work samples, and build relationships with the individuals and organizations that can further your career.
In the beginning of your art career, you will probably need a part-time or full-time “day job” to earn money for your studio work. Battenfield suggests looking for low-stress jobs that won’t drain you of the creative energy you need for your art.
How Planning Can Help
Throughout the book, Battenfield emphasizes the value of planning. She points out that if you don’t set short- and long-term goals, you won’t be able to create, evaluate, and pursue the opportunities that can help make your dreams become reality. Here are a few tips:
Survey the current art landscape. Instead of imagining an amorphous group of collectors, artists, or the general public, reflect on who would be most interested in the content of your work. What spaces feel like a natural fit? Although the art world is no longer held captive by a few dealers, critics, curators, or patrons, not all new venues and opportunities will be suited to your work or long-term professional goals.
Develop a work structure, business systems, and support networks that allow you maintain a healthy attitude, stay engaged, and search for new solutions. While the art world continues to shift in unexpected ways, you will need to continue to believe in yourself, ask questions, and get feedback and help as often as you need it.
Write your own obituary. How do you want to be remembered? What will you have accomplished? What will family members, friends, and colleagues say about you? This exercise can help ensure that you aren’t pursuing goals contrary to your core values and beliefs.
Promoting Yourself
What makes The Artist’s Guide so appealing is Battenfield’s empathy with artists who feel uncomfortable promoting themselves. She acknowledges her own shyness and writes that “Promoting yourself requires coming face to face with your own self-esteem and issues of entitlement. It can quickly stir up feelings of inadequacy about your work and yourself as an artist.”
She says there are ways to promote your work that will allow you to maintain your personal integrity and enable your own networking style to emerge. “Promoting yourself doesn’t mean that you are impolite, disrespectful of others, or inappropriately aggressive,” writes Battenfield. “It can be as simple as saying a few words about the show to a curator at an opening, then following up with card inviting the curator to one of your own shows.” Here are a few other tips from The Artist’s Guide:
Be yourself. People appreciate honesty and sincerity. Phoniness is easy to detect.
Turn your shyness into an asset. Be an attentive listener and ask questions.
Take a few actions every day to cultivate relationships with people you can help promote your work. Taking purposeful action can help you maintain the healthy attitude you will need to manage some of the issues that arise every day.
You can’t predict when the art community will turn their attention to you, Battenfield points out, “Art history is full of artists whose work was ignored and then embraced at different stages of their lives.” The strength to persevere can be developed by actively pursuing your goals and maintaining an resilient attitude.
The advice in The Artist’s Guide rings true, because Battenfield admits she made nearly every mistake discussed in the book: “I had fuzzy work samples and incoherent artist statements that still make me flush beet-red when I see them. I’ve bungled relationships and pulled them back together by the skin of my teeth.” She suggests using The Artist’s Guide as a template for creating a process that works for you.
Although a lot of the book focuses on different types of art organizations and funding sources, Battenfield’s day-to-day business advice is relevant to photographers and other freelance professionals who would like to have less stress in their lives and more time to focus on their craft.
Words of Wisdom
“It’s tough to be an artist in our culture,” writes Battenfield. While funds and opportunities are limited, your desires are limitless. Pushing yourself to the limits of your technical abilities can be challenging enough. Adding business responsibilities can feel overwhelming.
Making time to replenish your well of creativity is essential, she says. Constantly pushing yourself too hard won’t allow you to do your best work. Battenfield writes that “Any systems you can build to protect that fragile connection to your creativity is paramount to sustaining your artistic life.” In describing her approach to writing the guide, she explains “Every chapter in the book is about nurturing and protecting your creative energies so can make the best art possible.”
Jackie Battenfield has supported herself from art sales for over twenty years. She teaches career development programs for visual artists at the Creative Capital Foundation, and Columbia University. She also speaks at art workshops and events nationwide. Visit her website: www.artistcareerguide.com to see if she will be speaking at event in your area. You can preview and purchase the 378-page softcover book on Amazon.com or the Barnes
& Noble website.
WRITERS. If you’re a first-time author, or new to self-publishing, comparing self-publishing companies can be tough. For one thing, each company offers a different mix of services and pricing packages. Plus, it’s hard to predict exactly which services you may need as your project progresses.
That’s why the newly redesigned website of the Self Publishing Press includes a variety of educational features, including an Author’s Bill of Rights. The “bill of rights” includes the right to full disclosure of all publishing-agreement details and the right to simplified pricing with all charges clearly identified.
Other features on the site include tips on book marketing, a glossary of terms, and an Editor’s Notebook blog guiding authors through all steps in the self-publishing process.
Self Publishing Press is a New Hampshire-based company led by Kevin E. Pirkey, who has spent the last 25 years in the printing and publishing industry. His goal is to give authors a cost-effective way to self-publish their books without waiting months or years to try to get the attention of a large publisher.
“With the support of Self Publishing Press, authors can match the services of large commercial publishers and publish their books the way they want, with the quality and
professionalism their creative works deserve,” Pirkey says. “Just because an
author has never written a book before or doesn’t have the name recognition of Stephen
King doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get the same access to readers and all over
the country.”
Pirkey was motivated to start Self Publishing Press by his love of books and publishing: “I love to share in and encourage the passion of a new author for their work. There is great satisfaction in seeing an author receive the first copy of their newly published work.”
The Self Publishing Press offers four packages. Most authors will choose either the Bronze, Silver Premier, or Gold Deluxe package because these include editorial and marketing support services. The Family Memories package is for authors who want to self-publish works with limited distribution, such as family genealogies or cookbooks.
The packages include an author website through which reprints can be ordered as needed. A variety of a la carte services is available, including cover design, page layout, website development, e-book formatting, and press release writing.
DESIGNERS. PHOTOGRAPHERS. If the generic look and feel of many photo books have kept you from seriously considering producing a brand book, client presentation, or personal portfolio, check out the new ProLine of books from Blurb.com. The line was specifically created for creative professionals who to distinguish themselves not only through the content of their books, but also in their choice of materials.
With ProLine, you can customize your book with heavier, better-quality papers, more distinctive covers, and a choice of end sheets.
Fine Book Papers and End Sheets
The first two ProLine papers (Pearl Photo and Uncoated) are produced by Mohawk Fine Papers, Inc.
Blurb’s Pearl Photo paper is a rebranded version of Mohawk proPhoto paper. The 140 lb (190 gsm) semigloss paper is slightly heavier and glossier than the Premium Lustre paper used in other Blurb photo books. The Pearl Photo paper emulates the traditional photographic papers, enabling your books to resemble collections of custom photographic prints.
Blurb’s Uncoated paper is the popular Mohawk Superfine Ultrawhite in Eggshell finish. Blurb CEO Eileen Gittins noted that “Mohawk’s rich, heavy uncoated paper with its organic texture is hot in the design community right now.”
Blurb ProLine books can be created with Mohawk Superfine and proPhoto papers.
The ProLine end sheets are 80 lb. (115 gsm) papers that are currently available in five colors: charcoal grey, dove grey, warm grey, black, and white.
According to the Blurb, the two new ProLine papers from Mohawk are just the beginning. They plan to expand the creative range with additional professional-grade papers, more end-paper choices, and the ability to design books with more than 160 pages.
Linen Covers
The first new ProLine covers are linen hardcovers. You can choose from two colors: Oatmeal or Charcoal. Both are uncoated, giving them more of a natural feel. You can also choose to have your book produced with the Standard Black Linen cover.
