A Photographers/Marketers Point of View on Pinterest

 

I’ve participated in the comment threads of a few posts and on FB in the discussion over Pinterest, and the concern people have over it. I’ve recently started using Pinterest myself and generally like it for what it does.

As a photographer of course I am concerned anytime images are used without proper consent in a public setting. It opens the door of copyright infringement and further blurs the line in the general public and even the creative community on what is proper use of an image you don’t own, and what crosses the line.

Since the the entire concept of Pinterest is to publicly display images of others in a high traffic fashion w/o proper permission and consent, it’s the ultimate lightning road of that concern. Here are some recent blog posts that have literally lit up the web on the topic: Stuck In Customs and A Photo Editor.

On the legal side much of it comes down to the definition and implementation of the Fair Use Doctrine. After all fair use allows the republishing of copyrighted material without explicit permission in a very clearly defined framework. It usually has to be in the context of criticism, comment, news reporting, or teaching; it should not be the complete work but rather just parts of it; and it cannot supersede it or diminish the profits of the original work (disclaimer: my own short version, I’m not a lawyer – consult a lawyer for proper advise).

Now, in the days of the Internet sometimes the way a law is written is lagging behind the realities of the day. Is ‘pinning’ a single image from another webpage with a link back to the original source (the most common form of sharing content via Pinterest), with the ability of ‘liking’, ‘commenting’, or ‘repinning’ it covered under fair use. One certainly could make the argument. The image is being highlighted in the form of a commentary, except that it’s mostly visual, implied, and without words (well, technically Pinterest does require a short prhase to be added to each pin). And the action of pinning is purely editorial, not for the purpose of commercial gain off that particular image – not counting the ability of Pinterest to monetize traffic of the site as a whole.

Also, the very nature of Pinterest is the display of 3rd party images. As a consumer of Pinterest I’m quite clear that the people pinning images are usually not the owner or originator of the images, and that they’ve been shared under the premise of fair use. No claim or perception to the contrary is ever made by the pinner or the site itself.

Of course as with many laws, a savvy lawyer can make the opposite argument as well.

In a more practical way, looking at most of the images that one can find on Pinterest, those images have already been published on the web (presumably under legal terms and usage). Pinterest is simply amplifying the visibility of that original publication to a broader audience which may have otherwise not seen it. That amplification is clearly highlighted in the fact that in December of 2011 Pinterest drove more traffic to retail websites than LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google+ combined. Pinterest in many ways does not constitute a separate publication of the image, or a separate usage.

An interesting side note is that if the original usage of the photograph had a usage license attached to it, which restricts geography, time, circulation, etc. there may now be unaccounted for extended usage that would thus go uncompensated. But that would depend on the very specific usage terms of each image.

As a photographer and marketer I look at Pinterest in a more positive way. It’s an ability to amplify specific visual messages in an age that is already over saturated with visual stimulation. As a small business and entrepreneur it’s a constant struggle to stand out and be seen by people who may be your next client. If they don’t know you exist or what you do, you don’t have an opportunity to have a conversation that could convert into business. Being on people’s radar is the very first step. And Pinterest is a great tool to have in your toolbox. Of course it’s not a panacea, and it can only be one element in a broader strategy.

Pinterest allows me to communicate with others in two ways – I can communicate what visually stimulates me, and is an expression of my visual style. In pinning inspiring fashion images, photography, designs, and products, others can see how I think visually. That may create interest that can lead to a conversation. At the same time, others in my network can pin some of my work already published on the Internet, and highlight my work to people who may have otherwise not seen it, again possibly leading to a conversation.

To deal with the concern about copyright, the best defense is not to keep my images under lock and offline, where nobody can see them. But to properly register their copyright and within reason to watch out for unauthorized uses and infringements. And when we look at unauthorized uses, it really only matters where the unauthorized use is in any significant commercial nature where my own financial loss is big enough to be worth the time to fight it. Keeping in mind that my time is valuable as well.

Coming back to Trey’s post on Stuck in Customs, I do not subscribe to the Creative Commons doctrine, or giving work away for free. That is an entire separate discussion and issue, and by mixing both in the same post, Trey has clouded the conversation on Pinterest unnecessarily.

 

That wraps up my larger thinking on the topic. A few more detailed and technical notes:

First of all, most creatives I know have collected swipe files, torn out pages from magazine, and assembled both electronic and physical mood boards for as long as images and print have been around. Except usually the audience for those has been somewhat limited, and it was never public. On a purely legal way, many of these uses are also in the same gray zone of copyright and fair use, but it has been largely accepted or ignored. I think Pinterest falls into the same category but in the age of the Internet and instant communication.

Now a lot of what I said above assumes that the images on Pinterest have in fact been ‘pinned’ from another public website, which appears to be true for the vast majority of them. However, Pinterest does allow for the uploading of images as well. I think that is unfortunate, because it opens the door for more questionable image sharing. If Pinterest were to limit pinning to images from public websites, they would draw a much clearer line. And people wanting to pin their own images, would certainly be free to post them online in one of many different ways and then pin them from there.

Also, looking at how the Pinterest website has been implemented, from a purist way, it would be preferable if all their pages truly would refer to the original image via a link, rather than retaining their own copy. That would reinforce the fact that Pinterest is nothing but a reference rather than a copy of the work. And if the original owner were to remove the image from the reference page, so would the image on Pinterest. However, I understand that building the site that way would make for a very uneven user experience, and subject pages to long load times. They thus do create a copy of the image that is maintained by Pinterest. It may be nice if they would verify the status of the original image from time to time and update the copy accordingly.

 

As you can tell by now, I think Pinterest is largely a site that is a valuable marketing tool for creatives. And while it lives in a legal gray zone, innovation and success has never been found by always playing it safe and never taking a risk, as Seth Godin reminds us regularly. Sometimes boundaries have to be pushed and old rules have to be updated. But with that comes an obligation to be respectful and not play fast and loose. That goes for the folks behind Pinterest, and for those using the site.

It’s a fine line to walk…

Update [2/20/2012]

There’s an interesting blog post on the legality of Pinterest which quotes an IP attorney: http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterest-illegal-faq-2012-2.

I think that’s an interesting perspective. But I’m not sure that it gives Pinterest the full benefit of the doubt – it just shows how an attorney would argue against Pinterest if they were to choose to. The two arguments that need closer examination are the ‘entirety’ argument, and the ‘commercialization’.

On the entirety – and this is the perspective of photos I’ve pinned or seen others pin: While of course the whole photo is pinned, and not just a thumbnail, almost all these photos are part of a web page that includes a larger story. It may be one image from a fashion editorial, it may be one look from a summary of a fashion week runway show, it may be one food shot of a food photographer’s blog post, it may be one interior design look from an online magazine or store. The point is, there’s almost always more to where that image comes from, and there is at least in some cases a point in clicking on the image and going to the page where it came from to see the rest of the story. So the claim that Pinterest inherently always copies work in its ‘entirety’ is as much a stretch as Pinterest being fair use is.

And then on to the commercialization, and the quoted Google case. I think there has to be clear line between the website (and it’s traffic) being commercialized vs. an individual photo. In the quoted case against Google the plaintiff was selling access to the photos. Google providing free access to the photo clearly impacted the plaintiff’s potential commercial gain from the photo.

In the case of Pinterest, presumably all the images which can be pinned have to be publicly accessible (unless they’re uploaded, which is a different use case). I haven’t tested yet whether pinning an image that is either behind a paywall or in a personalized view of a page can be pinned? Either way Pinterest would be well served to prevent such cases. And of course, my argument above that a reference rather than copy of the image would go a long way of making this all much cleaner.

Also, the vast majority of images I’ve seen being pinned are not images for sale, but editorial or promotional images. That is a major consideration when assessing the impact on gain from an image as impacted by fair use. Many of these images are meant to be seen by as many people as possible in the correct context.

 

Maybe if I have some spare time, I’ll do some sleuthing how the web traffic for Pinterest works in terms of the website owner. If the ‘pinning action’ is well defined in the traffic, it would be easy to write code to block Pinterest if one was so inclined. That would also answer the question on the public/private access of photos. As a matter of fact, in the Google case, any website owner knows that Google bot crawls the web. If you want to keep content behind a paywall, it’s your job to blog crawl traffic. Keeping the backdoor wide open, is a bit ignorant, or may have in fact been a plan to lure paying traffic. One always has to explore the motivations of the players.

New Demo Reel

I just put together a new demo reel of my work behind the video camera in 2011/2012. It’s a short version – limited to 30s of content. We have the our local annual ASMP slideshow event coming up, and each member gets 45s of content to display still images and motion content. A 30s demo reel leaves me 15 seconds for still images of my work.

This demo reel doesn’t contain all of my work, but some of the most interesting visual moments in terms of lighting, camera work, and action captured. Actually having a timeline was a nice forcing function to edit it down to the most poignant elements.

This is the first year that we’re including motion in a nod to the changes in the industry. I’ve been a big proponent of this change on the board, and ended up with the task of compiling all the submissions for the slideshow. While it will be a lot of work, I actually look forward to it.

Penny Wise & Pound Foolish

We live in interesting times in the photography industry. On the plus side we have a large influx of young (not in term of age, but in term of industry experience) talent with enormous enthusiasm and new creative outlook. People ready to adopt new technologies, try something without being bound by conventional wisdom, or because it’s always been done like that.

On the downside we have a large influx of people with limited business experience and who work in this industry not for their primary income. People ready to work for free, people working at rates which undermine sustainable business practices, people skipping some critical aspects of the business and the service provided to our clients – insurance, release, licensing, tax collection, etc. The fact that many don’t derive their primary income from the industry, means the industry has become very much a case of competing against a subsidized competition – just like the international trade in some other industries.

Yesterday I had the pleasure to present to one of our local business networking groups on the topic of commercial photography. I called the presentation ‘How To Use Professional Visuals To Promote Your Business’.

The presentation focused on all the ways businesses, small and large, use visuals to promote their business and their product – from online presence, e-commerce, magazine, print, promo, and store front displays. Alongside with various marketing statistics why engagement rates of content with images and video is so much higher – such as the fact that customers who viewed video on Onlineshoes.com are 45% more likely to convert. And the engagement rate of a FB post is almost 3x on a post with an image as post with just a link. Then I covered many of the benefits a professional photographer can provide, and the trade-offs of DIY vs. hiring a professional, such as hidden costs, extra liability, and lost opportunity.

Overall it was very well received and several attendees commented on that they wanted more information and that it made them think. And I made it clear that there’s no right or wrong answer, but that there are quite a few factors that needed to be considered in order to make an informed decision.

While doing it yourself or asking a friend with a camera to do it for you, may sound like a good savings, very often it is penny wise and pound foolish.

A better way of looking at this, is that the general accepted guidance for any business is that it should set between 10-15% of its revenue aside as a marketing budget. Companies trying to grow more aggressively may up that rate, while ones barely hanging on, may do just 5%. Then, once your overall marketing budget is established, it’s a good idea to figure out a percentage of that, that will be spent investing in visual assets – photography and video. I would say at least 10%, but it may need to be higher depending on the nature of your business and marketing.

Another area where people are penny wise and pound foolish is when they think they’re getting a great deal because someone is willing to do the work for free. It’s penny wise, because they get something without paying for it. But it’s pound foolish because they will likely not get the best work, expose themselves to extra risk, and undermine the future of their vendor network.

Someone wiling to work for free is either brand new to the business, and may not yet have the experience to deliver, or they’re not very serious about their business. If one can afford to take a chance, that may be an ok trade-off, because sometimes one get a re-do with someone paid properly, if the free version didn’t work out. A trade-off of saving vs. the time lost. But sometimes a do-over is not possible if it’s a unique opportunity, a one-time event, or if other sunk cost is involved.

Anyone willing to work for free is less likely to have a properly setup business, proper insurance coverage, and many other infrastructure aspects – like backing up your data after the photo shoot, show up with a backup plan in case there’s a gear failure, etc. Last but not least, if they don’t get paid, they have very little skin in the game, and the no-show rate of free talent is significantly higher than that of a professional.

But where it is most pound foolish, is that it undermines the vendor network. Any business has to rely on many vendors over time to provide it with a myriad of service and infrastructure. You need these vendors to be experienced, stable, and available when the need arises. That means all these vendors need to have enough paid work to stay in business, and stay in business over time in order to refine their experience and skill. Every time someone thinks they made a good business decision because they got some free work, they made it less likely that they will find someone to do that same work a few months and a few years down the road. It’s an ecosystem that exists over a long period of time, not just in the moment.

And that ecosystem doesn’t only provide spot services, but also additional creativity through prolonged collaborations. After it appeared for many years that the age of the staff photographer was over, New York Magazine recently hired a staff photographer, primarily because it provided a framework for creative collaboration and better results than the alternatives (via APE).

The conventional wisdom is that any major skill has to be exercised about 10,000 before it is mastered. For photography that means doing something for about a minimum of 5 years full-time. Full-time is only feasible if it pays a living wage, otherwise it has to be subsidized and done part-time, which lengthens the time easily to 15-20 years.

Approaching a business like a politician – with a horizon never exceeding the next election cycle – is a poor plan. Seth Godin had an excellent write-up the other day about all the things we can learn from politicians and how not to act in the real world: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/01/learningleadership.html.

Another popular reference on the topic is the project triangle – which does apply to all types of projects, not just our industry: of the three criteria “good”, “fast”, “cheap” – you can pick any two but never all three.

But rather than ranting in frustration like many do online and offline, there is a real need for professional organizations, such as ASMP, to step up and educate these younger industry players to stop them from making poor decisions. The market will always make it hard to resist the penny wise and pound foolish behaviors on the demand side, so it’s best to educate and improve the supply side to prevent them from fueling the fire that’s burning down the house.

Updated Website Design – The Cycles of Clutter

I just finished a redesign of my own website. My last design had served me well for about 18 months and a few things had changed that required tweaks.

Which made me think of the cycles of clutter on web sites. It seems we always start out with a fresh design and really like it. And then over time we get ideas of things to do, and we keep adding on, and we add something else. And before you know it, the whole thing is a cluttered mess in need of a Spring Clean – kind of like a garage or a basement.

Over time I had added to my previous design blog posts, and social links, and a Twitter feed widget, and social engagement, and on and on and on.

But what always bugged me is that the images, and after all I’m in the business of selling great images, was becoming a less and less central part of the site. And the fact that the old site used a static layout that left much real estate on the screen blank instead of putting the image front and center.

So the most overriding criteria for the new website was that it had to feature images front and center, at the maximum screen real estate, with the least amount of distractions. As it goes for a good image – edit, edit, edit; which often means make it simple, remove unneeded stuff.

The other thing I wanted to incorporate was a design that put the image galleries back on the same host. On my old site, only the home page images were local, but the rest was hosted through slideshowpro.net. They’ve served me well, but having two hosts made me subject to two separate set of outages and maintenance issues.

And finally I wanted to take the time to play with some of the latest web design trends and tools, so I could stay up to date (after all I have a long technology and web/e-commerce background). So the new site needed to use responsive design, HTML5, jQuery, and seamlessly work on mobile devices and touch interfaces.

After a few weeks of working on it on my spare time, the main site is live now. It has a couple of cool features that I dig:

• The responsive grid which automatically adjusts to the screen size, giving maximum space to the center stage that features my work. You can resize the window from a full 1920x1200 to iPhone size and the layout keeps up with that. Every page only has a single adaptive HTML file, enabled by media queries.
• At the smaller screen sizes on an iPhone, the page dynamically adapts its layout. The bulkier graphic menu disappears and is replaced with a drop down menu above the main stage. Easier to navigate on a small screen, and keeping precious pixels for use by the image.
• The image galleries detect touch devices and adjust navigation. The same gallery allows for click based navigation on a desktop, but switches at runtime to touch based navigation on an iPhone or iPad.
• The site automatically picks a image resolution that gives maximum quality on a large screen, but loads fast on an iPhone. It does so by keeping three sets of images and at runtime deciding which one to load. Also images for the most part lazy load with proper feedback and avoids the long spinning donut on white background.
• It’s all written with latest jQuery plugins. No Adobe Flash code or other incompatible BS, and fully SEO compliant. And while the code is HTML5, it uses extra plugins to be backwards compatible to older browsers.
• I still keep extra content on the site, to help a bit with SEO and to provide extra depth for those who are interested – such as some of my editorials and lookbooks. But they’re layered in a set of dialogs linked with sleek icons.
• A nice clean About page that doesn’t follow all the old and tired photographer templates.
• And a bit of a brand gimmick – on my promo materials I have started placing my logo in a way that it overlaps the images. I’ve played around with CSS styling to accomplish the same on my layout, giving a consistency between my online and print brand appearance.

There are still a few more tweaks to make. I want to add some of my videos to the site instead of keeping them separate, but use some of the same icon and dialog overlay technique. And I need to put a bit more content in a few places. But overall I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.

I’d love to hear feedback if you check it out.

Snow Day in Seattle

Seattle is always an interesting city when it comes to winter weather. It’s infrequent enough, and has it’s set of terrain challenges, that it never really is prepared and everything simply shuts down. This year we lost an entire week due to snow, ice, power outages, school closures, and a host of issues.

These are some pictures I took while walking around town during the power outage.

Danielle

These are some of the images from a recent agency test with Danielle, who is which TCM’s plus size board.

Credits: Danielle C (model @ TCM), Shyn (hair & make-up)

Why Do We Take Photos?

A blog post by Bret Doss triggered me to think about this question: Why Do We Take Photos?

Do we take photos because we want to share them, or do we take the photos for ourselves, or for someone else?

I think each person’s reason an intention will be different based on their own journey in life and the role photography plays for them. And there’s no right or wrong answer to the question. We all take photos for a reason, and it doesn’t have to be the same. But it is an interesting question to ponder.

Clearly sharing of photos is a popular activity judging by the ubiquity of photos on the web, and the proliferation of photo sharing sites like flickr, or watching your average new-age photographer’s FB stream and blog. Which matter of fact is in contrast to gatherings of photographers like last night’s ASMP board meeting, where the need to share, or social media trends are much less prevalent.

There are three general motivations which come to mind:

There is the aforementioned Sharer, those who subscribe to ‘Sharing is one of the prime movers, the motivators for making the photograph’. That probably should be divided into those who share the photo because they want to share the moment that was captured in the photo (the age old family vacation photo – now replaced by iPhone and FB); and those who want to share the fact that they caught a moment in camera perfectly (the flickr generation of photographers and the workshop junkies).

Sharing the photo is what ultimately delivers the emotional validation and payback for all the effort and investment. The fact that her photo ‘like’ count ticks up, that others rewarded her for the fact that she took that photo, the ‘nice work’ comments gathered, that validate that she can call herself a ‘photographer’.

There is the Artist, those who take images because they ‘have to’. The motivation is the process, the ability to do it, and joy of the craft. Of course the images do get seen by others, but the image libraries may contain hidden gems, sub-bodies of work not exhibited, projects that got worked on for years but aren’t finished yet, or not good enough yet. Creating images is a lifestyle for the artist, a purpose for being.

The seeing of the artist’s work is mainly driven by others, who have become the connoisseurs of the artist’s work and create demand for its visibility. It’s more of a pull process as opposed to a push process of the sharer. 

There is the Producer, the commercial shooter, who does enjoy the process and the work, but whose primary motivator is delivering an image someone else needs, and doing so to perfection. But if there’s no need for an image , or an external spec of what needs to be captured, no image will be taken.

Most producers will share images as part of promotional activities. But where and how they share images differs quite a bit from the sharer.

Of course there are blends. One may be a producer in food photography, but an artist in landscape or travel.

Whether someone is a sharer, an artist, or a producer, also largely depends on the role photography plays in life. The proliferation of the sharer in recent years is mostly a side effect of the rapid growth of the hobbyist category which far outnumbers the professionals when it comes to numbers. Since the hobbyist often has no large scale production ecosystem they’re part of, this is out of the question. And many enjoy photography as a hobby or additional activity in life, a creative outlet to their engineering or office day jobs. But they don’t tick like the archetypical artist who lives for the art.

Where do I find myself in this? I definitely started out as a sharer, and did all those typical things. But as I switched from photography as a creative outlet to turning this into my career, I’ve found myself somewhere between the artist and the producer. As a commercial photographer, there is definitely an aspect where what I shoot is driven by what people need. I try to solve people’s visual problems, not just create images in order to do so.

But I also find that creating images is a huge part of how I think and function nowadays, and the ability to create shots that satisfy me is important to me. Sharing them beyond the subject of the image, or the team that was part of creating them, is less relevant to me.

I’m content to sit in a room with 15 other photographers, some of which have careers of 40+ years in the business, and discuss the issues of the business of photography for several hours, during which time no one felt the urge to share a single image. Something hard to imagine at a photo walk or new age photo gathering, where it would be unusual to go 5 minutes before either a camera or an iPhone comes out for a show-and-tell.

A Look Back At What I Did in 2011

 

Editorials & Lookbooks

 

Working With Models & Creative Talent

 

Product Photography

 

Street Photography

 

Portraits

 

Shows & Events

 

Food

 

Motion