The Photo Feed 11.29.07

Corbis Waves Free Pix At Bloggers (Reuters)
Yesterday, Corbis reported being “close” to making a profit for the first time ever. Now the stock company has announced a plan for wooing customers: allow bloggers to use some of Corbis’ pix for free. There are, of course, strings attached: bloggers must showcase Corbis advertising. The pix, according to Corbis, will use either an ad overlay on part of the image, or embedded advertising that pops up when a user runs a cursor over the photo. Bloggers will be able to access eligible pix through a Web link at PicApp.com, which is currently in a trial phase, according to Corbis chief executive Gary Shenk. Offering access to free pix seems to risk increased copyright infringement, but Shenk says this isn’t a concern. “We work with a partner so that those pictures are tracked, and if they’re being used illegally, we can figure that out,” he told Reuters. “But as long as they are downloaded through this application, you're legit and you’re ready to go.”

Layoffs Hit The New York Times (Editor & Publisher)
Apparently, even The New York Times isn’t immune from the ailments the newspaper industry is suffering. Yesterday, executive editor Bill Keller sent his staff a memo indicating that “there are going to be layoffs in the newsroom, for the first time in recent memory.” For now, he says, only about a dozen so-called “support workers” will be laid off. But Keller expects “to eliminate a few management jobs in administrative areas” in 2008. The company’s “hiring freeze” will continue, with open positions filled internally.

WSJ Prefers Global Pursuits (Ad Age)
The folks over at the Wall Street Journal are feeling pretty confident about Pursuits, their new glossy that will launch in September 2008. WSJ had originally just planned to distribute the magazine in the United States, but now they’ve decided to share their Pursuits with Europe and Asia as well. About 800,000 copies are planned for U.S.-based WSJ subscribers, and 80,000 copies will be inserted in each of the paper’s European and Asian editions. According to a memo from WSJ publisher L. Gordon Crovitz and Dow Jones chief revenue officer Michael F. Rooney, the decision to distribute Pursuits in Europe and Asia is the result of “robust advertiser response.”

MORE BELOW: Study looks at the impact of manipulated pix ... Getty Images gears up for World AIDS Day ... Splashdown Direct gets a lucky break ... Photogs capture history's greenest witnesses ... Who's shooting the latest ad campaigns ...

False Memories: Just What The Photo Doctor Ordered? (Neurophilosophy)
It’s no secret that manipulated pix can be deceptive. But what happens when people look at doctored pix several years later? A new study published in Applied Cognitive Psychology shows that manipulated pix can create false memories. Participants looked at pix of either the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing or the 2003 Rome protests against the Iraq War. Some participants were shown the unaltered original pix. Others unknowingly looked at digitally doctored images. As it turned out, the manipulated photos strongly affected participants’ memories of the events. You can imagine the implications: If people can so easily fall for manipulated pix, then doctored images could be used as propaganda.

Getty Images Gears Up For World AIDS Day (Editor & Publisher)
With World AIDS Day being celebrated this Saturday, Getty is doing its part to educate the world about HIV/AIDS. The Getty blog is currently featuring an entry by photog Tom Stoddart, who has been documenting Sub-Saharan Africa’s AIDS pandemic for about five years. And yesterday, Getty announced the conclusion of its “Change Me” campaign, which raised more $500,000 for Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria by using pix to inspire discussion of how to improve the world.

Splashdown Direct Gets A Lucky Break (About The Image)
Snapping the perfect photo is often a matter of being in the right place at the right time. And shooting exclusive pix of an event is sometimes the result of being the only photog around. Just ask Michael Nolan. He snapped most, if not all, of the pix of the sinking Explorer, the cruise ship that hit an iceberg last Friday. Nolan was on a vessel just 34 miles from the accident and was one of the first people on the scene. His pix appeared in newspapers and on Web sites and TV stations around the world. This was great exposure for Nolan, but perhaps even better exposure for his agency, Splashdown Direct, which was just founded in 2005. Nolan’s pix generated more than 6,000 pounds (about $12,000) in revenue from the UK newspapers alone. “We had the once in a lifetime experience of having exclusive photos over a weekend when no other news broke around the world,” Splashdown Direct founder and marine biology photog Tom Walmsley said, adding that he was grateful that everyone on the Explorer was rescued safely.

Miu Miu Taps Mert Alas And Marcus Piggott (Women’s Wear Daily, 1st item / Fashion Week Daily / Fashionista)
Alas and Piggott shot Kirsten Dunst for the company’s spring campaign. Meanwhile, Dolce & Gabbana called on Jean-Baptiste Mondino to shoot Matthew McConaughey for the D&G fragrance ad campaign and commercial. And Juergen Teller shot Victoria Beckham for Marc Jacobs’ spring ad campaign.

Capturing History’s Greenest Witnesses (New York Times)
It’s no secret that many of the trees around us have been around far longer than we have. Describing trees as “witnesses” and “living connections” to bygone people and events, Charles A. Birnbaum founded the Cultural Landscape Foundation nine years ago. Since then, the organization has published an annual list of endangered plants and place. This year the Foundation also collaborated with the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester to tap photogs to shoot a dozen of the 21 endangered landscapes, dubbed “Heroes of Horticulture” by the Foundation. The pix will be exhibited at the Eastman House from December 1 through March 2, at which point the show will go on display at other museums around the country.

Comments

[M. Scott Brauer]

That Corbis deal is pretty interesting; imagine the photos they're giving away are wholly owned by Corbis, otherwise, I sure hope the photographers are getting a share of the ad revenue. Incidentally, I wonder how a publication would feel if I said their fees weren't high enough, so I needed to run an ad over a small portion of the image in print...