Recently in Commerical photog. Category

From Black Star Rising: Why Photographers Hate Creative Commons

Depending on who you ask, it's because:

1. It's taking money out of the pockets of working photographers;
2. It's putting money into the coffers of large corporations, whose executives like CC-enabled crowdsourcing even better than Third World child labor;
3. It's supposed to make sharing your work easier, but it often just makes it more confusing -- creating the kind of misunderstandings that lead to lawsuits.

Also:

• Guardian: Photographer Takes Down Bubble 2.0 Fun
  
• Larry Lessig: How Creativity is Being Strangled by the Law

Today's NY Times features an article on the increasingly restrictive conditions photographers face when photographing musical performers in concert. "At Stevie Wonder's concert at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night, photographers were told they could shoot only the first 5 to 10 seconds of Mr. Wonder's entrance and the first 60 seconds of his first song." That's pretty amazing. I assume this is directly related to the increasing lack of control celebrities have over the use of their images outside official channels.

Perhaps someone can explain this one to me, because it makes absolutely no sense to me, and not just because I can't speak Portuguese. Sao Paolo-based ad agency Neogama/BBH just won a Cannes Gold Lion for an anti-smoking campaign using the post-Katrina photography of Robert Polidori to represent the internal damage smoking can cause.

Is it just me or does this seem like a highly inappropriate use of such photography? Heck, I felt a little uncomfortable viewing these works in a museum setting, like I was some sort of death voyeur, but seeing them used as an ad, even for a "good cause", strikes me as wrong.

One of these days I will probably give this blog up and just set a redirect to Alec Soth's blog. Nearly every post he makes is deeply thoughtful about both the practice of photography and our daily encounters with the medium. Envy! Today he's posted an excellent bit on author's photos, which are a unique blend of art and commerce.

Check out the NY Times' article on the LOOK magazine archive exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, if only for the amazingly bizarre Stanly Kubrick photograph accompanying it.

Willing to Be Lucky: Ambitious New Yorkers in the Pages of LOOK Magazine
Thru Jan 7 at the MCNY
1220 5th Ave at 103rd St
(212) 534-1672