I wasn't born in the age of Life Magazine, an iconic emblem of its time in politics and everything else going on in the world. Instead, in my time, I grew up looking gleefully at American Photo magazine, where photojournalism and photography lifestyle was all that mattered. To me, it was an iconic magazine any budding photographer would be proud to read.

Pictures told stories, the rest was up to you—the reader. How you interpreted those pictures says it all. I also grew up reading Newsweek and Time magazine, so I learned very early on what American political propaganda does to you.

For me American Photo (or just Photo Magazine) died after having a long and fruitful life in print, and now lives on in digital.

Photo Magazine was once owned Hachette Filipacchi Media of France, and it was sold to Bonnier Corporation in 2009. That probably killed it for them. The french owned Photo magazine still lives on to this day.

The Decline of American Photo

What caused the magazine to shutter? In the 80s, it was a connoisseurs' magazine. It featured great images of both photojournalism and commercial photography. It didn't have the gear-head approach to selling you stuff and camera companies advertised on it because it was highly respected by professionals and what better way to reach out to them than to use this medium.

American Photo died the way most print magazines did. It failed to compete with mainstream photography content found on the Internet. For the most part, it failed to spot real talents in waiting and concentrated too heavily on artistic photography in the US, which didn't really appeal to people wanting to know more how the industry was doing. American isn't the center of the world of photography, that title unfortunately still belongs in Europe. This is probably why Photo France magazine is still around in print.

How do you become a success as a art photographer? How do you make images that people will pay for? What is an artist doing in photography? Will you ever get famous? Apparently not.

If you follow the American example of how to get rich real quick, you can look no further than Richard Prince, the self styled artist who appropriates other people's photos, desecrates them with his splashes of color and calls it art. He has also stolen instragram photos from other people, and sold them for US$100,000.

In America, he is a huge success in photo-art. His victims are fighting back though I am not sure if that would be bring any success. The problem with suing people like Richard Prince is that he's loaded and he can afford to bankrupt you with legal appeals. Sucide girls recently stole his thunder by posting their own instagram print for sale at a fraction of the price asked by Richard Prince for his stolen art.

Would be the sort of news item American Photo would cover to show success? Of course not. American's taste for art is borderline porn with a mix of apathy and repugnant appreciation.



Respect and Value of the Profession

Photojournalism is officially dead. There is still some hope in commercial, wedding and sports photography but these folks probably are grinders and not photographic stars. Even when you talk about the professional photojournalist in the US, then third world professional soccer players make money than them.

American Photo has gotten so ahead of itself that there isn't a noteworthy pool of photographers to tap on. Editorially, they failed to make it Photo Americas rather than (North) American Photo. I am sure there heaps of talents in Latin America, brave photojournalist taking their fight to the mega corporations in the Amazon basin to the political changes of the Amazon basin. Then again, editorial content cost money so who is picking up the tab? Everyone (including magazines) want cheap content and that's not always possible unless you only want photos of hookers working down the street from the office.

Photographers need money to get funded for something they want to undertake that are non-commercial and there is a lot of marketing involved. So if you want to undertake a Brazilian journey of sorts to photograph the destruction or the animals facing extinction in the Amazon, you better save money for that.

American photography isn't going in the direction where people appreciate what they do. As a career, it is just another job. American Photo magazine failed to recognize the talent elsewhere in the English speaking world too, and that's probably one another reason why they failed. Brands that advertise with American Photo want to know the readership and print numbers (about 100,000 copies when they ceased publication) and if you command a premium for advertising, your reader profile must show that as well. It is all economics.

The glamor one thinks of, working with celebrities and shooting art that people buy, can be achieved with just Adobe Photoshop. People have photoshopped celebrities into their parties so you probably have a better chance at making a living as a Photoshop artist than a photojournalist in America.

Content is king, and we are talking quality content. American Photo Magazine....may you rest in peace.

The Petzval lens previously released by Lomo was a huge hit, but it was fixed 85mm. This is a nice focal length for portraits but the blurring, well, I think it could have been better.

The upcoming 58mm is also similar, that it allows for those swirly bokeh effects and will also be available soon thanks to its support from Kickstarter.

These are all manual lenses, for both Nikon and Canon mounts and you can be assured that it will work on digital as well as film cameras. The only problem is that aperture settings are totally manual so you won't be seeing any metadata exposure in camera.

My own feelings is this. If you can get a second hand Nikon lens (manual) at 50mm full frame lens, with a 1.5x crop factor for APS sensor cameras, you already got yourself a good portrait lens. What's more the corner sharpness of these old 50mm lenses are nothing short of legendary compared to the Petzval. This means you can place off center subjects and make them sharp.

I am not a fan of center sharp bokeh lenses. The corner sharpness of Petzvals is poor so therefore all your subject shots have to be placed in the center of the focus screen. The lens cost 500 bucks, and God knows how much it will be when it becomes available for retail in Christmas. 

Behold the Minitar from Lomo, its first foray into the Leica M-mount lens business. Now the Leica M is a classic mount for the Leica rangefinder cameras like the M3 and M7.

Sold as add on manual lenses for both digital and film cameras, it cost US$350. For those who wishes to use this, you will need to have an M mount camera or get an M mount adapter for your Nikon or Canon camera. These cost in the ball park of US$100 each.

Now we all know that Rangefinders, even the digital ones from Leica, do not have AF capability. The Minitar is Zone focus. So you get three choices of distance choices.

The Minitar is also a 32mm lens, with a f/2.8 aperture. It should be relatively easy to use but don't expect razor sharp results with wide open apertures. The lens is a fun lens and from the looks of the sample photos, has pretty decent vignetting.

For now, the lens is only on pre-order. Head down to the Lomo website to book now.

This just in. Alamy has revised its contributor agreement after receiving stinging criticism in regard to how it pursues copyright infringements. The original terms were sent in February and was all ready to go live in April, 2015. But photographers started to protest some of the amendments to the previous terms and this started the ball rolling for a change. Shooting stock is a very difficult trade. You can spend thousands shooting images which you hope to sell only to see a similar offering for Royalty Free licensing. 

Contacting the customer to check on copyright usage was one of the critical issues that led to an amendment. On the left hand side is the original usage and contributor agreement terms and on the left, you have the amendment. 

In the original revised terms sent to contributors in February, 2015. Alamy wanted photographers to stay the hell away from customers. I mean, who wants their customers hounded by photographers? Unfortunately, this didn't go well with contributors who say that Alamy just wants to protect copyright abusers by buying the least costly license for a photo and using it verbatim on every single imaginable print and web collateral. 

The problem is still Alamy's stand is on its own pursuant of the copyright infringer. Here, it is closely worded to imply that if they do take action, the nett amount recovered from the offender will be first used to pay of its own legal team before handing any residual amount due to you. 

In other words, if you spend most of your time combing the net for people who use your photos without paying, then you could ranking a huge bill of your own. Apparently, Alamy will have to determine if the offending party was a client or customers of Alamy when this all happens. No where does it say that it will pursue the offender for leaked images. 

How does a Photo Leak into the Mainstream?

Alamy has a distributor network, who in turn help to market your photos to countries where it is not reaching out to. It is through here that the leaks will happen. High resolution images could be passed on for customer validation and rejected, and later used in customers collaterals. But Alamy also has its own preferred client list, who may in turn have those photos picked out, paid for and later used in other marketing collaterals where the original licensing does not cover. 

For example, for print use and for web use. People can easily scale a web quality for use on print. It's not rocket science. This is done on a everyday basis for photos which do not have the resolution to meet the demands of the print industry. 

Just because someone buys a medium quality image for use does not mean it can't be upscaled to print use. 

Print is very difficult to pursue. Unless you have a printed copy of the offending collateral, chances are you don't have a chance in court regardless of where you sold your license. 

How can I protect My Images from such Infringements?

Technically, you can't. If you find one on the web, you could issue a DMCA on a web host where the site resides. It won't work if the offending server or web host in located in a country that have very different copyright laws than the one found in the US of A. 

When an image leaks onto the Internet, chances are it's a done deal. Your only hope is to petition Google with a DMCA to take down photos which appear on their search engine so that the you have some control over the spread of the wildfire. 

Google images can be your best buddy if you want to find stolen pictures but you have to be Internet savvy to know how to issue a take down. 

For example, a Fortune 500 company residing in Europe might use your stolen image in a slider, you can have that offending site taken off the Google search results. This will impact the offending party's capability to have a page rank and this is probably your best bet. 

Those mom and pop stores? Well you could do the same if you have the time but you have to show that you own those pictures (having a stock image agency link to the stolen photos can help). To know more about how DMCA works on the Internet, you can go to Chilling Effects to get a better picture. 

Lomography is a cool  place to start for budding analogue photographers but their latest LCA-120 is kinda like a shot in the dark. You know how expensive 120 films are these days and if you are going to shoot Instagram like images for keeps, you're better off with Instagram.

The LCA is a quirky camera. I have one, and I loved using it. Making use of 35mm film is cool as they are available everywhere. But 120 film?

The camera is going to be released soon for US$430 a pop. Has the same zone focus and light metering as the older LCA and nothing else to match. Made it China of course.

The image quality is kinda iffy for me.

Not a fan of vignetting on the four corners of the lens but hey, some will sell their souls for it.
Sharpness and color reproduction is decent, not great but it looks like something you'd get out of a digital camera.

One thing that most people misses out on is that the square format is ideal for learning composition. It is what made Instagram great and this is where you can pick up some good habits on how to place your subject on the viewfinder.

Zone focusing is a bitch. Never quite liked it but for artistic merit, those blurry photos could make you famous....like the one they took of Bigfoot.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Adobe Photoshop. If you have been using Adobe's wildly successful Photoshop since version 1.0, you'd know that this software was responsible for changing the way photographers work with  digital photos. Adobe's photo editing tool is so popular, even ISIS terrorist use it to create propaganda.

ISIS Photoshop Image

ISIS photoshop image

Adobe's Photoshop was born in the age of analogue photography, where photos had to be scanned onto disk and manipulated. This allowed unlimited possibilities for photographers to improve on their images, and this alone does not mean enhancing the color curves. You can mask and take out objects that get in the way, change the color of clothing and blend in still subjects as requested by your client.

In my DTP years, I found Photoshop indispensable for creating wild and beautiful imagery for use in print and later websites.

Fast forward to the new century and the move to the Creative Cloud. Adobe says that it gives good reason for them to move to cloud based software as it gives them the chance to update the software quickly and address your needs efficiently. This was all bullshit of course, as Adobe had no means to control their software from being pirated and had to do something about it. Several attempts were made including the use of activated keys and regular updates via a live Internet connection. That didn't work. So what next? Why not try having an always online software?

Adobe's Epic Fail and Fall from Grace

When people talk about Cloud Computing, it's really about programs that connect you to a higher consciousness with greater processing power than your desktop PC. In the case of Google's Cloud strategy, your stuff exist in the cloud via Google Chrome, a PC device which has bare basic processors and just about enough RAM to run your CPU. The idea behind it was to allow you to carry a machine that let's the Cloud do your heavy lifting.

Not so for Adobe, Photoshop has evolved into a behemoth of code.  You can't possibly move your work to the cloud all at one so the CC badge was just added to confuse you. Relaunched as a subscription only cloud verified program for desktop PCs, Photoshop CC was meant to keep the pirates at bay while reaping the rewards of the digital imaging age.

Let's be reasonable, no photographer is desk bound all the time, you can't have digital uploads of your images unless you have hyper fast internet access. This means storing your client images online would require you to park yourself and computer at a Starbucks Cafe and let it chew through the web traffic. If you live in a city, getting high speed internet isn't a problem but not all photographers have such access.

Then you have the annual cost, for which they promise you regular feature updates. Seriously, when you move to the cloud, how often did you have to wait for new features? Did it come every month? Week? Let me tell you a secret, a program that needs to be updated regularly is one that is badly coded....to the point they are fixing it as it goes live. No program is totally bug free when released but there is a critical testing period in which to sort out the pressing bugs. If this bug hunting isn't done correctly, then the process will continue into your living room after you have bought it.

Adobe has found many creative ways to enhance the Photoshop experience...the the point it gets almost too cluttered with features. This is where Lightroom comes in. It simplifies the process for digital image editing without the heavy loaded features found in the full version of Photoshop. Pro photogs are advised to get both, so that one can function as a full service image editing tool while the other slimmed down version is more for photo management.

Welcome to Affinity

When Adobe bought out Macromedia, it was a designated anti-monopoly move that no one cared about. Since then there has been no real challenger to Adobe's Photoshop but on the Mac, Affinity hopes to change that perspective.

Affinity Photo is a stand alone Photoshop rival that is now in Beta. It is a wonderful alternative to Adobe's offering and though not really ready for prime time, it could pose a serious challenge.

What Adobe has done so far has been to build on the core of Photoshop over the years and this has made it very heavy on hardware resource. Affinity Photo on the other hand was built from the ground up so there isn't any legacy code to worry about. Affinity previously had a hit with Affinity Designer, a Adobe illustrator killer app that runs only on the Mac.



Affinity Photo Beta Has Landed from MacAffinity on Vimeo.

You can sign on for the free beta right now by heading to the their website. The other thing I like about Affinity is that it isn't cloud based. You can take it with you. No problems there when you travel anywhere with an assignment in tow. The features are very powerful as can be seen in the video so for the professional, this is a God send.

And now for the price...it's 50 bucks...USD, only from the Mac Appstore when it launches. And how much were you paying for your copy of Photoshop CC to do the same thing?

One of the underlying reasons that people all over the world have been totally taken with Photoshop is that it has become mainstream. Geeks, amateurs, professionals and even casual hobbyist have taken to it like ducks to water.

Adobe has never had it so good. But in order to monetize, they will need people to pay for the full version. Piracy was one of the reasons they switch to the cloud. But they could have just made it cheaper if they wanted people to buy more of it.

Affinity sees this as a way to muscle in, but only on the Mac for now. This makes sense as it concentrates its resource on building a stable alternative to Photoshop before embarking on world domination.

The folks at hayesburban found a way to revitalize some old analogue device for the digital age before it is made a door stopper. The NoLab Super 8mm digital cartridge is just one device that can be used in place of the traditional film cartridge. The Super 8mm NoLab module sticks into any Super 8mm analogue camera and in the process, makes the film camera from a bygone era usable again.

The specifications are as follows:

Features

• 720p HD video capture in 4:3 format
• Frame rate automatically adjusts to camera settings (up to 60 fps)
• Integrated Film Look options
• Unlimited storage via removable SD card
• Battery and recording status light

Specifications

• Image Sensor:  5 megapixel Omni Vision OV5600 series
• Video Encoding: 720p HD H.264 (4:3)
• Memory:  Removable high capacity SD card
• Connections:  One mini USB port (primarily for charging)
• Battery:  Rechargeable LiPo battery providing up to 3 hours of continuous recording
• Housing:  Machined aluminum, color anodized and laser etched
• Height:   70mm
• Width:    75mm
• Depth:    24mm
• Weight:   160g

Once the technical problems have been sorted out, this project will go to Kickstarter or Indiegogo for funding. Right now, it is still in the tweaking stage.

Should Digital be the Way Forward?

 

I have my doubts but then again it's not for me to decide. It's just like GMO foods, if you are fine with it, then let's go all the way. 

For me, such a project isn't exactly innovative. There has been attempts to revitalize analog cameras in the past by replacing the film intake with a digital back. NoLab is taking on this same approach and let's say you do get the camera working again with a digital Super 8mm, what then? Would you rather shoot with such restrictive features such as 720p? People these days are already yelling for 4K video capture. 

Then you have the stalwarts who buy analogue for the sake of shooting film.Why would they go digital? Your iPhone probably has better video quality than a Super 8mm camera running a digital cartridge. 

In the end, it makes no sense at all to continue maintaining a digital feed on a analogue device. It just doesn't quite cut it. 

Why We Shoot Film

The whole concept of analogue is to have something you can hold onto, a moment in history that is not vaporous in nature. That's why people shoot film. People do not shoot film to convert to silky smooth digital videos for fun. It makes no sense. If you want a final digital feed, you can always shoot the footage digitally and put in the analogue effects during post production. People are not sharp enough to tell the difference. Some say that it is not genuine but only experts can tell the difference if the footage is shot on film as the majority of people have lost their eye and appreciation of anything analogue.

Though I applaud the spirit of such a venture, I do feel that such products are doomed to commercial obscurity. In the end, it is all about creative license versus cost. The reason why people are shooting so much digital videos and image is because of cost. It cost you next to nothing to have a moment ingrained on Facebook. Having a film roll shot, process and projected on screen has become a creative endeavour. The artist and the art isn't about cost, it is about the approach to showcase your creative excellence. Cost is never a concern when it comes to such artistic expressions.

So please continue to shoot film and if you feel the urgent need to go digital, there is always the iPhone which does it all.