Getty Acquires Digital Vision

Getty Images has acquired London-based Digital Vision, a royalty-free photography business, for $165 million in cash. The majority of Digital Vision’s current image collection already is available at gettyimages.com through Getty Images’ Image Partner program. The company expects to increase investment in Digital Vision content to broaden the collection in terms of number of images, depth and geography.

Getty also announced a one-year partnership with PicScout, a provider of infringement detection software. The agreement allows Getty to use PicScout’s Image Tracker Service on all of its 450,000 rights-managed images, including those that already have been licensed. PicScout will send reports of online infringements to Getty, and Getty will try to convert the infringers into paying customers.

More information is available at www.gettyimages.com.

NPPA Condemns Altered Newsweek Cover Photograph

The National Press Photographers Association has condemned Newsweek magazine’s use of an altered photograph of Martha Stewart on its March 7 cover, calling it a major ethical breach. Stewart’s head had been superimposed upon the body of a model who was photographed separately in a Los Angeles studio.

Despite the fact that Newsweek ran a page 3 disclaimer calling the cover image an illustration, the association is concerned that the average reader will not realize that Stewart’s body does not appear in the photograph.

“The public often distrusts the media, and this just gives them one more reason,” said NPPA president Bob Gould. “This type of practice erodes the credibility of all journalism, not just one publication.”

Datta Photo Garners World Press Award

The international jury of the 48th Annual World Press Photo contest selected a color image by Indian photographer Arko Datta as World Press Photo of the Year 2004. The picture shows an Indian woman mourning the death of a relative who was killed in the Asian tsunami. Datta also received a cash prize of 10,000 euro and a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II camera. The winning photographs can be seen at www.worldpressphoto.nl.

The jury awarded prizes in 10 categories and selected one image as the World Press Photo. This year, the contest broke two records, the number of photographers and the number of photographs entered: 4,266 professional photographers from 123 countries entered their work, with a total number of 69,190 images. It was also the first time that the judging was completely digital.

OpenRAW to Press for Open Camera Formats

The OpenRAW Working Group has launched a new website, www.openraw.com, to advocate for open, documented digital- camera data formats. The goal of OpenRAW, as stated on the website, is “to encourage image preservation and give creative choice of how images are processed to the creators of the images.”

Virtually all digital cameras store the raw image data in proprietary file formats. In the brief history of digital photography, digital camera manufacturers have dropped support for asset management applications, abandoned settings from older RAW processor versions and changed the methods of storing basic camera settings without documentation.

Undocumented RAW file formats present a number of problems, including limiting the choices available for image processing; increasing the risk that with time a RAW file will become unreadable or unable to be processed properly; and wasting third-party software development resources.

Many of the points that OpenRAW makes are quite similar to Adobe’s rationale for creating the digital negative (DNG) format. The difference is that Adobe is proposing that camera makers adopt DNG as their export format (perhaps as an alternative to disclosing their proprietary formats), while OpenRAW wants camera makers to disclose their proprietary formats whether they adopt DNG or not.

PACA Meets in Seattle

The Picture Archive Council of America (PACA) held its 12th annual meeting April 29 through May 1 in Seattle. Attendance was the highest in five years, with more than 140 attendees, including representatives from seven new stock libraries. At the event, member emeritus Jane Kinne was presented with PACA’s first Lifetime Achievement Award for her more than 50 years of service to the industry.

Among the topics were the ever-changing stock photography landscape, discussed by James Alexander of Adobe; the pros and cons of digital picture editing, presented by a panel of stock agency experts; and searching for stock pictures in the digital era, discussed by a panel moderated by Debbie Campbell of Seattle-based Tip Top Creative. Breakout sessions covered subjects such as marketing, protection of copyright and intellectual property, and advances in visual search technologies.

PACA has scheduled its inter-national conference for Oct. 14-16 in Redondo Beach, Calif. More information is available at www.stockindustry.org.

Adobe, ASMP, APA Establish Directory

The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), the Advertising Photographers of America (APA) and Adobe Systems have formed an alliance to simplify the hiring of assignment photographers. The Adobe Photographers Directory will provide a searchable list of professional photographers, accessible directly from Adobe’s products for creative professionals. ASMP’s general members will be charter members of the directory, as will members of the APA.

Users of the directory will be able to search the listings by geographic location and photographic specialty, and view portfolio images. The photographers’ experience and competence will be evidenced by their membership in the partnering organizations.

Further details about how ASMP and APA members can participate in the directory are posted at www.asmp.org/adobe and www.APANatl.org, respectively.

ASPP Board Meets

The national board of the American Society of Picture Professionals recently met in New York City for a retreat hosted by national president Eileen Flanagan at the Corbis offices. The goals for the meeting were to determine who ASPP is, where it is going and how it intends to get there. By the end of the day, the board had drawn up an outline for many elements of the organization, including the magazine, the website, membership, chapter programs and the educational program.

Along with the motto “Building Community among Image Professionals,” the board worked on a vision statement that better reflected who the group has become over the years and where it sees itself in the industry: “We are a community of image experts committed to sharing our experience and knowledge throughout the industry. We provide professional networking and educational opportunities. If you create, edit, research, license, manage or publish pictures, ASPP is the place for you. Join us.”

For more information about the society, contact Cathy Sachs at cathy@aspp.com; www.aspp.com.

Science Faction Images Available Through Getty

Science Faction recently announced that its image collection is available for licensing through Getty Images. Founded in 2004 by Roger Ressmeyer, a photographer of space and science and a former executive in the stock photo industry, Science Faction represents imagery that captures the universe of physical and natural sciences, high technology, medicine and space.

The collection includes work by science photographers and artists such as Tony Hallas, Fred and Randi Hirschmann, Nancy Kedersha, Chad Kleitsch, Yoav Levy, Flip Nicklin, Louie Psihoyos, William Radcliffe, David Scharf and Henry Schleichkorn.

For more information, contact Caren Brinkema at 206-232-2300, caren@ressmeyer.com.

Sack Photo Trust Offers SFMOMA Gift

The Prentice and Paul Sack Photographic Trust has promised to give nearly 800 photographs from the Sacks’ private collection to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. This group of photographs joins their 1998 gift of nearly 1,000 works.

This summer, SFMOMA is presenting an exhibition drawn from the Sack photo collection. “Taking Place: Photographs from the Prentice and Paul Sack Collection” is one of the largest ever mounted at SFMOMA, celebrating an unparalleled collection that spans the history of the medium from 1840 to 1975.

Doubleexposure 2005 Raises $110,000 for YIF

More than 340 photographers, arts enthusiasts, volunteers and students attended Doublexposure 2005, the ninth annual fundraiser for Youth in Focus. The event, held April 8 at Consolidated Works in Seattle’s south Lake Union neighborhood, offered photography classes to at-risk teens and also included an auction that raised nearly $110,000 for the training of young photographers.

Photographer Hal Morey’s famous image, “Grand Central Station, NYC circa 1930,” garnered the highest bid at the auction, selling for $2,000. Morey’s photo was supplied by the London-based Hulton Archive, owned by event sponsor Getty Images.

Photographic donors to this year’s auction included luminaries from the local and national photographic scene, including Alice Wheeler, Larry Calkins, Spike Mafford and Barb Kinney. The students’ work was framed by Museum Quality Framing and hung with the donated professional work in the Consolidated Works Galleries.

Brooks Turns 60

The Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, Calif., has announced plans to celebrate the school’s 60th anniversary throughout the remainder of 2005, and is seeking alumni to be part of the celebration.

In addition to other anniversary activities in Ventura and Santa Barbara over the coming months, the celebration will culminate with two major events on the weekend of Oct. 20-22. Brooks will host an alumni reception at the 2005 PhotoPlus Expo in New York City on Friday, Oct. 21. The following evening, a gala will be held at the Fess Parker Doubletree in Santa Barbara. The event’s theme will be the 1940s, when Brooks was founded by professional photographer Ernest H. Brooks Sr.

In the hope of reconnecting with Brooks graduates, starting with the original 30 students who enrolled some 60 years ago, the school has launched an alumni website, http://alumni.brooks.edu.

Santa Fe Workshops Creates Scholarship

Santa Fe Workshops has established a scholarship fund in memory of Westlight stock agency cofounder Craig Aurness, who taught at the workshops in the early 1990s. The Craig Aurness Memorial Scholarship Fund, sponsored by Corbis, will provide two $1,250 scholarships annually to talented and deserving emerging professional photographers who wish to attend the weeklong workshops in Santa Fe. More information about the scholarship program is available at www.santafeworkshops.com.