I have been prompted to go back and find old images of people that were involved in the tragedy as well as inspired to go out and create new images.

Here are some images from the recent Tucson tragedy that I wanted to share with our ASMP Tucson community.

There are a lot of myths and misunderstandings about embedding copyright, contact information, and other “metadata” into JPEGs, TIFFs, DNGs, and other digital image files.

Are the following statements facts, or urban legends??

1. Embedded photo metadata is something that is hard to read unless you have Photoshop or some other professional software application.

2. Embedding photo metadata adds a lot of disk space overhead to an image file.

3. Removing embedded photo metadata is against the law.

4. Images that I upload to my social media or photo sharing sites will still retain my embedded photo metadata.

Get the answers and learn more about the top twelve metadata myths at David Rieck’s excellent Controlled Vocabulary website.
www.controlledvocabulary.com/blog/top-metadata-myths.html

It’s a totally anonymous survey, and takes about 10 minutes to fill out. Here’s the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NR8LYRR

After taking the survey, the respondent is given an option to provide his/her email (on a separate page, to maintain the confidentiality of the responses to the survey) and be entered in a drawing to win a $100 gift certificate to a mail order photo retailer.

After months of development, the new ASMP-Tucson web site is live! This is a completely new site, structured after the National ASMP site. The site draws on both our own local content and content from the National site, creating a great resource for both photographers and creatives here in Tucson. There are a lot of new features to the site – I’ll highlight a few below, but the best way to see what’s new is to visit the site!

www.asmptucson.org

The newly designed site features separate content areas for members and creatives as well as non-member photographers. There is a Local Resource section that lists assistants, stylists and makeup artists, labs, the weather, and other local resources, and an ASMP National section. Spotlighted Features, News, and Upcoming Events will all be updated frequently. There’s also a link to the ASMP-Tucson Blog.

The ASMP-Tucson site now features member photos on the right-hand side of many pages. These images by ASMP-Tucson chapter members are pulled from the Portfolio section of the National member database. It’s very cool!!! Recently, ASMP National increased the size requirements for these photos. If you did not upload new images, National automatically up-rezzed them, and many look ugly! So now is the time to log into the National site (you can do that from the ASMP-Tucson site!) and upload new images. The size requirements are listed on National’s site. They’re your images, and lots of people will see them, so make sure they look great!

There are also new banner images that will be shown on both the home page as well as in the new Member’s Gallery, a showcase for work from all ASMP-Tucson members.

© Jennifer Polixenni Brankin

 
General Members can submit up to 5 banner images and associate / student members may submit 1 banner image. Banner images will be shown randomly on the home page. On the Member’s Gallery page, all members who submit images are listed, and one of each member’s five images (one for associate/student members) will be randomly selected and shown. The page refreshes with new images with each page load to keep the site looking new. This is another great way to showcase your work, so submit new images soon!

The new banner images should be 620 pixels wide and no more than 225 pixels tall, sRGB jpg, 72 ppi, with embedded sRGB profile. You can use white space any way you want – crop a single image to that size, or combine images into a composite. Please name banner images as Lastname_Firstname_MemberID_ImageNum.jpg and submit them to webmaster@asmptucson.org. (Here’s an example: Photographer_Joe_99999_001.jpg) If you’re a General member, the Member’s Gallery and home page banner images both link to your Find-a-Photographer page on the National ASMP site, so if you don’t have any images on the new ASMP-Tucson site, you’re missing out!

Lastly, we could also use a sponsor or two… If you know of a company that would be interested in sponsoring ASMP-Tucson and having their logo/ad on the ASMP-Tucson website, refer them to the new website!

Enjoy!

–Rich Wagner
ASMP-Tucson Board, Web Liason

An Invitation to all Pro Photographers and Stock Artists,

Many photographers complain that the cost of doing business through most stock agencies / distributors has become too high! The agency system as it exists today threatens the business viability of any professional artist who creates images for stock licensing.  Not only do the big agencies take the large majority share of the revenues but they continually and historically keep charging less and less per license without any apparent concern for the business realities of those professionals who create the imagery they distribute and license.

Enter Evostock.  Evostock’s mission is to end the need for agency representation / distribution for professional stock image creators.  In so doing, Evostock will empower the independent artist to have control over their business and imagery and in turn allow the vast majority of stock licensing fees to go directly to the creators.   Evostock will also work to evolve rights managed licensing / pricing models in adaptation to the new and emerging media environments.  These new models will be designed along with input from professional trade organizations and other industry players to serve the short and long term business interests of independent professional stock artists and their customers / clients.

The vision and organizational plan for Evostock has been released on www.evostock.org.

Evostock is a virtual collective of independent professional stock artists. Photographers are coming together online with their images to create a new way forward outside the system of large stock agencies who they believe no longer serve the best interests of professional image creators.  Evostock’s mission is to empower professional stock image creators and end the necessity for overly expensive agency representation / distribution in the stock image marketplace.  Evostock is a general subject matter edited collection.

To learn more, go to www.evostock.org or view the initial members’ collections at www.evostock.com.

Evostock is being built on Photoshelter Virtual Agency (VA) technology and was founded by Tim McGuire in late July, 2009.

If you want to help build a new future for stock creators, check out this new venture and see if it’s right for you.

www.EVOstock.com, an online virtual collective for stock imagery creators.

EVOlve or go extinct!

–Rich Wagner