Craig Peters Luminance
Craig Peters speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

The Merchants, Luminance Session Six

Craig Peters, senior vice president for business development at Getty, opened the second session talking about a way forward with copyright licensing. He made two assumptions: that content creators want to get paid for their work and that the vast majority want to live in a world where copyright exists. He identified the problem with copyright as one that has risen with new publishing platforms in the "new world of media." Today the average person is posting images to new publishing platforms regularly, but the average person doesn't know about copyright and usually doesn't have a budget to license images. The disconnect leads to what he calls the "world of the right-click," where people take content and use it with no benefit going back to the content owner. The answer to this problem is not SOPA or other legislation, he said. Peters sees the internet as large and evolving. The solution therefore…

Continue ReadingThe Merchants, Luminance Session Six
Zack Arias Luminance
Zack Arias speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

Photography’s Bright Future, Day Two at Luminance

Scheduling note: Speakers Leila Boujnane and Chris Chabot were not able to speak during the first session. Zach Arias was added to the morning session and spoke on social media. Andrew Fingerman, PhotoShelter CEO, opened the day thanking yesterday's speakers for a generous and thought-provoking day. He also observed the overwhelming positivity at the conference from both the speakers and the attendees. It's great to see the excitement about the future of photography and and it's exciting to be a part of it, he said. Eric Cheng, director of photography at Lytro was the first speaker of the morning. He spoke about light field photography, which differs from traditional photography in that it captures the directional information of light entering a camera. Light field photography takes 3D images that can be refocused after they are taken and are fully interactive. The images open and can be manipulated on desktops and smart phones…

Continue ReadingPhotography’s Bright Future, Day Two at Luminance
Peter Yang Luminance
Peter Yang speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

Luminance Session Four: The Light Tamers

The first day of Luminance ended with presentations from three very different photographers. Their presentations were accompanied by strong visuals from their portfolios. We've included links to their work below, we highly recommend taking a look. Barbara Davidson opened the session showing her Pulitzer Prize winning work "Caught in the Crossfire." This body of work, shot over three years, shows the perils of gang violence in Los Angeles. Just because it wasn't a traditional breaking news story, she thought it was an important story to cover and she decided to take it on as a long-term documentary project. Davidson believes gang violence is one of the social ills affecting the inner cities of our country. "We don't only have to go to Afghanistan and Iraq to cover injustices," she says. These injustices are happening here in our backyards, she says. "It's easy for us to ignore it in our own country because…

Continue ReadingLuminance Session Four: The Light Tamers
Alan Taylor Luminance
Alan Taylor speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

Luminance Session Three: Packaging Media

Eileen Gittins, CEO and founder of Blurb, a digital book publisher, spoke about the 21st century book: what is it now and what might it become? She spoke about how print provides a different experience than digital. Books have physical mass and this may make people feel that they matter more, she says. When she makes the decision between a physical or a digital book she thinks about whether it is something she wants to keep or something she wants to consume. But that's not to say she doesn't see the value in digital. What we used to think of as a book is changing before our very eyes, she says. To help explain this phenomenon, she used an analogy: before there was TV there was radio and when TV first came out it was a lot like radio on TV. Over time TV developed into a new medium entirely. This is…

Continue ReadingLuminance Session Three: Packaging Media
Donald Pettit Luminance
Dr. Donald Pettit speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

Luminance Session Two: Photography’s New Frontiers

Cory West, engineering manager for Facebook photos started off the second morning session with a discussion about social photography. Some time back he was interested in the relationship between memory and quality of life. After coming across various articles about the way that we remember things (it turns out that as a result of having instant access to information, we've begun to optimize our memories by not remembering facts in order to better remember how to FIND facts), he decided to do a social experiment with his photos. He photographed 7,000 photos at 27 different social events and posted 950 curated shots on Facebook. He received 880 incidents of participation on 400 of the 950 posted photos. What he found surprising was that 55 percent of the activity was from people he didn't know. When he looked at the data, the numbers did make sense, as he had many more friends of…

Continue ReadingLuminance Session Two: Photography’s New Frontiers