ASMP takes a hard look at Instagram
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Right now you are breaking a federal law if you use an unmanned aerial photography drone for any commercial purposes near people. Until the FAA allows it you can not fly a UAS except over unpopulated areas (where the kids / Dads fly model airplanes). Put a camera on it and things get even more tricky given restrictions Washington is weighing presently. So be careful with those business plans and where you put your money until the FAA figures this out and don’t forget your liability insurance does not cover illegal activity.
Here is a hint of what the folks at the FAA are thinking:
“… operations in civil airspace have different priorities. Civil performance standards are often more stringent, especially in the areas of reliability. Public expectation for a safe aviation environment drives our very high standards.”
“Currently, there are no means to obtain an authorization for commercial UAS operations in the NAS. However, manufacturers may apply for an experimental certificate for the purposes of R&D, market survey and crew training.”
Translation: You are going to pay a boat load of money to get an FAA approved UAS to fly over populated areas for commercial uses. Not only will you have to get FAA approval for the aircraft but for the guidance and control system as well. Not to mention the training. And guess what there are no FAA training areas set up at this point for you to be properly trained.
FAA site: http://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/uas/uas_faq/
This new platform is quite simply astounding. CrowdMedia just might change photo journalism forever with crowdsourcing news photography from anyone on the scene….
Interesting discussion regarding smartphone photojournalism with renowned photography theorist Fred Ritchin here
CrowdMedia’s premise is simple: Crowd sourced social photos shared on Twitter or Instagram are, more and more, becoming critically important to news coverage. So the startup offers an automated platform that gets those pictures out of social media and onto the front page of major news organizations, with rights cleared and money in the owner’s pocket … all within minutes.
“We want to completely crush today’s model of journalism,” co-founder and CEO Martin Roldan told me last night.
On June 7, literally 15 minutes after launching, the platform proved itself.
“There was a shooting incident at Santa Monica College, near where President Obama was. Within the first 15 minutes we were live,” Roldan said. “It was intense in the office.”
CrowdMedia’s platform, which combs through 150 million shared photos every day, searching for the .03 percent that are newsworthy, noticed the surge in attention, found the only photos from inside the locked-down Santa Monica college, cleared the rights with the student who took them, and sold them to publishers.
It’s not every startup that sees that instant kind of proof-of-concept. And the system, which is still in private pre-beta with a small group of media outlets, proved itself again last week during the Asiana crash at San Francisco airport.
“We got photos on the Huffington Post from people who were there,” Roldan said. “We caught these photos mostly by geolocation.”
Great info on how to fine tune your WordPress site and the ever important aspect of SEO
“WordPress is one of the best, if not the best content management systems when it comes to SEO. That being said, spending time on your WordPress SEO might seem like a waste of time, it most definitely is not. Optimizing your site to the best practices outlined in this article will help you improve your rankings, gain more subscribers and have a better website in general.”
Amazon is actually moving into your territory in a big way and this is a very big wake up call for small galleries. It’s all about the user experience online now, its all about eyeballs on your art, its all about distribution networks.
If Amazon is getting into the game you know they spent millions studying it and they see an opportunity here. Should you jump in with Amazon? Hell no… This is a wait an see moment as Amazon is the Wall-mart of the Internet and their site is terrible at showcasing anything. They make it easy to buy. They are very bad at creating a good way to look or find art. ( see ArtSpace and Artnet as they are the best at it and they only work with galleries – which is the way to go. SaatchiOnline has an interesting site as well.
What this means from a business perspective is galleries will need to align themselves with one of these online giants or perish. You think I am wrong? I wish… I have vast experience in this online take over game. This same thing happened in the stock photo industry a few years ago (now decimated), The same thing happened in the music industry with Itunes and now it’s happening to your industry. Why is this going to effect your bottom line? Because giant corporations don’t care about you. They just want a piece of the sale and if they don’t get a piece of your sale they could care less. It’s a numbers game to them. They will make up for it in volume.
If I owned a gallery I would sign up as a user with the big online Art Gallery sites and see which one fits and which one feels right. But the days of the single gallery online are over boys and girls. You have to be with an online group and where the eyeballs are and these big sites will be where people go whether you like it or not.
Think about it; If a small site like Artspace has 200,000 members that’s a boat load of art buying eyeballs. When Amazon gets into the game its going to change the game immediately. Lots of food for thought in this NYTimes article but the main point is when the 800-pound gorilla gets into your house you better pay attention. They make Getty look like small potatoes and Getty destroyed the mom and pop stock industry and more importantly the price of images plummeted once they got into the game.
New York Times Article Here
Survey which found Online art buying soars as almost three-quarters of collectors go online here