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Designed for professionals in the photographic and imaging industries, PhotoPlus Expo showcases the latest advances in photography, both traditional and digital. Held annually at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, attendees have the opportunity to explore an inspiring array of photography, design and imaging products and services - everything from image capture and color management to retouching and storage - all from the industry’s leading manufacturers.

www.photoplusexpo.com

It is increasingly unlikely that an orphan works bill, uniformly viewed as a threat to photographers, will pass during the current session of Congress. Despite support from the U.S. Copyright Office, as well as influential companies like Microsoft and Google, no such bill has been introduced in either the U.S. House or the Senate so far.

The idea is still active in Congress, however. Both the House and Senate held hearings recently on whether to make copyrighted works that have been “abandoned” by their owners available for reuse. House staffers have been holding closed-door meetings every week or so with interested parties, trying to hash out compromise language for the bill. The most recent of these meetings was held Tuesday.

Photography associations, fearful that an orphan works bill could make un-credited visual images essentially free for the taking, have campaigned vigorously against it. Getty Images and Corbis, normally fierce competitors, banded together to hire a lobbyist, Steven Metalitz, to fight the proposal, according to Nancy Wolff, attorney for the Picture Archive Council of America (PACA).

In February, several photography groups – including PACA, the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), Professional Photographers of America, Advertising Photographers of America and others – warned that the bill was being fast-tracked and could become law this year. They asked their members to send letters opposing the change, which was recommended in a report from the U.S. Copyright Office earlier this year.

Wolff, who has been closely following the orphan works legislation, says it is possible a bill related to orphan works will be introduced in the House later this month. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chair of House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, appears to be interested in sponsoring the bill.

There is less activity on orphan works in the Senate, where Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) have taken the most interest in it.

One big question is whether the bill will use the language proposed by the Copyright Office. The Copyright Office suggests lowering or eliminating the penalties for someone who infringes a copyrighted work if they can’t locate the owner to ask permission. Of particular concern was phrasing saying a work could be considered orphaned if the infringer couldn’t find the owner after “a good faith, reasonably diligent search.” There is no way to search the copyright office records for the owner of a photograph without already knowing the owner’s name.

As with any bill, odds are slim that it will become law, even if it is introduced.

“The chances are better that there won’t be a bill enacted than there will be,” says ASMP counsel Victor Perlman, who testified before a Senate committee meeting on orphan works April 6.

ASMP opposes the Copyright Office proposal as it stands. Perlman has proposed an alternative idea, where people wishing to use “orphans” would pay a fee to an escrow fund. The money would be used to pay license holders if they come forward later. Perlman acknowledges that while photographers and illustrators seem to like this idea, it is “very unpopular with pretty much everyone else in the world.”

Scores of people and companies filed comments with the Copyright Office while it was researching orphan works. Among them is Google, which says relaxed laws on orphan works will benefit Google Print, a project to digitize and catalog all the books from several major libraries. Artists who want to be able to reuse other work more freely, including those affiliated with the Creative Commons group, also wrote in support of the proposal.

At the two congressional subcommittee hearings held so far, people representing museums, publishers and filmmakers have spoken in favor of the Copyright Office’s proposal, since it will make it easier to use old, archived works in books and documentary films. Trade associations for illustrators and photographers oppose the proposal, since they say the law could make many visual works, usually published without credit, into “orphans.” The law would also make the penalties for misuse so low that it seldom would be worthwhile to pursue infringers, the associations say.

At the March 8 hearing on orphan works before the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, four people appeared as witnesses:

• Jule Sigall, associate registrar for policy and international affairs of the U.S. Copyright Office, speaking in support of the Copyright Office proposal.
• Allan Adler, vice president of legal and government affairs for the Association of American Publishers, also supporting the Copyright Office proposal.
• David Trust, CEO of the Professional Photographers of America, urging significant changes to the Copyright Office proposal.
• Maria Pallante-Hyun, associate general counsel and director of licensing for the Guggenheim Museum, largely supporting the Copyright Office proposal.

On March 29, the same House subcommittee held a hearing on a related matter, how best to deal with small claims related to copyright infringement.

At the April 6 hearing on orphan works before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, seven people appeared as witnesses:

• Sigall of the Copyright Office.
• Perlman of ASMP.
• Pallante-Hyun of the Guggenheim.
• June Cross, a documentary filmmaker and Columbia University professor, supporting the Copyright Office proposal with some qualifications.
• Brad Holland, founding board member of the Illustrators’ Partnership of America, strongly objecting to the Copyright Office proposal.
• Thomas C. Rubin, counsel for Microsoft, supporting the Copyright Office proposal.
• Rick Prelinger, board president of the Internet Archive and founder of the Prelinger Archives, a film archive, supporting the Copyright Office proposal.

Go to: PDN

New Gear and Great Sales at Calumet

Visit our website to check out new products from Hahnemuhle, JVC, Canon video and Nikon. Take advantage of sale prices and save on specialty camera and studio stand kits. Hurry, these offers are good from March 6 through April 30, 2006.

Use Your Calumet Credit Card and Save

Make a purchase on your Calumet Card between March 23 and April 15, 2005, and make no payments, pay no interest until January 2007!

The no interest offer applies at one of our ten retail locations, online or by calling us direct at 800-CALUMET (800-225-8638).

Get Summer Workshop Scholarships

The Santa Fe Workshops (SFW) is pleased to offer a number of scholarships for photography workshops in Santa Fe. The Workshops has many offerings of interest to photographers and photo educators including Alternative Processes with Christopher James, Introduction to Photoshop for Photographers with Josh Withers and Black-and-White Photography for Young Photographers (specially designed for teens 13 to 17 years of age). You can review a selection of more than 50 summer workshops at www.santafeworkshops.com.

Scholarships Available:

A generous scholarship program supports the young photographer (with two full scholarships available), the educator, and the photo enthusiast or emerging professional. The Nikon Spirit Initiative, in recognition of the individual vision that animates all great pictures, awards two $750 scholarships to amateur and professional
photographers to support their personal vision through photography. The Kodak Educator Scholarship of $850 is awarded to a deserving and talented photographic or digital educator for a week-long workshop in Santa Fe between June and December 2006. Educator applicants must be high school, college, or advanced studies teachers of photography or digital imaging. The deadline for all scholarship applications is April 21, 2006.

Go to: Calumet Photographic

FIFA had proposed a two-hour embargo on photos taken during the World Cup, a serious limitation for web sites that cover sports. FIFA later reduced the embargo to one hour, then to immediately after the end of the match. The rules also banned publishing photographs shot in a sequence and limited the number of photographs that could be published online to five per half and two per extra time.

News agencies had to agree to the terms to get photo credentials to cover matches. The proposal would have benefited web sites and cell phone services that have licensing deals with FIFA to run live soccer coverage.

News organizations have been fighting the new rules since they first appeared last fall. The World Cup, played every 4 years, begins June 9 in Germany.

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN), a Paris-based federation of news organizations including the Newspaper Association of America, has been in talks with FIFA to try to get the rules dropped. WAN said it was representing the Associated Press, Getty Images, Reuters, Agence France-Presse and others.

Today, FIFA and WAN released a joint statement saying FIFA had agreed to drop all restrictions on digital publication of photos.

According to a statement, the two parties reached an agreement in a private meeting between FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter and WAN CEO Timothy Balding.

“I am satisfied that we have been able to amend the earlier position taken and thus recognize WAN’s justified requirements,” Blatter said in the statement. He also said he had invited WAN to nominated a representative to sit on the FIFA Media Committee.

Though the FIFA-WAN spat appears to be over, it is just the latest in a series of photo-related conflicts between news media and sports governing bodies. In the past few months in the U.S., NCAA schools have written cease-and-desist letters to photographers who posted their pictures of college athletes on the SportsShooter.com online portfolio site.

More recently, the LPGA imposed usage limits on news photos from women’s golf events, a matter that has still not been resolved to the satisfaction of some editors. Two photos editors said today their companies are still in talks with the LPGA in hopes of an agreement.

Go to: PDN

Version 1.1, which will ship in March, will bring many user-requested features to the application. The update, which will be free to 1.0 users, will be made available when Apple updates its suite of Pro applications, making them available on the Intel processor Macs. The update for Aperture will work with both PowerPC based Macs (G4, G5) and Intel based Macs (currently Intel based iMac and MacBook Pro).

We’ll have the official press release as soon as it’s available, but in a private hands-on meeting this morning Apple Product Managers showed off the new software to PDN.

Changes to this version revolve first around the issue of raw processing. Thanks to feedback from PDN users, Apple was able to massively enhance their raw processing engine, providing a level of raw quality they feel is equal to or superior to other systems. While they acknowledge that some users might prefer the default conversion of other systems, they’ve gone out of their way to bring new power to raw processing.

The version provides new algorithms for basic raw processing, but also adds several new raw tools. These include Boost, which adjusts the contrast curve of an image; sharpening, which is independent from overall sharpening tools and effects just the raw processing; Chromatic Blur, which softens the chromatic aberrations often found in raw images; and Auto Noise Compression, which helps to reduce sensor noise. This last feature is most impressive, as it looks at not only the profile of the camera being used, but looks at the camera settings. An image that has been shot at ISO 1600 for 2 seconds would get more noise reduction than a shorter exposure time image or lower ISO shot.

Images that have been adjusted in 1.0 can be updated to the 1.1 processing, or left alone, and the tool to migrate older processed images can be applied to any selected image, and the user can choose between processing all images, only those who have been adjusted, or only those that have not been adjusted.

All new raw tools can be applied via lift and stamp, and can be set as presets.

The program has also offered RGB display, a feature that’s persistently available above the historgram and is also viewable in the Loupe. Sample size can be varied between 1×1 pixel to 7×7 pixels, and the sample area is visible in the Loupe as well.

Aperture 1.1 will have the ability to manage layered PSD files. Images brought into Aperture can be exported back to PSD with their layers intact (as long as they have not been adjusted in Aperture, which flattens the image–just make a copy to perform adjustments on).

The program has also added DPI controls for image export, allowing photographers to create export presets for any image size and resolution.

The program is also implementing a new tethered workflow solution for Canon and Nikon cameras, and while it’s not a full-blown integration to the program, it works seamlessly. In our demos, Apple staff attached a 1Ds Mark II to a Quad G5, opened Canon’s pro software, and then ran an applet to tell Aperture what folder was set to receive the tethered files. From then on, images captured with the camera were auto-imported to the program. The company says that it’s working on even greater tethered support in future versions.

In addition to feature updates, the program has gained a much-requested speed boost as well, with many operations processing 2-3x faster on PowerPC systems, and twice again as fast on Intel macs. We used Aperture 1.1 in our demos on an Intel iMac, Macbook Pro and Quad G5 and the program ran significantly faster that version 1.0.

The update of Aperture will be made available via Software Update, and will be free. Intel-based users of version 1.0 simply need to install 1.0 on the Intel Mac, and then run Software Update to receive the Intel-compatible version of 1.1.

Go to: PDN

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced an update to Camera Raw plug-in for Photoshop® CS2, extending raw file support to 17 additional digital camera models. Available as a free download from Adobe’s Web site, the plug-in builds on the raw file support integrated in Photoshop CS2 for digital cameras from leading manufacturers such as Canon, Fujifilm, Kodak, Mamiya, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, and Sony.

With the addition of the new plug-in, Camera Raw functionality in Photoshop CS2 now supports more than 113 different camera models and allows professional photographers to easily manipulate raw files without sacrificing any image quality. Now professional photographers can more quickly and easily import and manipulate raw data, saving time while increasing artistic control.

New cameras supported by Adobe Camera Raw 3.3 plug-in and DNG Converter include Canon EOS 5D, Canon EOS 1D Mark II N, Canon EOS 20Da, Fujifilm Finepix E900, Fujifilm Finepix S5200/5600, Fujifilm Finepix S9000/9500, Kodak EasyShare P850, Kodak EasyShare P880, Mamiya ZD, Nikon D200, Olympus E-500, Olympus SP-310, Olympus SP-350, Olympus SP-500UZ, Pentax *ist DL, Pentax *ist DS2, and Sony DSC-R1.

Availability

The Adobe Camera Raw 3.3 plug-in also requires Photoshop CS2, Photoshop Elements 3.0 or Photoshop Elements 4.0 and can be downloaded for free by going to the Adobe Web site at www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html.

The recently announced Adobe Lightroom™ Beta also leverages Adobe Camera Raw functionality, with support for over 100 cameras and incorporates raw conversion into a single workflow experience.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated

Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information - anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

PICTURE Magazine is a bi-monthly NYC based national photo industry publication, providing news, calendar, and event information, photographer profiles and interviews, advertising and magazine reviews, digital and internet columns, and equipment and product information.

The magazine has grown tremendously over the past ten years to emerge as an acute, intuitive and valuable monthly photo industry resource. PICTURE fills the niche for a smart and insightful look into the current photography market.

Go to: Picture Magazine

Bill Me Later®: Buy Fast. Feel Secure.®

Bill Me Later® is a convenient and secure new payment method designed for purchasing on the web. As a credit account, Bill Me Later® provides you with the flexibility to purchase without using your credit card. Bill Me Later® is offered through Chase Bank USA, National Association (The Bank) and is only available to US customers who are at least 18 years of age. Subject to credit approval.

To request a Bill Me Later® account, you do not have to complete a lengthy application prior to making a purchase. Simply select Bill Me Later® at checkout to complete your request.
There are no account numbers to enter, just top-of-mind information such as date of birth and the last four digits of your social security number. This information is easy to provide and helps us protect you against fraud.
Bill Me Later® offers “zero fraud liability” protection which means you are not responsible for unauthorized charges.
After you use Bill Me Later®, you will receive a billing statement.
Bill Me Later® offers flexible repayment options: you can choose to pay the entire balance with no additional charges or pay a portion of the balance and regular interest charges apply.

Bill Me Later® Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to be approved prior to selecting Bill Me Later® at checkout?
No, you do not need to complete an application or get approval prior to shopping. To request a Bill Me Later® account, simply select Bill Me Later® at checkout. A separate page will appear in which you: 1) verify the billing address you’ve already provided the merchant, 2) supply your date of birth and the last four digits of your Social Security Number for verification purposes, 3) Review and agree to the E-sign Consent, and 4) review and approve the Bill Me Later® Terms and Conditions to request a Bill Me Later® account.

Is there an Annual Fee?
No. There is no annual fee for using Bill Me Later®.

What is the Annual Percentage Rate?
The Annual Percentage Rate is 17.99%. Of course, you can choose to pay your entire balance by the payment due date and pay no finance charges.

Does Bill Me Later® protect me from unauthorized charges?
Yes, Bill Me Later® provides “zero fraud liability” protection; the same protection provided by most major credit cards. This means you are not responsible for unauthorized charges.

And Bill Me Later® has been designed with other features to help protect against unauthorized use of your account. Your identity is validated with top-of-mind information such as date of birth and the last four digits of your Social Security Number. This means there is no account number that can be lost or stolen.

What does Subject to Credit Approval mean?
Bill Me Later® is a credit account that you can use to make purchases. The Bank will review and consider your credit report and other credit related information prior to approval.

Do you review my credit report every time I make a purchase?
The Bank does not review your credit report for each transaction. However, your credit report may be reviewed for some transactions and periodically to provide you with the maximum buying power possible.

Do I have a credit line and how much is it?
The Bank does not issue a credit line. To enhance your convenience, security and buying power, The Bank approves and extends credit for each transaction.

Where else can I use Bill Me Later®?
A growing network of merchants accepts Bill Me Later®. A complete list of the merchants that accept Bill Me Later® is provided on the Bill Me Later® website at www.billmelater.com.

How can I contact Bill Me Later® to find out more about this payment method?
Web: you may visit the Bill Me Later® website at www.billmelater.com or email your questions to customercare@billmelater.com.

Go to: B&H

ASMP is the premier resource for community, culture, commerce and publications relating to publication photography. ASMP is the authoritative voice of publication photographers worldwide.

Rights protection, promotion standards, ethics, community and camaraderie. Founded in 1944, the American Society of Media Photographers (originally the Society of Magazine Photographers and later the American Society of Magazine Photographers) is the leading trade association for photographers who photograph primarily for publication.

Go to: American Society of Media photographers

ASMP promotes photographers’ rights, educates photographers in better business practices, produces business publications for photographers and helps buyers find professional photographers.ASMP was founded in 1944 by a handful of the world’s leading photojournalists and is recognized internationally for its leadership role. ASMP has over 5,000 members, including many of the world’s greatest photographers, in 40 chapters nationwide.

The ASMP has three purposes:

ASMP was formed at a time when photographers were forced to shoot on speculation and credit lines had not yet been established. The organization was born out of need, and that need has driven it for more than half a century.

ASMP is active in the areas of copyright, better conditions for photographers, combating work-for-hire, and providing legal advocacy and lobbying. It promotes business education through seminars, White Papers, and publication of business books and forms. It has helped frame copyright legislation and Society representatives have often given testimony before Senate and Congressional committees and in legal cases.

The Society also refers inquiries for photography to its members, by region or specialty.

Go to: American Society of Media photographers

From its beginnings, Brooks Institute has followed the philosophy of “learn by doing”. Students gain the artistic, technical, and business expertise needed to succeed in visual communications. Brooks is a world leader in professional photographic and motion picture education with an outstanding faculty, and three beautiful locations in Santa Barbara, California.

Brooks Institute’s programs are designed for anyone who aspires to a career in photography or filmmaking as well as working photographers who seek new skills to advance their careers. As we enter the era of global communication, we will continue to provide one of the finest educations in photography and filmmaking available.

Go to: Brooks Institute of Photography