Oops

A quick note to all who have been leaving comments:

Just now you may have received an email saying that your comment was rejected by yours truly. If this is the case, please leave your comment again, as I don't want to give the impression that your wonderful opinions aren't welcome. I just hit the wrong button and deleted them by accident.

My apologies!

Corbis offers bloggers free images

Corbis, the stock photography company, is offering photos for bloggers like me to use on their websites. The catch? Each image contains an embedded advertisement, either overlaid on part of the image, or in hidden "roll-over" format. This offer comes from a partnership between Corbis and PicScout, whose website PicApp.com will be the location at which bloggers can download their images. Ad revenue will also be generated, and bloggers will have the opportunity to earn their share with enough images through PicApp.

From Corbis Chief Executive Gary Shenk, via Reuters:

"We work with a partner so that those pictures are tracked, and if they're being used illegally, we can figure that out. But as long as they are downloaded through this application, you're legit and you're ready to go."

This is part of a growing trend amongst stock photography businesses that find they must grow and change with the times. Fast-growing online offers like these have been developed to deal with the ever-encroaching amateur market, with low-cost photo purchase sites and micro-payment sites. Snapvillage.com is another project that follows this vein: a site for user-submitted photos which allows photographers to sell their material for $1 to $50 each.

Click here to find out more about Corbis, or here for PicApp.

The Online Photographer has moved

Heads up to anyone updating their favorites lists: our buddy Mike Johnston has moved his blog, The Online Photographer, to a new location at http://theonlinephotographer.com. If you haven't visited this blog yet, you'll find a fine mix of commentary, news, and musings from the site's awesome community. His is the model to which we all aspire.

Also, I can't imagine why he would want to leave Blogger. Is it the fact that you have to use tab-cycling to enter the title of your post (that's why I had "Rest in Peace, John Szarkowskij" on top of the last post for a full day), or the requirement for Google ID's to leave comments? Don't get me wrong, I love Google, couldn't live without it, but what about all the other poor people who must add yet another ID to the list?

All of my site logins were recently erased off of my Palm Pilot, along with everything else. So I've put it to work in scraping my BBQ grill...

Flak Photo and the Photobloggies

Isthmus magazine's online edition, The Daily Page, has just featured our friends over at Flak Photo, and the recognition they have received at the 2007 Photobloggies. Based in Madison, Wisconsin, Flak Photo is an online magazine dedicated to fine art photography. Editor Andy Adams has proven that a screen can serve as well as print, as long as one is ready to embrace a different set of considerations.

The care that must be taken in presenting high quality images online is apparent at Flak Photo, which may have the best web layout for a publication I've yet seen. Adams insists that it wasn't the work of one person alone that has earned likewise distinction across the blogosphere. It was started about two years ago as part of Flak Magazine, a more verbal take on a publication with an online format. Editor James Norton planted the idea,

From The Isthmus Daily Page:

(Online publishing) also allows you to send editions of your magazine to subscribers via e-mail, an option Adams has introduced. He has 800 e-mail subscribers, he says, and they skew toward photographers and art directors who view the site on larger-than-standard monitors. "I'm all about giving a photograph room to breathe," he says.

Flak Photo saw a major redesign in the summer of last year. Hats off to everyone at Flak Photo for achieving such recognition, and wasting no time in doing it (the Photobloggies nominees were announced in February 2007, and the final decision made in April). Adams has also assembled a list of galleries representative of what Flak Photo has to offer. You can reach it here.