Friday, May 21, 2010

Corbis' Subsidiary Files for Bankruptcy Protection



Sygma, purchased by Bill Gates' wholly owned and privately held company Corbis back in 1999, has filed for bankruptcy protection according to a report in the French press here (via Thoughts of a Bohemian, 5/21/10), with tax debts of approximately 73 million euros.

As Paul Melcher at Thoughts of a Bohemian wisely surmises, French laws are remarkably more pro photographer than if this were a case in the U.S., and further, whatever court would take on this case could also be affected by anti-American/anti-big-business sentiments.

With a pro-photographer leaning in French law, Sygma was found liable for the loss of photographer Dominique Aubert's images, with a judgement of 1,500,000 euros. Following this, property and assets owned by Sygma were seized, and the game was essentially over.

Likely many of the Sygma photographers, with digital assets already in Corbis' asset system, will migrate to Corbis proper. In the end, as someone who knew of Sygma and worked alongside their photographers in it's heyday, it is sad to see the name disappear from the bylines, but, well, business is business, and so it goes.

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Monday, May 17, 2010

Video Compression For Still Photographers



MediaStorm is the preeminent outlet for multimedia stories by photojournalists that incorporate still images, with intermittent video, and incredible audio to tell a story in an increidbly immersive way. Brian Storm, who founded the company, has been a leader in the industry for a very long time, and also spends a great deal of time getting things right.

One of the challenges for still photographers migrating to video is how to properly prepare the final package for publication/broadcast/posting in the many different arenas. To bring understanding to what can only be descibed as a Tower of Babel when it comes to the proper settings, MediaStorm has put together MediaStorm’s Guide to iPad Compression for the Web (5/17/10) which is well worth the read. In fact, Storm's entire blog should be on your daily (ok, maybe weekly) list of blogs to check out.

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