Buzz Aldrin Sues Topps for Use of Likeness

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin is suing the Topps trading card company in federal court in Los Angeles for the use of his likeness after they used what is arguably him inside a space suit doing the first walk on the moon.

Aldrin, a very private man since his launch to fame, has been very protective of his likeness and has fought to protect others from profiting or exploiting him. What's worth noting here is the fact that you can't actually see Aldrin in the photo on the Topps Heritage box, but you can see the image of a suited man (obvious to all as Aldrin) on the moon.

For a long time it has been said that if you can't see a persons face you don't need a release, and there are numerous court cases that point out the fallacy of that argument. So, the point remains - get a release wherever you can.

If you'd like to know more, the Washington Post has more here.

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R.I.P. PicApp - We Told You So

Back in August of 2009, with great fanfare, PicScout announced PicApp, and we took a critical (and dim) view of it, as we wrote about here - Silly Rabbit - PicApp's Got Problems (8/19/2009). The concept was - free photos for your non-commercial blog/etc, and we'll intersperse some ads among or overtop of the images, and make money that way.

We said it was a bad design then, and, more importantly, we said it made no business sense then, and on their blog here (12/23/2010)

"...the demand was not sufficient to commercially justify this as our core business model, which is why we have decided to terminate the Picapp images search....".

Right. Because it was poorly designed, made no business sense, and was also likely competing with the sources of the images (Getty/et al), and they didn't like it either. Paul Melcher does a fine job of taking a critical look at PicApp here - so I won't rehash what he wrote, other than to say "we told you so."

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When Is Your Black Friday?

Most people don't know what the origin of "Black Friday" is. For those of you not in the know, the answer is - it is the date that most retailers go from being "in the red" to "in the black", that is, profitable. So, the money they make from Black Friday until the end of the year, is, essentially, their profit.

The question then becomes - do you know when you go into the black? Are all your assignments profitable? Should they be?

If you don't know your Cost of Doing Business, check out the NPPA's CODB calculator here, and work it out. If you learn that your overhead for a day's photography is $250, then taking that $200 photo assignment "because you don't have anything else to do that day" is a really bad idea.

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Photopreneur Speedlinks

It's often interesting and insightful to read what's happening over at Photopreneur. Here are links to a few articles worth checking out!

• You Could be a Professional Photographer When… -You’re not ready to become a professional until you also have these elements of professional knowledge figured out:
  
  

  1. You Know the Legal Stuff
  2. You Understand Licensing and Pricing
  3. You Have a Professional Attitude



• Photographers Start to Give Up on Copyright Restrictions - For photographers, the ownership of images seems obvious: they had the concept, set up the shots, used their creativity, drew on their technical skills, and produced beautiful photographs. The results belong to the artists who created them, and they’re the ones who should get to control how the photos are used.


• Photography Deals That are Worse Than They Look - A photographer finds that a bad deal included his being ridiculed by the end user of the photography.

Now go! Check 'em out, and come back soon!

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Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.

Livebooks - Speedlinks

Our colleagues (and, yes, advertiser) Livebooks does a great job over on their Resolve blog of posting timely and insightful articles on the realities of the business and marketing of photography. Here are a few:

• What is Branding - Want to build a strong brand that best represents your business? Sit down and define the following:
  
  

  What is your mission statement?
  Who are you? What is your business about?
  What are you values and your company’s values?
  What do you want to be known for?
  What is your specialty?



• Selling Relationships - The client wants to know that you are listening and want to meet his or her needs. The client wants a RELATIONSHIP.


• Pricing – How to Factor for YOU in Your Costs - I don’t care if you’ve been in business for 2 months or 20 years; this is something that is always of concern to small business owners. And, for those people who feel comfortable in their pricing, it is a short-lived comfort. Pricing must always be examined and re-examined.

Now go! Check 'em out, and come back soon!

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US News & World Report To End Print Edition

For as long as my professional career has been ongoing, I have always held as the holy grail, Time, Newsweek, and US News & World Report, in the magazine industry, as the harbingers of the industry. Now, US News is looking more like a pallbearer. As we learned from the Huffington Post (here) , US News will cease to print it's publication in 2011. You can be sure they'll do print editions of their "Best Colleges" and other "Best" special issues, but US News is essentially signalling that print is dead.

If the thickness of Time and Newsweek are any indication, I expect that they too will stop killing trees and go online, but with 30% of households not having internet according to this article, it would seem that that audience will no longer be served by US News, but, perhaps, that's not the audience they are targeting?

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PDN Acquires WPPI, After Capture, and Rangefinder

The evening of the PhotoPlus Expo Bash, on the USS Intrepid, it was announced by PDN that they (or, rather, their parent company, Nielsen) had acquired the publication Rangefinder, After Capture, and the trade Wedding and Portrait Photographer International (WPPI) trade show.

I've had the opportunity to attend both trade shows, and they couldn't be a more disparate group of people attending the PhotoPlus Expo and the WPPI show, so this seems like a solid move on Nielsen's part. As someone who has attended the PhotoPlus Expo for almost 20 years, and thinking it was the end-all-be-all of shows, it was enlightening (and refreshing) to see the group of photographers at the WPPI show, and, frankly, those photographers seemed far more focused on the business realities of photography than those at PhotoPlus. Further, the show's structure means that the seminars and show floor don't compete as much as they do at PhotoPlus.

(Continued after the Jump)

Interestingly enough, WPPI had tried to expand their perceived market from weddings and portraits to a broader audience, when they attempted to change their trade show name to "World Imaging Expo." Seemed a good idea, no? Well, apparently, the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) didn't quite like that idea, and filed suit a few years back because of their trademarked trade show "Imaging Expo" and "Imaging USA" tradeshows. The suit - Professional Photographers of America, Inc. v. Rangefinder Publishing Co., CV08-02324 SVW, was filed in the Federal District Court of Los Angeles. (more info here).

I think that the acquisition by PDN's parent company does two things - it solidifies and consolidates two well known and well respected brands, and also signifies to people who thought that PDN was on borrowed time that the PDN brand will be around for the forseeable future.

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