Tyler-Shields-Luminance
Tyler Shields speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

The Instigators, Luminance Session Seven

Gary Morgan, CEO and co-founder of Splash News--which was bought by Corbis last year--opened "the instigators" session on day two of Luminance. He spoke about the change that celebrities have brought to news photography. News used to be about issues, it's now firmly about people, he said. He used the recent photos of Prince Harry in Las Vegas as an example. He pointed out that the photos that were sold to TMZ, then later sold to Splash are awful photos, in that they are shot poorly with a phone camera. But the photos made the top headlines and were well paid for because they were the first images to break news. It doesn't matter what kind of camera you have, it matters if you have a picture and you get it out first and fast. This is what is driving the entertainment news market now, he said. The democratization of media creates…

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Craig Peters Luminance
Craig Peters speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

The Merchants, Luminance Session Six

Craig Peters, senior vice president for business development at Getty, opened the second session talking about a way forward with copyright licensing. He made two assumptions: that content creators want to get paid for their work and that the vast majority want to live in a world where copyright exists. He identified the problem with copyright as one that has risen with new publishing platforms in the "new world of media." Today the average person is posting images to new publishing platforms regularly, but the average person doesn't know about copyright and usually doesn't have a budget to license images. The disconnect leads to what he calls the "world of the right-click," where people take content and use it with no benefit going back to the content owner. The answer to this problem is not SOPA or other legislation, he said. Peters sees the internet as large and evolving. The solution therefore…

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Zack Arias Luminance
Zack Arias speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

Photography’s Bright Future, Day Two at Luminance

Scheduling note: Speakers Leila Boujnane and Chris Chabot were not able to speak during the first session. Zach Arias was added to the morning session and spoke on social media. Andrew Fingerman, PhotoShelter CEO, opened the day thanking yesterday's speakers for a generous and thought-provoking day. He also observed the overwhelming positivity at the conference from both the speakers and the attendees. It's great to see the excitement about the future of photography and and it's exciting to be a part of it, he said. Eric Cheng, director of photography at Lytro was the first speaker of the morning. He spoke about light field photography, which differs from traditional photography in that it captures the directional information of light entering a camera. Light field photography takes 3D images that can be refocused after they are taken and are fully interactive. The images open and can be manipulated on desktops and smart phones…

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Peter Yang Luminance
Peter Yang speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

Luminance Session Four: The Light Tamers

The first day of Luminance ended with presentations from three very different photographers. Their presentations were accompanied by strong visuals from their portfolios. We've included links to their work below, we highly recommend taking a look. Barbara Davidson opened the session showing her Pulitzer Prize winning work "Caught in the Crossfire." This body of work, shot over three years, shows the perils of gang violence in Los Angeles. Just because it wasn't a traditional breaking news story, she thought it was an important story to cover and she decided to take it on as a long-term documentary project. Davidson believes gang violence is one of the social ills affecting the inner cities of our country. "We don't only have to go to Afghanistan and Iraq to cover injustices," she says. These injustices are happening here in our backyards, she says. "It's easy for us to ignore it in our own country because…

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Alan Taylor Luminance
Alan Taylor speaks at Luminance. Photo by Michael Treola.

Luminance Session Three: Packaging Media

Eileen Gittins, CEO and founder of Blurb, a digital book publisher, spoke about the 21st century book: what is it now and what might it become? She spoke about how print provides a different experience than digital. Books have physical mass and this may make people feel that they matter more, she says. When she makes the decision between a physical or a digital book she thinks about whether it is something she wants to keep or something she wants to consume. But that's not to say she doesn't see the value in digital. What we used to think of as a book is changing before our very eyes, she says. To help explain this phenomenon, she used an analogy: before there was TV there was radio and when TV first came out it was a lot like radio on TV. Over time TV developed into a new medium entirely. This is…

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