Invision’s goal is to take on the dominant player in the celebrity photo business: Getty Images, which has owned entertainment agency Wireimage since 2007.

“I’ve heard from a lot of people I’ve worked with that they weren’t happy with one choice. They wanted another option,” says Invision managing director Dan Becker.

Becker, who was formerly director of commercial content and services for AP Images, says Invision will operate as a separate company from AP. The wire service is the majority owner, and will provide distribution for Invision.

So far, Invision has just one staff photographer–Chris Pizzello. Other contractors and freelancers include Matt Sayles, Evan Agostini, Jordan Strauss, Todd Williamson, John Shearer, Jon Furniss and Casey Rodgers.

Becker says there will be opportunities for other photographers, too. “We will use AP’s freelance network, but we intend to recruit other photographers and grow our own freelance network,” he says. “It’s a big part of our mission.”

Becker says he relies primarily on word-of-mouth recommendations from photographers he’s currently working with to identify new talent. “We will try people out with entry level assignments,” he says.

Both the cool-looking canes and the dancing, leaping, bounding Weimeraner shown in Wegman’s photo library are intended to encourage people to move more.

The company fills a void in the market, supplying products for an aging population that doesn’t want to sacrifice style for functionality. Maybe Omhu can make a nice looking case for my reading glasses.

You can view the photo library on the Omhu web site, and the video can also be viewed on Vimeo.

©Chicago Tribune/Brian Cassella

The Chicago Tribune has posted a dramatic series of photographs showing a clash between police and protesters outside the NATO summit meeting in Chicago on May 20. The images were shot by Tribune photographer Brian Cassella, who explains on his blog how he got the photos. The last image of the series shows a police officer cocking his fist to punch a protester. By itself, it’s easily read as (another) act of police brutality against citizens exercising their constitutional rights. But context is everything, as the rest of Cassella’s images illustrate: The police officer is throwing the punch to stop a protester from swinging a heavy stick (for the second time) at the head of another police officer who had lost his helmet. That helmet-less officer had already been struck once in the head by another protester swinging a lighter stick, which Cassella captured as it broke over the officer’s head. It’s a complicated story about two wrongs that don’t make a right, and Cassella tells it with clarity in nine frames. To see the series, visit the Chicago Tribune’s web site. (Cassella also talks about the photographs in this Chicago Tribune video.)

Since 2008, the stock agency has been owned by private equity firm Hellman & Friedman. (Full disclosure: Hellman & Friedman also owns Nielsen, parent company of PDN.) Hellman was reported to have paid $2.4 billion, or $34.00 per share, for the agency which had previously been a publicly traded company.

Since Getty Images went private, the company has not disclosed any financial data to the public. The agency has made cost-cutting measures in the past year that have affected photographers who contribute to the agency. For example, last year Getty introduced tough new contracts, cutting back royalties it pays to photographers,  telling contributors that rights-managed images that have not sold well will be moved to royalty-free collections while the royalty-free images would be sold as part of subscription packages.

Related articles:
ASMP to Getty Photographers: Time to Bail

Getty Cuts Pay for Editorial Contributors

Submissions to the First Book Prize are first screened by a committee lead this year by Kimerly Rorshach, director of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke. According to the FAQs on the First Book Prize Web site, the focus of the competition is on “the breadth and nuance of the body of photographs as an extended narrative and meditation.” The committee’s selection is then turned over to this year’s judge.

Willis is on the faculty of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and has published such books as Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present; Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present; The Black Female Body in Photography; and Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs. Previous judges for the First Book Prize include photographers Robert Frank, William Eggleston and Mary Ellen Mark.

Past winners of the prize have included Benjamin Lowy, Jennette Williams, Danny Wilcox Frazier, and Larry Schwarm.

Guidelines for entries can be found at the First Book Prize web site.

©David Doubilet. Penguins near Danko Island, Antarctic Penninsula. (Courtesy of the artist)

Photographers scheduled to talk about their work and careers as part of the Master Talks series at this year’s LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph will include Lynsey Addario, Ernesto Bazan, Camille Seaman, Bruce Gilden, Robin Schwartz, and Hank Willis Thomas, festival organizers have announced.

The festival will take place June 7, 8 and 9 in Charlottesville, Virginia.  LOOK3 bills itself as a celebration of photography, where attendees and featured artists can share images, ideas and inspiration over three days and nights.

Other recent additions to the schedule include renowned underwater photographer David Doubilet, who will give a pre-show lecture about his work on the evening of June 6. Doubilet’s images will be displayed on banners along the pedestrian mall in downtown Charlottesville.

Evening projections on June 8 and 9 will showcase works by more than three dozen photojournalists and artists, including Todd Hido, Moises Saman. Steve Winter, Arlene Gottfried, and Beth Dow, to name just a few of the established professionals. The work of several emerging photographers will also be part of the projections.

As previously announced by LOOK3 organizers, this year’s event will feature on-stage interviews with Alex Webb, Donna Ferrato and Stanley Greene. They will discuss their influences, processes, and inspiration in three separate present4ations.

In addition, several photographers will teach two-day master classes during the festival. They include Bazan, Addario and Thomas, as well as  Eugene Richards, David Alan Harvey, Maggie Steber, Brian Storm and Julieanne Kost.

The guest curators of this year’s LOOK3 program David Griffin, visuals editor of The Washington Post, and photographer Vincent J. Musi.

General admission passes for all of the events (except master classes) cost $145, or $75 for students. A premium pass (called The Big Love Pass) costs $450, and entitles pass holders to reserved seating at the on-stage interviews, master talks, and projections. Big Love Pass holders will also have a chance to meet all presenting photographers at a special reception on June 8.

Additional information about the festival is available at the LOOK3 Web site.

© Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos

The New York Photo Festival 2012 opened on May 16 with shows assembled by four guest curators, and some nearby satellite shows. After three years in which shows took over multiple spaces in the Dumbo neighborhood in Brooklyn, this year the four-day festival has located most of the shows by its four guest curators in the Powerhouse Arena and bookstore at 37 Main Street. Powerhouse Arena is also the site of panel discussions with artists and presentations by ImageBrief, the sponsor of this year’s festival.

Amy Smith-Stewart’s “What Do You Believe?” packs loads of images into displays at 56 Water Street and 37 Main Street. Artists show include Jen DeNike, Hank Willis Thomas, Fay Ray, Anissa Mack, Matthew Spiegelman. A discussion with Smith-Stewart and some of the exhibiting artists takes place Thursday May 17 from 3 to 5 pm.

Glenn Ruga, founder of socialdocumentary.net presents several editorial and documentary photographers, including Bruce Davidson, Lori Grinker, Platon, Eugene Richards, and Rina Castelnuovo in “The Razor’s Edge: Between Documentary and Fine Art Photography” at 37 Main Street. A discussion with Ruga and some of the artists will take place at 7 pm Thursday,  May 17. Ruga also curated a show on the mezzanine of 37 Main Street, made up of images presented by socialdocumentary.net.
“The Curse and the Gift,” curated by Claude Grunitzky, is exhibited on the messanine of 37 Main Street. Artists in the show include Christian Witkin, and Evangelia Kranioti and Irmelie Krekin. Friday May 18 from 3 to 5 pm there will be a discussion with Grunitzky and the artists.

http://nyph.at/grunitzky/statement.html

DJ Spooky (aka Paul Miller) has curated a show titled “Sinfonia Antarctica (The Book of Ice)” that looks at archival images from the Antarctic and how the work “has shaped some of the ways we think about contemporary digital media esthetics.” According to press information for the festival, the show will be presented on ice floes on the East River, depending on prevailing currents. There will also be a presentation Friday May 18 from 8 to 9:30 pm at 37 Main Street.

Tickets are still available for $20 at the door in the Powerhouse Arena.

Video from the scene of the arrests helped clear the photographers in both cases.

In New York, police accused New York University photography student Alexander Arbuckle of blocking traffic at an Occupy protest march on January 1. He maintained that he was photographing from the sidewalk at the time of his arrest. At trial, the judge dismissed the charges after Arbuckle’s defense attorneys showed a video by another journalist showing police massing near people on the sidewalk, and then arresting them, according to AP.

In the Seattle incident, photographer Joshua Garland was accused of grabbing and twisting the arm of a police officer at a May Day protest in downtown Seattle. The Seattle Times reports that prosecutors decided they couldn’t prove the charges against Garland after his defense attorney showed a video of the incident. According to that same report, the attorney pieced the video together from “video segments posted on YouTube by witnesses and other footage shot by a local television station.”

Muholi has documented the lives of black lesbians in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Uganda, and has received awards and recognition in South Africa and abroad.

According to reports, hard drives and computers containing her archive of still photographs and video footage, representing more than five years’ worth of work, were the only things stolen from the apartment, fueling speculation that the theft was a targeted attempt to silence an artist who has been as controversial as she has been celebrated. Among the contents of the stolen hard drives were photographs of the funerals of lesbians killed in hate crimes.

The theft occurred on April 20 and the investigation is said to be ongoing.

Muholi did back up her work, but the back-up hard drives were kept in the same apartment and were also stolen, she told the Cape Times. The theft is a tragic reminder of the benefit of storing archives and backups in more than one location.

The business prospectus is incomplete, so Shutterstock has not yet specified the number of shares it intends to sell or the price. But for the purposes of its filing the company estimated it would raise no more than $115 million.

Founded eight years ago by CEO (and majority shareholder) Jonathan Oringer, Shutterstock was one of the first microstock agencies to offer subscription-based pricing. That allows users to download up to 25 images per day for a flat fee of $250 per month, or $2559 per year. Users can also license image on demand, for prices starting at about $10 per image.

Last year, Shutterstock’s total sales revenues were $120 million, a 45 percent increase over 2010 revenues of $83 million and nearly double the 2009 revenues of $61 million. The average price users paid per image download last year was $2.05, according to Shutterstock’s SEC filing.

Meanwhile, net income–which is income after administrative, marketing, and research and development costs are subtracted from total revenues–has hovered around $20 million for the past three years. Income has remained relatively flat despite the rise in revenues because Shutterstock’s operating costs have increased by about 50 percent per year since 2009. Operating costs were $97 million last year.

The company says it plans to use the IPO money for operations. Shutterstock says it plans to invest in new technology, and in its sales and marketing efforts to attract more contributors and customers. Most customers are small and medium-sized businesses, but Shutterstock says it hasn’t fully tapped that market. It also wants to increase revenues from large businesses, which currently account for just 10 percent of its revenues.

Shutterstock claims an image database of more than 19 million photos and illustrations and 500,000 video clips, provided by more than 35,000 contributors. The vast majority of contributors are amateur photographers.