The Joy of Working for Nothing

Most of us will have enjoyed a Charles Dickens story through reading his books or seeing them portrayed in a film or TV drama. Dickens created a wonderful cast of unforgettable characters. They were bound up in stories that frequently touched on the injustices in contemporary society and highlighted the appalling poverty suffered by people in its lower strata. His books have never been out of print, a fact that is popular with publishers. The Random House Group, the largest general-interest trade publisher in the world according to Wikipedia, are planning to publish a new edition of Oliver Twist and for that they need a new cover photograph.

Google+ Now Preserves Copyright Metadata

One month ago we reported that all metadata, including copyright metadata, was deleted from the images displayed on Google+ pages. We discovered during our investigation that Google+ did preserve the metadata on its servers, but by removing it from the displayed images it rendered them as orphan works. The only official comment that we know Google made about this came from the Google+ Photo Community Manager, Brian Rose, who said that displayed images were "optimised for consumption", i.e. metadata is deleted. As far as we know Google made no other announcement about this, but yesterday we heard from another photographer that things seemed to have changed recently.

New campaign to embed information permanently in digital media

Media release of 13 December 2011

A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but permanently attached descriptions are worth a lot more as photos travel through the digital world. A campaign has been launched now to embed descriptive and rights information in digital media and to retain it during the whole life cycle.

Sony World Photography Awards 2012

Last Call for Entries

Today, Wednesday 07 December, the World Photography Organisation, issues a last call for entries for the 2012 Sony World Photography Awards, the world's most comprehensive photography competition. The deadline for entries is Wednesday 04 January 2012 giving photographers from across the world just four weeks left to enter.