It’s an EISA Award winner? I’ll buy two!…$25K grant for West Oz photographer…Ancestry.com in photo rights grab…Godox owner sees red on green colour caste
It’s an EISA Award winner? I’ll buy two!
How many people do you know who have purchased a bit of photo kit on the strength of it winning an ‘Of The Year’ prize from, say EISA (‘Expert Imaging and Sound Association’) or TIPA (‘Technical Image Press Association’)?
Me neither, but still they persevere, years after year, decade after bloody decade. As noted before in Inside Imaging, it’s passing strange but the awards seem to be bestowed such that few brands walk away without a prize. The photo companies all send out press releases noting how extremely proud they are that two, three four or more of their portfolio have taken out a coveted award. All the websites and magazines – especially the ones who are members of the EISA or the TIPA – dutifully run the multiple stories, staggered over a week or so – At the end of the day, it’s much ado about nothing.
But if you are really keen to know which products won the 25 categories in the just-announced EISA awards, click here. Among them are the Epson Surecolor P700 inkjet printer. It is surprising that any group of experts would name this a product of this year or any other. Epson has placed spacers in the cartridges of the P700 to artificially reduce their capacity by 50 percent, from 50ml to 25ml. Otherwise they would be the same capacity of the P900, which besides this rip-off (they charge about the same for the 25ml as the 50ml cartridges) and the fact that it is an A3+ and not an A2+ printer, run the same technology. The P900 cartridges fit the P700, but they are chipped so you can’t use them. The initial printer set-up for the P700 uses almost all the ink in the supplied cartridges. The Epson P700 is among the most expensive of all recent and current inkjet printers on a per-print basis. If these experts had any consideration for the people to whom they are recommending products, they wouldn’t be rewarding such cynical, customer-hostile behaviour with awards.
$25K grant for West Oz photographer…
Western Australian photographer Claudia Caporn is an inaugural recipient of the $25,000 Minderoo Foundation Artist Fund, announced back in April.
The Perth-based photographer points her camera at rural Australia. She has a close connection with life in agricultural communities, having grown up on a wheat and sheep farm in WA’s Southern Wheatbelt region in a town called Quairading.
She intends to use the $25,000 to further her social documentary project, Western Australian Women of the Land, which captures the women working in the agriculture sector.
‘Historically, farmers in Australia have been painted as white, heterosexual, tough men, and this has often meant that women are labelled as domestics or farmers’ wives,’ Caporn said. ‘I want this project to photograph the truth in the industry. Ultimately, I want to use this body of work to celebrate women in agriculture and inspire women to consider a job in agriculture.’
The Minderoo Foundation is a ‘modern philanthropic organisation’ and its Artist Fund is a new initiative, with six artists provided $25,000 and four additional $10,000 artist residencies. It’s founders, billionaires Andrew and Nicola Forrest, made their fortune from the mining and cattle industries, with Andrew listed as Australia’s second wealthiest person (at time of publishing, anyway.)
Out From The Mist – raising awareness about mental illness
Out from the Mist is an Australian-based international photo and video competition raising awareness about mental health.
According to the Out from the Mist organisers, one in 10 people globally live with mental illness.
Out Of The Mist is inviting anyone living with or having experienced a form of mental illness the opportunity to submit entries to its 2021 competition – either stills or short videos.
There are no specific categories as long as the photo or video depicts the experience of living with mental illness, or the recovery process, or the indirect relationship of watching a loved one suffer.
Submissions are open now and will close on September 24, 2021. Winners will be announced on October 10 to coincide with Mental Health Week. Single entries are $35.
Prizes include cash, Affinity One software licenses and vouchers from Brisbane-based photo lab, FotoFast.
Find out more here: https://www.outfromthemist.com/
Ancestry.com in photo rights grab
Family tree business ancestry.com has decided to effectively assume ownership if every single image posted on the site by it’s several million subscribers. It’s also decided that it owns everyone’s family trees and documents such as births, death and marriage certificates:
“Also, by submitting User Provided Content through any of the Services, you grant Ancestry a perpetual, sublicensable, worldwide, non-revocable, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, publish, distribute, provide access to, create derivative works of, and otherwise use such User Provided Content to the extent and in the form or context we deem appropriate on or through any media or medium and with any technology or devices now known or hereafter developed or discovered. This includes the right for Ancestry to copy, display, and index your User Provided Content. Ancestry will own the indexes it creates.”
This generated a fair amount of concern from ancestry.com members and a somewhat hurt response from the multinational long the lines of ‘Geez, all we wanted to do was spread joy around the world’: ‘It was never intended to enable Ancestry to do anything with our users’ content other than facilitate a vibrant family history community that brings the value of personal discoveries to all,’ it wrote in a blog post.
It also provided a way for Ancestry members to prevent its rights grab – they can bugger off. It now allows you to delete user content from the site, automatically revoking Ancestry’s permission to use it. Almost as if it was actually deleted! Except that if you have been so unwise as to enable others to use your content ‘this license continues until the content has been deleted both by you and the other users.’
The best part of Ancestry.com’s verbal gymnastics is this pearler: ‘Notwithstanding the non-revocable and perpetual nature of this license, it terminates when your User Provided Content is deleted from our systems. Now if something is ‘perpetual’ and ‘irrevocable’, how can it ever ‘terminate’? Lawyers please!
The new Terms and Conditions kick in on September 2.
Godox owner sees red on colour caste
In an article on his website, The Godox AD100 is unusable for Professional Photography, UK photographer Paul Richardson argues just that.
He claims that the latest and cheapest release in the Chinese-based Godox AD series is firstly not powerful enough to use on its own and, when combined with other Godox AD lights it introduces a nasty green colour caste which can’t always be corrected out with editing software. He returned one unit thinking it was a dud only to discover the second was similarly duddish.
‘From a £260 flash you would expect there to be some changes in the colour temperature, and that would normally be acceptable,’ he wrote. ‘However, the big issue with the AD100 is the colour cast. It is green. Very green.
‘Godox advertise themselves as a brand for professional photographers. Which means you’d expect professional level quality…At the price point, I’m not expecting them to be perfect. But why release a new flash in the AD-series which is incompatible with other flashes in the same series?’
We asked Rob Gatto, managing director of local distributor Kayell whether there had been any concerns locally: ‘I have not had any feedback from any retailers or end users in regard to a green cast when using the AD100Pro,’ he replied.
‘The unit has been selling well and has been well received in Australia.’
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