The german publisher Jahreszeitenverlag (JALAG) with magazines such as “Petra, Für Sie, Merian” now forces photographers to sign contracts that give all rights of all photo material of assigned JALAG shoots to the JALAG-syndication. So for everybody who signs this contract and keeps working for JALAG publications, he won’t have the possibility to re-sell his material later – which means that this important channel of distributing and selling pictures will be closed in the future…IF WE DON’T PROTEST AGAINST IT!

So all the photographers and students out there, click the FREELENS (a german photographers union) protest blog and sign your name there! This movement against stealing photographers rights seems to become hugh now, and it should even be bigger as the disussion is about our economic future!

Read also here or here.

Quick note in between: the art/design/photography part of the guardians website (http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/photography) is a good source with quite interesting articles. I like their “My best shot” series where every week a well known photographer presents his personal favourite shot and explains how it happened.

I think it’s very interesting what is happening in the publishing and photo book industry now: there seem to be more and more do-it-yourself services that offer print-on-demand books and magazines, so that smaller editions are possbile at reasonable costs. The questions is how the quality is and if the user has to use the layout software of the company or if it’s also possible to send pdf’s for printing. I will definitely try one of these services, when my coal miner project turns into a book one day

http://www.blurb.com
http://magcloud.com

If you know any website or blogs that deal with editorial design, photography etc, please let me know!
And check out the link list on the right, I try to update it frequently.
Cheers!

Hello me friends out there,
as there is so much good and interesting photostuff out there and also so many things in the photography and art world to talk about, I thought it is a good idea to start this small blog and see what I can contribute…I don’t know exactly how this here is gonna work out, but I wanna try to put some informations together about editorial and portrait photographers in Germany as well as elsewhere. I would like to introduce some of my photography friends to you to push our small DORTMUND (that’s where we study) network a little bit further.
So, lot’s of ideas and thoughts though my english needs some improvement, but I hope it’s not too bad.
So far so good.
Have a great weekend!