Shortly after photographing Bruce at Wrigley Field a few months ago, I embarked on the massive task of scanning my complete Bruce Springsteen archives. It took me about two weeks to make about 500 scans from transparencies and negatives, and I have spent the last few months slowly cleaning them up in Photoshop. I am reminded of why Bruce has a special place in my heart. His publicist, Marilyn Laverty, is an old friend, and has always gotten me access to his shows. Her usual  method was to get me a photo pass and a ticket in the first three rows to shoot the rest of the show from.

So, in July of 1984, she invited me up to St. Paul, Minn. To shoot the kickoff of the Born in the USA tour, asking me to come up a day early. So I hopped on a plane and flew to Minneapolis, cabbed it to the hotel and checked in. I called her and she had me meet her in the lobby with my equipment. We got in her car and drove to the St. Paul Civic Center, walked into an empty arena, in which Bruce and the band were on stage performing a song called Dancing in the Dark, with a lot of video cameras moving about. She turned to me and said “Bruce is shooting his first video- directed by Brian De Palma- go nuts- start shooting!!” So I spent the next 4 hours with unprecedented access to the band, including the scenes where he pulled a young model out of the audience to dance on stage with him (Turned out the model hired for the shoot was Courtney Cox, in her first acting roll- way before Friends)

I stayed up there for the next three nights, shooting the first three shows of the tour. While talking to Marilyn before the third night, it suddenly dawned on me that the band was coming to the Chicago area for the next five shows, and I asked her if I could keep this access going. She agreed, and I flew home the next morning. The following day, I got up, got in my car and headed to the Alpine Valley Music Theater in southern Wisconsin for Bruce’s first of two shows there. The access was tremendous, and I got some of the best photos of Bruce and the band that I have ever gotten. I shot those two shows, and three more in Chicago and went home satisfied.

Almost exactly one year later, in the beginning of August 1985, I received a call from a photo editor at Newsweek. She told me that Marilyn had suggested that they look at my pictures for a major feature they were doing on Bruce. I sent them a lot of stuff (back in the day, you actually had to send original transparencies- imagine that) I sent them a pile of slide pages about 2 inches thick- considering that it was going to be a big feature, maybe they would use a few of them! That Friday, I got a call from the photo office. The words coming out of the phone were words I will never forget- “WE are going to put Bruce Springsteen on the cover next week. We have narrowed it down to three photos, and 2 are yours. If we use one of yours, how do you want the credit to read?” HOLY CRAP!!! I was left twisting in the wind till Sunday night. I got a call from a friend of mine who edited a long gone rock magazine that was printed in the same plant as Newsweek. He was at the plant doing a press check and picked up a copy of Newsweek off of a pile, curious about the cover photo. He immediately called me and said “Do you know you have the cover of Newsweek this week?”

That is the moment that I feel I was legitimized as a photojournalist.

The reason I am writing this is that I just finished reading the last print edition of Newsweek. Starting next week, my subscription will switch to the iPad version. I am left pondering where journalism is going. The final issue has some great writing and memories from some of the many great writers who worked there over the years. I wonder if anyone will ever get that call telling them they are going to have a photo on the cover of Newsweek?

Lally Weymouth was asked what she thought of the switch, and she said it was inevitable. It is important to note that Newsweek was forced to speed up publishing the Bill Clinton- Monica Lewinski issue because Matt Drudge broke the story first on the Drudge Report.

As the year come to an end, I remain cautiously optimistic. After all, it is still words and pictures on a white background

It seems that Instagram put up some new rules due to go into effect next month that give them the right to sell the use of any photo on the site to corporations to use in advertisement on the site. ASMP and APA put out notices decrying the issue and pretty much got the whole issue wrong!

From: http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/18/3780158/instagrams-new-terms-of-service-what-they-really-mean

First, like every other company on the web that stores user data, Instagram has always had an expansive license to use and copy your photos. It has to — that’s how it runs its networks of servers around the world. And Instagram’s existing terms specifically give the company the right to “place such advertising and promotions on the Instagram Services or on, about, or in conjunction with your Content.” Instagram has always had the right to use your photos in ads, almost any way it wants. We could have had the exact same freakout last week, or a year ago, or the day Instagram launched.

The new terms actually make things clearer and — importantly — more limited. That “on, about, or in conjunction” with language is dead and gone. Now you’re only agreeing that someone else can pay Instagram to display your photos and other information only in connection with paid or sponsored content. These phrases have very specific meanings — Instagram can’t sell your photos to anyone, for example. It simply doesn’t have permission. And Budweiser isn’t allowed to crop your photo of a bar, slap a logo on it, and run it as an ad on Instagram — that would go well beyond “display” and into modification, which Instagram doesn’t have a license to do. (In fact, the old Instagram terms allowed for modification, but the new ones don’t — they actually got better for users in that regard.) In technical legal terms, Instagram doesn’t have the right to create a “derivative work” under 17 USC §106. The company can’t sell your photos, and it can’t take your photos and change them in any meaningful way.

So what can Instagram do? Well, an advertiser can pay Instagram to display your photos in a way that doesn’t create anything new — so Budweiser can put up a box in the timeline that says “our favorite Instagram photos of this bar!” and put user photos in there, but it can’t take those photos and modify them, or combine them with other content to create a new thing. Putting a logo on your photo would definitely break the rules. But putting a logo somewhere near your photos? That would probably be okay.

This is exactly what Facebook has been doing all along- advertisers can pay to “sponsor” your posts in various categories to make sure they prominently appear in your friends’ News Feeds.

The real question is “Why is ASMP wasting its time trying to police a section of the web that no photographer in his or her right mind would ever post their photos to?? Photographers that post intellectual property to any web based social media site are fools anyway!!!

By the way, there was so much negative talk about the instagram situation that they backed off the next day on the language, or at least said they will.

Last week, ASMP and APA sent out an announcement concerning the stock photo agency Alamy. The first lines read as follows:

“On November 20, 2012 Alamy sent an announcement of changes to their Contributor Contract that will take effect January5th, 2013.  According to Alamy the key reason for issuing a new contract is a 10-percentage point Increase in Alamy’s commission on direct and distributor sales.  Notice, it is an INCREASE in Alamy’s commission, which means another component of the sale, contributors (photographers) will have their commission reduced.  APA and ASMP want our respective members to be aware of the impact of this change.”

Later in the article, they supplied a link to Alamy’s blog, where they try to explain why taking 60% is better for the photographer than them taking 50%, and also try to explain what they are doing to increase sales:

http://www.alamy.com/Blog/contributor/archive/2012/12/04/5278.aspx

It is an interesting take on business, but doesn’t bring up the major point- that the system is broken and photography has been devalued to the point that it is pretty much worthless! So them saying that they are trying to punch up sales will have almost no effect, as more of nothing is still almost nothing!

Or….. as ASMP and APA says:

“While we commend the Alamy efforts in creating increased sales, we seriously question the decision to fund those efforts solely at the expense of contribution photographers, who supply the very images that are at the core of their model.

Photographers need to seriously evaluate their own business models and decide if it in fact remains in their best interests to affiliate with Alamy given the new terms.”

Last week I photographed Chris Issak.

About ¾ of the way through the show, Chris noticed a few fans being hassled taking cell phone photos. He stopped the show and this exchange happened: “Hey folks, take as many photos you want. We spent a lot of money dressing like this and we will never look this good again!”

From Kenny Johnson (Drummer):  You mean like those flowered effeminate suits you wear?

From Chris:“Professional athletes wear suits like this- don’t you ever watch figure skating?”

Too bad all the professional photographers shot three songs from the soundboard.

Last week, someone I am working on a project with suggested that we start a Facebook page and post some of the projects photos to it. I reacted very badly!!

Here is a quote from the Facebook rules and regulations, found at: http://www.facebook.com/legal/terms

For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

YIKES!!!!

The next day, Neil Steinberg in the Sun Times wrote  a column titled:

I do own the copyright on this,right?

In it he discussed a guy who put a copyright notice on his Facebook page and compared it to “nailing a notice on your door that the mortgage that you agreed to that was $1500.00 is now $150.00. Nice try!

You sign your rights away to Facebook when you join, and the only way you get out of it is to take your page down!

Just to add insult to injury, the new Photoshop User declares:

Facebook strips out camera metadata when you upload a photo, meaning that metadata crawlers can’t successfully search Facebook photo galleries for camera metadata.

So, I have a Facebook page that I almost never look at, and have never posted a photo to, although photos of me keep on cropping up on it, for some reason. I have over 2000 friends, although I don’t know who more than half of them are!

But it is a necessary evil in the world today (I guess to try to appear hip and with it). People continually invite me to things that I find out about a few weeks after they are over- it seems that this is the go-to way of communication today. I’m not really buying into it!

In the 80’s and 90’s, my main magazine client was Playboy Magazine. Every publicist in the music business knew that if they gave me access, there was a good chance that their artist would appear somewhere in Playboy. It didn’t hurt if their client was a good looking woman.

So, in August of 2001, a Nashville publicist called me and asked me if I was interesting in driving out to Joliet, Il. (about 60 mines from my house), to photograph Chely Wright, one of her clients. It is a nice ride out to the Rialto Square Theater, a hundred hear old theater with a lobby made for photography. I met Chely backstage mid afternoon, and she told me how nervous she was to appear sexy in a men’s magazine. Seemed that her brother was in the Marines stationed in the middle east, and she was afraid he would take a lot of grief for his sister appearing in Playboy. I reassured her that the pictures would be tasteful, and she went off to do her hair and makeup, while I scouted out location and set up lights. She found me in the lobby and we took some nice photos, which appeared in Playboy a few months later. I never saw her again, but read a lot about her until 2010, when she publicly came out as gay. She appeared as the grand marshall of the Chicago Gay Pride parade that year, and released an autobiography.

This weekend, I watched a movie called “Wish Me Away” on Showtime. The film documents the extraordinary steps she took toward making the public announcement of her sexuality on the Today Show. It shows the remarkable courage it took to pretty much give up her career (The Country Music community doesn’t take well to people outside their “norm”). The first half of the film is filled with her sharing the stage with some of the biggest names in Country Music. Near the end of the film is a slide on the screen that says: “Since her announcement, there have been no invitations from the country music community to share the stage or recording studio.” Except for Rodney Crowell!! She called him when she was deciding what to do, and started sending him songs. He persuaded her to record them, and produced her 2010 album. So at least there is one guy in Nashville that is a mensch!

At the end of the movie, a slide comes on the screen: “She has no regrets.”

#1. Last week I photographed a beer companies sales convention. During one of the sales presentation, the announcer talked about the great new promotion the brand (Rolling Rock) was going to start next year:  Send in your camera phone pictures of you and your friends having fun and drinking Rolling Rock. The “winners” will see their photos on Rolling Rock packages and in advertising! Crowdsourcing at its best. Get free photos and cut photographers out of the equation! And….. if you don’t have a camera phone, they will be setting up photo booths at major events, so you can jump in and take the photos there. Oh well, another opportunity lost to new technologies.

#2, Last week, Ritz Camera closed most of their stores in the Chicago area. Not enough people buying stuff to keep them open. I also heard a rumor that the biggest camera store in Chicago (Helix) will be closing it’s doors soon. It used to be the place to go in town for professional equipment, but Calumet came in and blew them away. Another one bites the dust.

Election day brought me much hope. Barack won, the way his people said he would, although it was kind of scary. The two guys that talked about abortion and rape ( booth Republicans) were soundly defeated, and many tea party people were voted out of office. Good job, America!

But, here in Illinois, we continue to hold our lead as, quoting Newsweek from last year, the most corrupt state in the union. We narrowly edged out Louisiana last year, but we are widening the lead!!

• Only state with our last two governors in federal prison.

• Only major city with three sets of father and son alderman convicted for corruption. (Helps to have a good gene pool if  you want to be corrupt).

Last Tuesday, we saw two more shining examples of democracy at work:

Jesse Jackson, Jr., who has been in and out of the Mayo clinic being treated for depression and bi-polar, who didn’t campaign at all in this election, won in a landslide. THEN…….the day after the election it came out as front page news that he is trying to work a plea bargain on charges that he used campaign funds to remodel his house in Washington, and for flying his mistress around the country. If he goes down as a felon, he cannot hold office and a new election will have to be held, costing the taxpayers mucho money!!!

Then we have the strange case of Derrick Smith, a state senator, who was indicted for accepting bribes last summer and was voted out of the senate (First guy ever to be kicked out) but remained on the ballot. He won in a landslide! Main reason is that most people just voted Democratic, giving him the vote. (see headline of this post). It was kind of humorous to read the description of his “Victory” party on election night. 12 people showed up, and that includes his family. Lots of ribs and chicken left over on the buffet.

Friday’s paper brought some more statistics:

Jackson will be the second congressman in a row from the 2nd District to be convicted of a crime. He is already the third consecutive 2nd Congressional District representative to be embroiled in a sex scandal!!

So, we in Illinois elected two future convicted criminals, ensuring us of our solid standing as the most corrupt state in the nation!! We are very proud.

In December of 2003, I spent a week traveling around the midwest on a tour bus with Bono, Ashley Judd and Chris Tucker, photographing them while they talked about the AIDS crisis in Africa.

Near the end of the tour we found ourselves in Cincinnati. After lecturing students at a college, the group moved on to an AIDS hospice. There was a reception in the common room, and I found myself standing next to a little, balding guy with a name tag that said Peter Frampton. My first thought was “That must be pretty weird growing up with the same name as a famous English musician.” Then he started to speak in an English accent and I Realized- YIKES- that’s the actual Peter Frampton!

I bring this up because there is a note from Peter Frampton in Bob Lefsetz’s mailbag post this week. There is also a note from Wendy Waldman. In it she speaks one of the great truths of the music business:

“I know that somewhere on the net it was written that I’ve been “disappointed” that I never “broke through.” I’ve said a lot of dumb stuff in the press over 40 years, but that is ONE thing I have never said. In fact, not breaking through was probably the greatest gift of my life. It has forced me to keep pushing my boundaries, to keep studying, to make a buttload of mistakes and a few exciting successes, to search, experiment, to “ride the rails” as I said in the show the other night, to learn to produce, be a session player, a singer, a performer, a teacher, a songwriter in different disciplines, to range all over the globe in incredible musical experiences and with the greatest musicians of my time, to learn new styles of music and work in every possible configuration and discipline except for classical music, (Alas, how I wish I could have.) These boundless, wider ranging opportunities only came to me because I had no choice–I had to stay restless and to keep learning, and it made me grow. I would never have survived being a star in my 20s and 30s.”

I know that Peter Frampton is still touring.  He recently toured America playing the songs from the album Frampton Comes Alive for its 35th anniversary. I wonder what his life and career would have been like if he didn’t happen to record and release the biggest selling live album of all time in 1976!!

In the new Rolling Stone. There is a great article about Tom Hanks, with a fabulous quote from Julia Roberts, spoken at a dinner honoring him. When she got up to speak at the end of the night, she said:

“All right, well, it’s late and I’m paying my babysitter overtime and I have to pee, so: Evevvvverybody fuckin’ likes you.”

During my career, I have had several occasions to run into Mr. Hanks, and he has always been a totally cool guy.

The first sighting was during  a video shoot for a song that was the theme for a movie called Nothing in Common being shot in Chicago. The cast included, Jackie Gleason, Bess Armstrong and a young television actor named Tom Hanks. The song was by a band that I used to work with called the Thompson Twins.

During the shoot (on the set of the movie) Tom was kind of sitting around bored so I started asking him to pose for pictures. No problem!

About a year later, a friend of mine at PBS booked him for a kids show she was producing. He remembered me (usually nobody does) and we reminisced about the video shoot. He remembered details that I had long forgotten.

Several years later he was a guest on the Oprah Winfrey show. He was a big star by then, but made sure to come up to me before the show and reminisce again! A true Mensch!