The Russian Photos Blog

Photo Of The Week: 90 Year Old Hurrah

Russian Photos — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:21:54 +0000

Moscow, Russia, 09/05/2013.

A 90 year old Russian World War Two veteran shouts the Russian military salute in Gorky Park during the country’s annual Victory Day celebrations.

Photo Of The Week: Police Observer

Russian Photos — Mon, 06 May 2013 19:26:23 +0000

Moscow, Russia, 06/05/2013.

A young policeman in Bolotnaya Square watches protesters through a gap in banners with images of imprisoned Russian opposition leaders as some 20,000 demonstrators protested against Russian President Vladimir Putin and demanded the release of political prisoners. The demonstration marked the first anniversary of a protest that descended into violence between protesters and police and resulted in over 600 arrests.

Photo Of The Week: The Melnikov House

Russian Photos — Wed, 01 May 2013 17:21:29 +0000

Moscow, Russia, 25/04/2013.

Ekaterina Karinskaya inside the Melnikov House [1927-1929], the most famous construction by Soviet avant-garde architect Konstantin Melnikov, in central Moscow. The unique cylindrical house, which is slowly collapsing due to nearby construction work, is the subject of a complex dispute between the architect’s grand-daughter Ekaterina, who lives there and wants to turn it into a museum, her sister Elena, and businessman Sergei Gordeev.

Photo Of The Week: Billion Dollar Baby Doctor

admin — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 13:27:36 +0000

Lapino, Russia, 29/03/2013.

Russia’s newest billionaire Dr Mark Kurtser at his new hospital in the town of Lapino in with children’s diagnostic equipment, the only one of its kind in Russia. Dr Kurtser’s company, MD Medical Group Investments, runs 12 medical clinics across Russia and Ukraine, specialising in childbirth, gynaecological and vitro fertilisation services.

Magnum Photos CNN War Fashion Photographer Workshop

admin — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 17:18:13 +0000

Join the Magnum Photos CNN War Fashion Photographer Workshop and this could be you!

Magnum Branding Inc™ and the former news service known as CNN are proud to announce their first War Fashion Photographer Workshop. This two week intensive course is designed to equip you with all the core skills required to become a top fashion photographer, or failing that, an award winning photojournalist.

Although fashion and war photography are often thought of as worlds apart this workshop will show the two are in fact closely linked: and when fashion and war photography come together the results can be very cool. In the past many photographers have been reluctant to move from the security of frontline embeds to the chaos of the catwalk because of the dangers associated with the fashion world. But figures show that relatively few photographers are killed or injured on fashion assignments, and the skills you learn with us will help you safely sashay your way to success.

Course leader is CNN Professor of War and Fashion Moni Basu. She will be assisted by Simon Barnett, author of the forthcoming Anyone Here Been Raped And Got A New Collection Coming Out? Special guidance on ethics and morality in times of war and fashion will be provided by John Galliano.

The workshop will be split into two parts. In the first week you will work independently in Afghanistan*. Working alone and blagging food and accommodation from foreign NGOs – although with a makeup assistant on call – will provide a basic grounding in the skills required before moving to the second stage. In week two you will be thrown into the fashion frontline and embedded with the Gramsci House of Couture before and during a major international fashion show.

Workshop graduates will receive a Magnum/CNN Conflict Fashion Pro Certificate™ – worth $100 at any Leica store – a CNN iReporter badge and a souvenir conflict photographer doll.

Subjects covered by the workshop will include:

Hostile environment training for the fashion world
How to air kiss privates on parade without embarrassment
Improvised explosive devices: how to spot them on the catwalk
Beauty lighting for firefights
Suicide bomber jacket or cutting edge fashion: how to tell the difference
Makeup: when to use for beauty and when for camouflage
Fashion flak: next season’s colours for protective clothing
What your scarf says about you
Red dot or not: why the Leica remains the conflicted fashion photographer’s jewelry of choice

Demand for this workshop is sure to be high so a vetting procedure will be in place. All applicants must have completed at least one tour of duty at a recognised international fashion show. Applications by email only to fashionvictim@magnumphotos.com or wargame@cnn.com.

* Subject to availability, scheduled troop withdrawals and developments in US foreign policy. This section may relocate to Iran: please ensure you have all the necessary visas.

Agence France Presse vs Morel: Photo Agency Found Guilty Of Theft, Faces Million Dollar Bill

admin — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 13:32:35 +0000

So, AFP, how’s that “steal the photos & sue the photographer” business plan working out then?

Three years almost to the day since photo agency AFP heisted Haitian photographer Daniel Morel’s award-winning photographs of the 2010 earthquake the first court decision has been handed down in what has evolved into a high-profile and significant copyright case. In a humiliating ruling against the agency, a New York court has upheld Morel’s claim for copyright infringement against AFP. The agency had initially attempted to sue the photographer when he objected to their theft of his images from Twitpic, where he had uploaded them and linked to his Twitter account in an attempt to market his work.

This isn’t the end of the affair though, just the beginning of the end. For one thing, there’s the matter of the bill AFP will face. Morel’s claim against AFP calculated damages based on treating each download of any of his images by an AFP client as a separate infringement. This resulted in a figure so huge that nobody seemed quite sure what it was, but it certainly totaled upwards of 100 million dollars. The judge however threw this calculation out, stating that the law only allowed for one infringement per image, not for each use of that image. But although the court has now set the rules on how the damages should be assessed it declined to make an actual assessment, leaving that for a jury to later decide.

Morel uploaded 13 images, of which 8 were infringed, and the maximum allowed per image is $150,000. There’s also the matter of AFP’s falsification of Morel’s copyright information, which allows for up to a further $25,000 in damages per image. So the maximum the jury can award against AFP is $1,400,000. For their part AFP previously asked in a court memorandum that if found guilty they should pay only $240,000. Whether that memorandum will even apply when the matter comes before the jury is unclear; what is now clear is that AFP’s final bill will be somewhere between a quarter of a million and one and a half million dollars, plus substantial legal costs.

Exactly how much will be decided by the jury, who will decide partly on the evidence of willfulness in the AFP infringements; but since courtrooms are theatre they will also be swayed by the performances of the lawyers and witnesses. So far the AFP legal team’s performance has not been Oscar material: while outside court they have declared “we shall prevail”, inside they have at times been mocked by the judge. There’s plenty of evidence of willfulness in AFP internal memos that have already come to light, but it’s the agency’s director of photography for North and South America Vincent Amalvy who is likely to deliver the killer blow. In addition to his involvement in the Morel fiasco Amalvy was also caught stealing other Haitian images, and has already admitted that when it comes to breaking news AFP toss out the copyright rulebook. Such behaviour is unlikely to play well with the jury, so while the eventual award may not reach the maximum allowable, bet on it getting into six figures.

But the real final total for the Haitian infringements will almost certainly be more, possibly much more. For although AFP and Getty are the headline defendants in the case, their distribution of the images led to many further infringements by end users such as Time, CNN and many others. These have already been settled out of court for undisclosed sums. And the AFP ruling doesn’t include co-defendants Getty Images: that will be addressed by a jury trial, and should Getty lose the result will be further substantial damages awarded to Morel.

A press release from Morel’s lawyers the Hoffman Law Firm following the AFP ruling both addressed the issue of damages and hinted at the fate that may befall Getty:

“Although Judge Nathan rejected Morel’s legal theory entitling him to as much as one hundred twenty million dollars in statutory damages, Morel still hopes to win millions in damages following the trial. The ruling and the case may have implications for users of social media as well as ‘service providers’.”

That leads directly to the issue of AFP’s partner and co-defendant Getty Images. The court didn’t rule on Getty’s culpability, leaving that decision to a further jury trial, since Getty eventually entered a different defence from AFP. That defence is, to say the least, interesting, since it essentially hinges on Getty throwing their partner under a bus:

“Getty Images requires and relies on the representations AFP makes about its content in the License Agreement. It could not possibly investigate whether the hundreds of thousands of images that AFP transmits to Getty Images’ database every year infringe other parties’ copyrights, without altering its business model, incurring massive expense.”

The law Getty are relying on to back that statement up is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, specifically the clause that absolves internet service providers from guilt when infringing material is uploaded to their servers by a third party: this is commonly referred to as the safe harbour or Youtube clause.

At first sight that looks like a viable defence: the DMCA is quite specific in its requirements and Getty appear to have been careful comply with at least some of them. But there are at least two potentially fatal flaws in Getty’s strategy. For one, the DMCA is specifically intended to protect an internet service provider from the legal consequences of copyright infringement on their servers initiated by a party over whom they have no control: Youtube should not be held responsible for the behaviour of a teenager uploading pop videos is the rationale. But such a comparison is obviously absurd: Getty and AFP are major media companies who have entered into a legal agreement to syndicate images for big money, not teens sharing ripped vids.

Secondly, the DMCA only protects a provider when the entire process of the infringement is automated. Getty are stressing the automated nature of both the AFP feed and Getty’s own distribution system. However this argument is undermined by evidence that Getty staff manually altered metadata attached to the Morel images, and that agency staff licensed some of the images in telephone sales.

And the biggest problem for Getty is that they are relying completely on the DMCA to get them off the hook: they have no other options left. So in the end Getty’s reliance on the DMCA may prove to be a sign of desperation rather than clever legal maneuvering.

Away from the courtroom there’s also a comic sub-plot to be resolved, starring various figures who either absolved AFP of blame or actively defended the agency’s actions. Aside from the usual freetard nutters these included the National Press Photographer Association’s Mickey Osterreicher, photo blogger John Harrington and Visa Pour L’Image’s J-F Leroy.

Osterreicher – who’s only a lawyer after all – managed to read the wrong company Terms of Service, quoting those of Twitter when the ones that mattered were those of Twitpic. Harrington, who posits himself as a business expert, got the company right but the date wrong, relying on ToS that Twitpic had introduced after and in response to the AFP theft: that led him to proclaim “AFP did the right thing”. And Leroy was especially vociferous in his defence of the accused, a stance that most observers concluded was entirely unconnected with the agencies’ close association with, and sponsorship of, his Perpignan photo festival.

Curiously, some of these carefully considered expert opinions have now mysteriously disappeared. In the wake of AFP’s crushing defeat it would be interesting to hear what Osterreicher, Harrington and Leroy have to say for themselves now. Instead expect only the sound of web pages being deleted.

Photo Of The Week: Presidential Guard

admin — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 09:27:01 +0000

Moscow, Russia, 13/01/2013.

Russian police guard a skip marked “for garbage” that has been filled with portraits of President Vladimir Putin and other Russian politicians. Thousands of opposition protesters carried posters of President Vladimir Putin and members of the Russian parliament with the word “Shame” written in red at a protest called the March Against The Scoundrels. The protest was against the new law banning the adoption of Russian children by Americans, widely seen as a response to the recently passed USA Magnitsky Act.

Photo Of The Week: Moscow Chainsaw Blizzard

admin — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 11:34:10 +0000

Moscow, Russia, 30/12/2012.

An ice sculptor with a chainsaw competes in the “furious Saw: Ice hour masterpiece” contest at the opening of the Snow Kingdom MultiGRAD in Kuzminki Park.

Photo Of The Week: Father Frost In Person

admin — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 14:39:39 +0000

Moscow, Russia, 24/12/2012.

After a week of temperatures of below minus 20 degrees Centigrade, Moscow’s official Ded Moroz, or Father Frost, launches the city’s forthcoming New Year celebrations after arriving at Gorky Park on an open top bus.

Photo Of The Week: The Eggman Is Just Walking

admin — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 05:33:36 +0000

Moscow, Russia, 15/12/2012.

A man wearing an egg for a head and signs reading “The Eggman is just walking” and “The Eggman does not go to unauthorised rallies” walks past police in Lubyanka Square at an unauthorised opposition rally to mark a year of protests against Russian President Vladimir Putin.