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A Summit to Remember by Mark Lapin Openness, optimism and cooperation among competitors characterize Microsoft’s first Pro Photo Summit Article rating: 8.00

For many who attended, even those who arrived as skeptics, Microsoft’s first Pro Photo Summit proved to be a welcome move by a power player at a watershed moment in the history of digital photography.  The technology has matured at mind-boggling speed, progressing from a consumer toy to a ubiquitous professional tool in a dozen years but the industry’s inability to implement basic standards and the fact that computer operating systems were not optimized for digital imaging have posed persistent problems.  The Microsoft Pro Photo Summit may well be remembered as the breakthrough event when those last barriers began to fall and the digital evolution became an irresistible, irreversible revolution.

Microsoft billed the Summit as a chance to “engage in dialogue about the latest trends in and future direction of digital photography at the professional level, network with key people in the industry, and see demonstrations of the latest technologies.”  The two-day event took place at the end of June on the Microsoft Campus in Redmond, Washington.   Attended by over 300 invitees, it brought movers and shakers in the digital imaging industry together with an elite grouping of photographers, headlined by Microsoft’s newly selected Icons of Imaging-- Bambi Cantrell, Reed Hoffmann, Denis Reggie, John Shaw, Matthew Jordan Smith and Art Wolfe.

Top photographers and the companies that serve them are known for their strong egos, sharp rivalries and general inability to agree on the simplest things but the Summit set a very different tone.  According to industry analysts, leading pros, Microsoft execs and independent software developers, the Summit was characterized by a spirit of open dialogue, communication among competitors, commitment to meeting professional needs and optimism about the unlimited potential of digital photography.

Richard Lopinto, a long-time imaging industry consultant who has been involved with digital since the beginning of Nikon’s work on the technology, put the event in perspective and expressed the general enthusiasm.  “Digital photography is a congregation of sorts composed of all the different elements in the photography industry.  It’s the application of resources among all the hardware and software companies involved that has enabled digital photography to become so good in such an exceptionally short period of time.  Microsoft, to their credit, was very ecumenical in the way they ran the Summit and the people they invited.  They’re acting in a responsible and productive way to bring to bear their resources, which will inevitably be of great importance.   The Microsoft people have a great business and personal enthusiasm for digital photography, particularly Kostas Mallios, head of their Rich Media Group.”

One of those who came to the Summit as a skeptic but left as a believer was Vincent Laforet, a rising star of photojournalism who has a Pulitzer to his credit at the ripe old age of 31. Laforet is closely associated with Apple’s Aperture, a workflow and manipulation program developed for pros who work with the new RAW image format to avoid the loss of detail caused by JPEG compression.  Laforet believes that the Summit could be the first of a series of high-level gatherings at which the industry comes together to iron out differences and listen to the concerns of professional photographers.

“We were all skeptical about the real purpose of this Summit and wondering what would happen,” commented Laforet.  “The fact that Microsoft invited me and Apple executives as well as people from Adobe shows that traditional competitors are turning a new page.  It was very classy.   The industry has had a tremendous challenge just in setting basic standards that can communicate across all software platforms, standards for color calibration, color management, file conventions and camera settings.  Photographers couldn’t care less whose standard it is.  We just want things to work.  The fact that Microsoft called people together is a big step in exactly the right direction.  It’s an incredibly positive development.”

Craig Keudell, president of OnOne Software, an independent company that develops highly popular Photoshop plug-ins such as Genuine Fractals and Mask Pro, also had high praise for the event.  “I thought it was great,” said Kuedell.  “Microsoft has the clout and the resources to pull off an event like that, and they really showed that they care about the pro photo industry.  It was important to have their name as a leader in rallying the whole community together.  I saw a lot of familiar faces.  A lot of Mac folks were in the audience so it was very even-handed, not a question of one platform versus the other.  Whether you’re a professional photographer or just a participant in the industry, we’re all dealing with both.  I see the platforms coming closer and closer together.  There are more similarities and interoperability between the two.  Vista looks like a great platform for digital photography, and we’re excited to be a part of it.”

Just as location is everything in real estate, so timing meant everything at the Summit, which coincided with major Microsoft initiatives and qualitative changes in the digital imaging industry.  Microsoft has reorganized its corporate structure to focus on key business areas, one of which is professional and ‘prosumer’ photography.  The company is also poised to release Vista, the first major upgrade to its operating system since 2001. 

According to Kostas Mallios of Microsoft, “Vista has taken a huge leap forward in terms of the organization of photos and compatibility with industry standards.  We’ve also added a new color system, and are introducing a new Windows photo format, code- named Photon.  The Summit was really our coming out party to the industry, our chance to prove that Microsoft ‘gets it’ in terms of providing added value.  Previously, people had to launch all kinds of different applications to look at RAW images in the Explorer view, and the results were sometime disappointing.  Now all that is native to the operating system. We’re democratizing photography for everyone who has a Windows PC, and that’s a lot of people.”

Industry analyst Richard Lopinto believes that Microsoft is adding critical mass to the already explosive growth of digital imaging.  “The importance of the operating system in storing, manipulating and sharing digital images can’t be overstated,” he said.  “Two factors have always plagued photographers-- time and knowledge; you could have all the knowledge in the world but not enough time to apply it; or plenty of time and not enough knowledge to work efficiently.  Now we have operating systems that acknowledge the whole issue of time and knowledge. The beauty of digital photography is that more and more very smart companies are applying their unique expertise, their inventiveness and their understanding of market forces to address the needs of photographers.  That’s why the technology has evolved dramatically over a short period of time, and it’s only going to accelerate with the incorporation of some really big players on the software end.”

Microsoft shares that assessment.  “Everything in the field is reaching the point of maturity, coming together in a wonderful way,” said Kostas Mallios.  “It starts with cameras, which have pretty much overcome people’s worries about image quality, resolution and battery life.  It has also happened in printing, at home or in the lab or both.  Canon, Epson and HP have all introduced archival quality inks which last 80, 90, 100 years.  And in the middle is the computer, which is giving us the ability to store, see and share photos in ways never available before.  There’s no comparison between looking at 4x6 prints in an album or a shoebox and seeing a video of the images, complete with soundtrack, on a 60-inch HD TV or downloading all your photos to a digital picture frame that you can take anywhere in the world.   The possibilities around digital photography are so vast that every time I talk about them, it amazes me.”

But progress is rarely free from pain, and many professional photographers feel that this is a particularly difficult time to make a living with a camera.  Veteran travel and location photographer Wolfgang Kaehler, for example, appreciated the congenial atmosphere at the Summit but feels that digital is something of a mixed blessing.  As the technology has blossomed, he has noticed a slow decline in assignment work.  Kaehler is taking up the slack in a personally satisfying way by teaching and leading photo tours to exotic locales. 

“Hearing about the software that’s coming,” he said, “makes some of us think that we’re facing the demise of the professional photographer.  Before, pros had to have some specialized knowledge of cameras and film.  Now many people don’t know what an aperture or shutter is but they can still take good pictures, or change bad ones into good ones.  In stock photography, we’re starting to see sites where amateurs can post stock, which they sell very cheaply, for five or ten dollars an image.  Maybe the quality is not so good but editors at some publications don’t seem to care.  In sports, digital video cameras are now able to capture high quality stills, and many publications have stopped sending both still and video photographers to events.  They make do with one video guy and capture stills from his work.” 

Photojournalist Vincent Laforet also hears gloomy forecasts when his peers sit down to talk shop but feels that industry giants foresee a far brighter future.   “Two things happen when you put a group of photographers in one room,” he said.  “First, they can’t agree on anything, and second, the only thing they can agree on is how poor the business is, how it’s spiraling out of control, how it’s impossible to make living and won’t be around in five years. Ask any photographer about the state of the industry today, and you’ll get a very bleak perspective on the economic forces we’re facing.

“Yet the real driving forces in the industry are making the exact opposite decisions.  Multibillion dollar corporations like Microsoft, Adobe and Apple have chosen this moment in the history of photography to throw their enormous resources into creating the best soft- and hardware for professional photographers.  It’s special and shouldn’t be overlooked.  People should wake up to fact that photography is very far from dead.  I think we’re seeing some sort of renaissance, not only for pros, but also for amateurs.   For around $800, amateurs can now get a Canon Digital Rebel with a couple of zooms, which will easily give them better quality than the $20,000 digital camera I was using back in 2000.” 

Industry consultant Richard Lopinto believes that no matter how far and fast digital imaging progresses, the human element will always be the key to greatness. “If typewriters or word processors had been the solution,” he said, “there’d be a zillion great writers.  People make great pictures, not computers or technology.  They can help, but you have to apply them with your own vision and creativity. Pete Turner and Jay Maisel are unique entities.   Photographers who see light and color the way they do will always be in short supply.”

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