Amana is hot - was hotter before though. I started with them when
they were a little baby agency called photonica back in Tokyo,
Aoyama. Then, photonica became the buzz in NY with it's abstract
'image' pics. Rest is history.
Hi Rudi,
Hehehehehe - yeah hotter they were. Indeed, but there's still a lot
of hot work coming out recently. Some young-guns, with phenominal
talent and skills. Today, Tokyo is burning HOT - too hot - outside
that is
Photonica still exists - one of many companies that are under the
umbrella called Amana Group - total staff of 800 people. No more a
baby agency - almost all of their work comes through Dentsu (where
else ;-) ) Today they're in Tennozu Isle, by the pedestrian metal
bridge.
They themselves have no such rules as Getty - officially that is -
and this is a very recent development, like I said in my other post.
There are still quite many Ad-Photogs here in Japan that shoot MF
film, and no one is really bothered about that. All serious (big name
brands) product shots are of course still LF - well I can't talk for
all - but that is the general acceptable format for so many reasons
you know very well.
It's only very recent that Amana Images (the part that SELLS the
images) have politely started to "prefer-only-if-possible" digital
(now all this in a super polite japanese, which basically means as
you know "Drop the bloody film, man.") - basically because of
simplicity and time involved for their internal workflow. We're
talking 30.000 images a day - registration and archiving - so your
work is literally up few months after the shoot - and a bit later at
Getty.
To others, regarding the Getty discussion here:
Getty, or any other agency for that matter, does not care about brand
names of camera but simply the 16MP minimum output - that is all.
Here in Japan the frase is "Di-Ess-U" when talking minimum
requierments. Dunno if you noticed, but this does not include the
name CANON. In fact no one really cares that much about what brand
name's on your camera - and why should they?
I personally think many are shooting the messenger here, as it is the
CLIENT that usually tells us what they want and need - and that is
what I think is the message GETTY is getting from their client base.
There are most certainly other factors involved, like protecting a
certain standard, price, bla, bla, bla...
But and if we are not happy - we can always submit to iStock - who
belong to the same company - but have lower requirements - so I
basically fail to see a reason to complain about this whole Getty
issue...
cheers
gisli
