I’ve always thought the music business could learn a good lesson from the photography business. We embraced the digital world and they fought it to the bitter end.
You could buy and download a digital picture years before the music business would allow you the same choice with a song. Pictures were on your computer and your phone  a few trips around the sun  before music was.
That said, as a ” Work for Hire” most of us maintain no copyright protection on our work and as a  musician ; write and perform a song that goes to No.1 and you’re setting yourself up in a new house a new car and a whole new circle of friends. For a number of years now pictures have been reaching out to the world in a way the music business is only now beginning to understand.

Technology is making real time pictures a global reality.
Last night our crew of  5 Reuter photographers covered the 2008 Grammy Awards held at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. Our field general (global entertainment photo editor Sam Mircovich ) was a scratch at game time after being put on the injured reserve list following a visit to the dentist earlier in the week.

Fred Prouser and Mario Anzuoni took on the task of editing, Lucy Nicholson set up lights in the deadline photo room and handled all the backstage photography, Danny Moloshok shot arrivals and I was inside shooting the pre-show and show. This awards show turns into a 14 hour day very quickly. As in all of our event coverage we
were all connected using Reuters  Panikon software. Danny and were on  OQO computers and EVDO cards from our positions and Lucy just dropping a disk with the editors who were working next to the deadline photo location. Processors were Rick in Colorado , Rich in Portland, Fred in San Diego and Stel on the picture desk in Washington D.C. (Note: Our field general  ,global entertainment photo editor  Sam Mircovich , was a scratch at game time after being put on the injured reserve list following a visit to the dentist earlier in the week

Danny shot arrivals and the images were sent from his position via Panikon and edited by Fred in the deadline room. Mario was editing my images from the show, I was sending from my seat about 150 feet away from the right side of the stage. The sprint EVDO cards were moving thumbs in about 2 seconds and pulls were about a minute on 4 to 5 megs depending on crops, the network was flying.

Fred is very good and finding the show rundown lists. It’s a huge help when your inside as once they go live its non-stop for 3 ½ hours and you have to think and plan ahead for what is coming next. As the TV cameras go to HD and get better he light seems to be getting worse. I shot mostly at 1000 ASA some at 160sec some at 200. I would drop down to 800ASA and 125th on the wide pictures. Most everything is shot on a 400 2.8 with a canon Mark 111. The auto white balance on the Mark 111 is junk so I dialed in at around 3600K and it seemed to hold pretty good for the entire show. Oh yes, I should mention the pre show … we shoot 100 awards before the live to air show begins ….. it’s a long day for everybody.