National Geographic's Yourshot section, where a friend works, has been nominated for a Webby award. Please go vote for them, not because it's run by my friend (well, not entirely for that reason), but beacuse it's an awesome idea: National Geographic lets amateur photographers send in their photos, and publishes the best of them on the web. This kind of interaction between amateurs and major media outlets should be encouraged wherever possible, especially when the result is the dissemination of really neat photographs.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
You grant to National Geographic Society and its subsidiaries and licensees ("NGS") the following rights: a royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual license to display, distribute, reproduce and create derivatives of the Photograph, in whole or in part, without further review or participation from you, in any medium now existing or subsequently developed, in editorial, commercial, promotional and trade uses in connection with NGS Products
Yoww. Not sure why anyone would go in for this; if the photograph is good enough to make into NG; it is probably worth retaining rights for. Not as if there aren't numerous other ways to disseminate one's work these days on the web. Fifteen minutes of fame, I guess.
Speaking about National Geographic in general, does anyone else feel that the quality of it has gone way down in the last 15 years or so? I've got a bunch from 1944 up until around 1992 that I will always keep, but once they hit the mid 90s or so it feels to me that the subject matter and quality of writing and photography started to go way down (maybe it's just one-two punch of the homogenization of world culture and the loss of Kodachrome?) It's slid almost (but not quite) as dramatically as Scientific American. The Atlantic is about the only mag that seems to be capable of keeping any sort of quality standard up these days (though I admit you had me wondering with last month's issue about Britney, LOL)
See JPG Magazine as well. A photography magazine drawn entirely from user submissions.
@STC: that's the deal, and people don't have to submit their photos if they don't want to. YourShot participants also have a chance of getting their photo published in National Geographic magazine, and if the photo is selected for the Daily Dozen, it goes to the online jigsaw puzzle page and you can play with it.
Sorry you think the quality of the magazine has slipped since the mid '90s, but have you picked up a copy lately? The May issue on China and Tibet is pretty outstanding, with great stories by Amy Tan, Peter Hessler, and Leslie Chang, and photos by George Steinmetz, Lynn Johnson and others:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/featurehub
(Yeah, I work there.)