by Tara McMeekin
Associate Editor

MelinOne became involved with the contest at the suggestion of The Washington Post, another sponsor of the contest, and a user of the software.

There were more than 1,800 entries posted on NPPA’s Web site just in the “Attack on America” category for the 2001 “Best in Photojournalism” contest.

The Washington Post’s assistant managing editor of photography, Joe Elbert, saw the MerlinOne system as the perfect tool for facilitating the contest after he began using Merlin Picture Desk at The Post in February.

“Actually a lot of newspapers are using it, but I guess no one thought about using it for photo contests,” Elbert said.

Categories in the NPPA photo contest ranged from “Attack on America” to “Sports.” NPPA awards were given to three winners in each category. All told, approximately 25,000 images were posted on NPPA’s site for consideration.

“This is an opportunity for the software to be used in a really public way so that everybody can understand how database software works,” Elbert said. “We knew that the old way of just sending in slides was archaic.”

The Washington Post (daily, 759,864; Saturday, 699,857; Sunday, 1.06 million) implemented Merlin Picture Desk to manage its own daily photography load, which amounts to nearly 1,000 photos each day.

Merlin Picture Desk provides an extensive archive for staff to access and it works in much the same way as an Internet search engine.

“It’s the same way you’d use Google or Yahoo! or whatever your search engine is,” Elbert said. “That’s what Merlin is to images.”

Picture Desk has been a useful tool for enabling photographers out in the field to get images in to The Post on deadline. A prime example is photographers on assignment in Afghanistan. They are equipped with a laptop, a satellite phone and Picture Desk. Photographers download images into the laptop from their digital camera, fill out the Merlin IPTC header/caption field and then use the phone to send digital pictures to The Post.

“The header field is what makes or breaks the search engine. You have to fill those fields out, save the files as small as possible and then you use the satellite phone and beam it to The Post. [Photos] come into one of our drop boxes and go directly into [Picture Desk],” Elbert said. “Using the IPTC header field, we can direct it to the department or the page that we want it to be published in.”

Merlin Picture Desk features a customizable IPTC header field

“One of the biggest pains in the world is filling out the caption field if you have Photoshop because Photoshop always has these little windows and you click through about a dozen windows and you lose your mind,” Elbert said. “Merlin designs the IPTC field based on the newspaper and what your needs are.”

Elbert is also a volunteer for the NPPA and was very involved with the 2001 Best in Photojournalism contest. Each photographer that submitted an entry for the contest was able to download MerlinOne’s plug-in, fill out the IPTC field and submit a photo from anywhere.

“This contest had no advertising. It was strictly e-mail because we didn’t have time to put it in our monthly magazine,” Elbert said. “I think what was totally cool was when I got pictures out of some small village in Mongolia and I don’t even know how they did it — but they pulled it off.”

Elbert said he estimates that MerlinOne gave away about 30,000 of the $100 plug-ins during the contest.

This is the first Best in Photojournalism contest that the NPPA has been involved in, but it’s not just about the contest for Elbert, who views this as a great tool for journalists.

“It’s more important to see what’s entered than what wins,” he said. “Great pictures don’t win contests. Sometimes they should, but they don’t. The thought was if all the photographers that enter can see what their work looks like as opposed to everyone else’s, it becomes a real educational tool.”

Elbert said he has also had someone contact him saying they were going to create a college photography course based on the contest entries.

Although The Post just recently implemented Merlin Picture Desk, the paper began archiving images with MerlinOne in 1995. The Post was able to turn its photo morgue of over 500,000 images into a searchable archive. Back then, the newspaper was using another company for managing their daily picture desk. Elbert said that solution was impractical for a daily newspaper operation because it had too many bells and whistles and it only supported the PC environment.

“What I love about Merlin is … here at The Post we have it on our intranet. It’s in-house so you don’t have to have the software installed on your machine, it’s just like … going to the Web site for the contest. We have it set up [the same way] inside The Post. It doesn’t matter what your operating system is — Mac or PC,” he said. “The biggest problem that faces newspapers and magazines is designers use Macs and the newsroom side uses PCs, and the only way you’re going to come together is through the intranet in-house.”

Now everyone at The Post has total access to photographs — art directors, editors and editorial staff.