I just posted a fascinating column by stock-photo guru Jim Pickerell on Black Star Rising, the blogzine of my client Black Star.

Jim advises both photojournalists and advertising photographers to learn to shoot video -- and fast -- because pretty soon print publications will begin using video stills for their photographic needs. He quotes Dirck Halstead of The Digital Journalist, who says:

Video ... will undoubtedly become the main means of acquisition in photography. Today, almost all the manufacturers of prosumer video cameras have moved to High Definition. These cameras, off the shelf, are capable of delivering a 2-megapixel still image.

The Dallas Morning News is now equipping their still photographers with Sony Z1U video cameras, and they have created an algorithm that allows those frame grabs to be boosted to 16 megapixels, which only two years ago was the maximum you could get out of a professional 35mm camera. The Dallas Morning News is regularly running 4- and 5-column front-page pictures from these video grabs. Then, they put the streaming video on their Web site.

The financial imperative to newspapers is clear. Their salvation, in a time of plummeting ad revenues on their broadsheets, lies with their online versions. Online demands video. For this reason, we can comfortably say that in 10 years photojournalists will only be carrying video cameras.

The advertising community is scared and doing everything it can to delay the inevitable. The goal of agencies is to convince the companies that pay them big bucks to produce major national campaigns that such campaigns are the best way to sell products and services. Unfortunately, the results for dollars spent are in steady decline and companies will only buy this argument so long.

Consider this little story told by Jan Leth, executive creative director of OgilvyInteractive North America. The agency was assigned by Six Flags to do a promotion for the amusement park's 45th anniversary.

"They wanted to give away 45,000 tickets for opening day to drive traffic. So we got a brief to do whatever: ads, microsite, whatever." While the creative people were trying to plan the project, the creative director went off and posted the ticket giveaway on Craigslist.

"Five hours later, 45,000 tickets were spoken for," Leth said. "No photo shoot. No after-shoot drinks at Shutters," and with some irony he continued, "Now, the trick is, how do we get paid?"