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Articles from March 2014

Small Claims In The UK

By Jim Pickerell | 322 Words | Posted 3/31/2014 | Comments (1)
Late in 2013 the Patents County Court (PCC) that handles copyright claims in the UK was renamed the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC) and a provision for submitting small claims was introduced. The small claims track is intended for claims with a value of up to £10,000 and where costs orders are tightly controlled.

Got To Keep Producing

By Jim Pickerell | 753 Words | Posted 3/28/2014 | Comments
Recently, on the “Stock Photography, buy and sell your images” group on LinkedIn photographer Pierre Charrlau complained that his Getty Images sales have “greatly diminished” and wanted to know if others were having the same experience.

Average RM and RF Prices At Getty

By Jim Pickerell | 588 Words | Posted 3/27/2014 | Comments
On its web site for Flickr contributors Getty asks, “What are the average prices for RM and RF?” and then gives the following answer. “The average licensing fee for royalty free ranges from $175 to $225. And for rights managed licensing, keeping in mind that uses and fees vary widely; the average is around $550-$650.”

Fotolia's Dollar Photo Club

By Jim Pickerell | 436 Words | Posted 3/25/2014 | Comments (1)
Fotolia has decided that in order to attract more customers to their microstock offering they need to lower prices for professional users. They have created a members-only Dollar Photo Club and are promoting it to readers of Graphic Design USA (GDUSA).

Brianna Wettlaufer Named CEO Of Stocksy

By Jim Pickerell | 231 Words | Posted 3/25/2014 | Comments
In celebration of the one-year anniversary of Stocky United, Brianna Wettlaufer has been appointed CEO of the company. Wettlaufer, who was co-founder and former VP at iStockphoto, (which was acquired by Getty images for $50 million in 2006) brings over 10 years of leadership and innovation to her role.

Copyright Registration Fees Go Up

By Jim Pickerell | 272 Words | Posted 3/25/2014 | Comments
The United States Copyright Office of the Library of Congress has published a final rule establishing adjusted fees for copyright registration. The new fee structure will go into effect on May 1, 2014. The fee for an application filed online will increase from $35 to $55. The fee for an application filed on paper will increase from $65 to $85.

Safe Blogging

By Jim Pickerell | 495 Words | Posted 3/24/2014 | Comments
Be careful what you write in your blog. It’s not private. Over the weekend I received a request from a former mid-level employee of a stock agency who wanted me to delete from our Selling Stock archive a story that was published in 2009.

PACA On Image Embedding

By Jim Pickerell | 343 Words | Posted 3/24/2014 | Comments
PACA’s mission has always been to support a healthy and sustainable market for licensing the use of photographic images, as well as to encourage and support innovative ways for photography to be legally used in the rapidly changing marketplace.  Clearly, models for licensing of photography have had a difficult time keeping pace with changes brought on by the Internet, social media, and the blogosphere.

Don’t Be Evil

By Jim Pickerell | 1269 Words | Posted 3/21/2014 | Comments (1)
The informal corporate motto for Google is “Don’t be evil.” This motto is sometimes incorrectly stated as Do no evil. But the company’s image search tool facilitates and encourages theft. The same is basically true of Bing and Yahoo.

U.S. Court Of Appeals Overturns Lower Court Copyright Registration Decision

By Jim Pickerell | 405 Words | Posted 3/19/2014 | Comments
After many years, the Ninth Circuit finally entered a decision in the Alaska Stock, LLC v. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company (HMH) case.  In Anchorage U.S. District Judge H. Russel Holland had originally tossed the federal lawsuit after finding that the photographs had been improperly registered with the Copyright Office.

Subjects In Greatest Demand

By Jim Pickerell | 815 Words | Posted 3/18/2014 | Comments (1)
A reader asked if anyone produces a list of the stock photography subjects that are in greatest demand. As far as I know such a list does not exist. In very general terms the subjects in greatest demand are model released people in business and family situations, but to be useful it is necessary to get much more specific.

“Perfectly Imperfect” - New Food Trend From StockFood

By Jim Pickerell | 453 Words | Posted 3/17/2014 | Comments
StockFood has released a new collection of food images that points to a new trend in food photography, and to a certain extent in stock photography as a whole. They call their collection “Perfectly Imperfect” which describes the spirit of spontaneity that is increasingly in demand in every type of photography.

Getty: A Three Month Review

By Jim Pickerell | 1487 Words | Posted 3/14/2014 | Comments
In all the excitement about 35 million FREE images it is worth looking back at some of things that have been happening at Getty Images in the last three months. After watching revenue decline for the fifth straight quarter, and many of its top producers cut back on production or stop supplying new images altogether, Getty evidently decided that their turn-around strategy wasn’t working and they needed to make some radical changes.

Carlyle Should Be Talking To Shutterstock

By Jim Pickerell | 1650 Words | Posted 3/12/2014 | Comments
Carlyle Group should be trying to sell Getty’s Midstock division (iStock, Thinkstock and Photos.com) to Shutterstock before the value of that segment of Getty’s business collapses. Carlyle should recognize by now that Getty Images has been a bad investment. It is the time to cut losses.

PantherMedia Relaunches Website

By Jim Pickerell | 504 Words | Posted 3/12/2014 | Comments
The German microstock agency PantherMedia (http://www.panthermedia.net), a German microstock agency with 28 million images in its collection, has relaunched its new website with the most comprehensive update in 10 years. Besides the clear new design, the website offers new products, new licences and additional features.

Will Getty Insist On Keeping Contributors In The Dark?

By Jim Pickerell | 715 Words | Posted 3/11/2014 | Comments (1)
Photographers, illustrators, Getty’s Image Partners (stock agencies), and trade associations representing Getty photographers should be asking Getty to supply creators with a limited amount of the data collected when Getty embeds creator's images on a web site for FREE.

Getty Terminates Agreement With Flickr

By Jim Pickerell | 814 Words | Posted 3/11/2014 | Comments
Getty Images has announced to its Flickr contributors that it has provided notice to terminate its existing agreement with Flickr. The original 5-year agreement went into effect in July 2008. Getty has been unable to come to a new agreement at this time. Getty says they continue to be open to working with Yahoo!/Flickr.

Are Stock Photo Prices Falling Everywhere?

By Jim Pickerell | 930 Words | Posted 3/9/2014 | Comments
Most photographers believe stock photo prices are declining everywhere. But not at Shutterstock where they have seen a 27% increase in 3 years from $1.91 per download in Q4 2010 to $2.43 in Q4 2013. RM and traditional RF photographers are thinking, “This is not a story for me. I’ll never go near any distributor with prices that low.” Please don’t give up. Let me walk you through some numbers that you may find useful and interesting.

More On Getty’s Embed Tool

By Jim Pickerell | 1182 Words | Posted 3/7/2014 | Comments
See the previous story. It looks like a high percentage of the RM and RF images in the Creative Stock Images of the www.gettyimages.com cannot be accessed using the Embed Tool. This may not be the slam dunk Getty is hoping for.

Getty Makes 35 Millions Photos Free For Blog Use

By Jim Pickerell | 1068 Words | Posted 3/6/2014 | Comments (1)
Getty Images has made it possible for anyone to easily embed and share its imagery – at no cost – for non-commercial use on websites, blogs and social media channels through a new embed tool. Free Pictures For Anyone Who Blogs.

Shutterstock To Acquire WebDAM

By Jim Pickerell | 330 Words | Posted 3/5/2014 | Comments
Shutterstock has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire WebDAM, a leading provider of web-based digital asset management software.

Fotolia Announced $5,000 Prize For iPhone Image

By Jim Pickerell | 458 Words | Posted 3/5/2014 | Comments
Fotolia has announced that it will award a prize of $5,000 USD for the best selling image in 2014 that was uploaded to its new Instant Collection for iPhones. In addition, every image accepted in the Instant Collection before the end of April, will instantly earn $1. Now everyone has a chance to sell smartphone images, regardless of technical ability or expensive equipment. Contest details here: http://us.fotolia.com/instantcontest.

iStock To Launch Subscription Service

By Jim Pickerell | 958 Words | Posted 3/4/2014 | Comments
iStock has announced that in April it will launch a subscription product based on the Thinkstock subscription product. The low priced Thinkstock product has been the fastest growing part Getty Images’ business.

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This stock photography news site focuses on the business side of photography with a special emphasis on stock photography. Our goal is to help photographers maximize their earnings based on the quality of their work and the commitment they are prepared to make to the trade. The information provided will be applicable to part-timers as well as full time professional photographers. We’ll leave it to others to teach photographers how to take better pictures.

Jim Pickerell launched his career as a photographer in 1963. In 1990 he began publishing a regular newsletter on stock photography. In 1995 the information was made available online as well as in print and was gradually expanded to a daily service. Click here for Pickerell's full biography.

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