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Articles from May 2012

Where Is Ad Money Being Spent?

By Jim Pickerell | 571 Words | Posted 5/30/2012 | Comments
According to Kantar Media $144 billion was spent on advertising in the U.S. in 2011. Television received the largest portion of this (47%) divided between Broadcast ($38.5 billion) and local and national Cable TV at $30 billion. Digital advertising is growing at a rapid pace. Newspaper and Magazine revenues are declining.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Files Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

By Jim Pickerell | 409 Words | Posted 5/29/2012 | Comments
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) filed a voluntary petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.  The “pre-packaged” comprehensive financial restructuring plan will eliminate $3.1 billion of the company’s debt through a debt to equity transaction with its bank and bond holders.

20/20 Software Releases Image Expert

By Jim Pickerell | 174 Words | Posted 5/29/2012 | Comments
20/20 Software recently announced the release of Image ExpertTM. The 20/20 Software Image Expert is an advanced workflow and image processing application. It provides image analysis using a set of rules provided by the library; image conversion, image resizing, renaming, and metadata import/export.

123RF Launches Footage Collection

By Jim Pickerell | 335 Words | Posted 5/29/2012 | Comments
123RF has launched 123RF Stock Footage. Clients can choose from over 75,000 high definition video clips at www.123rf.com/stock-footage/ in addition to Royalty-Free Stock Photo and Illustrations.

What Will Shutterstock & Fotolia Do With The Money?

By Jim Pickerell | 2064 Words | Posted 5/25/2012 | Comments (1)
Fotolia just received $150 million growth investment and Shutterstock will have over $100 million from an IPO soon. What will they do with the money? Check out this story to see what we were able to glean from Shutterstock's S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission and from other industry sources.

Getty Images Owners Consider Sale or IPO

By Jim Pickerell | 464 Words | Posted 5/23/2012 | Comments (1)
Hellman & Friedman, the owners of Getty Images Inc, have retained Goldman Sachs Group Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co to examine a possible sale or public offering of the business. According to press reports a sale or IPO could value Getty Images at $4 billion. This move follows announcements last week by Shutterstock and Fotolia. Shutterstock hopes to raise $115 million in its IPO and Fotolia received a $150 million growth investment from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. for a 50% stake in the company

Stock Photo Market Size

By Jim Pickerell | 327 Words | Posted 5/23/2012 | Comments (1)
Will the stock photo market generate $5 billion annually in revenue by the end of 2012? Don't You Believe It.In its recent S-1 filing Shutterstock quoted BBC Research as saying the "market for pre-shot commercial digital imagery is expected to exceed $5 billion in 2013." I think the market for stock still photos, illustration and footage will generate no more than $2 billion by the end of 2012. 

PhotoShelter Helps Photographers Learn What Buyers Want

By Jim Pickerell | 441 Words | Posted 5/22/2012 | Comments
PhotoShelter has released the results of its 2012 survey of “What Buyers Want From Photographers.” ( ) This guide, compiled in conjunction with AgencyAccess, will be useful to photographers seeking assignments as well as those marketing stock. The survey was sent to 90,000 buyers of photography and more than 1,000 responded.

StockFood Introduces Recipe Videos

By Jim Pickerell | 420 Words | Posted 5/21/2012 | Comments
StockFood, the leading food media agency, is adding a new product to its extensive visual collection: instructional Recipe Videos, offered with a package of additional complementary information services. The Recipe Video collection is targeted at the food, retail and hospitality industries, as well as a broad user group of online media.

123RF Partners with ZCool in China

By Jim Pickerell | 374 Words | Posted 5/17/2012 | Comments (1)
123RF has announced a partnership agreement with Zcool, mainland China's renowned creative designer platform for graphic designers. Designers show their work on Zcool and there is a degree of sharing of the work.

ASMP Submits Comments On New Copyright Fees

By Jim Pickerell | 375 Words | Posted 5/17/2012 | Comments
The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), along with the Professional Photographers of America (PPA), has submitted comments to the U.S. Copyright Office in response to proposed new registration fees. In formulating the Copyright Office comments, ASMP surveyed its members about copyright registration and received nearly 900 responses.

Appellate Court Upholds $12.74 Million Damages Verdict Against Corbis for Fraud and Breach of Contract

By Jim Pickerell | 329 Words | Posted 5/17/2012 | Comments
A three-judge panel of the Washington State Court of Appeal has substantially affirmed a trial court judgment against Corbis Corporation for Fraud, Breach of Contract, Breach of the Duty of Good Faith and Fair Dealing, Misappropriation of Trade Secrets and Unjust Enrichment over the ownership of Infoflows' Fedmark technology. The original jury awarded $36 million in damages. Following trial the judge reduced the damages to $12.74 million.

Fotolia Receives $150 Million Growth Investment

By Jim Pickerell | 389 Words | Posted 5/16/2012 | Comments (2)
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. L.P. (together with its affiliates, "KKR"), today announced a $150 million growth equity investment in Fotolia. In addition, KKR, TA Associates and Management worked with KKR Capital Markets and a number of relationship banks to put in place a $150 million senior financing for the Company.

Shutterstock Files With SEC For IPO

By Jim Pickerell | 235 Words | Posted 5/15/2012 | Comments
Shutterstock has filed plans with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering (IPO). The company intends to list its stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “SSTK” and hopes to raise around $115 million through this IPO. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the offering have yet to be decided.

Stills or Video: Which Works Better In Online Advertising?

By Jim Pickerell | 886 Words | Posted 5/14/2012 | Comments
In web advertising what produces the best results still photos or videos? You may be surprised. This story outlines some of the things that are happening that will change the way customers choose their images and some of the things you can do to increase sales.

Getty Images 2011 Revenue: Creative Stills Declines

By Jim Pickerell | 1027 Words | Posted 5/11/2012 | Comments (1)
In March it was reported by Moody’s and Standard & Poors that the gross revenue for Getty Images in calendar 2011 was $945 million. This figure, and how the various lines of business break out, provide some interesting insights into the state of the stock photography business.

Broken Promises and Stock Photography

By Paul Melcher | 749 Words | Posted 5/10/2012 | Comments (1)
The stock photography industry has to face the challenge of becoming relevant in an economy that has no patience for inadequate business models. Today the vast majority of photographs are used without any contact with the traditional photo industry, which has completely lost control of production and distribution. But the industry continues stubbornly to apply old rules to this new landscape. It does not see, or purposely wants to ignore, that their model does not fit current needs and thus is chasing customers away.

New Pricing Strategy For RM

By Jim Pickerell | 1092 Words | Posted 5/9/2012 | Comments
Evolveimages.com has introduced a new simplified licensing model for Rights Managed (RM) Images that they call EvoRights. EvoRights focuses on four primary price drivers: use type (commercial or editorial), intended media (print, digital or both), duration and geographic distribution and allows customers to determine the usage fee in as little as three clicks.

What Do Buyers Want? ImageBrief Will Tell You

By Jim Pickerell | 574 Words | Posted 5/8/2012 | Comments
An Australian company called ImageBrief, has developed a way for buyers to submit briefs directly to photographers for the images they need. This cuts out the stock agency middle men, and eliminates the need for buyers to wade through massive online databases of images.

iStockphoto Offers Adobe CS6 Plugin To Streamline Designers’ Workflow

By Jim Pickerell | 218 Words | Posted 5/8/2012 | Comments
iStockphoto has launched a simple and intuitive plugin for several programs in the new Adobe® Creative Suite® 6 (CS6). The FREE plugin enables designers to search and directly download images within the programs without interrupting their workflow. A one-click comp replace feature automatically exchanges comp images with purchased images, perfectly resized and positioned within the working page layout or design.

One Hundred Seventy Million Images

By Pat Hunt | 1055 Words | Posted 5/7/2012 | Comments (2)
As of the end of April PacaSearch had 169,352,194 searchable images on www.pacasearch.com. That is a lot of images. And the number is constantly growing. But, the number is not what makes searching on this site unique. What’s amazing is the fact that all the images are easily available for licensing because trademark, copyright and release issues have been addressed and sales models have been created.

Copyright Registration Becomes More Expensive

By Jim Pickerell | 420 Words | Posted 5/4/2012 | Comments
The U.S. Copyright Office is proposing to increase the registration fee for filing an online application from $35 to $65, and the fee for using a paper application from $65 to $100. They are requesting a fee increase because in 2011 fee receipts only covered 59.5% of the cost of providing the service. The rest comes out of the taxpayers pockets.

Alamy Expands 100% Royalties For Students

By Jim Pickerell | 333 Words | Posted 5/4/2012 | Comments
Alamy has announced the expansion of its 100% Royalties project, designed to give young photographers experience of a professional stock photography agency. Launched in a number of universities in the UK and USA in 2011 the project has proved a real success. In fact, it has been such a success that it is being extended into a second year.

PeopleImages.com: New Paradigm For Exclusive Licensing

By Jim Pickerell | 2395 Words | Posted 5/3/2012 | Comments (2)
RM photographers Take Note!! With the launch of PeopleImages.com Yuri Arcurs has taken away your last best argument for why professional art directors and graphic designers should go to traditional RM sites to license the images they need.

Shutterstock Considering IPO

By Jim Pickerell | 607 Words | Posted 5/2/2012 | Comments
Four non-disclosed sources have told Reuters that Shutterstock is looking for underwriters for an initial public offering (IPO). A Shutterstock spokesperson refused to comment on the report or to supply financial details about the company.

Bigstock Partners with Freelancers Union

By Jim Pickerell | 218 Words | Posted 5/2/2012 | Comments
Bigstock has announced a partnership with the Freelancers Union, a non-profit membership organization for independent workers. The partnership will provide the union's nearly 200,000 members with creative assets and inspiration.

What’s The World’s Best Selling Photo?

By Jim Pickerell | 389 Words | Posted 5/1/2012 | Comments
What's the most that has been paid for a single photo for editorial, product or other type of commercial use?  Learn about some top sellers and tell us of other examples.

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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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