Change View Options:

Articles from June 2015

Getty Teams With Fiverr® To Supply Creative Services To SMBs

By Jim Pickerell | 247 Words | Posted 6/30/2015 | Comments
Fiverr, a marketplace for digital services, and Getty Images, have unveiled a partnership that puts premium creative services in the hands of small and medium businesses (SMBs), empowering them to produce creative once only thought possible for large enterprises. Fiverr sellers, which include graphic and web designers, can tap into an unrivaled trove of the world's best images from Getty Images and iStock to produce eye-catching ads, social content, fan pages, apps and just about any other creative design imaginable.

Magnum Nominates 6 Photographers For Membership

By Jim Pickerell | 249 Words | Posted 6/30/2015 | Comments
At its annual General Meeting (AGM), held this year in Paris member owned Magnum Photos nominated six new members: a record breaking number. They include: Matt Black, Carolyn Drake, Lorenzo Meloni, Richard Mosse, Max Pinckers and Newsha Tavakolina.

Newzulu Signs Partnership With Alamy

By Jim Pickerell | 448 Words | Posted 6/25/2015 | Comments
Newzulu Limited (ASX: NWZ) is pleased to announce that it has entered a strategic partnership and content syndication agreement (Agreement) with Alamy. Newzulu’s crowd-sourced news archive will be featured among Alamy’s collection of over 50 million images from which the platform has generated over US$154 million for its contributors in the last 15 years. Newzulu and Alamy will work together to generate revenue through the sale and licensing of Newzulu’s crowd-sourced content to Alamy’s editorial, creative and commercial clients worldwide.

Getty Granted “Interested Party” Status In EU’s Investigation Of Google

By Jim Pickerell | 524 Words | Posted 6/24/2015 | Comments
Getty Images has been granted “interested party” status in the European Commission’s investigation into anticompetitive behavior by Google. Getty Images provides specialized image search and shopping services to end users in direct competition with Google.

Masterfile Update

By Jim Pickerell | 465 Words | Posted 6/24/2015 | Comments
Several of my readers have differing opinions with regard to the meaning of the term “no exchange of equity” as it appeared in Masterfile’s May press release. I thought it meant that no money changed hands. I asked Steve Pigeon, CEO of Masterfile, for clarification.

Pond5 Relaunches Adobe® Premiere® Pro CC Plugin

By Jim Pickerell | 190 Words | Posted 6/23/2015 | Comments
Pond5 has re-launched its free Pond5 plugin for Adobe® Premiere® Pro CC which gives editors instant access to nearly 5 million royalty-free video and audio clips.

Shutterstock Partners With Penske Media: Editorial Imagery and Video Distribution

By Jim Pickerell | 390 Words | Posted 6/22/2015 | Comments
Shutterstock, Inc. and Penske Media Corporation (PMC) have agreed to form an alliance that will create and license entertainment and fashion images and videos to the world’s top media, publishing and creative companies. (Check out PMC brands and events.)

Unhappy With Image Pricing: Consider Picfair

By Jim Pickerell | 528 Words | Posted 6/22/2015 | Comments
Tired of giving up 70% to 80% (and often more) of what a customer pays to use your image to a distributor? Consider Picfair. Unhappy with the prices distributors are charging for your images and want more? Consider PicFair.

Authenticating And Protecting Cell Phone Images

By Jim Pickerell | 935 Words | Posted 6/18/2015 | Comments (1)
Suppose there was a smartphone app that automatically sent every image capture to the cloud and stored all the metadata including date, time and exact location down to within 100 feet or less of where the picture was taken. (Also imagine if camera manufacturers built that into cameras.) It's coming!

Microstock Image Revenue Will Decline

By Jim Pickerell | 562 Words | Posted 6/17/2015 | Comments (3)
Thanks to Adobe Stock gross microstock revenue will start to decline. Let me explain why. I estimate that about $143 million of Shutterstock’s 2014 revenue came from subscription and that there were about 114 million subscription downloads. It all those customers were to switch to Adobe Stock they could probably get all the images they need for $43 million or less and save $100 million annually. Check out the numbers.

Will User Generated Content Kill Stock Photos?

By Jim Pickerell | 573 Words | Posted 6/17/2015 | Comments (1)
Matt Munson, CEO of Twenty20, recently made the case for why User Generated Content (UGC) will be The Death Of Stock Photos. He argued that “stock photos do not depict reality” and that “brands that use them risk coming off as generic and out-of-touch” with consumers.

Adobe Stock Launched: Royalty Rates UP!

By Jim Pickerell | 779 Words | Posted 6/16/2015 | Comments
Adobe has launched [St] Adobe Stock as part of its Adobe Creative Cloud subscription offering. Creative Cloud customers are now able to launch Adobe Stock directly within CC desktop software such as Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop or After Effects, and add watermarked or licensed images to their Creative Cloud Libraries. This will allow them to access and work with images across multiple desktop tools.

Visual Connections Announces New York Conference

By Jim Pickerell | 313 Words | Posted 6/16/2015 | Comments
Visual Connections has announced the dates for its October conference in New York. This year Visual Connections New York 2015 will be on October 28th immediately following the DMLA (formerly PACA) Annual Conference that runs from Sunday October 25 through Tuesday the 27th. And if that isn’t enough photo related events for you PhotoPlus Expo will be October 22-24, 2015 at the Javits Convention Center.

Tracking Image Usage

By Jim Pickerell | 937 Words | Posted 6/15/2015 | Comments
LMKtag (also Lamark) has developed a relatively inexpensive system to embed tags, invisible to the naked eye, in digital images files. These tags link back to a LMKtag database that contains the image creator’s name and contact information as well as whether the image is available for licensing. The database can also include caption information and other metadata about the image and the creator can adjust this information at any time.

Does Anyone Like Your Photographs?

By Jim Pickerell | 690 Words | Posted 6/12/2015 | Comments
Photocrowd is a relatively new social media site (launched in September 2013) that is designed to encourage photographers to shoot more pictures, work on assignments, participate in contests, build cool portfolios and socialize with each other.

Sourcing Images From Cell Phone Users

By Jim Pickerell | 309 Words | Posted 6/9/2015 | Comments
Should traditional agencies be making more of an effort to source images from cell phone users? Sixteen months ago Alamy introduced its Stockimo app and started accepting images into its collection that are taken with cell phones. To date about 350,000 images have been submitted and about 170,000 accepted.

Competition: Who Has The Market Advantage?

By Jim Pickerell | 719 Words | Posted 6/8/2015 | Comments (1)
During the CEPIC Congress in Warsaw a Russian stock photo agent told me that Russian photographers can live and support a family very comfortably on 50,000 roubles a month. At today’s currency exchange that works out to about $886 per month or $10,632 per year.

Finding The “Right” Image

By Jim Pickerell | 607 Words | Posted 6/2/2015 | Comments (1)
Last week I wrote a story about “Microsoft’s Research On Captioning Photos Automatically." I argued that this technology is a long way from being of much use to stock photo customers who trying to find useful photos for their projects. However, helping users find photos may not be what Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are really trying to accomplish.

Stay Connected

Sign up to receive email notification when new stories are posted.

Follow Us

About This Site

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.

Top Categories