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Articles from July 2013
The
Image Source team responsible for tracking trends in the premium stock photography industry is in the process of publishing a series of briefings following their recent research conducted to determine near-future patterns in the use of conceptual imagery. Intended to help premium stock photographers produce the imagery demanded by image buyers, their research will be published as a series of articles on the Image Source
photographer resource blog over the next couple of months.
Video is starting to become the new essential for stills libraries. Although the two majors have had motion divisions for years, most UK photo-libraries avoided video for a number of reasons: technical complexity, bandwidth and the uncertainties of a new market, compounded by the economic difficulties of the past few years.
How fast is the education market moving from print to digital delivery? In its Q2 2013 earnings conference call with investors last week, Pearson, PLC, the world leading provider of educational materials and services provided some interesting data.
Yuri Arcurs has written a
long post entitled “
Microstock sees its first major setback in 6 years and here’s why.” In it he explains (1) why he is pulling his images out of all microstock agencies except iStockphoto and his own Peopleimages.com, (2) why he decided to go exclusive with Getty, (3) why mobile, crowd sourced photography is “a serious threat to stock photography” and (4) why he has invested $1.4 million in Scoopshot. This article is a must read for everyone in the industry.
A few months ago I reported how Getty Images’
Rights Managed prices vary when an image is being used in different countries. Now, I've expanded that research to cover a number of additional countries and additional types of uses. The results are interesting and show how confusing RM pricing can be.
Earlier this month Cengage Learning Inc., the second biggest publisher of college-course material in the U.S., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it tries to restructure its debt of about $5.8 billion. Under a deal with some of its senior lenders, the company will try to use the bankruptcy case to eliminate $4 billion in debt,
We are moving rapidly toward a time when a large portion of the news photographs we see will be crowd sourced. There may be no way to slow this trend, but it raises some serious questions for those trying to earn a living as news photographers, or those who hope to take up this career in the future.
Alfonso Gutiérrez, President of CEPIC has provided some updated information on the CEPIC Image Registery (CIR) that Selling Stock reported on earlier
here and
here. See his report.
In the last 18 months I have been tracking the collection sizes of 421 of
iStock’s leading contributors. These creators have had combined total downloads of 49,141,000 out of an estimated 150 million for iStock since its founding. Thus, they are very representative of iStock’s total collection and sales.
iStockphoto has announced today that
1/2 of its imagery is now 1/2 of its former price. Prices for non-exclusive images used to be: 1, 4, 7, 10, 12, 15, 18 credits based on file size. Now those prices have dropped to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 credits with the price for the largest file size being only 39% of what was formerly charged.
Backed by Yuri Arcurs,
Scoopshot is launching a new service for crowdsourcing photography on-demand in minutes after the customer makes a request. Scoopshot gives photo buyers the ability to instantaneously place assignments in front of the company’s global network of 280,000+ mobile photographers.
Over the weekend, Seeking Alpha (SA) published an article aimed at the investment community entitled, “
Shutterstock Valuation Makes Me Shudder.” The points made in this article are well worth considering, not only for investors, but for anyone interested in earning a living in the business of stock photography.
Since early in 2009 I have been
tracking downloads of 192 of iStockphoto’s most productive contributors. All of them have more than 48,000 downloads and 130 of them have more than 100,000. There are others with high numbers of downloads that I have not tracked for as long a period, and I’m sure there are a few I have not identified. Nevertheless, I believe this group is very representative.
An increasing number of mobile phone photographers in Europe are contributing images to
Scoopshot. The company recently released the total number of images uploaded to the five tasks that photographers have found most interesting. Amazingly, 27,788 images were submitted to a request from WAZ Media Group in Germany for pictures of interesting coffee cups.
PhotoShelter has launched
Beam, a new web platform that makes it easy for photographers to create exciting portfolio sites with a contemporary look. Initially, they have provided four innovative templates, but more variations are expected in the near future.
The UK’s
Copyright Hub has launched its pilot phase. It is designed to be a gateway to information about copyright in the UK and point those interested in the right direction to get permission to use a copyrighted work.
James West (Alamy CEO) and Mike Fischer (Alamy Chairman) have invested in a smartphone video start up called
Manything, an innovative new video recording service that uses smartphones and tablets as remote video cameras.
Shutterstock’s
Offset brand that was announced in April is moving forward. Currently the site has more than 27,000 images with more images and artists added every day. Customers are already licensing images, but Offset is currently in an invite-only beta. If you would like to take a look at what’s on the site go to
http://www.offset.com/ and request access.
PACA has changed its name to
PACA, The Digital Media Licensing Association. While the name Picture Archive Council of America has served the organization well, it has become apparent that it no longer accurately reflects today’s photography licensing business, or the membership of the organization.
Alamy has launched an initiative called “Ask James” where contributors pose questions on Facebook, Flickr or the Alamy blog about Alamy operations or the stock photo business in general. Once the questions are in CEO James West sits down infront of a webcam and records as many answers as he has time for in 10 minutes segments.
The stock photography business has its first billionaire. Bloomberg news reported that last week Jonathan Oringer, the founder of
Shutterstock Inc. (SSTK) became a billionaire. Oringer owns 18.5 million shares of Shutterstock, or 55 percent of the outstanding shares. Last week shares of the company reached a record high of $56.44. Today, shares are trading at around $56 per share which makes Oringer’s holding worth in excess of one billion dollars.