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Articles from September 2018

Getty Video Producers: Get Ready For Some Low Royalties

By Jim Pickerell | 479 Words | Posted 9/26/2018 | Comments (2)
Getty Images has just done a deal with www.animoto.com to provide unlimited video clips to Animoto video producers. Animoto says, “Now when you create marketing videos in Animoto, you'll have unlimited access to our stunning collection of stock photos and video clips at no extra cost beyond your subscription.”

WENN Media Group To Use Copytrack Infringement Tracking Service

By Jim Pickerell | 239 Words | Posted 9/26/2018 | Comments
Copytrack and WENN Media Group (WMG) have announced their future exclusive collaboration. WMG specialized in providing up-to-the-minute entertainment news content with production based in Los Angeles, New York, London and Berlin. Copytrack will provide WMG with the tracking and worldwide legal enforcement of copyright infringement.

Action Press Independent Again

By Jim Pickerell | 93 Words | Posted 9/26/2018 | Comments
Action Press, one of Germany's leading press photo agencies based in Hamburg since 1970, is again independent and privately owned. Ulli Michel, longtime managing director, used the management buy-out option and bought action press out of the SilverHub UK bankruptcy estate.

Knowing What To Shoot

By Jim Pickerell | 1466 Words | Posted 9/25/2018 | Comments
Stock agencies do a very poor job of advising photographers what to shoot. Most successful businesses try to keep the people producing their products well informed about what is selling and what isn’t. They don’t want their workers wasting time (and costing them money) producing products no one wants to buy.

Mega Agency Launches Service To Fight Copyright Infringement

By Jim Pickerell | 395 Words | Posted 9/24/2018 | Comments
The Mega Agency has launched an innovative new service to fight widespread copyright infringement – Mega Image Police (MIP). The company, a leading provider of news, sports and entertainment content, has beta launched an initiative to quickly identify stolen content and actively pursue damages on behalf of its growing global contributor base.

Is Visual Evidence Fact?

By Jim Pickerell | 654 Words | Posted 9/21/2018 | Comments
When I entered the photography profession “Seeing Was Believing.” If there was a visual record of something, then it really happened. Photos were much more important records of events than just words. A still image might not provide an accurate, overall understanding of a particular event, but at least it was an accurate rendition of a moment in time. No more!

Article 13: Copyright Protection

By Jim Pickerell | 721 Words | Posted 9/20/2018 | Comments (1)
All photographers around the world who are trying to control and earn money from their work should watch, very carefully, what the European Parliament does with Article 13 of its Copyright Directive. The final EU decision could greatly benefit all photographers whether they live in the EU or not. Tech industry leaders, like Google and YouTube, strongly oppose this legislation, because it could force them to use automated content filtering systems to insure that copyrighted material is not being distributed without permission on their platforms. The law states that digital companies should put "effective content recognition systems" in place.

Conceptual Realism: Is That What Customers Are Buying?

By Jim Pickerell | 614 Words | Posted 9/20/2018 | Comments (2)
Getty Images has just sent out a promotion – probably mostly to photographers – to show Conceptual Realism. The implication is that customers want more of this type of imagery and photographers should be shooting more of it and supplying it to the agency. Is Such Imagery Really What Customers Want? I can’t believe that most of what is being shown in this gallery are images that customers are actually licensing for use.

Getty Debt

By Jim Pickerell | 1330 Words | Posted 9/18/2018 | Comments
Many in the industry are concerned about the level of Getty Images debt and what that might mean for the future of the company. The following is some general information about the financial status of the company. It is not clear how the debt might affect the future. Getty Images has about $2.367 billion in debt. About $1.8 billion of that is in Term Loans at 4.37%. Back in 2012 they had about $2 billion in Term Loans so in the past six years it appears they have paid down about $200 million of the principal in addition to the annual interest. The terms of these loans is unclear and may vary.

Getty To Supply Amazon Echo Users With Photos

By Jim Pickerell | 520 Words | Posted 9/17/2018 | Comments
Getty Images, has agreed to make Getty’s award-winning collection of sports, news, entertainment, archival and creative images available to enhance the voice responses from Alexa on all Echo devices with a screen. Exactly how image creators will be compensated for this use of their images has not been explained.

Storyblocks Changes Marketplace Commission Structure

By Jim Pickerell | 496 Words | Posted 9/14/2018 | Comments
In an effort to drive more Marketplace sales Storyblocks has lowered its commission to 50%. When the company (then known as Videoblocks) launched its Marketplace offering in 2015 the company offered still images and video clips at dramatically, discounted prices compared to its competitors. However, they paid creators 100% of the money received from the licensing of their work. As a result creators ended up earning more for each image licensed than they would if the image was licensed by one of the other stock agencies that paid royalties that were a small percentage of the total license fee.

Landslide Vote on Copyright Directive in EU

By Jim Pickerell | 462 Words | Posted 9/14/2018 | Comments
On September 12th the European Parliament voted in favor of a Copyright Directive by more than 200 votes. The Directive will provide tools to ensure fair remuneration for creators. The landslide vote is clear evidence that the EU intends to apply some controls on the tech giants.

Image Quest Marine Appoints New Library Team

By Jim Pickerell | 194 Words | Posted 9/13/2018 | Comments
Specialist marine photo library, Image Quest Marine, is re-launching with the appointment of a new library team. Eleanor Novick is joining the archive as Library Manager, bringing 10 years of industry experience, including over six years working as Senior Picture Researcher at Lebrecht Photo Library.

Preliminary Income Survey Results

By Jim Pickerell | 390 Words | Posted 9/12/2018 | Comments
On August 31st I published the Photog Income Survey in an effort to get a better idea of what photographers worldwide are able to earn annually from the images they produce. To see all eight questions and some background information before starting to respond to the survey click on this link.

Obituary: Scott Braut (1971-2018)

By Jim Pickerell | 392 Words | Posted 9/12/2018 | Comments
Scott Andrew Braut passed away on September 7, 2018, just short of his 47th birthday. Known for his big smile and engaging stories, Scott touched everyone he met. After his family, Scott's passion was photography. Known throughout the industry as a tireless advocate for photographers, Scott spoke around the world empowering individuals and businesses to create content.

Survival Rights

By Jim Pickerell | 773 Words | Posted 9/6/2018 | Comments
In today’s stock photo environment, the concept of “survival rights” in a contractual agreement between photographer and stock agency no longer makes sense. Many stock photo agencies have clauses in their photographer contracts that allow the Agency to continue to license rights to the photographer’s images for years after either the photographer or the agency terminate the agreement. If the agreement is “exclusive” then the photographer cannot do anything to try to generate revenue from the images, even if the Agency has not been generating much, or any, revenue from them for the photographer.

Vimeo Launches Stock Footage Marketplace

By Jim Pickerell | 647 Words | Posted 9/5/2018 | Comments
Vimeo has announced the launch of Vimeo Stock, a new global, royalty-free stock marketplace featuring an exclusive collection of high-quality video footage sourced directly from Vimeo’s community of iconic creators. Vimeo Stock unlocks content from Vimeo’s world-renowned community of storytellers, redefining what stock footage can and should look like. Vimeo Stock contributors keep 60-70 percent of revenue generated from their licensed clips (versus the average industry cut of ~35 percent), while subscribers to Vimeo’s paid membership plans always save 20 percent on all stock purchases.

Getty Images Press Release

By Jim Pickerell | 797 Words | Posted 9/5/2018 | Comments
The Getty family has taken full control of Getty Images Inc. from The Carlyle Group ("Carlyle"). Through the transaction, the Getty family will acquire all of Carlyle's equity interests in Getty Images for cash plus units that provide Carlyle with an ongoing financial interest in the future growth of the Company. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close by the end of the third quarter of 2018.

Carlyle Out: Getty Images Back In Getty Family Hands

By Jim Pickerell | 168 Words | Posted 9/4/2018 | Comments
The Getty family is acquiring all of the Carlyle Groups 51% equity stake in Getty Images for about $250 million and rolling over about $2.35 billion of outstanding debt. The deal gives Getty Images an enterprise value of under $3 billion compared to $3.3 billion in 2012 when Carlyle acquired a majority stake in Getty. At that time Carlyle invested about $500 million in the company. It is believed that the Getty family has ended up owning a significant portion of the debt.

Most Photographed Cities

By Jim Pickerell | 883 Words | Posted 9/4/2018 | Comments (2)
I saw a story recently that said Dreamstime had identified Kiev as the 15th most photographed city in the world. That surprised me. as I had expected a lot of other cities to be much higher in terms of tourist destinations than Kiev. I couldn’t find the original Dreamstime story in order to see who they had as number 1, but I found a lot of other lists of top cities and top travel destinations. They were all differed depending on who put together the list. I found one list of “25 Most Photographed Cities in Europe” and Kiev wasn’t on it. I decided to search Shutterstock’s collection of 216,094,727 images to see which were the top cities with the most photos.

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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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