Press Releases 7

Posted on 10/25/2005 by Jim Pickerell | Printable Version | Comments (0)

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PRESS RELEASES 7

October 25, 2005



ASMP Foundation Welcomes Grant Applications

The ASMP Foundation is reminding potential applicants that the deadline for the fall grant cycle is rapidly approaching, but there is still time to apply. The


foundation, which is the charitable arm of the American Society of Media Photographers, awards grants for educational programs in photography twice a year. The
deadlines are November 15 and May 15. ASMP is the nation's premier trade association of professional photographers.

The grants are awarded in support of a wide range of programs to benefit ASMP members and the creative community they are a part of. The goal of the
foundation is to encourage the professional and artistic growth of photographers. Grant amounts vary depending upon need, but typically do not exceed $1,500. The foundation does not offer assistance grants to individual artists.

In the previous grant cycle, awards were made to four groups:


  • Aperture Foundation, to support "Confounding Expectations: Photography in Context," a series of panel discussions featuring the leading photographers,
    artists and authors of our time.
  • PhotoAlliance, to anchor next year's funding for the ongoing Emerging Artist Lecture Series and the first annual Pacific Rim Lecture.
  • The Santa Fe Center for Photography, for three projects: a workshop called "Publishing the Photographic Book: A Primer"; a workshop titled
    "Presenting Your Work to the Fine Art Market"; and a seminar called "Who's Collecting Whom?" featuring investors, curators, art directors and gallery owners.
  • ASMP's Chicago/Midwest Chapter, to support "Achieving Balance Between Passion and Profession," a two-day retreat for professional photographers, assistants and advanced students.

Other ASMP grants have helped fund university seminars, non-profit educational and arts organizations and community education programs in the United States and
abroad.

Applicants will be notified within 60 days of the deadline if their application has been accepted. All grant decisions are made on a nondiscriminatory basis.
Application information and forms are available online at www.asmp.org/foundation/.


Digital Railroad Delivers Aggregated Photo Marketplace

Digital Railroad, Inc., has announced plans for the Digital Railroad Marketplace. This initiative is another direct response by the company to address requests for additional features by its photographer, agency and photo buyer members around the world.

The Digital Railroad Marketplace will continue to allow members to maintain their personally branded archives, while giving them the most efficient method to simultaneously publish images through an aggregated marketplace. Digital Railroad's members include award-winning photographers and agencies in 40 countries, from Afghanistan to Italy, from the U.S. to Indonesia. A partial list of members can be viewed at the following directory: www.digitalrailroad.net/corpsite/directory.html.

The service provides photo buyers with the best of both worlds: archive owners who understand and control their own image collections and the convenience of a centralized search. Hundreds of new photo sources will be made available to buyers, who can manage their purchases in a single unified workspace using one member name and password.

"For more than 30 years, as Director of Photography for Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, Day in the Life Books and many others, it has been one of my challenges to find, on deadline, unique images and photographers from around the world that wouldn't be published in my competitors' publications," says Karen Mullarkey, Editorial Director of FilmLoop.com. "But with the arrival of Digital Railroad's Marketplace, my work will be thoroughly simplified with one location providing a greater number of unique, international, professional photo sources."

"As a photographer who has more than 40 years of experience working with magazine publishers, I am keenly aware of the importance of effectively controlling and marketing my archives," says Dirck Halstead, Award-Winning Photographer, Editor and Publisher of The Digital Journalist. "Digital Railroad's team has the most photo industry expertise of any Internet technology company. This deep understanding of our business is a critical element to simultaneously solving the challenges of photographers and buyers. Now, with the addition of the Marketplace, Digital Railroad will become an even greater asset to my marketing program."

"The upcoming launch of the Digital Railroad Marketplace is an enormous opportunity for us to continue selling images to customers through our branded online archive, while simultaneously allowing us to easily place our photographers' images in front of new buyers," says Marcel Saba of Redux Pictures, a Digital Railroad agency member. "Digital Railroad continues to develop unique features that we request, and I am certain that this new Marketplace feature will help its members around the world sell more images and do more business."

"Digital Railroad's Marketplace has arrived in response to requests by those professionals who demand a competitive, efficient and economical service with which to place images in full view of potential buyers around the world," says Graham Cross, Director, eyevine (UK).

"This new feature adds to our marketing channels, giving eyevine and our photographers yet more visibility, and will enable clients to find the images they need. Together with sub-agencies also powered by Digital Railroad, we'll have more pulling power in one combined space, whilst at the same time maintaining our brand identity. Digital Railroad is unique in their knowledge and speed of reaction to what's important in our industry."


Digital Railroad Aligns with PicScout to Add Image Rights Tracking Services to Member Archives

Digital Railroad and PicScout announced an alliance to provide PicScout's proprietary Image Tracker Technology for image rights management. This premium service for Digital Railroad's members will enhance Digital Railroad's application services with PicScout's image recognition and web crawling technology, providing Digital Railroad's members the ability to upload their images while simultaneously submitting the content for rights management tracking via PicScout Services.

PicScout applies the most sophisticated web crawling and image recognition technology in the world to find copyright infringements in print and websites, and is capable of detecting images even if they have been altered or distorted. Its Image Tracker Service enables photographers to compare their Rights Managed images with individual images on commercial web sites and on major stock photography markets throughout Europe and North America.

Digital Railroad is an application services company that is dedicated to solving the critical technical problems facing the creators and buyers of digital imagery. Digital Railroad's unique, comprehensive suite of online services transforms the way photographers and agencies manage, market, and sell images to photo buyers worldwide.

"We are constantly expanding our application services, as well as our technology partnerships, to minimize production and help our members solve their business challenges," said Evan Nisselson, Founder and CEO of Digital Railroad. "The PicScout Image Tracker Service is a unique premium service that we believe will become a valuable asset to give more control to our photographer and agency members."

"This alliance will enhance the Digital Railroad services platform and help photographers to focus on making great pictures-developing their core business rather than managing technology," added Eyal Gura, CEO of PicScout.


iStockphoto Surpasses Half-Million Member Milestone

iStockphoto announced its community has surpassed the 500,000 member mark, more than doubling in size in the past 12 months. In 2000, iStockphoto's genesis marked a powerful shift in the business of royalty-free digital images by creating a dynamic online community where high-quality, low-cost stock images can be purchased from $1 to $20, well below prices at the conventional stock photography firms. Today, with nearly 20,000 international contributing photographers and artists, a library of 450,000 images growing at more than 11,000 images per week, and more than 30,000 new members being added each month, iStockphoto has become the premier destination for designers and photographers to share ideas, inspiration and knowledge.

"iStockphoto provides designers, advertisers, media and marketers great images that don't break the bank," said Guy Kawasaki, author of "The Art of the Start" and managing director of Garage Technology Ventures. "This is an idea whose time has come-stock photography will never be the same because of iStockphoto."

iStockphoto's micro-payment system and robust search functionality make it a practical and reliable resource for graphic designers, but the deeper attachment to iStockphoto comes from an amazing range of photos and illustrations by some of the best talent in the world. iStockphoto's exclusive artists hail from six continents and their work is reviewed by an international panel of experts to ensure qualitative and intellectual property standards. iStockphoto approves and uploads around 11,000 fresh images per week to its easy-to-use online library that now boasts 450,000 files.

iStockphoto also hosts an on-the-edge globetrotting photo academy called iStockalypse, paying for models, locations, lighting and backdrops in such locales as Boston, Prague, Seattle and New York to help photographers learn from professionals, deepen their talent and broaden their portfolios without incurring the huge costs of professional shoots. The community also features forums and discussion boards that buzz daily on almost every aspect of design and photography, as well as member challenges (The iStock Steel Cage), contests, and highest-rated image indexes and designer spotlights.

"Passionate commitment to their craft, be it photography, design or both, is what drives our community's tremendous organic growth," said Bruce Livingstone, president, CEO and founder of iStockphoto. "Our forums, discussion boards and developmental opportunities are thriving because the bulk of our members live for their art, so we are thrilled about surpassing the half-million member mark because it means we are offering a great global online home to creatives, as well as fantastic, well-priced images to clients."


Masterfile Establishes Direct Sales Operations in France

On November 1, 2005, Masterfile will establish direct sales operations in Paris, France as part of their European expansion.

Since 2000, Masterfile France has been operated by "080 SARL", a company owned by Mr. Romain Grandadam-and Masterfile France grew successfully under his guidance. Now Masterfile is ready to begin a new phase of growth as part of its recently-announced expansion into Europe.

There will be no staff cuts. All of the current staff in Paris will become employees of "Masterfile France SARL" on November 1st. The operation will be expanded during 2006 with additional investment from the parent company.

Leading the Paris operation is Mr. Antoine Boucherit, Directeur Commercial. Mr. Boucherit joined Masterfile France in 2000, shortly after it began operations and he has been integral in building the business there. He will report to Tomas Speight, Masterfile's Senior Vice-President International in Europe.

Masterfile President, Steve Pigeon, says "The terms of the acquisition are confidential but, suffice to say that we are ending our relationship with Romain Grandadam as the best of friends. We are delighted to welcome the staff in Paris into our global organization. We look forward to expanding our service to clients in France while increasing market share for Masterfile's contributing artists around the world."


Photographers Laforet, Frakes, Ashburn Choose PhotoShelter as their Online
Image Archive

Digital storage platform provider BitShelter LLC announced the launch of PhotoShelter, an online image archive service and marketplace. Vincent Laforet, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer with The New York Times; Bill Frakes, a staff photographer for Sports Illustrated Magazine; and 2004 Canon Female Photojournalist Award winner Kristen Ashburn are among PhotoShelter's initial clients. Built by the engineers behind the success of HotJobs.com, PhotoShelter offers professional photographers a truly affordable and robust archive system, along with the tools and resources they need to turn their storage into sales.

"The shift to digital photography has created a modern crisis: How do photographers store terabytes of images, while providing immediate access and searchability to generate sales?" says Allen Murabayashi, CEO of PhotoShelter and former Senior Vice President of Engineering at HotJobs.com. "Desktop hard drives, DVDs and even consumer-level RAID do not provide a long-term solution to the problem."

PhotoShelter solves this dilemma by providing secure storage that is both locally and geographically redundant, with 24-hour online accessibility. What's more, it serves as a sales platform, allowing photographers to create galleries, sell images, add search capabilities to their own sites and create RSS syndication feeds. Because PhotoShelter wants to empower photographers to turn their archive into a source of revenue, there are no commission fees, and plans start at just $5.99/month.

"The features and workflow components of PhotoShelter are a perfect tool for freelance photographers. I haven't found anyone else out there who can compete," says Laforet. "This service gives me much greater freedom-instead of being bogged down by technology, I am liberated by it, both in terms of time saved and much greater mobility."

PhotoShelter offers photographers:


  • Bulletproof archiving that is both locally and geographically redundant
  • Commission free image licensing and sales
  • Ability to add image search capabilities to personal sites
  • Ability to create RSS and ATOM syndication feeds
  • A "Virtual Agency" service that allows photographers to group together
    for marketing purposes yet retain full control of their images

PhotoShelter offers Photo Buyers:


  • Deal directly with a photographer and not a middlemen
  • A directory of photographers within a specified area or budget, or with a
    particular specialty
  • View galleries through password-protected invitations


PhotoShelter made its premier at the PhotoPlus Expo in New York City, October 2005.


Copyright © 2005 Jim Pickerell. The above article may not be copied, reproduced, excerpted or distributed in any manner without written permission from the author. All requests should be submitted to Selling Stock at 10319 Westlake Drive, Suite 162, Bethesda, MD 20817, phone 301-461-7627, e-mail: wvz@fpcubgbf.pbz

Jim Pickerell is founder of www.selling-stock.com, an online newsletter that publishes daily. He is also available for personal telephone consultations on pricing and other matters related to stock photography. He occasionally acts as an expert witness on matters related to stock photography. For his current curriculum vitae go to: http://www.jimpickerell.com/Curriculum-Vitae.aspx.  

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