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RANDOM THOUGHTS 98
March 18, 2005
WireImagestock.com
Do you know what hiving is? What about adultecent? What are the new consumer trends that photo buyers are anxious to illustrate these days?
WireImagestock has a feature on its site called Trend Bits
(www.wireimagestock.com/PromoThinkTank.aspx) that looks at some or the current trends that influence consumer thinking. Photographers will find it worthwhile to spend a few minutes thinking about some of these issues.
Currently, eight different topics are discussed and within each topic there is lots of meat. Photos illustrate each topic to help provide a visual sense of what might work. The topics are:
- Real is the new fake.
- Random Juxtapositions create meaning.
- Blink don't think.
- Worldwise.
- High Powered.
- Hiving.
- Organic chic.
- Adultscence
By the way, hiving can also be called nesting, cocooning, or connecting, but the bottom line is that people are spending more time with family and friends in the comfort and safety of their own personal headquarters. Adultscence is a noun that describes adults who are still adolescents at heart -- and was named word of the year for 2004 by Webster's New World College Dictionary.
More On Editorial Fees
Sources in Europe tell us that newspapers in Scandinavia can get unlimited access to Getty's news, sports and celebrity material for a monthly fee of about 1800 EUR (about $2,400 U.S.). That doesn't work out to much per image used, but since Getty wholly owns most of the images in their editorial collection they can afford to do what agencies paying a percentage to individual photographers cannot.
This strategy makes it very difficult for agencies operating in the traditional manner to compete in the sale of hard news pictures.
ImageSource Sets Up New York Office
Image Source has established a creative office in New York headed by Lisa Curesky the newly appointed Director of Photography, North America. Lisa was Creative Director at The Stock Market for a number of years and more recently she was North American creative director for Zefa. Sources indicate that when Corbis acquired zefa Curesky felt it was time to move on.
The New York team will also include Stephanie Cabrera as Art Director, whose previous experience in art direction for producers of high end rights managed agencies make her the ideal choice.
Rachel Hotchkiss, one of the founding members of the creative team at Image Source has been newly promoted to Director of Photography Worldwide with overall responsibility for Image Source's global creative team.
Image Source productions in the last two months have taken place on location in Asia, Continental Europe, South Africa and South America as they seek to provide creative and commercially relevant images for all global markets.
SuperStock Expansion
Superstock has expanded its total number of images available online by more than 80% since the A21 acquisition in February 2004 and now has more than one million images on the site.
Many of the images are from some of the best artists, agencies and producers in the world, including Brand X Pictures, Digital Vision, Mauritius, AGE, Rubberball, Stockbyte and others.
They have also recently upgraded their site at www.superstock.com greatly improved the accessibility and search functionality. Included in this upgrade is "SuperSelects", a tightly edited collection of contemporary images. To set up this group they invested thousands of man-hours to go through all the images in their archive and hand select those their editors believe are best. This collection comprises both RM and RF.
There are two other new features. "Show more like this", is a new search refinement that brings back similar images with just one click. There is also a "Randomize" button that brings back search results in a random order. No biasing of the images, just an honest random showing.
Estimates Of Latin America Market
Ever wonder how big the Latin American market is for stock images. Carlos A. Angel, General Manager of Other Images S.A. with offices all over Latin America estimates the Latin American market for stock photography is approximately $30 to $35 million in sales annually. Sales in Brazil are $12 to $14 million and Mexico is in the range of $8 to $10 million. The balance is divided among all the other countries in Latin America. This also includes all the countries in the Caribbean except for Puerto Rico.
Ressmeyer Creates Science Faction
Roger Ressmeyer has brought together images from some of the industry's finest science photographers, agencies and institutions to create a new brand called Science Faction Image Collection.
Ressmeyer is known for his award winning photography of space and the heavens and has produced and authored several mass-market picture books and multimedia CD-ROMs including Orbit - NASA Astronauts Photograph the Earth, and Space Places and Volcanoes - Life on the Edge.
In 1995 Roger sold his Starlight Photo Agency to Corbis as one of its first major acquisitions. The agency was known for its space, science and technology photographs. From 1995 through 2003, Ressmeyer worked at executive Vice President positions first at Corbis, and then at Getty Images where, among other things, he developed the Photographer's Choice brand and helped found the Image Partner program by recruiting and signing up National Geographic, FoodPix and Illustration Works.
Remmerssen Retires
Peter Remmerssen, Managing Director of Picture Press in Germany has announced that he will be going into early retirement at the end of March. Martin Borek, who presently heads the Gruner + Jahr Documentation department will take on the added duties of managing Picture Press beginning in April. Peter will continue his involvement with the picture business to a certain degree. He will be attending the CEPIC Conference in Prague in June and representing BVPA on the CEPIC Committee for the next two years.
Workbookstock Offers RF
Workbookstock has recently added it to its offering in order to better supply the needs of its customers. This is significant because Workbook had long been opposed to RF. Among the brands it is representing are Image Source, Stockbyte, Big Cheese, Medio Images and Blend Images.