Agencies/Distributors
A couple weeks ago I wrote an articles asking
“What Is ‘Commercial’ Stock Photography.” I questioned how big the demand is for “candid,” “natural” and “real life” grab shots of what happens in front of the photographer rather than staged shots that look real but are carefully posed with great production values. A reader suggested I contact Jerry Taven who founded Nonstock about a fifteen years ago.
Getty Images has taken action against a serious copyright infringer who was discovered to have improperly accessed, downloaded and distributed Getty Images content through social media.
robertharding has unveiled an innovative new portal for photography contributors to upload work to their site.
Alamy has been chosen as a distribution partner for photo content from international news agency Reuters. The deal will give all of Alamy’s customers in the UK, US, Canada and Ireland access to millions of images that span over 20 years of incredible news photography.
Adobe has released a host of new features and performance enhancements for its Creative Cloud users. Of greatest interest to stock photographers is the addition of an all-new
Premium Collection of over 100,000 high quality stock images. Images will be available for single download purchase and priced between $100 and $500. In addition, there are other key enhancements to Adobe Stock that provide a deeper integration with Creative Cloud apps.
Editor's Note: I recently asked Chris Ryan of
CAIA Image to explain how their company came into existence as a stock photo production company, and how it operates. He sent me the following and said, "we are always looking for new contributing artists whose work we think is truly outstanding."
ZUMA Press, has announced that it is now offering images from top wire service Reuters through its news feed. ZUMA proudly becomes a distributor of Reuters images in the United States and Latin America as of today.
Have we lost sight of what commercial stock photography is? Have we become so obsessed with “real life” and “natural” the we think that anything that is arranged or posed is bad? Does an image have to shock to be good stock?
Image Brief has made some changes in its terms and conditions. One of the major changes is that they are introducing Social Media Pricing. Photographer may op-out of social media pricing for their RF images, but if they don’t act within 30 days they will automatically be opted in.
National Geographic Creative is looking for a new Senior Photo Editor. Based in Washington, DC this person will review submissions from National Geographic Creative talent, assess which assets would be of commercial value and make determinations as to how they can best be directed for monetization.
Visual China Group has provided a
list of the third party image collections it represents. The combined totals of RM and RF images in these collections is over 10.5 million images. It has been believed that VCG represents all the images in the Getty Images collection, but that appears not to be the case.
Getty Images has launched the
Getty Images Virtual Reality Group, a new business dedicated to the creation and global distribution of virtual reality (VR) content.
According to
Getty Images CEO, Dawn Airey, “Over 97 per cent of visitors come to our websites to look at – not purchase – amazing imagery.”
Shutterstock, Inc. has made its visual search features,
first introduced for desktop use in March available for mobile use. Reverse Image Search for mobile invites users to capture the world around them on their mobile phones, and then upload them via the
Shutterstock app to search Shutterstock’s collection of over 80 million images for similar content and style.
Stocksy has reported another year of impressive growth with gross sales of
$7,928,745 million in 2015. That is up 126% from $3.5 million in 2014. The great news for image creators is that Stocksy paid out
$4,323,735 in royalties. That’s 55% of gross revenue collected. In addition, because the company is a Co-Op, they were able to pay out an additional $200,000 in dividends to members who sold images during the year.
Since October 2013
Getty Images has been collecting money from Pinterest for images in its collection that have been pinned on Pinterest. The transactions appear on photographer sales reports as $0.03 gross sale and a photographer royalty of
$0.01. Indications are that this is a one-time payment no matter how long the image stays on Pinterest.
Shutterstock has notificed its Offset contributors that it has decided to make Offset content available to its Enterprise clients (over 24,000 of them) at a price point between $50 and $100. The current Offset price for a 72dpi web use image is $250.
In a Photo District New interview entitled
“Too Big To Sue” Getty Images General Counsel Yoko Miyashita and VP and General Counsel Lisa Willmer explain why Getty Images is not suing Google Inc. in the US for copyright infringement. This is a must read for everyone engaged in the image licensing business.
In order to safeguard its users,
500px Marketplace has modified its submission requirements by asking for extra details to confirm the identity of its contributors. As of May 16, 2016 contributors must confirm their contact information and provide a copy of their government ID before any new images they submit to Marketplace can be sold.
If you’ve got quality digital image files that have been sitting around for a while and earning little or no money, there may be a way to get some cash for them.
GraphicStock, owned by
VideoBlocks, is paying a small one-time fee for non-exclusive rights to image collections. For this one-time fee they receive the right to license the images to customers non-exclusively, in perpetuity. No additional royalty will be paid to the creator for such sales.
Microsoft has teamed up with
Shutterstock to add integration within PowerPoint in order to offer access to the vast collection of images for use in presentations.
PantherMedia is happy to announce that the royalty free images of the renowned Parisian Agency
PhotoAlto are now available via PantherMedia. This addition gives extra flair to PantherMedia’s Premium Collection. PhotoAlto's images distinguish themselves with a special touch of fashion and style that can only originate from Paris. Creatives all around the world hold PhotoAlto in high regard due to its strong technical quality paired with a specific, individual take on subjects and themes of any type. While the main focus of the collection is on people photography, there is also a strong emphasis on food, travel and other subjects.
Dreamstime has enhanced the already prolific stock media catalog of 43 million images and is now accepting submissions to build a library of royalty-free audio clips. In the first 24 hours after opening the site for submissions Dreamstime received more than 10,000 sound clips. The new audio section will eventually contain thousands of high quality professionally produced sound effects and music files, not currently found anywhere else in the industry. The royalty-free audio clips are grouped into four categories which include instrumental, style, theme, and sound effects, with many sub-categories available for further refining, ensuring users can quickly find the exact sounds or music their projects require.
Everyone says there is increasing demand for photos. And there certainly is for photos that can be had for $1.00 or FREE. But is there increasing demand from those customers who used to buy photos for use in advertising and major marketing campaigns? The following are some statistics. Unfortunately, this story may raise more questions than provide answers, but the questions are worth considering.
Shutterstock has reported Q1 2016 revenue of $116.7 million up $19.1 million compared to Q1 2015. The growth is due mainly to new customers and increased activity by enterprise clients. Royalties paid to contributors during the quarter were about 29% of total revenue, or approximately $33.8 million. Currently, there are over 100,000 contributors meaning that the average contributor earned $338 during the quarter.