Agencies/Distributors
Design Pics Inc., headquartered in Edmonton, Canada announces the acquisition of
Pacific Stock, a Hawaii based photo agency. The agency was originally founded in 1987 by Barbara Brundage.
Image creators need to recognize that the fatal flaw in the stock photography business model is that there is no way to control supply relative to demand. This was not a big problem in the 1990s when demand exceed supply, but that state of affairs will never happen again. As a result Stock Photography is and will continue to be a very risky business.
The sale of
Masterfile to Arius 3D Corp for $21.4 million is still hanging in the balance. The two companies have agreed to extend to January 31, 2012 the closing of the previously announced proposed acquisition by Arius3D of all of the issued and outstanding securities of Masterfile.
Getty Images notified its editorial photographers on November 9th that
it is revising its editorial contract and cutting the royalty rate to 35
percent. Under the current editorial contract Getty pays photographers
50 percent for some sales and 35 percent for others.
PhotoShelter has published a new Free guide to Selling Stock Photography that can be found and downloaded
here. The guide includes results of a survey of 500 buyers of stock that shows which collections they search most frequently.
Masterfile has added 1.5 million budget-friendly photos and illustrations to its website at
www.masterfile.com, complementing its large collection of premium rights-managed and royalty-free images. Customers can easily toggle between the RM/RF collection and the $10 collection, but images from both collections are not shown at the same time.
Shutterstock Images LLC has released its
Shutterstock for iPad app, available for free download now in the Apple App Store.
Just 8 months after launch
ImageCollect.com, a celebrity picture library offering images at microstock prices, has doubled in size in 3 months and now has more than three million images available for download. The library contains archival imagery and current content supplied by top entertainment photographers. The company expects to have more than 5 million images by early 2012.
Aurora Photos is excited to announce the launch of the
myPhone Collection of stock photography, a collection of images taken with iPhones and other mobile devices by some of the world’s top photographers and iPhoneographers, and now made available to pictures buyers for both editorial and commercial licensing. To coincide with the launch of the myPhone Collection, Aurora is also introducing a new modified Rights Managed licensing model called
Easy Rights Managed. The model offers simple, quick, broad, and managed rights at reasonable prices.
With its launch of its
myPhone Collection Aurora Photos has also introduced a new simplified Rights Managed pricing model they call
Easy Rights Managed. “The model offers simple, quick, broad, and managed rights at reasonable prices.” The model is similar in some ways to the Rights-Ready model launched by Getty Images in 2006. Getty later abandoned this experiment.
While Thanksgiving is a joyous event for many, for those less fortunate it can be a difficult time. With this in mind,
Dreamstime, is launching its “Give Thanks, Give Back” campaign to help share the blessings of this year’s Thanksgiving with those less fortunate.
The Occupy Wall Street movement’s “we are the 99 percent” campaign is
basically about a fairer distribution of wealth. Photographers and those
who handle the distribution of images to end users need to launch an
Occupy Book Publishers movement.
In an effort to give volume customers a better deal and compete with Getty’s Premium Access and Thinkstock programs
Corbis Images has launched a new Royalty-Free (RF) subscription service that offers customers easy access to more than one million RF images at greatly discounted prices. The service, called ‘OnDemand: Royalty-Free’ is available to all customers to help solve their creative storytelling needs.
For those in the stock photo industry October is always a time for
intense networking and education in New York with Visual Connections,
the PACA International Conference and PhotoPlus Expo. Now that these
events are over its time to reflect things learned. Here are a few of my
take-aways.
Arius3D Corp. and Masterfile Corporation have agreed to extend to November 30, 2011 the closing of the previously announced proposed acquisition by Arius3D of all of the issued and outstanding securities of Masterfile.
Some Flickr photographers are given the opportunity to place some of
their images on gettyimages.com. One photographer who was recently
approached by Getty asked if he should have any concerns about dealing
with Getty or if there are things he should be aware of before
agreeing. Here are some of my thoughts.
Corbis has announced that it will be closing its entire Calgary operation at the beginning of 2012. The "planned office closure" will consolidate all of the company’s Technology and Marketing activities in Seattle. Corbis is expecting to add technology and marketing positions to the Seattle headquarters. Veer will continue to operate as a separate brand. It is unclear whether any of the personnel currently working on the Veer brand will move to Seattle.
The big distributors are missing a huge opportunity to capture an even larger share of the market than they already control. Learn how visual search could help them grow revenue and take market share from the small suppliers.
iStockphoto is celebrating completion of its fifth year in the stock video business by
discounting all video purchases by 15 percent from October 17th to 23rd.
The first thing everyone wants to know about microstock is how much the average person earns licensing images at those prices. This story provides some statistics. The story also deals with the misconception that in order to have high earnings in microstock it is necessary to have a huge number of images in the collection.
Recently, a new stock agency asked if they should develop a pricing
strategy based on fixed prices, or prices based on how the images would
be used? Here are some things to think about.
Corbis Images (
www.corbisimages.com) has named Barak Ronen as Senior Vice President of Media Products. Ronen was formerly with Reuters and will be based in London. He will be responsible for the company’s Media product development and commercial strategy.
Getty Images plans to use "a handful" of 3D-dedicated photographers to cover secure next year's Olympic Games in London.
Many photographers believe they will make more sales for the best prices
if their images are represented by the biggest distributors. They may
make more sales, but definitely not for the best prices. For years the
biggest distributors have been seriously undercutting price – at least
in the education field. There is a big question whether increased volume
at low, dramatically discounted prices results in increased revenue
overall for creators. Here’s how and why.
Pond5 will be giving away coupons worth $10,000 of free stock media at the Frankfurt Book Fair (Hall 3.1, Booth A 118), Oct. 12 - 16, 2011. Pond5’s
online collection includes more than 800,000 royalty-free stock video clips (the largest archive on the web), along with millions of other assets, including stock photos, illustrations, music tracks, sound effects, and After Effects motion graphics projects.