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Scoopshot, the global crowdsourcing photo and video service has announced a global alliance with
Ebyline, a company which helps media publishers, agencies and brands to collaborate with professional freelance journalists worldwide by providing workflow tools.
Eric Charbonneau, a renowned entertainment photographer with over 25 years of experience, today signed with
Invision, the multimedia entertainment agency jointly owned by
The Associated Press and some of the world's leading entertainment photographers.
Scoopshot has launched Scoopshot PRO that makes commissioning a photographer easier than ever. The service gives the media, ad agencies and other companies access to a global pool of professional and accredited amateur photographers, and the ability to set, manage and pay for assignments.
This article provides trend information on the global and U.S. revenue generated through advertising by newspapers, magazines and online delivery services. Advertising revenue has always been key in supporting the creation and distribution of information content.
Historically U.S. publishers have relied on 85 percent of their revenue coming from advertising.
Last month we wrote about
Scoopshot a site where any photographer can submit cell phone pictures for editorial use. The company has been in business for about 18 months and has over 130,000 contributors from 165 different countries. Now Scoopshot has added an option that allows editors to identify and give assignments to a select group of photographers that produce professional quality work.
Publishers are asking for free pictures more frequently. Usually they
argue that the recognition a photographer receives from having his or
her pictures appear in their publication is all the compensation the
photographer should expect. Often they don’t even publish a byline.Thus
readers have no way of knowing who took the picture.
To infinity, and beyond! Roger Ressmeyer is one of 20 candidates with the chance to win a sub-orbital space flight. All he needs is lots of votes from people like you. Roger has been passionate about going to space all is life. And wouldn’t it be great to have a professional photographer actually fly in space. With your Facebook votes you can help him fly! Vote here (
http://apps.facebook.com/spaceracecompetition/entries/147)
Corbis Images has launched
OnDemand: Entertainment, a flexible entertainment subscription service. The entertainment subscriptions provide customers with exclusive access to the industry’s most comprehensive collection of breaking entertainment and iconic celebrity imagery. The service will be available to customers worldwide searching for compelling creative content to showcase their celebrity and entertainment related news.
According to an eMarketer study in 2012 U.S. marketers are expected to
spend more on online advertising than on newspaper and magazine ads
combined. Marketers are expected to spend $39.5 billion this year compared to $33.8 billion on print.
Some argue that there will always be plenty of print publications and
demand for images to be used in print. This story provides some statistics on the Magazine industry, Printing Industry, Newspapers and the Internet that provide a depressing picture of where the demand for still photography is headed.
According to
eMarketer world advertising spend is expected to be about $500 billion this year. The online portion of this spend will make up about $80.2 billion, or 16.1% of the total. By 2015 online advertising spend is expected to reach $132.1 billion and be 22% of total advertising spend.
AudioMicro, Inc., which operates a network of digital content licensing marketplaces, has announced that
ImageCollect.com, its celebrity picture marketplace launched just five months ago has more than 1,500,000 mostly “red carpet” images available for download. The company expects to have more than 4 million images on its site before the end of the year. The collection includes archival imagery from companies like Globe Photos and current content being supplied by top entertainment photographers.
At the CEPIC Congress in Istanbul a panel of Asian stock agents provided insights into the current market for stock photography in Asia. The panel included: Sandeep Mahewsari of Imagebazaar (
www.imagebazaar.com) in India, Daphne Fu of Panorama Images (
www.panoramastock.com) in China, Daniel Kang of Image Republic (
www.irepublic.kr) in Korea, and Ryusel Yoshimoto of amanaimages (
www.amanaimages.com) in Japan.
During the New Media Conference at the CEPIC Congress in Istanbul a panel of picture buyers offered their views on what they are looking for from stock photo collections. Lewis Blackwell moderated the discussion. Picture buyers on the panel included Peter Raffelt of Gruner +Jahr; Matt Burgess of Creature; Martin Casson of Dentsu in the UK; Alexander Karts of Die Bildbeschaffer and Paul Millen from an advertising agency in Istanbul. Two issues of particular interest to image creators and sellers revolved around the use of microstock by these large commercial customers and the lack of outstanding unique images in stock collections.
One of the themes that emerged at the “
La Fotografia In Italia” photojournalism conference in Milan last weekend was that the majority of feature stories photojournalists produce deal with tragedies. Some of the editors expressed the opinion that they were tired of seeing so much tragedy and were looking for something more positive and uplifting. A few photographers responded that they are just producing what the market asks for. Someone said that photojournalism is there to reveal the ugliness of our world and documenting various aspects of tragedies is right and proper. Read the whole story by
Enzo dal Verme on his blog and my comments here.
Recently, I posted on the “Stock Photography: buy and sell photos” group
on LinkedIn.com some of the information about photography revenue
relative to printing revenue that is found in this
story. Peter
Dean came back with a related question that deserves some careful
examination. He asked, “Approximately how many more images are used
these days in print compared to 10 years ago?” He also wanted to know
whether print revenue is Static? going Up or going Down?
Most newspaper and magazine publishers have recognized for some time
that the handwriting is on the wall and the old business model where 80%
of the cost of producing a newspaper or magazine was covered by
advertising and 20% by subscriptions is no longer viable.
The December issue of U.S. News and World Report will be the last printed on paper. Beginning in 2011 and marking a three-year transition to a new business model, the publication will go entirely digital, though it still plans to continue printing a series of print products.
“Our contention is that the iPad version of a magazine is part of the
rate base of that magazine,” said Condé Nast vice president of editorial
operations Richard Levine at the recent conference of the Picture
Archive Council of America. “A new strategy for acquiring content is
needed because it will be impossible to anticipate how imagery initially
acquired primarily for print use might be repurposed,” he continued.
This is not unique to Condé Nast issue, but rather a position other
publishers have already taken or will need to take in the near future.
Richard Levine’s keynote address at the PACA International Conference,
“The Impact of the iPad and the Future Use of Content,” raised a number
of critical issues for the stock photo industry.
Advertising growth is continuing to surprise analysts. ZenithOptimedia
has upgraded its forecast for global ad growth in 2010 from 3.5% to
4.8%. The forecast for 2011 is a continued growth of 4.6%. However, this
positive news comes somewhat qualified.
Traditionally, the primary uses of still pictures were in printed
products such as magazines, newspapers, books, brochures, direct mail
promotions, catalogs and—to a much smaller degree—posters and product
packages. An estimated two thirds to three quarters of all revenue
generated from stock pictures (in the range $1 billion worldwide) comes
from print image uses, but this demand has steadily declined for a number of years.
“National Geographic Interactive adapts the analog magazine to be more
easily and logically experienced in a digital form,” reads the
description of the new products. The publisher also promoted longtime
director of photography David Griffin to the newly created position of
executive editor, electronic publishing. Such changes at one of the most venerable titles may be a
preview of the publishing industry’s future—and, in turn, the future of
the images it uses.
This story provides links to some of the stories on this site that may be of interest to someone new to the stock photography business, or someone who might to have a
brief refresher course on some of the things that have been happening in the
last few years. Many of these stories will also give you some idea of developing trends and what the
future might hold.
Twenty questions to test your knowledge of the photo licensing industry and its future potential.