The Stock Artists Alliance reports that the first two months of its getMETAsmart program have seen nearly 800 picture professionals attend seven free seminars across the U.S. In addition to SAA-sponsored sessions on metadata, five events included presentations on search-engine optimization by online-archive company Photoshelter.
London-based Ingram Publishing announced the release of Creative Symbol Collection Part 2, which consists of 5,000 vector images. The entire collection is also available through PurestockX as single-file downloads.
California start-up GumGum has closed a Series A-1 financing round with $2.6 million in new financing from GRP Venture Partners and First Round Capital.
Those looking for free images, bloggers in particular, are getting a lot of attention from media and technology companies. In addition to GumGum securing another round of financing and the recent launches of Fotoglif and OffiSync 2.0, both of which endeavor to make it easy to source free images online, Google has integrated sort-by-usage-rights into Google Images.
Toronto-based Fotoglif has joined GumGum and PicApp in the ad-supported online image-licensing space. Former studio owner and Fotoglif founder Michael Betts says the business offers photographers a big opportunity, while also rewarding publishers financially.
Getty Images and Major League Baseball Properties have announced a multi-year extension of their agreement, under which Getty will continue as the exclusive Major League Baseball commercial photo partner and licensor of its image archive.