PhotoAlto has announced that it has just completed a year long project
in which the company re-designed and rebuilt is website incorporating
only the latest search and web technology. Visitors will immediately
note streamlined stylistic and design changes, and will be presented
with an enhanced choice of search features, quicker browsing speeds, a
simplified thumbnail display, and an all around increased ease of use
and intuitiveness to the website.
Photographers marketing their images through online web sites should be
alert to common art scams that seem to be growing in frequency. This is
particularly true for those trying to sell physical works of art (fine
art prints).
Many professional photographers are disturbed by the changes taking place in their careers. Photographers who dream of earning their living taking pictures will, at the very least, find that goal much harder to achieve than it was for their predecessors. Amateurs have taken over an increasing share of the business. And their share will continue to grow. The shift from professional control of the market to significant amateur involvement is irreversible and will accelerate. That doesn’t mean that no one will be able to earn a living as a still photographer. But many fewer will do it successfully than was the case in the past. There is no way to predict the amount of the market amateurs will finally control, but it will be significant.
iSyndica, the automation service that allows photo and video producers
to batch-upload content to multiple stock-selling and photo-sharing Web
sites, has announced that it will be closing its doors as of October 10,
2010. Effective immediately, contributors will no longer be able to
place orders for credits or storage, or change their subscriptions.
As we move forward in the digital publication age, a group of
celebrity photo agencies has untied into the Editorial Photo Agency
Guild, which is leading the way in attempting to establish some pricing
principles for the use of photos in iPad applications. The need for a
unified approach in bargaining became apparent when People magazine announced its plans to launch an iPad application and provide it free to print subscribers.
In theory, there should be major growth in demand for video in the near
future. However, people have been making that prediction for more than a
decade, and it still doesn’t seem to be happening. In fact,
videographers who were among leading sellers of video clips a decade ago
are now reporting that their sales are down 50% from what they were
just three or four years ago. It is unclear whether this decline only applies to a select few or if revenues are down across the board. At the same time, it is apparent that video as an industry is growing, offering still photographers an opportunity to transition or at least diversify.
Corbis has released
The Human Touch,
a creative trends report that highlights a new balance between the
convenience of technology and personal interaction. The trend builds on
the techno-backlash observed by researchers for several years.
The average annual income or a large group of photographers is pretty
meaningless. It depends greatly on how many images a photographer has in
a collection, generally how productive he is, the kind of imagery he
shoots, whether his work is represented by a single agency or many
agencies, which agencies in particular, and probably a number of other
factors.