The International Press Telecommunications Council and the Picture
Licensing Universal System have released a second version of the Photo
Metadata Toolkit for Adobe Creative Suite. The package of eight files
is available for free download.
Specialist image provider StockFood has announced a new offering:
features, which include images, editorial text and recipes as an
all-in-one solution for publishing clients.
More and more people are producing pictures of a quality sufficient to
satisfy the needs of many who want to use pictures. Thanks to the
Internet—and to a great extent microstock—it is now much easier than in
the past for people to earn a little money from the images they have
produced and to make contact with customers who might want to use them.
The “Going Pro” series of articles targets not the successful
professional but the person just starting out, or the microstock
photographer who has had some success producing images that sell and
believes it is time to quit his or her day job and go into photography
full time. What are the things they need to be aware of before taking
the big plunge of trying to turn something that is a fun hobby into a
career?
As little as five years ago, approximately 98% of all stock photo
revenue came from print uses. There was little or no Internet and small
business uses. Today about 20% of industry revenue comes from Internet and small business uses. The needs of these new customers were hardly addressed five years ago, as all traditional sellers focused on the high end of the market. Consequently, when someone
wanted an image for these purposes they either took the picture
themselves, or copied something off another Internet site and paid
nothing for its use. In the last five years the demand for images that
will be used electronically has grown dramatically.
On Sunday,
The New York Times ran a lengthy piece on the protracted legal battle
between technology startup Infoflows and Corbis. On Monday, Infoflows
followed up with a press release under the headline, “Jury Finds Bill
Gates-owned Company Committed Fraud; Corbis Faces $20 Million Judgment
and Permanent Injunction.” Corbis, however, says that the battle is far
from over and points to the somewhat odd timing of the press coverage.
Ed: Shannon Fagan was one of
the speakers at the New Media Conference held in conjunction with the
June 2010 CEPIC Congress in Dublin, Ireland. Fagan has been in the
stock business for a decade, is represented by most major agencies and
is the president of the Stock Artists Alliance. He shares his
observations about the state of the industry with Selling Stock readers.
For several years
I have estimated that the size of worldwide market for still stock images and
illustrations at about $1.8 billion. I’ve also claimed that overall
stock photography has been a no-growth business despite the fact that
some companies and individuals could point to growth. Now, at the end of
2009 I believe gross revenue for the industry is no more than $1.45
billion and it will probably continue to decline. The stories here break out various segments of the market and explain the overall trends.l