Photography should
be a revolutionary act. It should be a kick in the establishment, the
common, the mundane. It has to be an act of revolt against banality and
conformity, a powerful explosion of new ideas. It should be as violent
to the mind as a thousand thunderstorms. It should rip apart the
accepted social fabric . It should denounce, point, accuse and solve.
In one frame. It should be a declaration of war to everything we take
for granted and accept as obvious.
PicScout and Idee have long been neck-in-neck in offering image-tracking solutions and underlying image recognition technology. The latest announcement from Idee founder Leila Boujnane suggests the two companies may continue competing on another turf: online image attribution.
With all the free information available on the Internet why would or should anyone want to pay for information?
Many consumers believe that writers should give away their work in
order to build a following of customers who will then pay them for some
other product or service they provide. Most would acknowledge that some
effort and expense is required on the part of the creator to produce
good, useful information, but often that is not deemed to be of any
economic value. Photographers tend to supply information on their blogs
as a way of getting customers to hire them for assignment work, for
paid speaking engagements or as a way of selling a book. The other way
to earn revenue is to generate enough traffic to your site that
advertisers will pay to surround your information with ads in hopes
that some or your popularity will rub off on them. Is giving away information the only way?
Fotolia has notified production companies that contribute to its Infinite Collection that in future they will only be paid 40% of sales, instead of the 50% they have been receiving. Independent contributors to the Infinite Collection retain the 50% commission rate.
London-based Image Source is making its entire collection available to users of PicScout ImageExchange. There are currently over 20 companies participating in the beta PicScout offering.
Though some editorial uses are permissible, photographs of many products and locations cannot be used for commercial purposes without a release. Blanket releases for images of such subjects are almost impossible to obtain. It is sometimes possible to get a release for a very specific, clearly defined use, but not for an undefined "stock use." Therefore, if the stock photographer's goal is to license images as stock, he or she should avoid wasting time photographing such subject matter.
Born in 1928 in New York, Magnum photographer Dennis Stock passed away in Sarasota, Fla., on January 11. He was 81 years old.
Take Stock, the historic image collection founded by photographer Matt Herron, is now available exclusively through Woodstock-based The Image Works. The collection features historic coverage of the civil rights and farm workers movements.