At the time we shut down the PhotoShelter Collection (and probably still), many photographers felt duped, and hurt that we did not give it more time to mature. But now that we are many months away from that traumatic event, I can restate the following: Stock photography sucks. I am not talking about the people who shoot it. I am talking about the state of the industry.
Fotolia has launched Operation Level Ground, a program designed to attract seasoned microstock contributors to the New York-based Web site by allowing them to keep hard-earned download rankings and the search-return placement these drive.
In a letter signed by Jonathan Klein, iStockphoto's exclusive contributors have been invited to contribute to Getty Images' rights-managed collections Stone and The Image Bank. Klein said, "We've been dreaming about this one for years and today we are proud to call it a reality."
Circle Stock Images is a new Web-based collaboration that unites individual contributor archives into a searchable image collection.
U.K.-based Capture Ltd. has released version 2.1 of its flagship photo-library management software by the same name. This month, the company demonstrated Capture at U.S. events including the Miami conference of the Picture Archive Council of America and pictureHouse New York.
U.S. Senators Al Franken, Sherrod Brown and Sheldon Whithouse have introduced legislation to disallow the federal tax deduction for all advertising and marketing expenses for prescription drugs. If enacted, this bill will hasten the final demise of independent assignment photographers, illustrators and those whose livelihoods are directly dependent on such creatives.
During this week's PhotoPlus Expo, Sausalito-based ImageSpan announced that its flagship product LicenseStream is now available in a business edition. This allows content owners to license and track their content through branded online stores.
As attendees were gathering in Miami for last week's conference of the Picture Archive Council of America, representatives of six trade organizations that unite more than 50,000 photographers and 800 American and European agencies met to discuss common goals.