Expect the business of producing and distributing still stock images to go downhill in the rest of 2007 and 2008. Among the issues to watch are: Crowdsourcing, Micropayment, Cannibalization of RF, Oversupply, No Growth in Customers Paying Traditional Prices, and a Decline in Use of Print for Information or Marketing.
This edition has stories on: Freerange Stock To Share Ad Revenues With Photographers; PDN Releases Stock Guide 2007; and New Bill May Pose Problems for Stock Providers.
Getting model releases from subjects in the "Developing World" has always been difficult. There is the need to translate releases into many languages and even when that is done the subjects often have little understanding of how their picture might be used. ANP Photo in The Netherlands has developed a program to make it much easier to obtain released photos of such peoples.
Stories in this edition include: Getty Images Files 2006 10-K; WGPN to Acquire Several Image Banks; Fotolia Says No Price Hike and iStockphoto Expands Search, Formats and Languages.
This edition has stories on: IPTC Releases Photo Metadata White Paper; Corbis Doubles Media Management and Northfoto to Distribute Chinese News Images.
Andreas Trampe, head of the photo department at DER STERN, Germany's leading general interest magazine, gave the keynote address at the "International Photo Metadata Conference of the IPTC" and outlined the current challenges picture editors face in trying to find the right image, on deadline. This is the full text of his presentation.
Once again the CEPIC conference (that's Coordination of European Picture Agencies Press Stock Heritage In Congress) in Florence, Italy from June 6th through 10th was the place for people in the stock photo industry to be. This story details some of things I learned.
This edition has stories on: Photo-Sharing Sites Enter Stock Market; Infoflows To Launch Video Tracking Service and Corbis Sponsors Cannes Lions Ad Festival.
This edition has stories on: Photographer Sees Big Profits With Microstock; Jupitermedia Buys 2 Web Sites; Image Source Hires Creative Exec; Microstock Sites Go Mobile; and Pending Court Case May Set Image Licensing Precedent.
Red carpet and celebrity photography may be about to get much less lucurative. Shutterstock has announced a new program called Shutterstock on the Red Carpet that is designed to help their network of over 60,000 contributing photographers obtain coveted press passes, for film premieres, award shows, concerts, political rallies, etc.