Getty Images, Inc. reported first quarter 2003 revenue of $130.3 million up from $117.7 million in fourth quarter 2002 and a 14.5 percent increase over revenue of $113.9 million in first quarter 2002. Over $4 million of the revenue rise was attributed to foreign currency translation as the dollar has weakened considerably from the first quarter of 2002.
Instead of trying to do it all, many sellers of stock images are beginning to focus their efforts toward either Marketing and Distribution OR Content Creation and Aggregation. This article explores that trend.
Tom Grill, one of the stock industries most financially successful photographers, says he is earning as much from RF as from RM and that photographers can be successful doing either. Grill left Comstock two years ago to start his own production company. Read this long dialog between Jim Pickerell and Grill.
This issue has stories on: Copyright Protection at Workbookstock, Getty's New RF Pricing Structure, Management Changes At Image Source, Fix Joins Brand X, AGE Distributed Website Architecture and more.
In preparing Story 543 on Royalty Free, I asked companies that produce RF several questions. The response from Henry Scanlon at Comstock was insightful and much more than I had asked for, or expected. Henry is always entertaining and this article provides important perspectives that are worth considering.
Most companies that produce RF are trying to maximize the number of marketing outlets for their images. Comstock, on the other hand, appears to be alone in focusing on promoting brand and not making its images available through other sites. I asked Henry Scanlon to outline the logic for that position.
Klaus Tiedge is a German photographer, living in Capetown, South Africa, who started producing RM stock images of people, lifestyle and beauty subjects about 8 years ago. Two-and-a-half years ago he began shooting RF for ImageSource. This story outlines his experiences.
Many photographers are still adamantly opposed to producing Royalty Free stock. It's time to re-think that position. This story outlines reasons why most stock photographers should be looking to produce at least some RF, if they want to advance their careers in stock.
I'm frequently asked, ''What's in demand? What sells?'' This story tries to answer that question by examining the subject matter of 2747 RF discs that are produced by 11 RF companies. It provides breakdowns of the various subject categories that over 200,000 RF images fall into.
On March 5, 2003 in the U.S. District Court in Miami a jury awarded Jerry Greenberg the maximum allowed by law of $100,000 per infringement for four infringements ($400,000) in the damages portion of his case against National Geographic Society for the unauthorized use of his images in the CD-ROM entitled ''108 Years of National Geographic on CD-ROM.'' The 8-person jury also found that the infringement was ''willful,'' which usually adds legal fees to the damages award.