One of the biggest problems in the photo world today is that we are being buried in photos. InfoTrend estimates that consumers will take 1.2 trillion photos worldwide in 2017. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is 9%. This year 3,934,500,000,000 will be stored on hard drives and other formats worldwide.
In July 2016
Alamy published an infographic with a timeline for the history of stock photography. They have just released an updated version with 10 new milestones based on comments they received from the public. You can find the updated timeline
here.
This story is
FREE. Feel free to pass it along to anyone interested in licensing their work as stock photography. On October 23rd at the DMLA 2017 Conference in New York there will be a panel discussion on Stock Photo Prices and whether there is anything that can be done to raise them -- even slightly. I will moderate the discussion.
In a speech at PhotoPlus Expo in 1998 Jonathan Klein told the stock photography community, “We also know that the stock photography industry has not historically focused on the needs of customers and, frankly, needs to in order to SURVIVE!, That is where we are now.” Getty Images developed a strategy that was totally focuses on "the customer," but it hasn't necessarily worked out.
Both Shutterstock and Adobe Stock have announced that users of
Google Slides can now access their collections directly. This could result in more image uses for photographers with images in both collections.
Adobe has announced that Santiago Lyon has joined
Adobe Stock as the first director of editorial content. In this newly created role, Santiago will lead Adobe Stock’s editorial content strategy and collection, working with world-class photojournalists, documentary photographers, editorial providers and media.
Effective October 1, 2017 a new French law obliges clients who use commercial images in France to disclose whether the body shape of a model has been retouched to make the individual look thinner or larger.
Contributors report that Getty Images believes there is still a demand for RM imagery. However, they are seeing fewer high quality submissions on a consistent basis, despite the fact that they have many more RM contributors than was once the case. The company is trying to encourage more production by posting increasingly frequent shoot briefs on the Getty contributor website.
Videoblock has rebranded itself as
Storyblocks. The existing video and audio libraries are being maintained as separate subsites:
Videoblocks by Storyblocks and
Audioblocks by Storybloacks. (Each offering requires a separate subscription.) The former GraphicStock library is now part of Storyblocks.
Shutterstock, Inc. has launched its
Flashstock business as
Shutterstock Custom, a proprietary platform that provides an efficient and innovative way for its 1.7 million customers to create branded content.