Articles by Jim Pickerell
There are many businesses where one or more “middlemen” are needed between producer of the product and consumers. Digital technology is making it increasingly possible to reduce, or eliminate, the need for middlemen in many industries. When this is possible (assuming the technology developer doesn’t take a disproportionate share of the price the customer pays) the creators of the product can get a fairer share of the amount the consumer is willing to pay and has more control over the price charged for the work performed. This can benefit consumers as well as producers by giving them more direct access to the creators of the product they want to use.
Getty Images has announced an exclusive partnership with
GLAAD, the LGBTQ media advocacy organization, working together to challenge harmful and cliched visual stereotypes of the LGBTQ community, through the launch of their first collaborative effort, a set of guidelines aimed at improving the visual representation of the transgender community. As part of a broader commitment, this new partnership encourages the creation of authentic, diverse imagery and videography, aiming to empower the media and advertising industries to choose visuals which authentically represent the LGBTQ community.
The United States Copyright Office recently created an
informative webpage dedicated to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; an influential law established in 1998 relating to copyright enforcement in the new digital age. The page provides a brief overview of each section of the law and its respective application.
A number of stock agencies are complaining that they don’t get enough new submissions of in demand imagery. See
here. They are seeing increasing requests for "diversity," "African American," "Black Lives Matter" and say that images showing more minorities and ethnic groups are needed. For the most part they are very unspecific about what these images should show.
Shutterstock, Inc. has announced its
2021 Color Trends report. By analyzing pixel data from the year’s top downloads and mapping each pixel color to a HEX code, the report reveals the three fastest-growing colors that will tell the story of 2021, as well as local favorites from around the world.
Photographers who want to earn a portion of their living in the future creating images need to quickly learn and start using Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) skills. (See
this story)
The
National Geographic Image Collection, owned by The Walt Disney Company, is scheduled to close effective December 22, 2020. National Geographic
was sold to Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox for $725 million in 2015. In March 2019 Fox was sold to Disney and Murdoch and his family became the second largest shareholders.
Shutterstock has announced the buyout of AI-driven music platform
Amper Music for an undisclosed sum. The move adds to a growing trend of stock image sites getting involved in rights-free music. Earlier this year, Adobe
inked a deal to carry rights-free music catalogs from both Epidemic Sound and Jamendo, while Getty Images also hosts a royalty-free music library by
Epidemic Sound.
Those setting prices for photography are focused entirely on profits for agency managers and
compensation for capital investment. They give very little
consideration to the well being of creators. Compensation for stock
photos is widely out of balance with production costs. Changes are
needed. Photographer need more control over how their work is priced and a larger share of the fees customers pay. With new technology such changes are becoming increasingly
possible.
We are living in a time when Artificial Intelligence is dramatically changing the way visual content is created. It may not be long before stock photographers are no longer needed to produce photos for commercial use. Photographers will still create photos for personal use and their own entertainment, but visual content for commercial purposes will be created by graphic artists using AI to tell the story and produce the effects their customer needs.