Design Pics Inc., headquartered in Edmonton, Canada, has acquired
Alaska Stock, an Anchorage based photo agency, effective October 1, 2012. The agency was originally founded in 1990 by Jeff Schultz and has became known as “the place” to find quality images of Alaska, and more specifically, Alaska-themed images such as adventure, wildlife, winter lifestyles, and recreation.
Dreamstime has introduced a new corporate account system that streamlines administration of file downloads and enhances purchase and invoice tracking for large firms with multiple users. The new system enables multi-user firms to designate a Corporate Administrator, create multiple sub-accounts, and administer systems for purchasing images and track invoices.
Back in the first quarter of 2007 Getty Images introduced “
Premium Access” (PA) pricing for their “best customers.” See what's happening with Premium Access and how it compares with microstock.
Shutterstock Inc has announced that it plans to sell 4.5 million shares in its initial public offering at between $13 and $15 each. This block of shares would represent about 14% of its total shares outstanding.
iStockphoto has introduced a new
Shopping Cart Checkout option that allows customers to pay for just the images they need without having to purchase credits.
Dreamstime now offers almost 15 million downloadable images to a user base of 5.1 million. With over 100,000 new users joining each month, Dreamstime now has the fastest-growing user base in the industry and is one of the web's most popular sites. The company's rapid growth is fueled by a unique, community-focused business model that crowdsources creativity.
Yuri Arcurs, probably the world’s most prolific stock photographer, has written a
blog post outlining how the demand for stock imagery has changed and identified a few subjects to shoot and ones to avoid given the oversupply and declining demand.
Last weeks
announcement that PACA, ASMP and CCC are considering some type of arrangement that would compensate image creators for the unauthorized web usage of their images on sites like Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube, etc. needs careful examination by all photographers and distributors before anything is formalized.
More than 1,000 designers responded to
Graphic Design USA (GDUSA) annual survey designed to determine how stock imagery is being used. The survey indicates that use of stock imagery has grown nearly three times in 25 years since the first survey, starting at 39 percent in 1986 and reaching 98 percent in 2012. The survey also shows that 31 percent of designers are in a full-blown love affair, using stock images over 100 times a year, which is up 11 percent from last year.
The cost of producing images certainly hasn’t declined in the last 8 years. If anything it has increased. But, it is interesting to take a look at what’s been happening to the return-per-image on file based on Getty Images figures.