Articles by Jim Pickerell
Last week in a story entitles “
Educational Products For Students” I discussed the new educational publisher strategy for making images available to students. In particular I examined the Encyclopaedia Britannica product called Image Quest and made some estimates about pricing and the royalties photographers might receive for the use of their images. Encyclopaedia Britannica has now provided us with more details of their pricing strategy and we need to revise our numbers.
On Tuesday June 7, 2011 U.S. District Judge James C. Francis IV denied Norbert Wu’s request for a preliminary injunction and sanctions and refused to stop Pearson Education Inc. from communicating with members of a proposed class of photographers. Pearson had been temporarily restrained from negotiating with other photographers and stock agencies with regard to unauthorized use claims until the judge determined whether or not a class action could be certified. Now Pearson is free to move ahead and settle photographer's claims.
Today, the biggest problem for professional photographers is how to get their images seen by potential customers. Most photographers would agree that the way to get the widest possible exposure for their work is to get their images on gettyimages.com. Sources at Getty Images tell me that 96% of the company’s sales come from images customers find on the first three pages of the search returns. Customers have a choice as to how many thumbnails they want to see on any given page -- with a maximum of 100 allowed -- so three pages of images would be a maximum of 300.
The educational market has always been a big segment of the stock photo business. Some agencies and individual photographers earn the majority of there revenue from sales for educational use. Until recently, most of the photographs used for educational purposes were published in textbooks. All that is changing with
Britannica Image Quest that gives students and teachers unlimited access to a 2.3 million image file.
The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) has received $170,000 from the Authors Coalition of America (ACA), an organization which distributes money collected for copying non-title-specific works abroad, primarily in Scandinavia and Europe. Non-title-specific works are those that cannot be identified individually or by copyright owner.
There are strong indications that iStock's introduction of higher priced brands has resulted in the company licensing fewer images. In addition many of its customers seem to be turning away from iStock and goint to other microstock sites to purchase the images they need. One non-exclusive photographer with many best selling recreation images on both iStock and Shutterstock reports that his images on Shutterstock are now outselling those on iStock by 3 to 1 while a year ago the reverse was true. Other photographers confirm this trend.
BigStock is introducing a new strategy for licensing microstock images. Their pay-as-you-go system allows customers to pay with a credit card for only those images they want to use immediately and not be forced to purchase packages of credits. There is no minimum purchase.
Corbis Images will sponsor the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph in Charlottesville, VA from June 9-11.
The Festival is billed as “three days of peace, love and photography” and will feature exhibits and on-stage appearances by many illustrious photographers, with additional exhibitions, outdoor screenings, and projections.
At the CEPIC Congress in Istanbul a panel of Asian stock agents provided insights into the current market for stock photography in Asia. The panel included: Sandeep Mahewsari of Imagebazaar (
www.imagebazaar.com) in India, Daphne Fu of Panorama Images (
www.panoramastock.com) in China, Daniel Kang of Image Republic (
www.irepublic.kr) in Korea, and Ryusel Yoshimoto of amanaimages (
www.amanaimages.com) in Japan.
On May 23, 2011 in an open letter to contributors Andy Saunders, Vice President of Creative Imagery for Getty Images, outlined what Getty sees as the future of creative co ntent. His analysis will be of interest to everyone engaged in the stock photo business and can be found at
http://www.gettyimages.com/contributors, in the bottom right corner of the contributor log-in page. No password is necessary to view this link.