Photojournalists Call For Better Access To The White House

By Jim Pickerell | 664 Words | Posted 11/29/2013 | Comments
Last week a coalition of 37 news organizations, including the Associated Press, ABC News, The Washington Post and Reuters called for better access to the president and the White House in a letter addressed to White House press secretary Jay Carney.

News Photographer Job Cuts

By Jim Pickerell | 244 Words | Posted 11/27/2013 | Comments
The number of news photographers employed in the U.S has dropped 43% since 2000 from 6,171 to 3,493 according to the ASNE (American Society of News Editors). By comparison, the number of full-time newspaper reporters and writers dropped by 32%—from 25,593 to 17,422.

Morel Awarded $1.2 Million In Damages From AFP, Getty Images

By Jim Pickerell | 222 Words | Posted 11/25/2013 | Comments
A jury has awarded photographer Daniel Morel $1.2 million in damages in his case against Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Getty Images for the unauthorized distribution of his images of the January 12, 2010 Haiti earthquake. At the time Morel received no payment from the agencies for almost 1,000 uses of his images.

Unreaslistic Buyer Expectations

By Jim Pickerell | 936 Words | Posted 11/22/2013 | Comments (2)
The formula for producing stock images that sell is simple. Produce what customers want. All they want are images of  “better quality” that are “more creative,” “natural, not staged” and that clearly illustrate a “concept” the customer needs at the moment. Also, the “price” for usage must be lower than anything else available.

Trends In Sight

By Jim Pickerell | 399 Words | Posted 11/21/2013 | Comments
Corbis has released a series of eight research reports entitled “Trends In Sight” that explain and illustrate with Corbis images What’s New and What’s Next in photography.

Google Wins: Google Books Does Not Violate Copyright Law

By Jim Pickerell | 416 Words | Posted 11/21/2013 | Comments
Judge Denny Chin in Southern District of New York has ruled that Google Books provides a public benefit and is a fair use of copyrighted material. He ruled that the Google Books project doesn’t violate copyright law and dismissed the eight-year-old lawsuit against Google.

Design Pics Acquires AgStock Images

By Jim Pickerell | 351 Words | Posted 11/21/2013 | Comments
Design Pics Inc. has announced the acquisition of AgStock Images, a California based photo agency specializing in agricultural photography. Founded in 1996 by Ed Young, AgstockImages.com is a comprehensive library of worldwide agricultural photography, representing over 115 leading agriculture, produce, livestock, entomology, botany and plant pathology photographers, including photographers who are also professors and researchers across the United States, Canada, Europe and South America.

Top Shutterstock Contributors

By Jim Pickerell | 942 Words | Posted 11/20/2013 | Comments (2)
This story contains a list of the 99 Shutterstock contributors with the largest portfolios. All have more than 17,000 images on Shutterstock and the leading contributor, Africa Studio, has 346,683. Combined these 99 contributors have 4,433,257 or almost 14% of all the images on Shutterstock.There is a hot link to each contributor’s collection.

Changing Stock Photography World

By Jim Pickerell | 1539 Words | Posted 11/19/2013 | Comments (10)
As happens every fall there is a whirlwind of photo conferences – PACA Annual Conference, Visual Connection and PhotoPlusExpo (all in New York), and this year Microstock Expo in Berlin. In light of everything I’ve seen and heard between October 20 and November 17, 2013 I’ve provided a few observations as to where I think the stock photo industry is headed.

Microsoft’s 3-Step Process To Online Theft

By Robert Henson | 501 Words | Posted 11/14/2013 | Comments (1)
Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker and itself a massive consumer of image content for its products and services, has taken the bold step of promoting the theft of images online. Through its newly revamped Office product, Microsoft is replacing an image search functionality – one that routed the user to vetted sources for searching, transacting and integrating content into their online projects – with a general Bing search. While Microsoft is certainly free to remove one piece of Office functionality and push users onto the Bing platform, the methods of how it is doing so underscores a blatant disregard of intellectual property.

About