Conceptual Image Trends

By Jim Pickerell | 319 Words | Posted 7/31/2013 | Comments
The Image Source team responsible for tracking trends in the premium stock photography industry is in the process of publishing a series of briefings following their recent research conducted to determine near-future patterns in the use of conceptual imagery. Intended to help premium stock photographers produce the imagery demanded by image buyers, their research will be published as a series of articles on the Image Source photographer resource blog over the next couple of months.

Convergence of Video and Stills

By Julian Jackson | 961 Words | Posted 7/30/2013 | Comments (1)
Video is starting to become the new essential for stills libraries. Although the two majors have had motion divisions for years, most UK photo-libraries avoided video for a number of reasons: technical complexity, bandwidth and the uncertainties of a new market, compounded by the economic difficulties of the past few years.

Educational Publishing: From Print To Digital

By Jim Pickerell | 661 Words | Posted 7/29/2013 | Comments
How fast is the education market moving from print to digital delivery? In its Q2 2013 earnings conference call with investors last week, Pearson, PLC, the world leading provider of educational materials and services provided some interesting data.

Yuri Speaks

By Jim Pickerell | 952 Words | Posted 7/26/2013 | Comments (2)
Yuri Arcurs has written a long post entitled “Microstock sees its first major setback in 6 years and here’s why.” In it he explains (1) why he is pulling his images out of all microstock agencies except iStockphoto and his own Peopleimages.com, (2) why he decided to go exclusive with Getty, (3) why mobile, crowd sourced photography is “a serious threat to stock photography” and (4) why he has invested $1.4 million in Scoopshot. This article is a must read for everyone in the industry.

Where To License RM Images

By Jim Pickerell | 611 Words | Posted 7/24/2013 | Comments
A few months ago I reported how Getty Images’ Rights Managed prices vary when an image is being used in different countries. Now, I've expanded that research to cover a number of additional countries and additional types of uses. The results are interesting and show how confusing RM pricing can be.

Cengage Learning Files Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

By Jim Pickerell | 484 Words | Posted 7/23/2013 | Comments
Earlier this month Cengage Learning Inc., the second biggest publisher of college-course material in the U.S., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it tries to restructure its debt of about $5.8 billion. Under a deal with some of its senior lenders, the company will try to use the bankruptcy case to eliminate $4 billion in debt,

Crowd Sourced Photojournalism

By Jim Pickerell | 1359 Words | Posted 7/22/2013 | Comments
We are moving rapidly toward a time when a large portion of the news photographs we see will be crowd sourced. There may be no way to slow this trend, but it raises some serious questions for those trying to earn a living as news photographers, or those who hope to take up this career in the future.

CEPIC Image Registry Update

By Alfonso Gutierrez | 708 Words | Posted 7/19/2013 | Comments
Alfonso Gutiérrez, President of CEPIC has provided some updated information on the CEPIC Image Registery (CIR) that Selling Stock reported on earlier here and here. See his report.

Is Adding Images To iStock Worth The Trouble?

By Jim Pickerell | 6054 Words | Posted 7/17/2013 | Comments
In the last 18 months I have been tracking the collection sizes of 421 of iStock’s leading contributors. These creators have had combined total downloads of 49,141,000 out of an estimated 150 million for iStock since its founding. Thus, they are very representative of iStock’s total collection and sales.

iStockphoto Cuts Prices

By Jim Pickerell | 766 Words | Posted 7/16/2013 | Comments
iStockphoto has announced today that 1/2 of its imagery is now 1/2 of its former price. Prices for non-exclusive images used to be: 1, 4, 7, 10, 12, 15, 18 credits based on file size.  Now those prices have dropped to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 credits with the price for the largest file size being only 39% of what was formerly charged.

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