Chris Barton, managing director of Photographers Direct has written a humorous article on the
multiple use of microstock images that shows five young people—three women and two men—promoting the products and services of a dozen different companies, with copy that
would lead the reader to believe that these people were employees of all
these companies. Every rights-managed photographer will enjoy this
piece.
iStockphoto has launched a user-directed donation program, pledging up to $500,000 in 2010. The phased program will eventually enable iStock clients, contributors and employees to make microdonations to charities of their choice from within istockphoto.com.
Alaska Stock Images founder Jeff Schultz has volunteered as the official photographer of the Iditarod trail race for 30 years. In March, teams race from Anchorage to Nome, traveling over 1,150 miles of the most extreme and beautiful terrain in the world.
As part of its promotional strategy, Getty Images-owned iStockphoto is offering a selection of free images through Google Blogger, a leading blogging platform that boasts millions of bloggers.
Sausalito-based ImageSpan has announced that the services of Toronto company BrandProtect are now part of online content licensing platform LicenseStream. BrandProtect's LinkWalker will help LicenseStream users identify where brands, company names, images, audio, video and trademarks appear online.
What an image is worth to a customer depends entirely on the customer's intended use. The size of the file delivered has very little to do with how an image might be used, or the value the customer will receive from using it. Granted, there are limits as to how a very small file can be used. But, there are many ways that a medium-size file can be used, with widely varying values. The biggest problem with royalty-free licensing, and particularly with microstock, is not that it prices certain uses very low, but that the system of pricing by file size has tried to ignore use in an effort to achieve simplicity.
One of the key things to understand about stock photography is why some customers are willing to pay more than others to use an image.
The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies, which expressed serious misgivings about the proposed U.K. Digital Economy Bill in January, released a statement that highlights that some of such concerns remain in the latest version of the legislation.
The Picture Archive Council of America has announced its newly elected board for 2010-2012. Blend Images' Robert Henson is taking over the presidency from Maria Kessler.
Berlin-based fStop has launched the fCards App for the popular Apple lines of iPhone, iPad and iPod. The app, available through the iTunes store for $1.99, is a mobile adaptation of the free e-card service fStop has developed previously.