The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies has awarded Alan Smith and TopFoto, the stock agency founded and managed by Smith, the 2007 BAPLA award for outstanding contribution to the image-licensing industry.
Since 2004, Corbis has devoted significant resources to preserving the historic image collection. The Sygma Preservation Initiative will move 50 million slides, negatives, prints and contact sheets to a new, climate-controlled, fire-safe and secure home near Paris.
ImageSpan's newest product, LicenseStream, nears a full launch on Oct. 31. Although the online platform will host photographers' images and other content, its purpose is to offer transactional support with the rights-management process.
The Bodø, Norway-based microstock underdog Crestock has unveiled the third version of its Web site. Crestock sells individual-image licenses, bulk-credit packages and subscriptions. Its business model is similar to other microstock providers in all ways save one: competing on image quality.
Former Getty Images CFO Lawrence Gould wants to appeal to the Google generation of creatives with his new royalty-free stock library ImagePick. Co-founded by Gould and former Getty director of e-commerce Tom Donnelly, ImagePick promises search simplicity and image quality.
Gregg Stallings and Lynn Martin have joined Aurora Photos, Stallings as director of sales and Martin as director of royalty free.
The explosion of video has already affected the stock-licensing and photography industries. The largest stock-image companies have all diversified into video-related service lines. And the impact is felt by companies large and small.