Articles by Author

Future For RM Photographers

By Jim Pickerell | 729 Words | Posted 10/25/2019 | Comments

A 65-year-old photographer who has been selling his work as stock for many years and licensing his images as RM wrote recently asking my advice. He has a large collection of images and licenses a lot directly to clients, but over the years he has also made a small percentage of sales through stock agencies. See my advice.

DMLA Publishes Google Images Survey Results

By Jim Pickerell | 409 Words | Posted 10/25/2019 | Comments

The DMLA is publishing the initial results of our first Google Images Survey in anticipation of our 24th Annual DMLA Conference in LA. With our members representing over 80% of North American image and video licensing, and more than a third of our respondents C-level executives, the survey will provide the DMLA with data and member consensus to guide future engagement, advocacy and educational efforts.

PicRights Expands Copyright Enforcement Network

By Jim Pickerell | 175 Words | Posted 10/25/2019 | Comments

PicRights Europe GmbH has expanded its enforcement network. To bolster their growing enforcement activities in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the Czech Republic, PicRights has added an experienced team in Vienna, Austria. As the newest enforcement partner, PicRights Austria will augment the long-established network in major markets in Europe, North America, India, Africa, South America and the Middle East, further cementing PicRights’ dedication to wide-ranging geographical coverage of key markets around the world for its clients.

CASE Act Passes U.S. House of Representatives

By Jim Pickerell | 99 Words | Posted 10/25/2019 | Comments

The CASE Act, H.R. 2426, passed in the House of Representatives this week by an
overwhelmingly by a vote of 410-6. The bill still needs to pass through the Senate (and then be signed by the President) before it can be enacted into law.

Creating Model Releases With AI

By Jim Pickerell | 662 Words | Posted 10/10/2019 | Comments

Visual AI can do some incredible things. In 2019, using off-the-shelf AI and Machine Learning solutions from multiple vendors, media licensors can automatically tag massive image libraries, find landmarks or logos in images, and even get full-text captions that read like they were written by a person. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) can pull text out of an image--even if it’s handwritten, or on some tiny visual element, like a road sign - and automatically translate it into 100+ languages.

DMLA Google Images Member Survey

By Jim Pickerell | 465 Words | Posted 10/9/2019 | Comments

At CEPIC’s annual conference in Paris this June, Google Images’ Product Lead, Francois Spies, presented new functionality in development and expressed Google’s desire to work more closely with organizations like CEPIC and DMLA. These were encouraging words, on the heels of last years’ announcement at the DMLA’s 23rd Annual Conference of Google’s adoption of long-fought-for IPTC metadata fields.

Shutterstock Releases Background Removal Tool

By Jim Pickerell | 232 Words | Posted 10/9/2019 | Comments

Shutterstock has released a background removal tool as part Shutterstock Editor users can now easily remove the background from any image in the Shutterstock collection or their own images. (Shutterstock images must be purchased before they can be modified.)

Shutterstock Launches Reverse Image Search For Video

By Jim Pickerell | 361 Words | Posted 10/3/2019 | Comments

Shutterstock’s ongoing efforts to make the creative life of its customers easier continues with the launch of reverse image search for video. This new feature makes it faster than ever to find exactly the right video clip in Shutterstock’s footage library.

Shutterstock Custom Launches Smart Brief

By Jim Pickerell | 442 Words | Posted 10/2/2019 | Comments

Shutterstock, Inc. has launched Smart Brief, a new streamlined and guided experience to make it easier for photo users to quickly and efficiently improve the quality of the brief for a photo shoot. With this update, clients spend less time inputting briefs and more time leveraging collaboration tools to quickly obtain high-quality branded content and reduce the approval process time.

Global List Of Newspapers

By Jim Pickerell | 132 Words | Posted 9/26/2019 | Comments

A reader recently pointed me to a comprehensive index of global newspapers that may be of some use to readers. Links are provided to each publication. This index seems to be very thorough in its listing of publications in smaller countries, but when it comes to major market it seems to only list major national publication and few, if any, of the smaller local and regional publications.

About Michael Masterson

Michael Masterson has a broad range of experience in marketing, business development, strategic planning, contact negotiations and recruiting in the photography, graphic design and publishing industries. In addition to his long experience at the Workbook and Workbookstock, Masterson owned and was creative director of his own graphic design firm for several years.

Masterson has been a speaker or panelist at industry events such as Seybold, PhotoPlus Expo, Visual Connections and the Picture Archive Council of America (PACA) national conference. He is currently the national president of the American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP). He also serves on the board of the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council in his Los Angeles community. He chaired the marketing committee for the Los Angeles Conservancy, a historic preservation advocacy group, for many years.

He currently heads Masterson Consulting, working on projects ranging from business development for creative companies and sourcing talent for them to promoting and marketing industry events as well as providing resume and professional profile services for job-seekers. He can be reached at zvpunryqznfgrefba@tznvy.pbz.