Articles by Author

Getty’s RF “Market Freeze": Expensive Customer Mess?

By Robert Kneschke | 853 Words | Posted 8/7/2020 | Comments

Getty Images offers customers anything they want, but their decisions don't always seem well thought out. In November 2019, Getty Images ended the "right managed" license model, with which image buyers were able to buy, among other things, exclusive image rights for certain regions, industries, etc., which they called the "Market Freeze" feature.

What Stock Photo Customers Need

By Jim Pickerell | 1555 Words | Posted 8/5/2020 | Comments

ustomers need a better way to quickly review a selection of images than most stock photo sites offer. They don’t need more images. They need to be able to review the best images quickly. Twenty-five years ago this was possible by reviewing the images that had been placed in tightly edited major agency print catalogs. Now that editing is gone. The current marketing goal seems to be to throw as many images as possible at customers and force them to spend their time doing the editing. Historical trends indicate that most customers have found the mages used by other customers to be most useful for their purposes as well. Most customers are not looking for an image that has never been used.

Death Of Photography As A Profession

By Jim Pickerell | 1236 Words | Posted 8/4/2020 | Comments (1)

I define Professional Photographers as individuals who are earning a significant portion of the money they need to support themselves and live comfortably from licensing use to the images they produce. The number of such individuals is disappearing rapidly. All indications are that the number will continue to decline.

Stock Photography: Is Volume The Answer?

By Jim Pickerell | 1402 Words | Posted 7/29/2020 | Comments (1)

I can remember when I was primarily an assignment photographer and occasionally sold outtakes from assignments on the side. Most of the income I needed to support my family came from assignments. Stock sales gave us a little extra. Demand for stock started to grow and it became harder for me to get assignments as I was working in an area where the competition was stiff from a lot of top quality experienced photographers. Buyers wanted to pay a little less than it cost to do an assignment. They liked having instant access to the stock image they needed and not having to spend a lot of their time organizing assignment shoots.

Shutterstock Q2 2020 Financial Results

By Jim Pickerell | 1453 Words | Posted 7/28/2020 | Comments

Shutterstock has reported Q2 2020 revenue of $159.2 million down 2% compared to $161.7 million in Q2 2019 and down from $161.3 million the previous quarter. Revenue per download was $3.61 per-image compared to $3.44 in Q2 2019 and $3.42 the previous quarter. Total image and video downloads for Q2 were 44 million compared to 46.6 million a year earlier and down from 46.8 million from the previous quarter. At the end of the quarter Shutterstock had over 340 million images and 19 million video clips in its collection,

Shutterstock Partners With Microsoft: Gives Advertisers Free Images

By Jim Pickerell | 252 Words | Posted 7/24/2020 | Comments

Shutterstock has entered into a partnership with Microsoft to give brands access to the stock photography company’s library of images for use in ads. The API integration with Microsoft Advertising will give advertisers on the Microsoft Audience Network FREE ACCESS to millions of commercially licensed images.

What’s Fair Compensation?

By Jim Pickerell | 203 Words | Posted 7/24/2020 | Comments (1)

Shutterstock’s gross revenue in 2019 was $648,500,000. Total royalties paid out to all contributors in 2019 was about $181,730,000. Total Shutterstock stock owned by Jon Oringer is worth over $650,000,000.

Getty Helps Designers Take Advantage Of Photographers

By Jim Pickerell | 346 Words | Posted 7/24/2020 | Comments

A Getty Images photographer reports that he gets a lot of sales to a Scottsdale, Arizona company called Design Pickle that offers full design services to businesses. Getty licenses these photo uses for $0.17. The photographer gets a $0.03 royalty for his work.

Getty Market Freeze

By Jim Pickerell | 134 Words | Posted 7/24/2020 | Comments

Now that all of Getty Images’ Creative Image offering is Royalty Free the company seems to be trying go occasionally get a somewhat higher price for certain uses by offering a Market Freeze. They tell customers, “With Market-freeze, you can rest easy knowing we'll remove this image from our site for as long as you need it, with custom durations and total buyouts available.”

Best Microstock Distributors

By Jim Pickerell | 657 Words | Posted 7/21/2020 | Comments

Great Escape Publishing has published its first annual GEP Stock Photography Index 2020 which ranks, rates, compares and contrasts the top 10 online stock-photography sites.

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.