Macrostock
Many photographers, upset with the low prices their distributors are charging for uses, have become enamored with the idea that PicturEngine will allow them to set their own prices for use of their work. That may not work as well as they hope.
Getty Images will become the sole global distributor for Lonely Planet’s 420,000+ travel images as of July of this year. The collection from approximately 370 photographers has been built up over the last 14 years.
Previously we wrote about the new search engine
PicturEngine. The key question is not how well the search works, the number of images they offer or the chance for photographers to ask for higher prices for their work. The key question is how will they make customers aware that their site exists? The question is marketing.
A new search engine called
PicturEngine is getting a lot of attention in the blogosphere. It has recently been released in Beta after four years in development. The founder, Justin Brinson, also owns two agencies: Corner House Stock Photos and Picturesque.
Back in 2008, in an effort to try to compete with microstock, Alamy introduced its
Novel Use licensing model. This strategy allowed the company to license RM and traditional RF images for very limited small uses without risking loss of revenue when these same customers wanted to make larger uses of the images.
Publishers are asking for free pictures more frequently. Usually they
argue that the recognition a photographer receives from having his or
her pictures appear in their publication is all the compensation the
photographer should expect. Often they don’t even publish a byline.Thus
readers have no way of knowing who took the picture.
Photographers lament the low prices being paid to use some of their
“unique and unusual images,” particularly when the images are costly to
produce and unlikely to be in high demand. Some photographers,
particularly those with unique scientific/nature images, believe that
specialist agencies are “shooting themselves in the foot” when they
place such images with Getty, Corbis and Alamy. These major distributors
dramatically discount the prices they charge for the use of images
regardless of how much they cost to produce.
Alamy has moved effortlessly past the 30 million image milestone and is currently adding 1 million new images every month to its pool of editorial and creative stock imagery. Included in the new offering is a much stronger position in the celebrity image space.
IIn August of 2011
Arius3D Corp made an
offer to purchase Masterfile for $21.4 million in a bid to expand into the 2D market. Since then Arius3D has been trying to raise the financing necessary to close the deal. Several tentative closing dates have passed, the last being March 31, 2012, and it has now been announced that the deal “will not close,” and the offer to purchase is not being extended.
Most professional photographers believe Flickr is a site they should
avoid because someone might steal their pictures. They think of it as a
place where amateurs put the pictures they want to share with family and
friends. Todd Klassy is using it very effectively to market his images
in his part-time photographic business.
Universal Images Group Limited has built a database of more than 2.5 million education images for use by Encyclopaedia Britannica, in its
Image Quest online subscription service for schools, colleges and universities.
After 244 years, the
Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB) is going out of print. Sales peaked for Britannica in 1990 with 120,000 copies sold. In 2010 – the last edition – only 8,000 copies of the 32-volume set were printed and 4,000 still sit in a warehouse unsold.
There are a number of stories on this site that will aid you in determining what to charge for a stock photo usage. Below is a list of story titles and the number of credits required to read the entire story. Click on the detailed description link and it will take you to a short description of what is included in the full story. Click on the Story link and it will take you directly to the story and deduct the appropriate number of credits from your account.
If your goal is to earn a full-time living from photography -- and
particularly stock photography -- you need to read this series of 14
articles. They were originally written in the summer of 2010. Since then
the general state of the photographic industry has continued to go
downhill. These articles discuss key aspects of the business and issues
that those who want to earn their living taking pictures must consider.
Image creator success stories in the current educational publishing environment are few and far between. The strategy one photographer used when licensing educational re-use of an image may be instructive.
Robert Harding World Imagery
www.robertharding.com, a travel and global imagery specialist agency has acquired
Specialist Stock. Specialist Stock is a comprehensive collection of environmental and nature themed still photos and footage that is regularly licensed to international broadcasters, publications and the education sector.
ASMP’s “
The Future of Licensing” webinar with Frederic Haber, of the Copyright Clearance Center; Henry Oh, entrepreneur and digital content distributor; Eugene Mopsik, Executive Director of ASMP and Richard Kelly, moderator was held yesterday and can be downloaded here. Licensing was defined as a process that allows a customer to use something that is too expensive for them to own outright.
Getty Images, Inc. has announced the release of
Connect by Getty Images, an innovative new content distribution service. This powerful and flexible API is designed to give Web publishers built-in access within their publishing tools to Getty’s images, as well as the search metadata associated with them.
The Granger Collection, a historical image library, has launched a mobile version of its website,
www.granger.com, that will make it fast and easy for picture professionals to search 25,000 years of world history from the palm of their hand.
ZUMA Press, the California-based news agency is now supplying
Alamy's live news feed with images from its global network of 3,000 photojournalists. Owned and run by renowned photojournalist Scott Mc Kiernan, ZUMA has also made its back catalogue available online through Alamy’s
VII has announced that two of its member received top awards in two of the 9 categories in the 2012 World Press Photo Contest. Stephanie Sinclair, received a First Prize for Conterporary Issues stories and Donald Weber a First Price for Portaits.
Since September 2011 photography and illustration students have submitted more than 3,000 images to
Alamy,
the world's largest online stock photography agency. For the next two
years these contributors will receive 100% of all money collected for
the licensing of their images.
Arius3D Corp. and Masterfile Corporation have agreed to extend to March
31, 2012 the closing of the previously announced proposed acquisition by
Arius3D of all of the issued and outstanding securities of Masterfile
.
Imagestate Media Ltd and Imagestate Media Partners Ltd has ceased
trading through its website and as of February 1, 2012 has entered
Administration. The assets of the above companies have been acquired by a
new investor. The ongoing business of Imagestate will be managed by
Impact Photos. Heritage Images will operate separately.
In the U.S. it is possible to copyright a specific visual representation of a concept, not the concept itself. In what may be a precedent setting decision in the Patents County Court in London His honour Judge Birss QC has decided that a concept, or visual technique can also be copyrighted.