Stock
Motivated by the European Union’s challenge to develop a technological system that would make it easier for European citizens to gain access to cultural resources CEPIC has developed the CEPIC Image Registry (CIR) that will allows simultaneous visual or text search across thousands of image databases. Read more about how will work and how it may change the image licensing business.
Two Vancouver art directors faced with using stock photography because their clients don’t want to pay for assignments have launched a blog called
Getty Critics which pokes light-hearted fun at some of the stock photos that can be found at
www.gettyimages.com.
Getty has announced that it will be retiring The Agency Collection (TAC)
on iStockphoto in the next few weeks and creating a new collection
called Signature+. The company says the main driver for this move is to
simplify their offer to customers. It is unclear how this will
“simplify” the offer.
National Geographic has gathered its expansive archive of still and moving images and its roster of award-winning photographic and filmmaking talent and made them accessible to the creative community in one place, through
National Geographic Creative.
Booking opened on June 4 to prospective exhibitors at Visual Connections New York 2013, which will take place on Wednesday, October 23rd immediately following the PACA International Conference on October 21st and 22nd.
Since he started producing microstock images in 2005 Yuri Arcurs, the world’s top selling microstock shooter with over 1,500,000 downloads from iStockphoto alone, has been a strong advocate of non-exclusive representation and not putting “all his eggs in one basket”. Recently he signed an exclusive deal with Getty Images.
Given the prices publishers are charging for their digital products, they are establishing a precedent that images – in fact, all the content – is essentially worthless. See what publishers are charging and what that makes a single photo worth.
Recently John Fowler wrote on the Stockphoto Group blog on Yahoo “My promotional efforts are failing me,” and asked other photographers for advice on the promotional strategies that are working for them. John shoots mostly natural history imagery with an emphasis on insects especially those of agricultural, health and economic significance. Here's my thoughts on his options.
Scoopshot is scheduled to release a new web-based platform later this month that will make task creation publicly available. This is expected to increase the number of users, the quality of the content, create more brand visibility and increase user engagement for their media partners.
In the case of Pacific Stock, Inc. vs. Pearson Education United States District Judge Susan Oki Mollay in Hawaii has denied Pearson’s request for summary judgment with regard to Pacific Stock’s claim that Pearson had engaged in fraud and fraudulent inducement in its use of 59 images. Pacific Stock has also alleged that with regard to 151 images from 70 of its photographers Pearson exceeded the print run rights granted for the use of its images in Pearson textbooks.
Is bulk pricing always bad? After reviewing the sales reports of a number of Getty photographers
we’ve reported that from 25% and up to 40% in some cases of Getty’s total sales are for fees of $25 or less – often a lot less. Hans Halberstadt explains how he uses bulk pricing and custom pricing menus to get much more reasonable fees for the use of his images.
The stock photography business has changed dramatically from what it was five or ten years ago and the future does and the future does not look promising. In this article we’ve provided links to a number of previously published articles that provide a good overview of the industry and where we believe it is headed. If the reader wants to get a basic grounding in what stock photography is all about this is the place to start.
Corbis® Images has launched
Corbis CRAVE, a premium image discovery experience developed exclusively for iPad® and as an accompanying web experience. CRAVE features expertly curated imagery from industry-leading commercial and editorial photographers. At launch there are 47 portfolios from featured photographers.
With Stocksy (
http://www.stocksy.com/) Bruce Livingstone has set out to produce a collection of “authentic” stock images unlike anything customers will be able to find anywhere else. When he uses the work authentic he means a photograph that doesn’t look staged, pretend, forced or unrealistic. Images can be processed, but the processing must match the content. It’s not Instagram. Bruce took time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions for us.
Shutterstock has reported a record 22.3 million downloads and $51.5 million in revenue in Q1 2013. Revenue per download grew 8% year-over-year to $2.29. The Shutterstock collection has grown to more than 25 million images and over 1 million video clips. Revenue is expected to grow in Q2 to between $53 million and $55 million. For all of 2013 revenue is now projected to be between $221 million and $226 million. EBITDA is projected to be between $46 million and $48 million.
In an effort to help its photographers shoot the imagery demanded by image buyers Image Source’s trend monitoring team, ISM, have published a report on its
photographer resource blog IMSO, that examines the concepts portrayed in recent family imagery. In the process of preparing this report Image Source analyzed changes in the buying patterns or its customers, and researched a wide range of media and customer needs.
We reported on price variations to different countries for use of the same photo
here and
here. Kiratsinh Jadeja who originally raised the issue asked, “Do you think majority of the buyers already know about this and outsource already?”
If supplying pictures for educational use is a significant part of your business plan you need to be aware of how the market is trending toward digital delivery and how that is likely to affect the prices that will be paid for images used in digital products. In case you’ve missed them the following are links to a few stories we’ve published that deal with this subject in the last few years.
Since the fall of 2012 iStockphoto had been accepting pictures taken with mobile devices. Currently they have 7433 images on the site. So far, they do not allow contributors to upload their photos directly from their mobile devices. It is not clear whether they are accepting images from contributors who only shoot with a camera phone, or whether they are just encouraging their regular contributors to also submit some images they shoot with their phones.
JMC Inc (formerly JTB Photo Communications) based in Tokyo, Japan and
Universal Images Group Limited (UIG) have entered into an agreement in Tokyo on April 12th 2013 for UIG to manage the global distribution business of JMC in respect of the JTB Photo picture library of 150,000 travel, travel related, cultural, cultural heritage and religious rights managed images. Another 650,000 to be edited and 10,000 new images per month are part of the deal.
The Instagram community of 100 million users will have a new way to market their images with the August 2013 launch of
InstaStockImages.
Scoopshot, the global crowdsourcing photo and video service has announced a global alliance with
Ebyline, a company which helps media publishers, agencies and brands to collaborate with professional freelance journalists worldwide by providing workflow tools.
In recent discussions with agents operating in Europe it seems that it has become impossible to hold the line on pricing. They say there is always a competitor willing to undercut any rate.
Last week we asked the question “
Where is the best place to license images?” if the image is available in the Getty Images collection. We thought India might be the cheapest source, but we found some surprising cheaper alternatives.
Anyone interested in a career as a photographer – as well as those photographers in mid-career -- needs to carefully consider how the business is changing. If we look at image use on the Internet it is undeniable that more images are being made available for viewing. However, for professionals this is not good news.
More image use does not mean more demand for professionally produced images. It does not mean that there will be more opportunities for photographers to earn their living taking pictures. In fact, the opportunities to earn a living as a photographer are declining. Here’s why.