Stock
More than 1,000 designers responded to
Graphic Design USA (GDUSA) annual survey designed to determine how stock imagery is being used. The survey indicates that use of stock imagery has grown nearly three times in 25 years since the first survey, starting at 39 percent in 1986 and reaching 98 percent in 2012. The survey also shows that 31 percent of designers are in a full-blown love affair, using stock images over 100 times a year, which is up 11 percent from last year.
The cost of producing images certainly hasn’t declined in the last 8 years. If anything it has increased. But, it is interesting to take a look at what’s been happening to the return-per-image on file based on Getty Images figures.
The Picture Archive Council of America (
PACA), American Society of Media Photographers (
ASMP) and the Copyright Clearance Center (
CCC) are jointly exploring the development of a new, global, collective licensing model for unlicensed web usages. PACA expects this model to have a transformative impact on the industry for all licensors of visual media.
Last week we wrote about the new Getty Images initiative
Post-Usage-Billing Service (PUBS). On Thursday Craig Peters, Senior Vice President of Business Development for Getty spoke at the Luminance event in New York and shared some additional insights. He spoke of the dilemma the photo industry faces in protecting copyright and how Getty’s new initiative can solve at least part of the problem.
Alan Capel, Head of Content at
Alamy explains that the price for printing 3 million copies of a textbook was much higher than we
reported earlier this week.
PicScout has announced the launch of the ImageIRC Post-Usage-Billing Service designed to assure photographers and content licensors that their work will be properly acknowledged on social media platforms which embrace the ImageIRC Post Usage Billing solution.
Photographer Jacques Jangoux reports that Alamy has licensed two of his images - A3N0PR (2 boys in a canoe in the Amazon region) and A3AB62 (waterfall of Jari River, tributary of the Amazon) – for just
$25.00 each for textbook use. Of course the photographer will only receive 60% of these figures.
iStock has made it official. They are encouraging contributors to shoot with cell phones and accepting those images into the general collection. The next generation of stock photography – from RM to RF to Microstock to Cell Phones -- is upon us. See iStock’s
Creative Brief.
Travel photographers take note.
Wikimedia Commons thinks there are not enough free images available on the web. So they are running a contest to build their image database that already contains 13.6 million photos and illustrations.
No one likes to see their images used without compensation, particularly if the use is on a site that generates revenue for the user.
PicScout, a company that searches the web for images found in the collections of professional image distributor, says that 85% of the images they find on commercial sites are unauthorized uses (either never licensed, or used beyond the license). This article deals with what you should do to locate images that have been infringed and to receive compensation.
Pocketstock has created a new pricing strategy call Bidder that enables each customer to establish the price he or she is willing to pay for a royalty free image.
Can today’s music photographers hope to shoot images that are as striking as those of the pop stars from the 50s to the 90s? Or will developments like tighter restrictions for concert photographers, and artists wanting greater image control, mean that today’s music stars will leave a legacy of bland, boring images for future generations? While creating the Pop and Rock
showcase from the Alamy collection, I was struck by how the images of the latest bands didn’t quite have the resonance and iconic status of the documentary coverage of bands and pop stars of earlier eras who often enthralled audiences with their antics, charisma, rampant exhibitionism and on-stage posturing. Photographers helped create those legends.
The American Society of Media Photographers (
ASMP) has created a free Model/Property Release app for iOS (iPhone and iPad) that makes it easy for photographers to enter their own and the models information. The forms require that a photo of the model be attached to the release before it can be completed. Once the form is filled out the model, the photographer and a witness can each sign the form using their finger or a pen in the same manner as electronic credit card purchases are normally signed. Then, a PDF of the completed release can be emailed to the photographer and the model.
Citizen Stock has launched a royalty-free collection of over 10,000 images of real people and their emotions. Created by assignment photographers Sherrie Nickol and David Katzenstein, a husband and wife team, Citizen Stock (
www.citizenstock.com) is one of the first stock photo agencies devoted solely to portraiture of “real people.” The models aren’t professional models, but children, moms, dads, grandparents, skateboarders, lawyers, teachers, musicians, chefs, artists, office workers, clothing designers, and small business owners, to name a few.
On its
Google Drive cloud storage service Google has added a feature that will allow its customers to use
Thinkstock photos for FREE. They are currently asking their customers to suggest photos that they would like to see included in this gallery of free photos.
The Carlyle Group (
NASDAQ: CG) and Getty Images management announced today they have formed a partnership to acquire Getty Images, Inc., from Hellman & Friedman for $3.3 billion. Carlyle will acquire slightly over 50% of the company. Getty Images Co-Founder and Chairman Mark Getty and the Getty family will roll substantially all of their ownership interests into the transaction. CEO and co-founder Jonathan Klein will also invest equity in the company.
We recently reported on
Foap.com, a Swedish site where photographers can sell pictures they take using their cellphones. Now the developers of the Finnish company
Scoopshot, which offers a similar service, tell us that their best selling photographers, Arto Mäkelä, has earned more than $19,000 from pictures he ha taken on his Android smartphone and uploaded to the free-to-download Scoopshot app.
Water Rights Images has retained Visual Steam to build and manage a team of experienced licensing professionals on an ongoing basis.
Photononstop Group, based in Paris, announces the purchase of 100% of the shares in
Biosphoto, France’s leading stock agency specialized in Nature, Garden and Environment Photography. The Biosphoto collection contains 2.5 million photos and 20,000 videos. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
For some years we’ve seen a decline in rights managed and traditional royalty free prices. If you look at the price calculators of major distributors it might appear that prices haven’t declined all that much. The problem is that nobody pays those prices.
SuperStock has announced that Alan Bailey will assume the role of CEO and departing CEO, Lanny Ziering will take over the position of Chairman of RGB Ventures, the parent company of SuperStock. Mr. Ziering will focus on acquisitions, strategic alliances, and emerging technologies as the company focuses on expansion.
ZPartners have launched
www.stock3dphotos.com and is inviting still photographers to contribute. The site also provides
photographer guidelines for producing 3D photos.
In the future, will it be possible for more photographers to earn a
better living than they are currently earning producing stock images? More and
more photographers are jumping into the stock photo business every day
and many hope to make it a career. Here’s
a dozen reasons why future
revenue growth for this industry seems unlikely. I’ve discussed all
these issues before, but it seems useful to briefly itemize them all in
one place.
StockPhotosforFree.com has launched an initial archive of 100,000 free images mostly comprised of still frames pulled from HD videos that are available on
VideoBlocks.com.
On the
MicrostockGroup blog there has been a debate as to whether it is better to try to license images through
Alamy rather than on microstock sites given that the license fees and royalty percentages are so much higher.