Stock
Footage.net, a source of stock, archival and news footage, now also offers preview clips from StormStock, the world leader in extreme weather content.
Some Flickr photographers are given the opportunity to place some of
their images on gettyimages.com. One photographer who was recently
approached by Getty asked if he should have any concerns about dealing
with Getty or if there are things he should be aware of before
agreeing. Here are some of my thoughts.
In discussions with stock agents, and listening to publishing clients
explain their needs, at the 16th PACA International Conference in New
York this past weekend a few things became clear. Read this story for information about how the business is changing and what those licensing images need to do.
Why can’t the three major distributors – Getty, Corbis, Alamy – set
reasonable prices for textbook use? As licensors of the images they
should be able to set the price. Instead, they allow the major
publishers to dictate to them what they will pay. This happens
because the agencies are so worried about losing market share that they
constantly try to undercut each other and play right into the hands of
the publishers.
The big distributors are missing a huge opportunity to capture an even larger share of the market than they already control. Learn how visual search could help them grow revenue and take market share from the small suppliers.
The first thing everyone wants to know about microstock is how much the average person earns licensing images at those prices. This story provides some statistics. The story also deals with the misconception that in order to have high earnings in microstock it is necessary to have a huge number of images in the collection.
Many photographers believe they will make more sales for the best prices
if their images are represented by the biggest distributors. They may
make more sales, but definitely not for the best prices. For years the
biggest distributors have been seriously undercutting price – at least
in the education field. There is a big question whether increased volume
at low, dramatically discounted prices results in increased revenue
overall for creators. Here’s how and why.
Pond5 will be giving away coupons worth $10,000 of free stock media at the Frankfurt Book Fair (Hall 3.1, Booth A 118), Oct. 12 - 16, 2011. Pond5’s
online collection includes more than 800,000 royalty-free stock video clips (the largest archive on the web), along with millions of other assets, including stock photos, illustrations, music tracks, sound effects, and After Effects motion graphics projects.
StockFood, the world’s leading food image agency, introduces
living4media: a new picture agency specializing in home and living. The concept behind
www.living4media.com is to unite the most outstanding images produced by internationally renowned photographers and well-known niche agencies under one roof.
With the addition of over 32,000 images from Omni Photo Agency and 18,000 images from the British Library picture archives
Universal Imaging Group’s (UIG) educational image database has grown to nearly 3 million still images and 100,000 film clips. Both of these organizations will be continually adding additional images of art, history, culture and anthropology to the collection.
The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) and Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) will be launching a series of 10 free webinars on the “The Future of Art & Commerce” on October 5, 2011 between 1:00 and 2:30 pm EST. In the first session Susan Carr and Richard Kelly will deal with
What Everyone Should Know About Copyright. Click
here to register for this event. For details on all 10 webinars which will take place about every other week through March 2012 click
here.
SuperStock, a leading stock photography agency specializing in
Contemporary, Travel, Fine Art, and Vintage imagery, has launched
SuperFusion, a new collection of value-priced royalty-free images
gathered from around the world. The collection features images from top
professional photographers including microstock stars Yuri Arcurs, Ron
Chapple, and Andres Rodriguez.
Many who enjoy photography and have had some success at licensing rights
to their images dream of quitting their “day job,” giving up a regular
pay check and taking pictures full time. This story offers a few things to
think about that apply both to photographers who hope to do commercial
assignments and those who want to license rights to stock images.
Corbis Images (
www.corbisimages.com), has highlighted nine of its signature collections and described some of what went into the thinking when creating the collection. The imagery in these collections ranges from commercial images, to unforgettable moments in history to natural wonders and iconic celebrities.
The 2011
PACA International Conference, the premier annual event in the U.S. for those interested in stock photography, will convene in a little less than a month at the New York Marriott East Side in midtown Manhattan. It runs from Friday, October 21st through Sunday October 23rd.
Stipple Marketplace, the San Francisco based company with the goal of turning editorial images into e-commerce storefronts for consumers, has developed a system that allows publishers to earn money from the images they publish, not just sell ads around those images.
If you haven’t visited the Corbis web site for a while it may be time to
take another look. In 2010 Corbis decided that it was time to update
the search technology they had been using since 1995. The
project involved a series of architectural changes with two primary aims
– improving performance (speed of delivery) and relevancy of the
search results delivered. This story discusses some of the changes and modifications.
Spaces Images is a niche agency founded by people and lifestyle Jonathan Ross about a year ago. However, there are no people in the pictures this agency represents. In tracking 13 years of sales he and his wife and business partner Amy noticed that
many of their best selling images did not include people. They then set out to build
SpacesImages.com a collection that contains property released images of
locations where man lives, works and plays, but without any people in
the images. Most of the have strong graphic and design elements.
The Image Works (
theimageworks.com) editorial stock photography agency has announced the addition to its archive of imagery from the Spanish based Iberfoto picture library. The library consists of over 1.2 million photographs, artistic works and prints, focusing on Hispanic Culture from Spain and Latin America.
While fees charged customers for stock photo use have been steadily
declining, there is another issue that should be of equal concern to
image creators. That is the percentage they receive of the gross fee the
end user pays. This can be complicated and not the number many
photographers think it is.
In an effort to engage with the next generation of picture professionals,
Alamy and
Dreamstime have launched separate initiatives to benefit students.
Few stock photo tasks are as idiosyncratic as keywording. Some
photographers just use their mental vocabularies while others consult a
thesaurus. I know a photographer who has blocks of often-used synonyms
he cuts and pastes into the right place. Everyone does it differently.
In a little over a year the number of
images represented by the top four microstock sites has increased by 41%. Fotolia has had a 59% increase. The number of people contributing images to Shutterstock has grown by 37% and now totals 313,393. This wouldn't be bad if demand were growing at the same rate, but it's not. Demand seems to be relatively flat and at iStockphoto seems to be declining. How will these numbers affect everyone who produces stock images? Read more.
Graphic Design USA (GDUSA) has released some of the results from its
25th annual survey of graphic designers to determine their use of stock imagery. A total of
1,008 readers responded to the survey with 96 percent saying they use
stock imagery in their work and 60 percent using it at least 20 times a
year. Both represent new highs for the survey.
Fotolia has released a major update to their website which offers improved navigation and usability. This story explains some of the changes.