Stock
Don’t tell Cathy Yeulet that you can’t make money in microstock. She operates
Monkey Business Images,
one of the most successful microstock production companies. However,
unlike many microstockers, she is not new to stock photography. For
many years, Yeulet operated a successful rights-managed business in
Oxfordshire, U.K. When traditional royalty-free first began to take
off, she created the BananaStock brand, which she sold to Jupiterimages
in 2005 for approximately $19 million in cash.
She started uploading images to iStockphoto in March of 2008.
U.S. educational publishers are admitting to more and more unauthorized
uses during the past decade and quietly entering into out-of-court
settlements with an increasing number of image suppliers for large
numbers of uses. In cases where the original license fee was well under
$1,000, publishers are now paying multiple thousands of dollars to
settle claims.
Jonathan Klein is CEO and co-founder, with Mark Getty, of Getty Images
and the most influential person in the global stock photo industry. For
fifteen years he led an aggressive acquisition campaign which positions
Getty as the leading source of still and moving imagery as well as
footage and music. He is a passionate believer in the power of the
image to create change in editorial as well as creative photography. In
this exclusive CEPIC DAILY interview, he gives frank answers to some
tough questions posed by Tweak founder Jerry Kennelly. It gives an
intriguing insight into Getty as a privately held company and their
vision for the future of the industry.
This story provides a list of useful articles that will provide the reader with a good background on the current state of the stock photography business and where it is headed.
If you are in the stock imagery business and want to stay current with
worldwide industry trends, the annual CEPIC congress is a must-attend
event. Held every year in early June—this year in Dublin, Ireland, at
the brand new Aviva Stadium—the congress provides an opportunity to
meet industry leaders and exchange ideas.
During his keynote speech at the Dublin gathering of CEPIC, Stockbyte
founder Jerry Kennelly announced the upcoming launch of his new
business Tweak. Operating on a
content-as-a-service model, Tweak aims to become a major global
self-service design library and change the way customers access
creative content.
In an effort to obtain updated information on revenue trends in the
stock photo industry, we will be conducting a revenue survey at the
2010 CEPIC International Congress and New Media Conference, which that
takes place in Dublin on June 9–13. In a blind survey, we will be
asking representatives of every stock agency and stock image
distributor to answer five brief questions on behalf of their company.
How does demand for images compare to what many agree is an
oversupply?
What does the competition look like in terms of the number of images available online? Everyone knows there are billions of amateur images floating around the Internet, but what is the quantity of unique images currently available in professional collections?
There is only a little over a week left until the 2010 CEPIC International Congress
and New Media Conference in Dublin, Ireland, takes place on June 9–13.
This is the premier annual event, worldwide, for those who produce and
market stock imagery. It is not too late to register, and if you are a
member of the Picture Archive Council of America or the American
Society of Picture Professionals, there is a special discount rate.
A Russian photographer asks what subjects he should shoot for
microstock in order to maximize his earnings. With hard work, he feels he can duplicate the results achieved by Yuri Arcurs, particularly because shooting in Russia can be much cheaper than Arcurs' Denmark location. Yet there are flaws to that logic.
Jim Pickerell is launching a new photographer income survey in an
effort to determine general income trends for photographers in the last
couple of years. We encourage photographers, worldwide, who have had any earnings
whatsoever in the last two years from licensing rights to their images
to answer this brief questionnaire.
In a letter to its contributors, Corbis has disclosed it will be
seeking liquidation of the Sygma business entity in France. The company
acquired Sygma in 1999 and has had numerous well-publicized legal and
management issues with the former agency’s photographers, staff and
assets.
A large percentage of the still-photo segment of the stock photography
business is related to advertising—either licensing images for use in
print ads, or licensing them for use in editorial products that are
supported to a great extent by ads. The health of the stock photography
business is directly related to the health of the print business. To
understand what is likely to happen in the still photography business,
it is important to have some understanding of advertising trends.
Alamy will no longer make financial information publicly available. Since Getty Images went private, the U.K. company's quarterly numbers have represented the only reliable sales data in the industry.
What is top-quality photography for a major advertising campaign worth?
Evidently, art buyers at Campbell-Ewald, one of the largest advertising
agencies in the U.S., think $2,500 for “all advertising” and “all
print” rights is fair and reasonable, as evidenced by a recent
negotiation for the use of one of Hans Halberstadt’s photos.
Is it time to institute a system of floor prices for the use of
rights-managed images for editorial purposes? Is there any price so
low—$50, $30 or $20—that the image creator would prefer not to make the
sale?
A New York court has ruled that
copyright registrations obtained by Corbis for images submitted by at
least one photographer-contributor are invalid, in part due to Corbis’ failure to list
the names of the photographers—the authors and owners of the copyrights
in the registered images—on registrations submitted by Corbis.
This story provides links to some of the stories on this site that may be of interest to someone new to the stock photography business, or someone who might to have a
brief refresher course on some of the things that have been happening in the
last few years. Many of these stories will also give you some idea of developing trends and what the
future might hold.
The topic of future career opportunities in
photography has engendered a lively discussion on several Linkedin groups. Do such opportunities still exist or should most of those entering the profession consider other avenues?
This is a list of 14 articles that will provide microstock photographers, or those considering contributing to microstock sites, some useful background and insights into the industry.
Sometimes there is a silver lining when your stock agency gets acquired or you get kicked out of the agency. For example, clients that previously licensed Stock Connection imagery through Jupiterimages now have to re-license them directly, because Getty Images has phased out some content.
Twenty questions to test your knowledge of the photo licensing industry and its future potential.
This article by Ellen Boughn raises the question of whether there is a
need for specialized niche microstock collections, argues the case for
them and points to Vivozoom and Microstock Israel as indications that we
may see more of them. Jim Pickerell presents counter arguments as to
why the success of such sites is unlikely.
In the next few years, there will be two major trends in the education
business: There will be less demand for books as a teaching resource.
Electronic “learning objects” will be used to a much greater degree in
classroom and online instruction. Photographers
who agree that these changes will occur, and who supply images to those
producing materials for educational use, should begin to restructure
their businesses and produce content that will be in demand by this new
educational delivery system.