Photojournalism

Photononstop To Promote Roger-Viollet and France-Soir Collections

By Jim Pickerell | 335 Words | Posted 11/25/2019 | Comments
The Paris Council, the City of Paris has just granted Photononstop Group, for a period of five years, the cultural promotion and commercial exploitation of the digital reproductions of two heritage photographic collections: Roger-Viollet and France-Soir.

Fake Images

By Jim Pickerell | 419 Words | Posted 6/27/2019 | Comments
When I got into photography one of the strengths of the profession was that what a viewer saw in a picture really happened. When a reporter wrote a story the reader often could not be sure that what was described was an accurate reflection of the truth. The photograph provided a level of truth. The viewer knew that what they were seeing really happened. The photograph may have been out of context with the general tenor of the overall event, but at least it was an accurate reflection of what was happening in the instant it was created.

MAXPPP Pursues Unauthorized Uses

By Jim Pickerell | 298 Words | Posted 6/4/2019 | Comments
The photo news agency MAXPPP has selected two partner companies to monitor, recover and prosecute the use of its content on the internet, the newspapers and the magazines. The goal of the partnership: to increase by at least 50% its revenues related to fraudulent uses.

Shutterstock Rebranding Rex Features

By Jim Pickerell | 204 Words | Posted 6/4/2019 | Comments
Shutterstock is officially rebranding Rex Features as Shutterstock Editorial today. The company says: “Since 2015, we have been working toward the goal of expanding our editorial collection and service to customers around the world. Over the past four years, our talented Editorial team has built a robust offering, becoming a premier source of editorial images for the world’s media.

Microstock – The Dark Side Of Image Licensing

By Martin Lisius | 744 Words | Posted 6/3/2019 | Comments
There are often two sides to an industry. The side the customer sees, and the "inside" that industry people see. This article is about the inside of the stock image industry and how Microstock has changed. It also offers photographers and videographers some ideas how to deal with the issues.

Getty Images And APO Group Announce Strategic Partnership

By Jim Pickerell | 634 Words | Posted 6/3/2019 | Comments
Getty Images, and APO Group, a leading media relations consultancy and press release distribution service, have announced a wide-reaching collaboration to promote integrated text, photo and video solutions to organizations operating across Africa and the Middle East.

Fair Use Claim Rejected

By Jim Pickerell | 215 Words | Posted 5/6/2019 | Comments
On April 26, 2019, the Fourth Circuit Court overturned a Northern Virginia District Court decision that allowed Violent Hues Productions, LLC’s to use a cropped version of a photo to promote a Film and Music Festival without compensation to the creator. Violent Hues had made no effort to request permission or compensate photographer Russell Brammer for the use and claimed “Fair Use” in court. (See July 2018 story.)

Shutterstock and AP Renew Multiyear Distribution Deal

By Jim Pickerell | 229 Words | Posted 4/23/2019 | Comments
Shutterstock, has announced the renewal of its agreement with The Associated Press (AP) to distribute AP’s daily global photo output for license to customers based in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland.

VCG Violates Copyright

By Jim Pickerell | 229 Words | Posted 4/12/2019 | Comments
Techcrunch reports that VCG grabbed the first black hole photo released by the European Southern Observatory and immediately made the image available for sale for either editorial and commercial use without any attribution to the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (EHT), an array of radio telescopes that captured the black hole image.

News Photography In The Digital Age

By Jim Pickerell | 259 Words | Posted 1/4/2019 | Comments
According to, The State of News Photography 2018, published by the World Press Photo Foundation and authored by Adrian Hadland and Camilla Barnett photographers and photojournalists are finding working patterns in the media world increasingly difficult and many are facing more financial stress.

Mega Agency Adds Phil Ramey Collection

By Jim Pickerell | 258 Words | Posted 11/28/2018 | Comments
The Mega Agency is adding 2.5 million iconic and historic entertainment images to its rapidly expanding archive. The media company, a leading provider of news, sports and entertainment content, will now represent and license the Phil Ramey photo archive to its global customer base.? 

Photographer Income Survey Results

By Jim Pickerell | 2072 Words | Posted 11/6/2018 | Comments
We have closed the Editorial Photographer Income Survey that was sent out at the end of August. There were 270 responses which is somewhat disappointing considering the tens of thousands of photographers producing stock images today.

Sports Photographers’ Win Appeal Against NFL

By Jim Pickerell | 253 Words | Posted 10/29/2018 | Comments
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reinstated copyright infringement claims by sports photographers against commercial users of their photographs, finding that the licenses that the photographers had granted to one of those users did not permit it to grant a sublicense to the other to use those photographs for free. Spinelli, et al. v. National Football League, et al.Case No. 17-cv-0673 (2d Cir. Sept. 11, 2018) (Lynch, J).

Agence France-Presse Cutting Jobs

By Jim Pickerell | 189 Words | Posted 10/22/2018 | Comments
The CEO of Agence France-Presse Fabrice Fries has announced a "transformation plan" which will cut the number of employees by 5% at the end of 2017 in order to bring net profit of the company into equilibrium by 2021.

Shutterstock Editorial Available On eCommerce Platform

By Jim Pickerell | 345 Words | Posted 10/17/2018 | Comments
Shutterstock, Inc. has announced that Editorial content is now available for license on its eCommerce Platform. Shutterstock Editorial offers images that capture the world around us, including a live feed of curated news, sports, entertainment and royal family images, along with access to a multi-decade archive of iconic images. Previously available only to Enterprise customers with Shutterstock Premier accounts, this collection is now available to all Shutterstock customers through Shutterstock.com/editorial.

WENN Media Group To Use Copytrack Infringement Tracking Service

By Jim Pickerell | 239 Words | Posted 9/26/2018 | Comments
Copytrack and WENN Media Group (WMG) have announced their future exclusive collaboration. WMG specialized in providing up-to-the-minute entertainment news content with production based in Los Angeles, New York, London and Berlin. Copytrack will provide WMG with the tracking and worldwide legal enforcement of copyright infringement.

Action Press Independent Again

By Jim Pickerell | 93 Words | Posted 9/26/2018 | Comments
Action Press, one of Germany's leading press photo agencies based in Hamburg since 1970, is again independent and privately owned. Ulli Michel, longtime managing director, used the management buy-out option and bought action press out of the SilverHub UK bankruptcy estate.

Mega Agency Launches Service To Fight Copyright Infringement

By Jim Pickerell | 395 Words | Posted 9/24/2018 | Comments
The Mega Agency has launched an innovative new service to fight widespread copyright infringement – Mega Image Police (MIP). The company, a leading provider of news, sports and entertainment content, has beta launched an initiative to quickly identify stolen content and actively pursue damages on behalf of its growing global contributor base.

Editorial Photographer Income Survey

By Jim Pickerell | 587 Words | Posted 8/31/2018 | Comments
I have created a SurveyMonkey survey in an effort to gather data on the general income ranges of Editorial Still Photographers around the world. Go to this link to respond to the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PhotogIncomeSurvey Please encourage all editorial still photographers to respond to this survey. The resulting data could be very helpful to photography students, working photographers, the organizations that license rights to use editorial photography and those who purchase editorial photographs.

The Mega Agency Partners With Aller Media

By Jim Pickerell | 286 Words | Posted 8/16/2018 | Comments
Aller Media a leading publisher of celebrity, human touch and women’s magazines in Denmark, has announced it has partnered with The Mega Agency, who will become a preferred content partner. The deal, signed earlier this month, gives Aller Media access to The Mega Agency's breaking news content and rich archive of news, sport and entertainment photographs and videos, and further enhances the close relationship between the two media companies.

NY Daily News Photographers Terminated

By Jim Pickerell | 361 Words | Posted 8/3/2018 | Comments
The New York Daily News a daily tabloid newspaper founded in 1919, and as of May 2016 the United States’ ninth-most widely circulated daily newspaper, eliminated the jobs of all 10 staff photographers as of July 23, 2018. In addition to the photographers two photo editing staff positions were also eliminated.

Getty Pays Melania Trump Royalties

By Jim Pickerell | 647 Words | Posted 7/6/2018 | Comments
NBC News has reported that “News media paid Melania Trump thousands for use of photos in ‘positive stories only.’” President Donald Trump’s most recent financial disclosures revel that the first lady earned between $100,000 and $1,000,000 in photo royalties in 2017 from Getty Images. (Federal officials are only required to give an income range in their filings.

Globe Photos Resurrected As Fine Art Offering

By Jim Pickerell | 475 Words | Posted 7/5/2018 | Comments
From the 1940s through the 80s and 90s Globe Photos, Inc. was widely regarded by newspapers and magazines as a leading source for celebrity images. As other competitors entered the market Globe’s popularity faded, but they still have photographers covering red carpet events on a daily basis in Hollywood and New York. In recent years Globe Photos was one of 12 archives acquired by Capital Art, Inc., the world’s largest pop culture and image licensing company with more than 15 million images of every movie and entertainment celebrity of the 20th century.

The MEGA Agency Launches “The Mega Cloud”: Actively Seeking Contributor Archives

By Jim Pickerell | 767 Words | Posted 7/2/2018 | Comments
The Mega Agency, a leading provider of news, sport and entertainment content, is now giving photographers a quick, easy and efficient way to upload their digital archives. The initiative has been launched to add rich editorial content to Mega’s existing archive of more than 30million images and daily production of 10,000 images.? 

SilverHub Going Into Administration

By Jim Pickerell | 181 Words | Posted 6/18/2018 | Comments
Sources tell me that in an all-staff conference call on Wednesday, June 13, 2018, Nick Evans-Lombe and Adrian Murrell informed the SilverHub.Media staff that the company would be going into administration, the UK version of bankruptcy protection.