Workflow
What amazes me is why all the smart people in the publishing world think they have to give away all their information when they put it on the Internet. In theory if you get enough “eyeballs” then you can sell more ads and the revenue from the ads will cover your costs and generate a profit. But, that theory is not working.
At Adobe MAX 2015 in Los Angeles today Adobe outlined its vision for a "connected creative canvas" where people create and share their work from anywhere. More than 7,000 graphic designers and photographers attended.
LMKtag (also
Lamark) has developed a relatively inexpensive system to embed tags, invisible to the naked eye, in digital images files. These tags link back to a LMKtag database that contains the image creator’s name and contact information as well as whether the image is available for licensing. The database can also include caption information and other metadata about the image and the creator can adjust this information at any time.
If you’re goal is to earn a significant portion of your livelihood from the images you produce, and you already have a significant number of the best image you know how to produce with all the agencies and distributors who represent your work, does it make sense to regularly add even more images of the same general subjects to these collections?
iStock contributors have been advised that on January 15, 2014, the accounting operations of Getty Images and iStock will be combined into one unified system. Since Getty acquired iStock in February 2006 the two brands have been operated as separate businesses with separate accounting departments.
On September 13th
iStock will “throw-in-the-towel” and adopt the
Shutterstock licensing strategy that all images should be equal in price regardless of the quality of the image or the cost of production. They will discontinue their practice of pricing based on file size delivered, and of having multi-tier price categories.
Fire! Can it destroy your business? Are your files protected? On May 30th Steve Cole and his wife woke at 2am with smoke in their bedroom. They had a couple minutes to get out of bed and escape the house. Luckily both got out with their dog, but their three cats that were very much a part of their family did not survive. They lost everything including everything work related in his home office.
See the
previous story. It looks like a high percentage of the RM and RF images in the Creative Stock Images of the www.gettyimages.com
cannot be accessed using the
Embed Tool. This may not be the slam dunk Getty is hoping for.
Getty Images has made it possible for anyone to easily embed and share its imagery – at no cost – for non-commercial use on websites, blogs and social media channels through a new embed
tool. Free Pictures For Anyone Who Blogs.
Shutterstock has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire
WebDAM, a leading provider of web-based digital asset management software.
The biggest challenge for a photographer hoping to license rights to stock images is how to get the images seen by potential buyers. It would seem that the first step might be to get the images accepted by a good agency. But given the number of images on all subject matter in most agency collections that doesn’t necessarily mean customers will ever see them.
Recently on the Linkedin
Stock Photography blog Valerie Henschel asked, “When do you cull older non-selling images from your archive?” It is certainly something to think about. If customers are forced to go through a lot of outdated, mediocre or totally irrelevant images in order to find something that really fits their needs – and hopefully the best of that subject matter available in the collection – they are likely to give up and go elsewhere. As the choices of almost any photographic subject expand exponentially, this is becoming a bigger and bigger problem for buyers.
Stipple has introduced two new products: Stipple Mobile and Stipple Search. With Stipple Mobil you can create Stippled photos right from your phone. Easily add videos from your camera and YouTube; Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia profiles; and more to your photos. Photographers can instantly share everything on Facebook and Twitter.
Getty Images has made a number of strategic decisions in the past few years that have resulted in declines in both its “Creative” (RM and RF) and microstock lines of business. These decisions have also aided Shutterstock in its rise to a commanding position in the market with its subscription licensing model. I want to emphasize that when I talk about declines I am not referring to Getty’s other lines of business - Editorial, Footage, Other or B2B music – which as far as I can tell are still growing.
Alfonso Gutiérrez, President of CEPIC has provided some updated information on the CEPIC Image Registery (CIR) that Selling Stock reported on earlier
here and
here. See his report.
After Hurricane Sandy many news organizations will be thinking hard about covering breaking news events with iPhone’s and delivering the images via Instagram. Kira Pollack, Director of Photography for Time Magazine, hired five professional photographers to cover the event with their iPhones rather than their digital SLRs. By delivering the images via Instagram Time was able to show customers a more comprehensive report faster that would have been possible with a traditional approach to the assignment.
The buyer’s panel at the recent Picture Agency Council of America (PACA) conference in Chicago offered a number of ideas for ways individual sellers and stock photo distributors might adjust their search, delivery and pricing procedures to improve the chances of their images being chosen and used.
A new search engine called
PicturEngine is getting a lot of attention in the blogosphere. It has recently been released in Beta after four years in development. The founder, Justin Brinson, also owns two agencies: Corner House Stock Photos and Picturesque.
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.
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.
PhotoShelter (
http://www.photoshelter.com) has unveiled a full redesign of its e-commerce checkout process in addition to several new e-commerce features that can help photographers sell more images from their PhotoShelter websites. Over 70,000 photographers use PhotoShelter websites and tools to sell photo prints and products, or license their photography as rights managed, royalty free or personal use downloads.
Recently the U.S. Copyright Office launched a pilot program that enables
photographers to use the Electronic Copyright Office (eCO) system to
complete group registrations of “databases that predominantly consist of
photographs" or “published photographs."