Rick Becker-Leckrone, CEO of Blend Images, is interviewed about his background, the success of Blend Images, and the state of the stock photo industry.
World Portraits, The Netherlands company that emphasizes fair trade, and Dutch photo agency Hollandse Hoogte have announced a competition that will provide the winner with at least 5,000 euro to finance a photography assignment.
The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies has announced that Google will host a seminar during this year's Picture Buyers' Fair. The two-day event begins May 19, and its organizers have recently revealed major format changes and a new venue.
After publishing my article on a Two-Tier Pricing System I’ve had a
series of discussions with several photographers. There seems to be some
general misunderstanding as to why I think such a system is in the best
interest of all photographers regardless of whether they currently
license their work as rights-managed (RM), traditional royalty-free (RF)
or Microstock. Two-Tiers is not just another pricing model. The
whole purpose is so all images can be made available to all customers
at appropriate prices depending on how the customer intends to use the
image.
Anyone who has heard the term microstock has probably heard of Yuri Arcurs. He is recognized as the worlds most successful microstock photographer but is much more than just a photographer: he is a brilliant businessman adept at marketing, self-promotion and managing a large staff.
Photography has a long way to go. Compared to other digitized creative forms, like music, it is light years behind. And, for once, that could be a good thing. Like the youngest brother of a family, it can learned from it’s elders. For once, it has not yet been touch at full impact by the whole free file sharing tsunami that hit music a while back. Certainly the dams are leaking and breaking, but we are no where near what the music industry has experienced.
Founding editor Jim Pickerell has reacquired Selling Stock, which has been owned by Fadner Media Enterprises since late 2006. Selling Stock's daily coverage will remain unchanged, and Pickerell is also launching a companion Web site, PhotoLicensingOptions.com, which will offer paid access to stories on an individual basis.
Anyone who is licensing rights to pictures for educational purposes should take a look at this iPad promotional video to get an idea of what the delivery of educational information will be like in the near future.
Chris Barton, managing director of Photographers Direct has written a humorous article on the
multiple use of microstock images that shows five young people—three women and two men—promoting the products and services of a dozen different companies, with copy that
would lead the reader to believe that these people were employees of all
these companies. Every rights-managed photographer will enjoy this
piece.
iStockphoto has launched a user-directed donation program, pledging up to $500,000 in 2010. The phased program will eventually enable iStock clients, contributors and employees to make microdonations to charities of their choice from within istockphoto.com.
Alaska Stock Images founder Jeff Schultz has volunteered as the official photographer of the Iditarod trail race for 30 years. In March, teams race from Anchorage to Nome, traveling over 1,150 miles of the most extreme and beautiful terrain in the world.
As part of its promotional strategy, Getty Images-owned iStockphoto is offering a selection of free images through Google Blogger, a leading blogging platform that boasts millions of bloggers.
Sausalito-based ImageSpan has announced that the services of Toronto company BrandProtect are now part of online content licensing platform LicenseStream. BrandProtect's LinkWalker will help LicenseStream users identify where brands, company names, images, audio, video and trademarks appear online.
What an image is worth to a customer depends entirely on the customer's intended use. The size of the file delivered has very little to do with how an image might be used, or the value the customer will receive from using it. Granted, there are limits as to how a very small file can be used. But, there are many ways that a medium-size file can be used, with widely varying values. The biggest problem with royalty-free licensing, and particularly with microstock, is not that it prices certain uses very low, but that the system of pricing by file size has tried to ignore use in an effort to achieve simplicity.
One of the key things to understand about stock photography is why some customers are willing to pay more than others to use an image.
The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies, which expressed serious misgivings about the proposed U.K. Digital Economy Bill in January, released a statement that highlights that some of such concerns remain in the latest version of the legislation.
The Picture Archive Council of America has announced its newly elected board for 2010-2012. Blend Images' Robert Henson is taking over the presidency from Maria Kessler.
Berlin-based fStop has launched the fCards App for the popular Apple lines of iPhone, iPad and iPod. The app, available through the iTunes store for $1.99, is a mobile adaptation of the free e-card service fStop has developed previously.
Photo Web site company Zenofolio has added a new feature to its offering: users can now add music to their sites. Another new feature is client ability to select and share favorite images. Both upgrades are a response to community demand, said the company.
In response to "Use-Based Pricing: Corbis Moves in Right Direction," Jain Lemos said: "I am not convinced that the rights-managed model should disappear entirely, and promoting that idea too soon could have a negative impact that Corbis and others don't intend. Perhaps rights-managed and [traditional] royalty-free are going away on their own, but they have worked well for many years, and I'd hate to see the baby thrown out with the bath!"
Given the time pressures customers are under, most tend to go to the sites where it is easy to find a usable image. Given the way traditional and microstock sites are designed, it is infinitely easier to find a good, usable image in microstock than on traditional sites -- and microstock customers get the added benefit of paying less.
Alamy salesfor the 2009 were $22,864,000, down 27% from 2008. Fourth quarter sales
were down less than 2% compared to the third quarter of 2009 and were
down 14% compared to the fourth quarter 2008. British pound and Euro
sales were up slightly compared to the third quarter of
2009, but U.S. dollar sales were down 12% compared to Q3 2009 and 22% compared to Q4 2008.
After 146 years as a weekly, the British Journal of Photography is returning to the monthly format it launched with in 1854.