Cambridge-based Imense, which produces image-recognition and other software, has updated its Annotator keywording platform.
National Geographic has announced that it is ceasing regular publication of "National Geographic Adventure" with the current December/January issue after 10 years of publishing the travel and outdoor adventure magazine.
Joichi Ito, the chief executive officer of Creative Commons, has joined the advisory board of PicScout. The company's ImageExchange platform has also welcomed Dreamstime to the list of participating agencies.
Most professional photographers are adamantly opposed to Creative Commons licenses, which are used to allow free uses of images. However, widespread use of Creative Commons licenses may actually help establish in the minds of users the very important copyright law principle that "All Rights [are] Reserved" by the creator or copyright holder of any work, and that it is left to the creator to specify who has what rights to make what uses of the work and at what cost.
From marrying assignment and stock to choosing among rights-managed, royalty-free and non-traditional image licensing strategies, Bill Bachmann's experience offers food for thought.
PicScout has announced that 13 more image producers and companies have joined its recently launched Image Index Registry Connection.
Photographer Zee Wendell and art director Tara D'Ambrosia have launched Weestock Images, a children's stock photography agency, out of Newport Beach, Calif. According to the duo, Weestock fills a market gap.
The New York-based microstock is financing the construction of 12 wells in northern Ethiopian villages.
Bill Bachmann, author and publisher of
Remember The Joy -- How To Have a Successful Career in Photography and Have Fun Doing It, says: "The best part of my life is that I shoot what I love. Everyone should do that!"
Those that have traditionally made their living licensing stills to print educational and textbook publishers should take heed: there is ample evidence that predictions of such uses giving way to digital, often video-based options are true. ITN Source and its Education Clip Library just announced a deal with Archipelago Learning to provide video content for Archipelago's Study Island-an online standards-based assessment, instruction, practice, and test preparation program for the U.S. K-12 educational market.
Previous methods of image keywording almost always involved downloading an image from a server, adding metadata and reuploading it back. In cases of outsourcing images to keywording companies, this involved huge volumes of data traveling back and forth. Piksee, a new software package from New Zealand metadata company Keedup, eliminates the loss of time associated with data transfer by sampling images off a server and adding keywords and other information without moving images themselves.
Travel photographer Bill Bachmann is an ardent advocate for basing stock image pricing on usage (the rights-managed model), not on file size (the royalty-free and microstock models). In 2009, Bachmann is on track to earn almost $1 million from licensing his travel and lifestyle images.
Current established
usage fees are so low that many photographers and small agencies that
have specialized in selling to textbooks have either gone out of
business, or are on the verge of doing so. Nevertheless, the
excessively low prices were still not enough for the publishers. To
press their advantage it now appears that many of the larger publishers
have systematically, not occasionally or accidentally, printed many
more copies of books than they licensed rights to print.
WoodWing Software of The Netherlands and London-based Imprezzeo have announced an agreement to incorporate Imprezzeo's visual search technology into WoodWing's Content Station, an online publishing tool for enterprise-level content producers.
The figures gathered by CEPIC last year suggest that the stock industry's gross revenue estimates could be inflated by as much as a third as a result of double counting sales.
ITN Source has announced an archive footage deal with Shanghai Media Group, China's largest commercial broadcaster. This follows an earlier agreement with China's largest foreign education publisher Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
Getty Images Photographer's Choice contributors have been asking if they can participate in the recent Flickr Collection Call for Artists. Getty is allowing this, as long as the contributor has a payee name that is different from his or her current account. This can be accomplished as simply as adding "Inc." or "LLC" to the contributor name name.
Non-French photographers, photo agencies and other creditors owed money by SA Eyedea Presse (more commonly known as Gamma or Gamma Presse) only have until November 30 to file a court claim for any monies owed.
Following the release of the court-mandated revision to the Google Books Settlement, CEPIC -- formerly known as the Coordination of European Picture Agencies and just rebranded as Centre of the Picture Industry, complete with a new logo -- has renewed its objections to the precedent-setting agreement.
More and more publishers seem to be discovering that they "accidentally" printed more copies of books than they licensed rights to print. The latest comes from Scholastic.