Annie Leibovitz's debt crisis has reached a crescendo. Multiple media outlets have reported that the celebrity photographer's last-hope lender, Art Capital Group, has sued Leibovitz for breach of contract. Art Capital also asked the courts to interfere in the photographer's relationship with Getty Images, asserting that Leibovitz has assigned sole representation rights to the art broker as part of the loan agreement.
Designers are currently upset at the increasing push by customers toward doing spec work. As a photographer, I'd like to offer a little perspective.
A recent Linkedin and Harris Poll study of consumers and advertisers involved in the advertising decision-making process revealed disparate views. Apparently, those who determine the look-and-feel of an ad campaign are not necessarily in sink with their target audience's opinion. Still, both sides agree on some approaches, such as ads that are entertaining or funny.
The Picture Archive Council of America has announced a conference program that emphasizes emerging technologies and survival in the current economic conditions. The 14th annual event will be held in Miami in mid-October, and early-bird registration discounts end on August 15.
Since Getty Images finalized its acquisition of Jupiterimages in February, traditional and microstock industry insiders have been waiting to see how the leader will integrate former Jupiter brands. This week saw another step in this relatively quiet process: iStockphoto announced that it took over management of the Internet's leading free image Web site Stock.xchng.
With all the depressing news, it is good to hear some good industry news occasionally. SuperStock is looking to hire a comptroller and an account executive.
Corbis-owned Veer has fully launched of Veer Marketplace, the first microstock community to be part of a traditional agency's Web site. The Marketplace was initially announced in February and has gradually added features and functionality since.
Women's blog network BlogHer has integrated PicApp as a publishing tool for its 54,000 members and 60 editors. According to founder and chief executive officer Lisa Stone, BlogHer chose PicApp to have "a single source of premium, legal images from prestigious content providers."
TIME used Robert Lam's photo of a jar of coins on the cover of the magazine, with the headline "The New Frugality." The copy read: "The recession has changed more than just how we live. It's changed what we value and what we expect---even after the economy recovers." Lam received $30 for use of the image, which suggests we should expect a lot less.
LA-based AudioMicro.com has announced a licensing deal with the Discovery Communications-owned sound effects library The Hollywood Edge. The move adds 55,000 professional-quality sound effects to the crowdsourced audio marketplace.
Noted attorney Edward Greenberg and commercial photographer and former Professional Photographers of America president Jack Reznicki have released a new video-based course on copyright registration. Specifically, the two New Yorkers address the intricacies of the new online copyright registration system.
LicenseStream creator ImageSpan and liveBooks, a porftolio Web-site company, have forged a partnership to provide customized services to liveBooks' 5,000 photographer-customers.
If you are among those who think newspapers and magazines will always be with us because customers want them, consider that this year's newsprint consumption in the U.S. is down to a third of what it was in 1990.
The numbers below show the number of downloads for each of 124 of iStockphoto’s 150 top earners in the months of March, April, and May of 2009, based on total download statistics supplied daily by iStockphoto and compiled by
istockcharts.
Florida-based GlamourKey is a stock business that uses green-screen technology to offer royalty-free fashion and glamour stock footage of models with keyed-out backgrounds. The company says it is the first in the world to offer this type of product.
If you sell pictures for use in print publications, take a look at Backcast Online Magazine---not so much for the content, although it is great, but for the concept, which could be a huge new opportunity and salvation for editorial photographers.
Skyrocketing infringement rates and the seemingly inevitable arrival of an orphan-works legislation have scared the bejeezus out of content owners and inspired companies such as PicScout and The Copyright Registry to develop new products. The Associated Press is in both camps: the cooperative just announced that it is building an online registry of content to monitor its use, protect it from infringement and enable new business opportunities.
The advertising model for funding the costs of newspaper and magazine content creation and delivery seems to have outlived its usefulness. Is there an alternative to meeting the needs of advertisers, content creators and consumers?
On Wednesday, the Stock Artists Alliance announced to its members that it intends to pursue a merger with the Association of Visual Artists: "It has been a tough, but essential, reality for us all to acknowledge that as a small association in an industry that's been hard hit by internal and external challenges, SAA needs to adapt in order to continue to serve you, our members, as effectively as possible," reads the letter signed by a six-member SAA board, lead by president Shannon Fagan, and past SAA presidents Leland Bobbé, David Sanger, Zave Smith and Roy Hsu.