Photo District News is beginning to prepare for this year's convention by touting the results of a recent survey that ranked PDN PhotoPlus Expo #1 in timely purchases following the trade show.
The European Union's telecommunications chief Viviane Reding recently said that it is not piracy that is destroying the recording industry's business model, but a failed business model that is leading to piracy. This sentiment applies as much to the imaging industry as the recording industry, and it should be a wake-up call to business owners.
Karen Bernstein, a 30-year industry veteran and longtime international business development consultant to the New York-based Everett Collection, has passed away after a 3-year battle with a brain tumor.
ITN Source has won a competitive bid to supply 210 hours of content to Digital Images for Education. Scheduled to launch next summer, the initiative is financed by the JISC Collections, whose mission is to support U.K. education and research by delivering affordable, relevant and sustainable online content. ITN has also announced a similar deal in China and the launch of its seventh YouTube channel, with programming that targets book readers and provides marketing opportunities to publishers.
Recently, a very talented and successful photographer who produces both rights-managed and traditional royalty-free images was bemoaning the sorry state of the stock photo industry. He said: "We need a little respect [for our work]."
Ad spending plans are trending upward for most major media, according to the most recent data from an every-other-monthly tracking report surveying the "advertising confidence" of key media decision-makers.
Last week, the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies alerted its members that it is supporting the National Portrait Gallery in its intent to pursue legal action against Wikipedia. Following the download of 3,000 high-resolution images from the its Web site and their subsequent appearance on Wikimedia Commons, the Gallery has attempted to discuss the issue with the online encyclopedia and, in the absence of a response, issued a lawyer's letter to a Wikipedia administrator. Wikipedia is saying the Gallery does not have a case, as the public has the right to access public-domain content.
The Stock Artists Alliance reports that the first two months of its getMETAsmart program have seen nearly 800 picture professionals attend seven free seminars across the U.S. In addition to SAA-sponsored sessions on metadata, five events included presentations on search-engine optimization by online-archive company Photoshelter.
A recent WhatTheyThink survey found that 70% of the owners of printing businesses in the U.S. expect 2009 revenues to decline compared to 2008. If less is being spent to create printed products, less is being spent on the photographs that are used in them.
London-based Ingram Publishing announced the release of Creative Symbol Collection Part 2, which consists of 5,000 vector images. The entire collection is also available through PurestockX as single-file downloads.
iStockphoto's move to segment its microstock collection into standard-priced images and the premium Vetta collection, priced 10 times higher, complicates the choices of contributors when trying to determine where to place images in order to maximize return. Should photographers enter into exclusive agreements with iStock in hopes that some of their images will be selected for the Vetta collection, or continue to distribute their images through multiple microstock sites?
California start-up GumGum has closed a Series A-1 financing round with $2.6 million in new financing from GRP Venture Partners and First Round Capital.
Those looking for free images, bloggers in particular, are getting a lot of attention from media and technology companies. In addition to GumGum securing another round of financing and the recent launches of Fotoglif and OffiSync 2.0, both of which endeavor to make it easy to source free images online, Google has integrated sort-by-usage-rights into Google Images.
Photographers need to be prepared for and anticipate career change. Consider the career of Ron Rovtar, a successful stock photographer in the 90s, now happily selling real estate and using his photographic skills to photograph architecture.
Toronto-based Fotoglif has joined GumGum and PicApp in the ad-supported online image-licensing space. Former studio owner and Fotoglif founder Michael Betts says the business offers photographers a big opportunity, while also rewarding publishers financially.
Getty Images and Major League Baseball Properties have announced a multi-year extension of their agreement, under which Getty will continue as the exclusive Major League Baseball commercial photo partner and licensor of its image archive.
"We have reset and won't rebound and re-grow," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the continued decline of print as an advertising medium during the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.
OffiSync 2.0, released last week, has integrated Google Image Search, enabling users to easily find and insert images posted online into documents and presentations---to the chagrin of many a copyright owner.
The American Society of Media has launched a redesigned Web site with expanded resources available to all photographers and members of the photographic community---not just ASMP members.
Photographer-owned Viewfinders has redesigned its Web site with an emphasis on improving search. The 10-year-old Portland agency that focuses on imagery of the Pacific Northwest also implemented PLUS Packs, the standard developed by the Picture Licensing Universal System Coalition.