New York City-based photographer and president of the Stock Artists Alliance Shannon Fagan reviews last month’s conference of the Picture Archive Council of America, concluding that this year is unlike any other to date in the history of stock photography.
Stock libraries have been moving to adopt social-networking technologies and Web sites. Microstock agencies, for whom the online community is an integral part of the business model, have naturally been the early adopters, integrating social-networking features into their own Web sites and using Facebook and similar services. Traditional agencies appear to be following a similar path; however, this adoption appears to be guided more by fad and novelty than tangible evidence of potential business benefits.
Leading iStockphoto contributors saw their sales drop by almost 9% in April compared to March, according to our analysis of the numbers available through iStockcharts. To some extent, this might be explained by a loss of one business day to Easter.
This year, Getty Images photographers and editors have earned more than 60 awards and honors for editorial imagery and multimedia productions. These include the Overseas Press Club's Robert Capa Gold Medal Award and Picture of the Year International's Magazine Photographer of the Year Award.
London-based Science Photo Library has announced that a new motion collection is coming this summer.
The Photolibrary Group has beat out a number of competitors to exclusively represent the image and video content of VisitBritain, the National Tourist Board of the U.K. The collection offers travel and lifestyle imagery of Britain.
In the face of declining pricing and revenue percentages, many photographers have found new ways to supplement their freelance income. Some may have staff photography jobs and freelance on the side. A growing number work in similar or allied fields, such as graphic design, or even hold a totally unrelated job of real-estate agent, teacher or flight attendant.
To help measure how representative the survey results might be, responders were asked to indicate their affiliation with trade organizations. Close to a third (29%) of the total 136 respondents did not belong to any such group, while 25 (18%) belonged to organizations other than the choices provided in the survey.
Photographic activities that produced the highest average revenues were advertising and brochure, consumer editorial and architectural assignments.
Everyone wants to know the best strategy for marketing their images. The numbers from this year's income survey show that more people used the rights-managed strategy than any other, and that their average gross revenue was the highest at $56,326. However, image marketers should not be too quick to jump to the conclusion that rights-managed is necessarily the correct approach.
There were some very surprising results when we compared U.S. photographers with those residing elsewhere. Average U.S. stock photographer revenues appear to be substantially below those generated by shooters living elsewhere, apart from the few U.S. respondents earning in excess of $500,000.
New San Francisco-based photography site Snapixel markets itself as an offering that combines elements of Flickr and iStockphoto.
On the heels of a recent loss of the National Football League business, Getty Images has announced it has renewed its agreement to serve as an official photographic partner of the United States Olympic Committee.
The average annual earnings of photographers responding to the 2008
Selling Stock self-employed photographer income survey are $110,409, leaving out the top five producers whose earnings are uncharacteristically large. Of this, the average annual stock income was $65,475, which means that 41% of photographers' freelance revenues come from something other than the licensing of rights to stock images.
Image Source founder Christina Vaughan has been shortlisted for the Entrepreneur of the Year Award. The honor is part of the Asian Women of Achievement awards, which identify Asian women making a significant contribution to British life.
LookStat, an online startup serving microstock photographers, has announced it has closed a round of financing with $500 in venture capital. The Seattle technology company offers a Web-based service that allows microstock contributors to track their sales by image at multiple sites.
The results of Selling Stock’s 2008
self-employed photographer income survey compared to the
2007 results are disappointing on several fronts. First, we only had 136 responses this year compared with 238 in 2007. Many factors could have contributed to this, but the 2008 data must be viewed as having less validity. Nevertheless, as we parse the data there are some interesting nuggets of information.
Dubai-based Arabic stock library Gulfimages has launched Upload, a portal that will accept contributions from professional, semi-professional and hobbyist photographers.