The following is a list of the 131 highest producing contributors to iStockphoto and shows the number of downloads they had in March 2009 and approximate figures of the royalty revenue this represents. The data came from istockcharts (http://istockcharts.multimedia.de/). The first column is the total number of downloads for the individual as it was listed on istockcharts on March 2, 2009. The second column show downloads as of April 1st and the third column is the difference between these two numbers or total downloads for that individual for the month.
Alamy has removed the "comments" feature from its corporate blog. The company has also announced that it is restricting its online forum topics.
Six months after the initial announcement of the partnership between Time Inc. and Getty Images, the two have launched jointly owned Life.com. While the new Web site is a treasure trove for image lovers and history buffs, its image-use policies raise a number of issues for both consumers and content owners.
A start-up that makes photos shoppable has gotten the attention of Google, who joined its $5.75 million Series A financing round.
Agence France-Presse and Getty Images have extended their longtime still-image partnership with an agreement to distribute each other's video content. The worldwide deal, which allows both agencies to market content in English, is in place as of this month.
Beyond a higher level of personal involvement with Getty Images, iStockphoto chief operating officer Kelly Thompson does not think much will change at the Getty-owned microstock business after last week's resignation of its founder Bruce Livingstone. The newest member of the Getty Images executive committee shares the background of this decision and the company's plans for the near future.
For the third year, Corbis will sponsor the largest simultaneous advertising portfolio review in the world.
In 2006 I examined many of the factors that are impacting on stock photo market and leading to price declines. There were also a number of factors leading to declining sales volumes to traditional customers. These include the general demand for printed products, the tendency to use images multiple times but only pay once, trends in book publishing, postage costs, crowdsourcing of images and various types of guerrilla advertising. Since that time the situation has become worse.
As tax time draws near in the U.S.,
Outright.com, the Web's only free bookkeeping, accounting and tax software service specifically designed for the solopreneur, offers photographers advice on the hardest-to-classify business deductions.
Recently, the owner of a top microstock portal claimed that the cost of creating an image should dictate its initial price. However, this is not what happens---at either his agency, other microstocks or among traditional agencies. It is time to let go of the fiction that image pricing has anything to do with production costs.
New York-based subscription agency Shutterstock has announced that its stock footage library has exceeded to 100,000 clips. The company has been growing its inventory at roughly 2,000 clips per week since its launch of a footage offering in 2006.
Getty Images continues to perform strongly at this year's photojournalism competitions. Getty photographers took all three top honors and an additional honorable mention in the sports photojournalism category of the Best of Photojournalism 2009 and several other top sports-photography prizes.
Getty Images have selected photojournalists Magnum's Alex Majoli and Paolo Pellegrin as recipients of the first two of five 2009 professional editorial photography grants. Students of Germany's Fachhoshchule Hannover (University of Applied Arts and Sciences) and the London College of Communications won two of four 2009 student grants.
Tyler Olson's
recent microstock survey attracted 244 respondents, including 189 male and 55 female photographers. Their total gross 2008 revenue for the 242 who answered that question was $2,438,556, or an average of $10,076.68 per photographer.
Alamy has reported gross revenue of just under $31.2 million for all of 2008. This was broken down by currency, with $10,703,000 in U.S. dollars, 2,904,000 in euros and 8,974,000 in English pounds.
Though it has, apparently, been planned for some time, the resignation of the industry's chief disruptor has come as a surprise to many. As of April 1, iStockphoto founder and chief executive and Getty Images senior vice president of consumer markets Bruce Livingstone departs the stock-image industry.
A leading advertising assignment shooter says that he is seeing a growing niche in high-end sales.
As part of the ongoing discussion in the stock-image industry about the ethics and implications of selling the same content at different prices, James Alexander, formerly of Adobe Stock Photos, has posted some thoughts on his personal blog. This issue was first raised by
Microstock Diaries, and
Selling Stock has also addressed it in the past.
Content-licensing platform GumGum has launched a product that allows users to shop for products contained in images---specifically the outfits worn by favorite celebrities. ShopThisLook is already in use by blogs, such as INF Daily and Splash News' online gossip pub.
Getty Images' Orchard Represents and Annie Leibovitz have entered into a multi-assignment collaboration.