According to
The Takeout Anheuser-Busch has launched two Royalty Free collections of stock images featuring properly served beer, with diverse consumers and brewers, and myriad beer styles all found in contemporary settings on the free sites
Pexels and
Unsplash.
I was asked recently if I had a breakdown of the stock images uses by various categories of industry users. The answer is NO, and as far as I know no one else has done that type of analysis. However, it occurred to me that it might be useful to develop some broad general ideas of what the breakdowns might be.
Sheron Resnick of 20/20 Software has sent a brief note with very cogent arguments as to why my ideas for an
Image Creator Locator are impractical and probably won’t work. In this story I would like to examine some of her concerns and criticisms and offer some thoughts on each of the issues mentioned.
The biggest problem for the stock photography industry today is that in order to make customers aware that photos exist they must be online. Once online, anyone can easily grab and use them.? If the image is on the photographer’s, or a stock agency site, most users would infer that they should contact the photographers or agency and ask permission. But, more often than not, the picture is seen on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or some other site. No one, just looking at the image is sure whether it can be legally used or not. And if it should be licensed where to go to do that.
The legal definition of “Fair Use” is open to a lot of interpretation by courts. in
Brammer v. Violent Hues Productions, LLC, a Northern District of Virginia court recently found in favor of Fair Use. If this decision becomes legal precedent then photographers should assume that if one of their images can be found on the Internet, or anywhere else, anyone can use it for free.
Adobe just released its latest 2018 visual trend, “Creative Reality,” exploring surreal utopias and vibrant color palettes as well as the ways artists are reflecting this new day-glow-infused reality in their work. From art exhibits on
Burning Man to immersive projects like
Summerland, artists are creating new worlds filled with eccentric textures and hyper-sensorial experiences.
After reading last weeks stories
Are Photographers Shooting What’s In Demand? and
What To Shoot: Learning From iStock a photographer sent the following:
...shoot what stirs your mind...
...shoot what you think others might not...
...shoot what you believe you're good at...
...shoot what's reasonably accessible...
...that's all...bye-bye now...
If you’ve been a Getty contributor for a long time you might want to check to see if all the images they have accepted over the years are still in the collection. Jonathan Nourok (
www.jonathannourok.com ) has been contributing his botanical images to Getty Images since it was Tony Stone Images almost 30 years ago. He also posts some of the same images on his own website, but since he has an exclusive agreement for licensing with Getty he notes on his website that the images are only available for licensing through
gettyimages.com.
Recently I’ve done three stories examining various aspects of the collections at
Getty and
iStock and
Shutterstock. The chart below provides easy comparisons of these three collections.
I’ve examined the number of images in certain keyword categories at
Getty and
iStock. Today, I’ve done a count of the number of Shutterstock images with the same keywords as the other two agencies to see if it is possible to draw any comparisons. I'll take a look at the comparisons of collection size between Getty and Shutterstock. In addition there are some interesting things to be learned when comparing the number of photos with the number of illustrations on the Shutterstock site.
In the
previous story I examined the Getty Image Creative collection, and in particular EyeEm’s contribution to that collection, in and effort to determine what subject matter might be in greatest demand, and thus most needed. iStock offers some interesting insights into the subject because it basically has two separate collections – Signature and Essentials – with imagery at different price points.
If the major stock distributors want to sell more pictures it might be a good idea to give photographers more information about the relative demand for certain subjects in terms of number of images licensed and revenue generated by images with certain keywords. If occurred to me that the fastest growing collection on Gettyimages.com is EyeEm. Currently there are 26,024,940 images in the Getty Creative collection and 4,620,578 or
18% of them have been supplied by EyeEm. A little less than two years ago EyeEM only had 256,152 image in the collection.
This story provides some comparative figures of the 205 brands represented in the
Getty Images Creative collection between August 2016 and June 2018. There were 15,001,453 images in the collection in 2016 and 23,922,471 today, a 37% increase overall in two years.
The ACSIL Global Survey of Stock Footage Companies 4 is open now for participation. All footage companies worldwide are invited to participate in this fourth study of the stock footage industry. ACSIL and Thriving Archives today announced the launch of the ACSIL Global Survey of Stock Footage Companies 4 (AGS4), their fourth survey of the global footage business. The 47-question survey is being conducted online, and all footage companies worldwide are invited to participate. The online survey is open now through August 13, 2018, and can be accessed at
www.thrivingarchives.com/ags4.
A controversial bill in the EU seeking a rewrite of Europe’s copyright laws giving creators more power to restrict how their content is distributed has been rejected by lawmakers. The vote was 318 against the legislation, known as The Copyright Directive, while 278 voted in favor, and 31 abstained, taking the reforms back to the drawing board.
NBC News has reported that “
News media paid Melania Trump thousands for use of photos in ‘positive stories only.’” President Donald Trump’s most recent financial disclosures revel that the first lady earned between $100,000 and $1,000,000 in photo royalties in 2017 from
Getty Images. (Federal officials are only required to give an income range in their filings.
From the 1940s through the 80s and 90s
Globe Photos, Inc. was widely regarded by newspapers and magazines as a leading source for celebrity images. As other competitors entered the market Globe’s popularity faded, but they still have photographers covering red carpet events on a daily basis in Hollywood and New York. In recent years Globe Photos was one of 12 archives acquired by
Capital Art, Inc., the world’s largest pop culture and image licensing company with more than 15 million images of every movie and entertainment celebrity of the 20th century.
On Saturday
Visual China Group (VCG) shut down
500px Marketplace and replaced it with a distribution partnership arrangement. China users will be able to license the images through VCG who
acquired 500px earlier this year. Getty Images will handle all licensing in the rest of the world.
The Mega Agency, a leading provider of news, sport and entertainment content, is now giving photographers a quick, easy and efficient way to upload their digital archives. The initiative has been launched to add rich editorial content to Mega’s existing archive of more than 30million images and daily production of 10,000 images.?
Other than Shutterstock’s quarterly reports and occasional bits of information from Getty concerning iStock there is virtually no solid information available regarding the annual gross revenue generated by the microstock companies. I decided to take a look at the Poll information that can be found on
Microstockgroup.com of 10 of the leading microstock agencies to see if I could draw any reasonable conclusions about the annual revenue of these companies.
The Mega Agency has signed a deal with American Media, Inc. (AMI), the leading publisher of celebrity journalism and health and fitness magazines in the United States, that makes it AMI’s premium content partner. Mega already globally syndicates exclusive content for AMI, which owns and operates the leading print and digital celebrity and active lifestyle media brands in the United States.
Lohian Networks a keywording agency in India reports that Paris based
Photononstop has not been paying its bills and may be in financial difficulty.
Rashi Jain, Project Coordinator for Lohian Networks reports that in 2016 his company keyworded 3788 images for Photononstop at a rate of $1.25 per image for a total cost of
$4,735.00. Invoices were sent in June and July 2016 via Photosindia in the U.S. Almost two years later these invoices have not been paid after repeated followup requests.
Olycom, a major Italian photographic agency headquartered in Milan and founded in 1958 by Walfrido Chiarini as Olimpia Fotocronache has filed for bankruptcy. Everything regarding debts is in the hands of a judge. LaPresse, the Italian multimedia news agency led by Marco Durante, has acquired the analog and digital libraries of Olycom including the Publifoto brand, the historical archives Olimpia and Olycom and related brands covering the whole of the twentieth century, with a collection of over 15 million images.
Last week, the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs approved amendments to the
EU’s Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. EU’s Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. Among the amendments approved was Article 13.
Scope Features in the UK has gone into voluntary liquidation with nearly £400,000 in unpaid debts and nearly £13,000 in royalties still owed photographers. According to its
statement of affairs filed at Companies House on 17 May, individual photographers are owed sums ranging from £30 to more than £2,000.