Saugatuck, Mich.-based image and business-management services company HindSight Ltd. Has launched FindAPhotographer, a talent search-engine to help buyers find commercial and stock shooters.
The American Society of Media Photographers will present second annual ASMP Arnold Newman Prize to Jonathan Torgovnik on May 13. Supported by Getty Images, Canon and Photo District News, the prize recognizes environmental portraiture.
ClipartConnection.com is the newest addition to Jupiterimages' microstock and subscription offerings.
Twenty years ago, when images were color slides and researchers went through drawers of images to fulfill a customer's request, there was great concern that duplicate images were stored at multiple agencies. Shopping around would net the best price. In fact, this almost never happened, even in cases where the same image was available in multiple agencies.
New York-based Everett Collection, an entertainment and celebrity image library that chronicles the history of film and television, has reached agreements to represent four European brands: Keystone, Mirrorpix, Mary Evans Picture Library and Matrix.
A newly digitized collection of 1970s and 1980s celebrity and music-legend photographs by Brad Elterman is now available through Buzz Foto, which says it covers the world of celebrity as an art form.
German stock-image producer Westend61 is removing over one-third of its collection from circulation. The 4-year-old company is also raising its print-resolution pricing by an average of 25%.
Traditional stock photography sellers constantly struggle to improve their collections and search. Diverse collections are added to the offering to increase customer choice. Then portals revert to tighter editing, limiting the number of images returned on each search. When portals use this strategy, the rejected images often turn up on other portals and customers often buy the rejected images.
Leading footage-licensing company Thought Equity Motion has launched a music and sound-effects collection. Offering exclusive and third-party audio content, the royalty-free music library brings Thought Equity even closer to the business models of the stock industry's Big Three.
Lucky Oliver, the favorite underdog of many microstock contributors, will cease operations on May 15. After the company spent a year seeking funds to take the business to the next level, company founder Bryan Zmijewski said: "The investment team decided that it was in the best interest of all stakeholders to shut the company down."
According to first-quarter data from the Publishers Information Bureau (PIB), U.S. consumer magazines are exhibiting classic signs of recession. Advertising revenues and pages are on a decline, given the market's economic woes. In contrast, ads of food products and other necessities is growing in both dollars and share of revenue.
Many traditional stock sellers are trying to determine how to enter the microstock market. Microstock companies have identified hundreds of thousands of customers. Traditional sellers have resisted this market, due to the low fees per use. But the number of sales is becoming hard to ignore.
One of the three major political parties of Malaysia may have to go to court to defend itself against charges of unauthorized image use. The issues raised by the case, which concerns a campaign in last month's general election, are commonplace in the global stock licensing industry. It echoes those of several other ongoing legal proceedings.
The Bridgeman Art Library has launched an online conceptual image gallery that targets the core stock-buying market of advertising, media and design creatives. The London-based fine art and archival specialist invites art directors, designers and photo editors to "select powerful, non-clichéd images for commercial use... rather than having to use in-house artists or stock photography."
The major portals are editing many of the third-party collections, dropping images and limiting what they could add. They now refuse to accept some of the brands they had previously encouraged to produce. All this has meant more images for microstock.