Pond5, the pioneering online marketplace for stock media and creative
components, announced today that the one-millionth clip had been added
to its stock video collection, making Pond5 by far the largest and
fastest-growing collection of royalty-free video on the Web. The site
also offers millions of stock images, audio files, and other creative
components for use as raw material in media productions of all types.
iStockphoto has announced a partnership with iGoogle to provide users a new selection of beautiful and immersive full-page themes. Initially, there are more than 30 themes in the
iGoogle Themes library.
Robert Harding World Imagery
www.robertharding.com, a travel and global imagery specialist agency has acquired
Specialist Stock. Specialist Stock is a comprehensive collection of environmental and nature themed still photos and footage that is regularly licensed to international broadcasters, publications and the education sector.
Anyone asking themselves whether or not they should get into video should look at Corey Rich’s videos “
WHY” and “
HOW of WHY.” Corey is a filmmaker/photographer as well as a teacher. Yes, these videos were made to promote and sell the Nikon D4, but for the interested filmmaker they go far beyond that.
As of March 1, 2012
Imaginechina will be representing the images of
The Associated Press in the mainland China market.
ASMP’s “
The Future of Licensing” webinar with Frederic Haber, of the Copyright Clearance Center; Henry Oh, entrepreneur and digital content distributor; Eugene Mopsik, Executive Director of ASMP and Richard Kelly, moderator was held yesterday and can be downloaded here. Licensing was defined as a process that allows a customer to use something that is too expensive for them to own outright.
In the previous series of articles entitled
"Edication: How The Market Has Changed" we looked as some of the factors that have changed the educational market for images. This series of stories looks ahead. Not only have there been dramatic changes in the past, but the business of delivering educational materials to students is still very much in transition. There will certainly be a decline in the use of printed products, a growth in the delivery of educational material online and more use of video. Check out these stories for more about where things seem to be headed.
Shutterstock has announced a yearlong partnership with
TED, the non-profit dedicated to ideas worth spreading. This partnership is designed to encourage more dynamic, visual presentations from the world's most inspired thinkers. As part of this partnership, Shutterstock is providing complimentary subscriptions to speakers at TED2012 and TEDGlobal2012. Contributors whose images are downloaded as part of these subscriptions will receive their normal royalties.
Getty Images, Inc. has announced the release of
Connect by Getty Images, an innovative new content distribution service. This powerful and flexible API is designed to give Web publishers built-in access within their publishing tools to Getty’s images, as well as the search metadata associated with them.
The Granger Collection, a historical image library, has launched a mobile version of its website,
www.granger.com, that will make it fast and easy for picture professionals to search 25,000 years of world history from the palm of their hand.
An international alliance of publishers including seven member companies
of the Association of American Publishers, with support from AAP and
other international trade associations, has identified and taken legal
action against operators of one of the largest pirate web-based
businesses in the world.
ZUMA Press, the California-based news agency is now supplying
Alamy's live news feed with images from its global network of 3,000 photojournalists. Owned and run by renowned photojournalist Scott Mc Kiernan, ZUMA has also made its back catalogue available online through Alamy’s
living4media, the new home and living image agency, is expanding fast. Launched in April 2011 in Germany, the online collection is already available in 43 countries. This rapid growth can be put down to the long experience and established global distribution network of the agency’s parent company,
StockFood, the world’s leading food media agency.
Juice Images, the UK-based, high-end, RF image producer has just exceeded the 30,000 image mark. The images span a range of in-demand categories including Business, Industry, Education and Medical as well as more general Lifestyle.
VII has announced that two of its member received top awards in two of the 9 categories in the 2012 World Press Photo Contest. Stephanie Sinclair, received a First Prize for Conterporary Issues stories and Donald Weber a First Price for Portaits.
The Editorial Relations Committee of PACA (Picture Archive Council of
America) has released updated suggestions for dealing with educational
publishers. Digital technology is rapidly changing the way educational
materials are being developed and used. During this transition period
image licensors need to be particularly vigilant if they hope to receive
reasonable compensation for the long range use of their imagery.
Microstock Group has published the preliminary results of its 2011 survey of microstock contributors. So far more that 700 people have responded, but there is still time for anyone involved in microstock to
add additional information before the final results are tallied.
Corbis Images has launched
OnDemand: Entertainment, a flexible entertainment subscription service. The entertainment subscriptions provide customers with exclusive access to the industry’s most comprehensive collection of breaking entertainment and iconic celebrity imagery. The service will be available to customers worldwide searching for compelling creative content to showcase their celebrity and entertainment related news.
Since September 2011 photography and illustration students have submitted more than 3,000 images to
Alamy,
the world's largest online stock photography agency. For the next two
years these contributors will receive 100% of all money collected for
the licensing of their images.
One thing that has intrigued me about the microstock business is the
role designers and illustrators play as content creators and how their
participation on the seller side of the market influences imagery supply
and demand. Shutterstock recently reported that in 2011 32% of the
company’s total downloads were vector illustrations and that in the last
5 years customers have trended to move away from using photographs to
illustrate certain concepts and toward the use of very graphic
illustrations.
This article provides a selection of stories that will help the reader
better understand microstock photography and the state of the market for
images at microstock prices at the beginning of 2012. Some of the
stories in this list were written as much as two years ago, but provide
background on the subject.
iStockphoto has announced a new app that lets anyone create fast, fun
and free e-cards for use on Facebook. Customer surveys have revealed
that e-cards have become more acceptable and often preferred to
traditional cards.
Crestock has launched a collection of celebrity photos at microstock prices at
http://www.crestock.com/celebrities/. The collection contains real time coverage of popular stars from coast to coast supplied by top entertainment photographers, supplemented with an archive of past celebrity events – all from ImageCollect/Los Angeles.
Corbis Images (
www.corbisimages.com) and The Associated Press (
www.ap.org) are rolling out a monthlong social media photo showcase called “Perceptions.” The showcase on Facebook seeks commentary from people who view selected images from the cross-distribution collaboration between the two companies announced in January.
Shutterstock (
www.shutterstock.com) has delivered more than 200 million licensed image downloads to its customers since its founding in 2004. This number far exceeds that of any other company licensing rights to stock photography. The company’s closest competitor in the microstock arena is iStockphoto. According to the latest figures from
istockcharts.multimedia.de iStock has licensed 116,134,740+ downloads. (The + probably represents a few thousands above this number.)