After great success at producing and selling traditional rights-managed and royalty-free imagery for more than 25 years, Ron Chapple started producing microstock in 2006. By 2008, he went looking for new opportunities, and in 2009 — the year when many other photographers struggled to survive — he doubled his income compared to the previous year.

Latinstock Digital, the asset-management subsidiary of the Latinstock photographic cooperative, has entered into a joint venture agreement with KIT Digital, a provider of on-demand video-management software. The two companies have agreed to cross-market services, thus expanding the range of the total offering, to each other’s and potential new clients. For Latinstock, the agreement means a stronger foothold in the video and European markets and an expansion of its service roster.

Most professional photographers are adamantly opposed to Creative Commons licenses, which are used to allow free uses of images. However, widespread use of Creative Commons licenses may actually help establish in the minds of users the very important copyright law principle that “All Rights [are] Reserved” by the creator or copyright holder of any work, and that it is left to the creator to specify who has what rights to make what uses of the work and at what cost.

Bill Bachmann, author and publisher of Remember The Joy — How To Have a Successful Career in Photography and Have Fun Doing It, says: “The best part of my life is that I shoot what I love. Everyone should do that!”

Travel photographer Bill Bachmann is an ardent advocate for basing stock image pricing on usage (the rights-managed model), not on file size (the royalty-free and microstock models). In 2009, Bachmann is on track to earn almost $1 million from licensing his travel and lifestyle images.