If you’re interested in stock footage you may want to attend the
ACSIL Footage Expo 2015 in Manhattan next week. The event will take place on Wednesday, April 29, 2015 between 10:30am and 5:15pm at the Midtown Loft & Terrace, 267 Fifth Avenue, (29th Street), New York. NY. Many of the major footage distributors will be exhibiting.
In order to earn significant money from licensing stock images it is almost mandatory to make the images available through more than one large stock image distributor. But having images with multiple distributors also makes it almost impossible to determine if there has been an infringement. While it is easy enough to determine if an image has been used on the Interne, it is often almost impossible to determine if the image was legally licensed.
It’s that time of year when high school seniors are waiting for college acceptance letters and thinking about future careers. If you know someone who is thinking about photography as a career you might want to point them to the stories listed below.
EyeEm has raised $18 million in new venture capital and currently has a community of 13 million photographers across 150 countries.
PetaPixel has a great story by 30-year-old Brendan van Son about how he has been supporting himself for the last 5 years as a travel photographer/journalist. During that time he has visited almost 80 countries. He provides a lot of very valuable detail for anyone thinking about travel photography as a career.
Foap, is hosting a NYC photo contest that awards $200 each for the best New York City photos in four different categories. The contest is in partnership with
Mastercard.
In March we reported that an
ACSIL survey of stock footage distributors concluded that globally $550 million in revenue was generated from the licensing of stock footage in 2014. The 53-question survey was sent to over 400 companies that license stock footage and 90 responded. The following is an executive summary of the results.
The European Commission has sent a Statement of Objections to Google alleging the company has abused its dominant position in the markets for general Internet search services in the European Economic Area (EEA) by systematically favoring its own comparison shopping product in its general search results pages. The Commission's preliminary view is that such conduct infringes EU antitrust rules because it stifles competition and harms consumers.
I received a note from a stock photographer who was one of the more successful full-time image producers in the 1990s and early 2000s. He called my attention to a CNN story about “Workers Striking For $15 An Hour.” He is envious of those who will earn $15 per hour for their work. He is looking for a new career because he can no longer earn anywhere near $15 an hour in present value for the time and effort he puts into producing new images.
Most Rights Managed stock images can be used in many different non-conflicting ways by a variety of customers. The theory behind RM licensing is that the fee charged to use an image should have some relation to the value the customer receives from the use. RM photographers are encouraged to carefully negotiate, and spell out in detail in a license, the rights and limitations of each use. It is assumed that an honest customer will then track its usage. If the customer wants to make additional use of the same image the customer will then come back and negotiate an additional license. Is that working?