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Is The U.S. A Democracy?

This story is not about stock photography. Lately, I have been concerned about the state of Democracy in the U.S. This story outlines some of my thoughts. It is an issue that should concern every U.S. citizen, and maybe citizens of other countries. If you have friends who might be interested in this subject, please feel free to forward the story or use the information in any way.

Dealing With Model Releases

It should come as no surprise that, in recent years, online waivers and release forms have grown in popularity, especially during the past year. They’ve made it much easier to collect information while maintaining pandemic-approved standards. The stock photo industry, for example, has benefitted from online photo release forms. It provides an effective and efficient way to collect releases from models and online waivers will continue to be utilized as a better approach to signature-collecting.

Jon Oringer’s $52 Million Hampton Home

Take a look at Jon Oringer’s $52 million home https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9562059/Billionaire-founder-Shutterstock-lists-oceanfront-Hamptons-home-52-million.html in the Hamptons on Long Island.

Future Of Stock Photography

I launched Selling Stock in 1990 with the goal of helping professional photographer understand the stock photography business and the opportunities it offered. For a couple decades many photographers earned significant additional revenue from the licensing of stock images. A large number earned their entire living by producing photos on speculation and licensing them as stock.

Eleven Year Shutterstock Growth Trends

The chart below allows you to easily track the growth trends of Shutterstock quarter-by-quarter over the last 11-years and see the number of images in the collection, number of downloads and the gross quarterly revenue at the end of each quarter. You can also see the average revenue-per-download and revenue-per-image-in-the-collection trends.

Shutterstock Q4 2020 Financial Results

Shutterstock has reported Q4 2020 revenue of $180.9 million up 9% compared to $166.4 million in Q4 2019 and up from $165.2 million the previous quarter. Revenue per download was $3.91 per-image compared to $3.44 in Q4 2019 and $3.79 the previous quarter. The average revenue per download for all of 2020 was $3.68 compared with $3.43 for all of 2019.

Copyright Small Claims For Photographers Have Arrived

Photographers got a late Christmas present when President Trump signed the massive 5,593-page, $1.4-trillion omnibus spending and COVID-19 relief bill, titled the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021. () Buried deep within this omnibus spending bill was the 63-page CASE Act.

Nikon Moving Manufacturing To Thailand

I purchased my first Nikon camera in 1958 when I lived in Tokyo. At that time Nikon was the premier Japanese camera company. Nikon has announced that they will now move all manufacturing of new equipment from Japan to Thailand. The reasons are simple: Blue Collar workers in Japan average $18.94 per hour -- Blue Collar workers in Thailand average $4.15 per hour.

Who Is Behind Wirestock.io? Founders, Funding and Places

After my article a few days ago about Wirestock's questionable deal with Freepik, I got some comments and pointers that I want to summarize here.

How Oringer Could Improve Creator Compensation

If Jon Oringer of Shutterstock donated his annual salary of $4,598,580 to image creators who produce the products Shutterstock licenses, and divided it among creators based on the number of images licensed, how would that benefit image creators?

Is Wirestock’s “Instant Pay Program” A Scam?

If you use Wirestock to aid you in the process of filling out descriptions, titles, keywords and other required fields, and submitting images to stock agencies you need to read this story by Robert Kneschke (first published in German) and consider taking action before December 19, 2020 if you hope to earn much from your images in the future. Wirestock’s “Instant Pay Program” could be a way to help the middleman make more while the image creator earns less for the images he or she has produced.

Don’t Reveal Your Shutterstock Earnings To Anyone

Shutterstock doesn’t want their contributors revealing how much – or how little – they earn. Presumably, this is because they believe that if contributors knew how little they might receive for the imagery they submit they wouldn’t bother to submit anything.

HOsiHO Issues Call To Image Banks

According to aerial stock agency HOsiHO it is becoming harder and harder for video images creators to earn enough to support themselves. See its appeal to Stock Image Banks here. There has been a decline in assignments and prices for the use of video clips have declined so much that professional independent videographers are finding it difficult to justify continued production.

Consumer vs Middlemen vs Workers

There are many businesses where one or more “middlemen” are needed between producer of the product and consumers. Digital technology is making it increasingly possible to reduce, or eliminate, the need for middlemen in many industries. When this is possible (assuming the technology developer doesn’t take a disproportionate share of the price the customer pays) the creators of the product can get a fairer share of the amount the consumer is willing to pay and has more control over the price charged for the work performed. This can benefit consumers as well as producers by giving them more direct access to the creators of the product they want to use.

GLAAD and Getty Images Offer Guidelines For Photographing LGBTQ Community

Getty Images has announced an exclusive partnership with GLAAD, the LGBTQ media advocacy organization, working together to challenge harmful and cliched visual stereotypes of the LGBTQ community, through the launch of their first collaborative effort, a set of guidelines aimed at improving the visual representation of the transgender community. As part of a broader commitment, this new partnership encourages the creation of authentic, diverse imagery and videography, aiming to empower the media and advertising industries to choose visuals which authentically represent the LGBTQ community.

DMCA Webpage Available on USCO Website

The United States Copyright Office recently created an informative webpage dedicated to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; an influential law established in 1998 relating to copyright enforcement in the new digital age. The page provides a brief overview of each section of the law and its respective application.

Ways Agencies Could Improve Sales

A number of stock agencies are complaining that they don’t get enough new submissions of in demand imagery. See here. They are seeing increasing requests for "diversity," "African American," "Black Lives Matter" and say that images showing more minorities and ethnic groups are needed. For the most part they are very unspecific about what these images should show.

Shutterstock 2021 Color Trends Report

Shutterstock, Inc. has announced its 2021 Color Trends report. By analyzing pixel data from the year’s top downloads and mapping each pixel color to a HEX code, the report reveals the three fastest-growing colors that will tell the story of 2021, as well as local favorites from around the world.

Next Transition For Photographers

Photographers who want to earn a portion of their living in the future creating images need to quickly learn and start using Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) skills. (See this story)

National Geographic Image Collection Closes

The National Geographic Image Collection, owned by The Walt Disney Company, is scheduled to close effective December 22, 2020. National Geographic was sold to Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox for $725 million in 2015. In March 2019 Fox was sold to Disney and Murdoch and his family became the second largest shareholders.

Shutterstock Acquires Amper Music

Shutterstock has announced the buyout of AI-driven music platform Amper Music for an undisclosed sum. The move adds to a growing trend of stock image sites getting involved in rights-free music. Earlier this year, Adobe inked a deal to carry rights-free music catalogs from both Epidemic Sound and Jamendo, while Getty Images also hosts a royalty-free music library by Epidemic Sound.

New Stock Photo Marketing Strategy

Those setting prices for photography are focused entirely on profits for agency managers and compensation for capital investment. They give very little consideration to the well being of creators. Compensation for stock photos is widely out of balance with production costs. Changes are needed. Photographer need more control over how their work is priced and a larger share of the fees customers pay. With new technology such changes are becoming increasingly possible.

Will AI Kill Stock Photography?

We are living in a time when Artificial Intelligence is dramatically changing the way visual content is created. It may not be long before stock photographers are no longer needed to produce photos for commercial use. Photographers will still create photos for personal use and their own entertainment, but visual content for commercial purposes will be created by graphic artists using AI to tell the story and produce the effects their customer needs.

Pixabay Knowingly Distributes Stolen Images For Free

This story first appeared in German on Robert Kneschke's website. Why photographers give away their pictures on platforms such as Pixabay remains mostly incomprehensible to me even after this article. Sometimes, however, the authors do not even know that someone else is illegally offering their images for free.

Creative Insights From Adobe

Adobe Stock has released Adobe Stock Creative Insights, a data report revealing information collected from Adobe Analytics on 149+ million U.S. visits and millions of asset uploads to Adobe Stock between January 2019 and September 2020. As recently revealed in Adobe’s State of Creativity survey, 91% of creatives admit that COVID-19 and nationwide protests have inspired them to incorporate real-world issues into their work, with 87% reevaluating the subject matter of stock imagery in campaigns.

Shutterstock Q3 2020 Financial Results

Shutterstock has reported Q3 2020 revenue of $165.2 million up 4% compared to $159.1 million in Q2 2019 and down from $159.2 million the previous quarter. Revenue per download was $3.79 per-image compared to $3.40 in Q3 2019 and $3.61 the previous quarter. Total image and video downloads for Q3 were 43.4 million compared to 46.3 million a year earlier and down from 44 million from the previous quarter. At the end of the quarter Shutterstock had over 350 million images and 20 million video clips in its collection, for a total of 370 million pieces of content.

Stock Photography As A Career

Hopefully this story about my photo career will help young photographers understand how difficult it will be to make long-range plans for their future. Many businesses are changing at an increasingly rapid and unpredictable pace. Whatever you think you want to do in your 20s may turn out to be impractical, or unfeasible, sooner than you expect. What seem like an exciting opportunity today may soon disappear.

Adobe Artist Development Fund

Adobe has announced that they are putting together a $500,000 Artist Development Fund to commission artists from “underrepresented communities” to create diverse assets for AdobeStock’s portfolio. It is still unclear as to exactly the type of images they will be asking photographers to shoot. Also unknown is whether the contracts will only go to photographers from “underrepresented communities” to do the shooting, or whether they may go to any photographer who is willing to shoot “underrepresented community” subjects.

DMLA Virtual Conference Starts Sunday

The first Digital Media Licensing Association (DMLA) virtual conference starts Sunday. Online sessions for the week-long conference will begin most days at 11:00am EDT and end by 5:00pm EDT. All sessions will be available online and you can attend from the comfort of your home. No need to travel.

Shutterstock Expands Service With Editorial Video

Shutterstock, Inc. has announced the addition of Editorial Video, a new premium, full-service editorial video offering that is now available for license. Critical Past, Celebrity Footage and Viral Hog are just a few of the new partners who will distribute their engaging video content worldwide through Shutterstock’s Editorial Video. In addition, current partners’ epa and London Entertainment will begin providing high-quality video via the new service.

Stock Photography’s Historic Earnings Decline For Creators

Many photographers who have entered the stock photo business in the last 5 to 10 years have trouble understanding why photographers who have been producing stock photos since the 1980s and 1990s are so unhappy with how the business had declined. I’d like to provide a little historical perspective.

Adobe Launches Free Stock Image Collection

Adobe Stock has launched a Free Stock Image Collection containing about 70K images (50K pictures, 15K Vectors and 6K video). The first version has been built from the work of a few top contributors who have a significant volume of images in the main collection.

Stock Photography Has A Diversity Problem

An article in Popsugar says stock photography has a diversity problem. According to the author more stock images of black and brown people are needed.

Check Out Google Images Search And Licensable Badge

In my previous story about the Google Licensable Badge I made a mistake about when the badge would actually go live. It actually started appearing on the site on 31 August 2020. It will be interesting to see how much Google’s new Licensable Badge will help or hinder stock photo sales. To test it I did a search for “Office Workers.” Then you are given several options including one for “Clip Art” which seems to be all illustrations. and another for “Stock Photos”. I clicked Stock Photos and among the options given are “Royalty Free” and “Stock Photography”.

Dreamstime Celebrates Its 20th Anniversary

Dreamstime has announced the start of a celebratory month to mark its 20th anniversary this September. Dreamstime.com was registered in 2000 and disrupted the stock photography market by lowering prices manifold and enabling many photographers to join the industry. In 2004, it gained a top 3 position and has continued to experience sustained and rapid growth, evolving from a handful of photos to featuring 145+ million files in its online library and employing its own proprietary AI, PhotoEye, for filtering the now steady 3 million monthly approvals in 2020.

IPTC Photo Metadata Conference 2020

The IPTC, the global standards body of the news media will be conducting its 2020 IPTC Photo Metadata Conference online this year and it is entirely free for anyone to attend. The conference will take place on Tuesday 13 October 2020 from 15:00 to 18:00 UTC time. (That’s 11:00 to 14:00 EDT.)

Changing Stock Imagery Market

In an effort to better understand how the global pandemic and cultural movements have impacted the stock imagery industry, Adobe surveyed 600 global creatives in July 2020. Creators feel challenged in today’s creative environment, and 82% of respondents believe 2020 has forever changed the way they will create.

Premium Access Pricing

A Getty Images photographer asked if I could explain how Getty calculates its Premium Access (PA) deals where prices for image use vary widely? He pointed out that on his most recent statement he had a number of PA sales for $0.11 and one for $286.00. The vast majority of PA sales (roughly 60% of all sales) are near the low end, but there are also occasional extreme outliers.

Google Licensable Badge Announced

Last week Google announced it’s intention to launch Google Licensable Badge a function that will place a badge on images which require licensing before use when they are found by anyone doing a Google search. It is expected the launch will happen in the next couple of months.

Stock Photography Future

A young man studying photography wrote recently and asked if I could supply him with some accurate stock photography analysis. I told him I could, but he wasn’t going to like what I had to say. (This article is free to all readers, but there is a number of links within the story that require payment if readers want more detailed information.)

DMLA Conference Schedule

The schedule for the Digital Media Licensing Association (DMLA) Conference, October 25-30 is now available here. Online sessions for the week long conference will begin most days at 11:00am EDT and end by 5:00pm EDT. There will be two keynote addresses. On Monday at 11:00am Paolo Malabuyo, Director of UX at YouTube will speak on Embracing Complexity.

Colorsport Archive Sales

With the decline in public sporting events due to Covid-19, and thus the need for photo coverage, many sports photographers have seen a significant decline in demand for their services. But media companies still have time slots and space to fill. Consequently, they are turning more to documentaries and coverage of historical events to fill their gaps. In the UK this is great news for archies like Colorsport whose collection of sporting imagery goes back to the 1880s.

Self-Employed Photographer Dilemma

If you are a U.S. photographer hoping to earn at least a portion of your future living expenses from selling or licensing rights to the images you produce, it is time to seriously reassess your business plan. If photography is a hobby. If the pictures you produce are for personal enjoyment and their earning potential is unimportant. If you have no need to earn revenue from your efforts, by all means continue to take pictures. But recognize that no matter how great your images might be, in all likelihood any future financial compensation you receive will be miniscule compared to the time and effort expended.

DMLA 2020 Conference

The Digital Media Licensing Association (DMLA) Conference will be virtual this year and available to registered attendees for a full week from October 25th through Friday the 30th.? It is expected that there will be nearly 25 sessions, including two keynotes, nine panels and more than a dozen roundtables, all conveniently stretched over the week and available to you from the comfort of your home.

Google Licensable Badge

The Google Licensable Badge concept has been discussed for more than two years and seems to be getting closer to a release. Photographers will need to put a code in the IPTC header of each of their images. When a Google search finds such an image it will display the Licensable Badge with the image indicating that the image needs to be licensed for use. The viewer can then click on the badge and determine where they need to go to negotiate a license for use.

Analysis Of Adobe Stock Portfolios

In June German photographer Robert Kneschke did an indepth analysis of the portfolios on the Fotolia website. Adobe displays all the images it represents on both the Adobe Stock and Fotolia websites, but less information is displayed on Adobe. The following information should be an accurate picture of what can be found on Adobe Stock as well as Fotolia.

Reinvent Yourself Using Your Photo Skills

If you’re a freelance photographer trying to earn a living taking pictures, and finding photo jobs few and far between during this Covid 19 pandemic, you should read this story. Adam Pratt is one of many freelancers who has seen the demand for his services as a photographer decline. As a result he has re-invented his business. He has been able to use his photography skills and training to turn from taking pictures to organizing personal photos for families.

Shutterstock Public Offering

On Wednesday Shutterstock announced a public offering of 2,580,000 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $48.50 per share. Of this total 2,064,000 of the shares are owned by Jon Oringer (Shutterstock's Founder, Executive Chairman of the Board. The other 516,000 shares are owned by the company. Mr. Oringer will net $100,104,000 from the sale of his shares and the company will earn $25,026,000 from its sale of 516,000 shares bringing the total for the public offering to $125,130,000.

What Kind Of Images Are In Demand?

If you would like insight into the kind of images that are in demand and what you should be shooting you might want to take a look at AdobeStock. Adobe offers some features other major agencies don’t. Exploring the site could help you decide what kind of images might earn the most money for you.

Getty “Market Freeze” Update

After publishing our article “Getty’s RF ‘Market Freeze’: Expensive Customer Mess?" I received the following clarifying message from Matthew McKibben, Getty Images, PR Manager in The Americas. He said: