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Articles from August 2019
Effective September 1, 2019, StockFood will become
Image Professionals. The Munich-based media service provider
StockFood GmbH originally focused on food photography, but has continuously expanded its scope of business in recent years and is now emerging with a new company name. Image Professionals will bring together all of the company's specialized agencies and services. However, only the company is being renamed. StockFood, the food photo agency, will remain unaffected.
Many brands are finding that their Internet marketing is not working as well as it did a year or so ago. The brands pay Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other web hosting services huge amounts of money to target potential customers with pop-up ads that often don’t seem to generate much in additional sales. Brands like Airbnb, Away, Bumble, Callaway Golf, REI Co-op and Goose Island Beer Co. are developing custom, specialized magazines that focus on what their brand has to offer. If this trend grows it may offer new work for assignment photographers with specialized connections or skills.
It’s bad enough that social media users are grabbing photos they find on the Internet and using them without compensation or credit, but they are also using them in ways that totally mis-represents the story the image creator was trying to tell. Increasingly, not only is it impossible to believe anything you READ on the Internet, you can’t even believe anything you SEE on it either.
An editorial stock agent tells me that he is trying to hold the line, or increase, the prices he charges for images because his providers tell him that their costs are increasing. Meanwhile, a competitor who is offering dramatically lower prices in an attempt to win customers has entered the market. As a result, the agent's providers are seeing poorer sales. He asks for advice as to what he should do? I’ll give some answers, but I also want to invite my readers to chime in with any thoughts they might have, or strategies that have worked for them.
According to Leslie Hughes, Founder & CEO of
iSPY Visuals, Inc.45% of Creative Pros are using FREE (CC0) content. Similar percentages are using microstock. Leslie also operates
Visualsteam where she conducts regular buyer surveys in an effort get a better understanding of the developing and changing needs for photos and illustrations. Check out this link for more information about
Visualsteam’s 6th Annual Survey of Image Buyer.
Many U.S. photographers are hoping the CASE Act, a new law working its way through Congress, will help them protect their copyright and make it easier for them to go after infringers. The law will establish a Copyright Claims Board (CCB), a Small Claims court and eliminate the need to use the expensive Federal Court system to pursue infringers. Photography trade associations – ASMP, PPA, DMLA, NPPA, APA, NANPA – and other members of the
Copyright Alliance have been seeking this change for over a decade.
Storyblocks will be closing the Marketplace segment of its business on September 10th and moving back to a subscription only offering. Contributors who have outstanding payouts will receive those payments sometime after September 10th even if the amount owed has not met the minimum payout requirement.
Internet search technology has enabled professional photographers to discover more and more uses of their images. As a result, an increasing number of photographers are pursuing the users for compensation. Given how the system works customers who have legitimately licensed rights to use images are often required to do extra work to prove they did the right thing in the first place. This is not making these good stock agency customers happy. Some stock agencies fear that this extra hassle may drive some of their best paying customers to turn to more
FREE images rather than bother with paid sources.
The CASE Act which will establish a Small Claims system that targets copyright abuse is
working its way through Congress. The bill has finally been passed in the House and is awaiting action in the Senate. Photographers interested in understanding some of the downsides of this bill should read this FREE Story.
Cathy Aron will be retiring as Executive Director of DMLA in the fall and Rick Gell will be taking over her duties. Over the summer Rick will be acting as Interim Executive Director as Cathy assists in the transition one day a week.
Shutterstock has reported Q2 2019 revenue of
$161.7 million up 3% compared to Q2 2018 and down from $163.3 million the previous quarter. Revenue per download averaged
$3.44 per image, compared to $3.41 in Q2 2018.?? Total image and video downloads for Q2 were
46.6 million, up from 45.2 million a year earlier, and down from 47.2 million in Q1 2019.
StockFood has launched
StockFood Studios, an innovative production service for food photography. The Munich-based food experts, whose international brand is synonymous with professional food photography, are expanding their portfolio to include commissioned productions. The website www.stockfoodstudios.com offers this new service.
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This stock photography news site focuses on the business side of photography with a special emphasis on stock photography. Our goal is to help photographers maximize their earnings based on the quality of their work and the commitment they are prepared to make to the trade. The information provided will be applicable to part-timers as well as full time professional photographers. We’ll leave it to others to teach photographers how to take better pictures.
Jim Pickerell launched his career as a photographer in 1963. In 1990 he began publishing a regular newsletter on stock photography. In 1995 the information was made available online as well as in print and was gradually expanded to a daily service.
Click here for Pickerell's full biography.
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