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 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.
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, 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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.)