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Articles from January 2011
Photographers trying to license rights to their pictures are constantly
looking for ways to make contact with potential customers. Any given
image is potentially marketable to buyers worldwide. Individual
photographers are unlikely to ever meet most of these potential
customers. Thus, photographers tend to employ a variety of middlemen
operations to assist them in finding customers. One such operation is
Photographers Direct (PD) which has helped more than 15,862
photographers (about 5,000 currently active) make contact with over
20,280 unique buyers worldwide.
Pixmac has removed its exclusively restrictions for its contributors and
raised commission rates. Contributors will now receive 30% of the
revenue collected or at least $0.25 per download for the first $200.00
in earnings. Once their total earning exceed $200.00 they will receive
40%.
When the Huffington Post starts lampooning what they call “Ridiculous
Stock Photos” will art directors judge the concepts as something to
avoid in the future?
Image Source has announced the immediate appointment of Simon Woodthorpe as Group Sales Director to
head up both the Image Source direct sales team and the strong
distribution network of over 200 distributors worldwide.
Due to an expansion of its state-of-the-art hosting environment, Capture has spare space and
is offering to supply and host dedicated servers for BAPLA and CEPIC members on a first-come-first-served basis.
Do educational publishers place much value on the pictures they use
in their
books? Based on
what they are willing to pay for such images, the role pictures play in
the educational process has declined significantly over the
last 10 to 15 years. The fees paid for images used in textbooks have
not kept up with changing usage demands. There may be little
photographers can do to alter this trend, but they need to be aware of
and understand the problem as they plan future production for this
market.
iStockphoto has introduced its new round of price increases for 2011.
For those in the macro world (RM and traditional RF) who like to argue
that it is impossible to make money selling images on a microstock site
it may be time to take another look at what iStock is doing.
Readers new to this site want to know what they should read to get an
understanding of the stock photo industry. Sometimes regular readers
miss important stories due to the demands of their busy schedules.
Consequently, we’ve put together this list of 52 stories published in
the last eighteen months that outline what has been happening in the
stock photo industry, where things stand at the beginning of 2011, and
how the industry is changing. We hope you’ll find this list helpful.
The 2011 CEPIC Congress will take place in Istanbul, Turkey from 18 to
22 May. This annual event, held in a different European country each
year, draws stock photography professionals from all over the world. The
2010 Congress in Dublin, Ireland welcomed 700 attendees from 352
companies, 37 countries and five continents. The Halic Congress Center,
on the banks of the Golden Horn in Istanbul will be the venue for this
Congress.
Masterfile,is hosting a ‘Master Finder Contest’ designed to promote the
company’s subscription plans while touting the benefits of their
revolutionary Endless Media search platform.
Beginning stock photographers often ask those with experience for numbers they can use to construct a "business plan." They start by asking what kind of annual return-per-image they can expect to earn from a collection of a given size. This story outlines some of the steps photographers need to take when considering stock photography as a business.
For many photographers seeking to earn some, or all, of their living
producing stock images, one of the most important decisions in 2011 will
be whether to retire from the stock photo business or get into
microstock. Many photographers who are licensing their images at
rights-managed or traditional royalty free prices have seen their
revenue decline significantly in the last couple of years. They are also
skeptical that it is possible to earn any significant money licensing
images at microstock prices. As a result quite a few are choosing to get
out of the stock photography business.
Getty Images, Inc., has unveiled its new Photos.com site, developed for
value-conscious small business owners, marketers, graphic designers, web
designers and other creative professionals. Photos.com currently offers
2.5 million royalty free images and illustrations.
Getty Images editors say that they are still seeing plenty of great
content come through from a wide range of sources, in particular Flickr
and iStockphoto. They say there is no shortage of photographers
submitting new imagery and that they are editing tighter than ever for
their house collections and in particular their RM brands.
Corbis Motion has expanded its collection of video clips to more than 500,000 with a recent addition of more than 200,000 clips. Approximately two thirds of Corbis Motion clips are available in high definition (HD) and the collection includes a large selection of royalty-free (RF) clips that provide customers added value and flexibility.
As it becomes more difficult to earn a living producing stock images some photographers are looking for other ways to use their photographic skills. Taylor Davidson specializes in business and event photography in the New York City area. In March 2010 he launched
Narratively, an agency that specializes in providing assignment photographers to cover events.
It time for rights-managed sellers to adopt many aspects of the microstock pricing strategy.
The immediate reaction of many RM sellers will be, “I’ll never sell my images as royalty-free.” That’s not what I’m proposing. Photographers will continue to manage the rights to their images. They will continue to be able to license exclusive and restricted uses to their images. But from the customer’s point of view the basic pricing model will look and feel just like the microstock model that they have come to prefer.
If iStock is really interested in improving the quality of its
collection and bringing the work of the best and most experienced
photographers into its top end collections it needs to drop the
requirement that exclusive photographers not have images that are
licensed as RF with any other agency. All the company really needs is
that the specific images they represent, and any similars, not be in any
other collection. They don’t need to define “exclusive” this tightly.
It is interesting that even Getty Images only requires “image
exclusive”, but iStock want to have more control over the lives of its
photographers.
An exhibit of the work of several young photographers who are
participating in the Young Photographer Alliance mentoring program is
opening at the Calumet Gallery, 22 West 22nd St, New York City from
January 14-28. The gallery will be open from 8:30 to 5:30 Monday thru
Friday and 9:00 to 5:30 on Saturdays, closed Sundays.
2011 may be the year when the stock photo industry returns to the idea
of exclusive representation -- specifically, being exclusive with a
microstock agency. For many year the widely held belief has
been that the way to maximize returns was to get your images represented
by many distributors. Now, iStockphoto’s has developed an exclusive strategy that may bring
about a change in this way of thinking. While there are several
downsides for image producers to the iStock strategy, the upsides may
more that compensate for the difficulties.
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About This Site
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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