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Articles from November 2012
Think there are too many pictures on the Internet. The number is about to explode. About a year ago a team of Sweden’s most innovative and experienced entrepreneurs, its foremost camera electronics engineer, and an industrial designer decided people needed an easier way to create searchable, shareable memories. They believe we tend to forget some of the best things we experience because there is no record. They set out to change all that and started Memoto, a company with the goal of giving everyone true photographic memory.
For several years there have been discussions about the possibility of developing a simplified, less costly, less burdensome process for making a legal claim for unauthorized use of images. Currently all copyright infringement claims in the U.S. must be brought in Federal Court. Is a small claims system the answer?
Shutterstock has reported revenue of $42.3 million for the third quarter, a 36% increase over Q3 2011. The company expects to generate revenue of $44 to $45 million in the fourth quarter. Based on that projection revenue for 2012 will be between $164 and $168 million, up $44.7 million compared to the 2011 revenue of $120.3 million. This will be a 37% increase in revenue for the year.
Alamy has announced that beginning in January 2013 they will be reducing contributor royalty for direct and distributor sales by 10%. The new terms will be: Alamy Blue: Alamy commission 50%, Contributor commission 50% for Alamy Blue sales and 40% to the Distributor, 30% to Alamy, 30% to the Contributor for distributor sales.
A sure sign that camera phone images have become mainstream in the commercial image world is the announcement by Blend Images that it has added Memento, a new camera phone stock image collection, to its offering. Memento will feature strongly conceptual and illustrative commercial content and will be available for licensing at
www.blendimages.com and stock resellers worldwide in early 2013.
A photographer recently asked if I could point her to a chart that shows what royalty percentage each stock distributors pays its photographers so she could better determine which offered the best deal. She added, “I recognize that there were a number of factors involved -- home territories, partner agents, image collections, number of photographer’s images licensed, rights managed, traditional royalty free, microstock – so hopefully the chart would take all these factors into consideration.”
Alamy has launched Alamy iQ, a service designed to help customers better manage all the visual assets they own or have licensed rights to use. Alamy iQ will be particularly beneficial to global organizations that have people sourcing visual assets from many locations for a variety of uses. It will complement or replace existing asset management systems, help speed decision making and eliminate risk.
Bigstock, a subsidiary of Shutterstock, has announced a new API program along with two world-class partners:
CafePress Inc., The World's Customization Engine™, and
Emma an email marketing provider. These partners will utilize Bigstock's recently released API to provide their customers with access to Bigstock's expansive library of professional, commercially licensable
photographs and illustrations.
Today more than a quarter of all photos taken are taken on smartphones. No longer is the mobile phone just a communication device. Now users can take pictures with their phones anywhere, anytime without worrying about heavy equipment or camera settings. As of this month
Dreamstime has started accepting both editorial and commercial pictures that are shot using a mobile phone.
Foap, the site that licenses crowdsourced travel images taken by iPhone user, has received an additional $500,000 in funding from Jade Global Investments. David Los, co-founder of Foap, attributes the company’s growth to a first-mover advantage in offering iPhone users an opportunity to monetize photos already stored on their phones.
One of the programs at the recent PACA International Conference asked five industry visionaries to explore emerging trends and predict what the stock photo business will be like in 2022. There was general agreement that the current business model of licensing based on usage is
broken and that in a few years (probably a lot less than 10) it will be necessary to develop a completely different approach to licensing.
Shutterstock has introduced a new
Portfolio Page feature that allows contributors to organize their collection into sets they want to feature. Once a significant number of contributors have taken advantage of this opportunity Shutterstock will encourage their customers to check out the galleries and image sets that their contributors have created.
Stock photo professionals in the UK and across Europe are deeply concerned about the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill that is working its way through Parliament. As currently proposed it represent a serious threat to the ability of rightsholders to generate income from copyrighted works.
In October after
Image Source acquired Cultura Creative (
see story) the company immediately launched a series of photographer-centered workshops designed to inform top professional photographers of current industry trends.
In her presentations “The Fixer” at Photo Shelter’s Luminance event in September, retoucher and illustrator Amy Dresser beautifully demonstrated that there is no reality in photography any more. You'll be amazed at what she can do with Photoshop and Illustrator.
After Hurricane Sandy many news organizations will be thinking hard about covering breaking news events with iPhone’s and delivering the images via Instagram. Kira Pollack, Director of Photography for Time Magazine, hired five professional photographers to cover the event with their iPhones rather than their digital SLRs. By delivering the images via Instagram Time was able to show customers a more comprehensive report faster that would have been possible with a traditional approach to the assignment.
Axiom Photographic Agency Limited ceased trading on September 20, 2012, and was subsequently placed into Voluntary Liquidation at a meeting of the shareholders on October 23, 2012 due to its inability to meet its obligations to creditors. The Liquidator subsequently accepted an offer presented by
Design Pics Inc., to purchase the assets of Axiom Photographic, which became effective October 25, 2012.
At the PACA International Conference in Chicago in October the keynote
speakers was Ken Carson, EVP and General Counsel of Cengage Learning. He
outlined many of the challenges educational publishers face today and
provided insights as to where content licensing for educational use is
headed.