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Articles from December 2010
Many believe the concept of business ethics has become an oxymoron. Do a Google search and you’ll find reams and reams of explanations of what ethical business practices are, or should be. Every major corporation has a place on its web site that outlines the company’s ethical principles. Some companies test all employees annually to insure that they clearly understand the company’s ethical policies and procedures.
Often these principles seem to boil down to two over riding rules: (1) Maximize Shareholder and Manager Wealth and (2) Do What Is Legal.
John Fowler points out that his strategy for running a stock photography business isn't working, acknowledges that he needs to make changes and asks for ideas as to what those changes should be. I added some of my experiences and perspective and encourage readers to suggest positive ways forward.
A reader just forwarded to me a list of 50 sites with free photos. One
of the interesting things about some of these sites is that some of the photographers didn’t intend for their images
to be made available for free. By using PicScout’s ImageExchange I was able to determine
that a number of the best images on some of these sites seem to have
been grabbed from paid sites, particularly Dreamstime.
For almost two years I have been following the sales of 197 of iStockphoto’s top sellers.
The tendency has been to think of these people as photographers, but in
fact 98 of them, or almost 50%, list their job description as something
other than photographer.
Ron Chapple, one of the first traditional adopters of the micro-priced model into his larger stock business, says that chances of making a sale have decreased by 90% in recent years.
The Association of Stock Image Licensors and Thriving Archives have launched
the ACSIL Global Survey of Stock Footage Companies 2,
a comprehensive review of the stock footage business. The survey will
assess overall business conditions within the stock footage industry and
provide strategic, action-oriented information and insights to industry
leaders. Participants who complete the online survey will be eligible
to receive a complimentary summary report of the results and a 50%
discount on the purchase of the final report.
Crediting the success of feature films like “Avatar” for the growing
popularity of three-dimensional imagery, specialist provider StockFood
has launched a service that converts the stills in its delectable
collection into 3D format. The company says the trend is set to sweep
advertising and publishing industries.
The use of images for educational purposes has always been about 20% of
the total market for stock images. For some agencies and photographers,
educational sales represent a much higher percentage of their gross
revenue. However, as a result of technological developments and industry
consolidation, it has become extremely difficult for creators to earn
enough from licensing images for educational uses to enable them to
continue to produce imagery for this purpose.
iStockphoto has been working on a way to use language and country data to deliver more locally relevant results since last year.
On Monday, the Getty Images-owned microstock leader delivered on this
promise. The company also launched a new editorial product offering.
PhotoShelter offers new free training video.
Google is working on ways of addressing the problem of
infringing online content. The company is making four changes it plans
to implement over the next few months.
Many photographers are advised to develop a specialty and find an
undeveloped niche as a way to deal with the oversupply of imagery. John
Lund presents the case against a stock photo niche and argues that
financial success will come to the photographer who can best create
images that illustrate major concepts and compete successfully with the
other images.
Today, press release marketing presents the artist with another low cost
opportunity to promote their artwork. If done properly, press release
marketing will bring traffic to the artist’s website, help in building
and maintaining an artist’s brand and will eventually create incoming
links to the artist’s website, thus, enhancing it’s SEO and gaining a
higher page rank too.
The NY subscription microstock has financed wells to provide clean drinking water for 1,500 villagers in the Amhara region of Ethiopia.
Global ad spending in 2011 is expected to be up 5.4% to $411.7 billion
according to MagnaGlobal, but the trend for the print segment of the
business in the Western world is not so rosy. Most growth will be in Asian markets and media that does not have a big overlap with stock photography.
Munich-based footage company Framepool has launched a people collection. The unusually titled “Cats at the Cream” offers modern lifestyle motion content in high definition.
If you are absolutely convinced that all stock images must be licensed based on how they will be used, “Weekend With Bachmann” on March 4-6 in Orlando, Fla. may be for you.
At first glance, PicScout’s new
ImageExchange interface that isolates images that are easily licensable from any Google or Yahoo! search, and displays them in a right-hand panel next to all the returns delivered by these search engines, would seem to be a very helpful tool for professional users looking for images they can license legitimately.
In fact, the returns delivered may be more misleading than useful.
With the introduction of The Costco Art & Image Gallery, Corbis and Costco will sell individual prints and posters as retail products. The images offered are a select group of some 20,000 professional pieces of fine art, photography and illustration from the Corbis collection of more than 6 million images.
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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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