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Articles from December 2013
After reading my story on
Lightrocket and the comments, Yvan Cohen, co-founder of Lightrocket provided some feedback and clarification.
Patents are granted for original ideas. Unilock has a
U.S. patent that describes in broad terms a system for licensing the use of images online. The company is claiming that stock agencies are infringing their patent when they license image use through online sites.
I get a lot of questions about the size of the video clip market and its potential for growth. There is very little hard data publicly available. Back in 2011 The Association of Commercial Stock Image Licensors (ACSIL) conducted a
global survey to determine the size of the stock footage market. They concluded that the total stock video revenue generated in 2010 was about $394 million. ACSIL believes the revenue generated in 2013 will be about the same.
Recently, a German subscriber asked, “
Who will be the winner, Microstock or Macrostock?” To answer that question we must define winning. Is licensing the most pictures winning? Is the distributor with the most revenue the winner? Is making it possible for more photographers to earn some money from the pictures they take winning? Is it winning to make it possible for more photographers to earn a living producing and licensing rights to stock pictures? Is it providing customers with better service?
There is a growing demand for narrowly focused image collections that provide high quality, tightly edited and in depth coverage of their particular niche.
DisabilityImages is a good example of one such collection.
Over time royalty rates have declined. Usage fees have dropped dramatically in the last few years. And the huge oversupply of images is making it less likely that any images will ever be licensed. Faced with these facts many photographers have pulled back on new production of stock images, if not dropped out of the stock photo business entirely. Now,
Lightrocket offers a marketing option that may make some of those businesses sustainable.
Many microstock image producers keep a very low profile. Recently we came upon a list
www.microstocktime.ru/tools/ of the top 100 individuals and companies with the
largest portfolios on Shutterstock. We tried to learn a little more about Africa Studio, the number one contributor.
Visual Connections has announced that
Visual Connections Chicago (), the leading forum to meet and learn from image/footage buyers, will be moving to a new venue in 2014. Bookings for the Thursday, April 24, 2014 event will open on Wednesday, December 18 at 10am ET.
Footage.net’s Zap Email Service enables creative professionals to instantly send their footage requests to over 50 top footage houses via a single email. Footage companies participating on the service receive a daily stream of new footage requests.
Getty Images has announced that as of January 1st 2014, they are dropping the placement fee for RM Photographer’s Choice. This means that there are no longer any fees associated with Photographer’s Choice RM and RF!
Photographers all over the world are making sales through
ImageBrief. While it can be a lot of work responding to briefs the photographers we talked to seem generally happy with the results. ImageBrief reported that in October and November they negotiated sales for 168 photographers operating in 30 different countries. (See list below)
Pond5’s stock footage collection now exceeds 2 million clips. In addition the Redcode RAW (R3D) -- the native format for the popular RED series of ultra-HD cameras -- is now supported on the platform (
http://www.pond5.com/r3d).
Stocksy has announced that it has become the world's first stock photo website built around responsive web design principals. This step has made Stocksy the only stock photo site that can provide the same optimized research and buying experience across any smartphone, tablet or desktop device.
Moody's Investors Service ("Moody's") has reported that
Fotolia’s revenues for the fiscal year ending December 2012 totaled
$87 million. Moody’s expects revenues to increase in the “low to mid-single digit percentage range over the next 12 months.”
In November I surveyed image creators who had signed up to attend the Microstock Expo in Berlin and asked them two question:
(1) What are your top four distributors and the percentage of revenue from each?
(2) Is your gross revenue greater in 2013 than it was in 2012?
It’s time to take another look at
PeopleImages.com that Yuri Arcurs Productions launched 17 months ago. Yuri has long been the world’s most successful microstock photographer, and until June 2013 his work was represented on virtually all the world’s microstock distributors.
The 2014
“Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year” competition with a top prize of £5,000 has been announced. Professional and amateur photographers can submit their food images until January 31, 2014. The winner will be selected in London and announced on April 23, 2014 in a festive ceremony at the London’s “Mall Galleries.“
Getty Images has supplied selected investors with its third quarter revenue figures. Indications are that revenue continues to decline. For the year ending June 30, 2013 revenue was $897 million. For the 4 quarters ending September 30, 2013 indications are that the revenue is less than the $897 million, but we have been unable to determine exactly how much it has declined.
As of December 1, 2013
Universal Images Group Limited (UIG) has opened a new Content Management facility for Asia based in Tokyo, Japan.
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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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