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Articles from March 2010
The Obama administration, through the offices of the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel, has recently requested input from interested parties as to how piracy and copyright infringement is affecting the economy. The deadline for filing was March 24. Virtually all photographer trade associations and many other interested parties submitted reports and made recommendations for change.
Houston-based Inmagine has relaunched its microstock property 123RF as a mobile-enabled site catering to owners of iPhone, iPod and other 3G devices. The mobile site makes 123RF content available on the go.
Brian Storm of MediaStorm is giving the keynote address at the Reinvention Weekend, co-sponsored by the American Society of Picture Professionals and the Picture Archive Council of America. Storm's presentation, say the organizers, will offer insight on how to reinvent and save their careers by publishing stories across multiple platforms and markets.
There seems to be a misunderstanding as to why a two-tier pricing system is in the best interest of all photographers regardless of whether they currently license their work as rights-managed, traditional royalty-free or microstock. The two-tier pricing system is not just another pricing model. Its whole purpose is for all images to be made available to all customers at appropriate prices, depending on how the customer intends to use the image.
Getty Images and Major League Soccer have announced a multi-year extension of the 2004 agreement that names Getty the exclusive commercial photographic partner to the U.S. professional soccer league.
The previously free Fotolia-owned stock Web site PhotoXpress has relaunched with millions of new images and a new paid subscription option.
U.K. consultancy Electric Lane has announced the availability of Javascript Photoshop plugins ImageVisa and ImageText. Compatible with Adobe Creative Suite 2 and later versions, the easy-to-install scripts can be customized to suit photographer and agency workflows.
As buyer budgetary pressures and competition continue to drive prices downward, production companies and solo practitioners are increasingly looking to maximize their earnings by cutting out the middleman.
I am tired of seeing rights-managed sellers refer to microstock as $1 images. That is not what most people are paying, particularly those personal users who buy very few pictures. Actual prices are substantially higher, even for the smallest, Web-use only file sizes.
There is a persistent idea among many image creators that a photographer somehow devalues his work if he ever licenses it for low prices. Yet recent years have shown that volume can be as significant a factor as price, and there are numerous other considerations.
New iPhone App ID Release aims to change the way photographers and filmmakers obtain model and property releases. Available through the Apple App Store, the app was designed by photographers Jay Corbett and Hans Neleman, both with substantial experience in stock imagery.
New York-based stock, archival and news footage search engine Footage.net has announced the relaunch of its Web site, complete with a new footage industry directory.
If stock photography as a profession is going to survive, we are going to have to find a way to develop a two-tier pricing system. One tier would be for commercial use of images, and the other for personal and small use.
More and more still photographers are getting into video because of the
appeal of the hybrid still cameras that also shoot video.
Photographers love the visual coming out of these big chip cameras –
what’s not to love? But they quickly find out that if they aren’t just
going to be laying visuals down to a music track, they will need to
start thinking about their audio – specifically a narrative track or
one driven by sound bites from interviews. I work in the corporate
sector, as well as create documentaries, so I do a lot of interviews.
The interviews, along with a scripted voiceover comprise my audio track
and drive the story.
I was in Chicago a couple of weeks ago and stopped by
Zacuto.
Zacuto
is a business that has made outfitting DSLR cameras for video a
specialty. They have cleverly engineered an assortment of their party
add-ons that take these cameras to a higher level. They have also
provided solutions to overcome some of these cameras shortcomings.
Depending on the genre you are working in, documentary work, corporate,
indie films or photojournalism will ultimately determine which way
you’ll need to “trick” these cameras out.
In the investment world it is a proven strategy to diversify your portfolio. The same is true as a professional photographer. This article explores different ways to diversify your income from printed coffee mugs to fine art prints to pay-for-click advertising...and the time to start is now!
Tom discusses his strategies for success in stock photography with advice for both new and established stock photographers. He discusses what to shoot, the importance of RPI, selecting agencies and even what gear he uses.
Rick Becker-Leckrone, CEO of Blend Images, is interviewed about his background, the success of Blend Images, and the state of the stock photo industry.
World Portraits, The Netherlands company that emphasizes fair trade, and Dutch photo agency Hollandse Hoogte have announced a competition that will provide the winner with at least 5,000 euro to finance a photography assignment.
The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies has announced that Google will host a seminar during this year's Picture Buyers' Fair. The two-day event begins May 19, and its organizers have recently revealed major format changes and a new venue.
After publishing my article on a Two-Tier Pricing System I’ve had a
series of discussions with several photographers. There seems to be some
general misunderstanding as to why I think such a system is in the best
interest of all photographers regardless of whether they currently
license their work as rights-managed (RM), traditional royalty-free (RF)
or Microstock. Two-Tiers is not just another pricing model. The
whole purpose is so all images can be made available to all customers
at appropriate prices depending on how the customer intends to use the
image.
Anyone who has heard the term microstock has probably heard of Yuri Arcurs. He is recognized as the worlds most successful microstock photographer but is much more than just a photographer: he is a brilliant businessman adept at marketing, self-promotion and managing a large staff.
Photography has a long way to go. Compared to other digitized creative forms, like music, it is light years behind. And, for once, that could be a good thing. Like the youngest brother of a family, it can learned from it’s elders. For once, it has not yet been touch at full impact by the whole free file sharing tsunami that hit music a while back. Certainly the dams are leaking and breaking, but we are no where near what the music industry has experienced.
Anyone who is licensing rights to pictures for educational purposes should take a look at this iPad promotional video to get an idea of what the delivery of educational information will be like in the near future.
Founding editor Jim Pickerell has reacquired Selling Stock, which has been owned by Fadner Media Enterprises since late 2006. Selling Stock's daily coverage will remain unchanged, and Pickerell is also launching a companion Web site, PhotoLicensingOptions.com, which will offer paid access to stories on an individual basis.
Chris Barton, managing director of Photographers Direct has written a humorous article on the
multiple use of microstock images that shows five young people—three women and two men—promoting the products and services of a dozen different companies, with copy that
would lead the reader to believe that these people were employees of all
these companies. Every rights-managed photographer will enjoy this
piece.
iStockphoto has launched a user-directed donation program, pledging up to $500,000 in 2010. The phased program will eventually enable iStock clients, contributors and employees to make microdonations to charities of their choice from within istockphoto.com.
Alaska Stock Images founder Jeff Schultz has volunteered as the official photographer of the Iditarod trail race for 30 years. In March, teams race from Anchorage to Nome, traveling over 1,150 miles of the most extreme and beautiful terrain in the world.
As part of its promotional strategy, Getty Images-owned iStockphoto is offering a selection of free images through Google Blogger, a leading blogging platform that boasts millions of bloggers.
What an image is worth to a customer depends entirely on the customer's intended use. The size of the file delivered has very little to do with how an image might be used, or the value the customer will receive from using it. Granted, there are limits as to how a very small file can be used. But, there are many ways that a medium-size file can be used, with widely varying values. The biggest problem with royalty-free licensing, and particularly with microstock, is not that it prices certain uses very low, but that the system of pricing by file size has tried to ignore use in an effort to achieve simplicity.
Sausalito-based ImageSpan has announced that the services of Toronto company BrandProtect are now part of online content licensing platform LicenseStream. BrandProtect's LinkWalker will help LicenseStream users identify where brands, company names, images, audio, video and trademarks appear online.
One of the key things to understand about stock photography is why some customers are willing to pay more than others to use an image.
The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies, which expressed serious misgivings about the proposed U.K. Digital Economy Bill in January, released a statement that highlights that some of such concerns remain in the latest version of the legislation.
Berlin-based fStop has launched the fCards App for the popular Apple lines of iPhone, iPad and iPod. The app, available through the iTunes store for $1.99, is a mobile adaptation of the free e-card service fStop has developed previously.
The Picture Archive Council of America has announced its newly elected board for 2010-2012. Blend Images' Robert Henson is taking over the presidency from Maria Kessler.
Photo Web site company Zenofolio has added a new feature to its offering: users can now add music to their sites. Another new feature is client ability to select and share favorite images. Both upgrades are a response to community demand, said the company.
In response to "Use-Based Pricing: Corbis Moves in Right Direction," Jain Lemos said: "I am not convinced that the rights-managed model should disappear entirely, and promoting that idea too soon could have a negative impact that Corbis and others don't intend. Perhaps rights-managed and [traditional] royalty-free are going away on their own, but they have worked well for many years, and I'd hate to see the baby thrown out with the bath!"
Given the time pressures customers are under, most tend to go to the sites where it is easy to find a usable image. Given the way traditional and microstock sites are designed, it is infinitely easier to find a good, usable image in microstock than on traditional sites -- and microstock customers get the added benefit of paying less.
Alamy salesfor the 2009 were $22,864,000, down 27% from 2008. Fourth quarter sales
were down less than 2% compared to the third quarter of 2009 and were
down 14% compared to the fourth quarter 2008. British pound and Euro
sales were up slightly compared to the third quarter of
2009, but U.S. dollar sales were down 12% compared to Q3 2009 and 22% compared to Q4 2008.
After 146 years as a weekly, the British Journal of Photography is returning to the monthly format it launched with in 1854.
Acquired by microstock subscription leader Shutterstock in September 2009, single-image micro retailer BigStockPhoto has undergone substantial surgery. Rebranded as simply Bigstock, the Web site has relaunched with a new look and upgraded back end.
Reinvention Weekend, organized by the American Society of Picture Professionals and the Picture Archive Council of America, will be keynoted by Brian Storm of MediaStorm. Joining him in Boston on April 15 through 18 will be a lineup of photography and marketing notables.
New Zealand metadata specialist Keedup says txtese -- or chatspeak, txtspk, txtk and numerous other slang abbreviations that denote the language used to compose text messages -- is the language to keep in mind as the general population increasingly migrates routine tasks to mobile devices.
The stock photo industry needs a change in strategy so all images can
be made available for all uses at a reasonable price based on the value
the customer will receive from using the image. We need to get away
from the whole idea of rights-managed and royalty-free and recognize
that, in all cases, the price is based on use. Rights-managed licensing has always been much more about pricing
based on use rather than on managing rights. The vast majority of
rights-managed customers are not concerned with rights control or
exclusivity.
CEPIC has begun to outline events for the upcoming Dublin congress, scheduled for early June.
FootageBank HD is the new exclusive footage representative for Playback Technologies' stock library, which includes news stories, cartoons, travel segments, financial news graphics, environmental news and contemporary Los Angeles-area day and night-time lapse.