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Articles from March 2012
Most professional photographers believe Flickr is a site they should
avoid because someone might steal their pictures. They think of it as a
place where amateurs put the pictures they want to share with family and
friends. Todd Klassy is using it very effectively to market his images
in his part-time photographic business.
Since the beginning of 2012 there has been an explosion of interest by
Venture Capitalists in investing in microstock companies. This article examines the implications.
I’m regularly asked for information about the size of the market. This
story contains a quick summary of some of the important industry
statistics as well as links to related stories where I expand on these
numbers. Included are Microstock colllection growth trends; iStock download and revenue trends since 2005; images licensed annually; royalty payouts; Getty return-per-image from 2003 through 2007; Asian market; customer buying behaviors and useful statistics for photographer business planning.
Universal Images Group Limited has built a database of more than 2.5 million education images for use by Encyclopaedia Britannica, in its
Image Quest online subscription service for schools, colleges and universities.
In the case of Jon Feingersh Photography, Inc. vs. Pearson Education, Inc. Judge Anita B. Brody in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has denied a request from Pearson that it not be required to release the print quantities and publication dates of the various textbooks in which 50 of Feingersh’s images were used.
After 244 years, the
Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB) is going out of print. Sales peaked for Britannica in 1990 with 120,000 copies sold. In 2010 – the last edition – only 8,000 copies of the 32-volume set were printed and 4,000 still sit in a warehouse unsold.
Recently, the results of a year long study of Algebra 1 students at the Amelia Earhart Middle School in Riverside, California were announced. The math scores of the students who were taught using Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s
HMH Fuse: Algebra 1 curriculum on the iPad were
20% higher in the Spring 2011 California Standards Test than other students who were taught using traditional paper textbooks.
Alamy and
epa european press agency have signed a strategic commercial agreement which allows Alamy to sell epa's award winning news, sport and entertainment images including the epa archive. The images are available through Alamy’s website to key market sectors in the UK, North America and the Middle East.
Splash News has an archive of more than five million images and is adding new images at a rate of 5,000 a day, up from 3,000 a day a year ago. Splash was acquired by Corbis last summer. Its images are being added to both
Splashnews.com and
Corbis.com.
There are a number of stories on this site that will aid you in determining what to charge for a stock photo usage. Below is a list of story titles and the number of credits required to read the entire story. Click on the detailed description link and it will take you to a short description of what is included in the full story. Click on the Story link and it will take you directly to the story and deduct the appropriate number of credits from your account.
If your goal is to earn a full-time living from photography -- and
particularly stock photography -- you need to read this series of 14
articles. They were originally written in the summer of 2010. Since then
the general state of the photographic industry has continued to go
downhill. These articles discuss key aspects of the business and issues
that those who want to earn their living taking pictures must consider.
Online stock photography agency
Fotolia has acquired
Wilogo.com, a thriving community for design crowdsourcing. The community, founded in 2006, has been connecting companies in need of design work with a community of people willing to take on the job. Wilogo positions itself as a full service crowdsourced design community able to accommodate most marketing and branding requirements of client companies. Designers who participate have expertise in both print and web design.
Dreamstime has launched
Stockfreeimages.com a database of almost 400,000 royalty free image that they have culled from their primary collection. They are giving these images away for free. One of the interesting things about the image selection for this Free service is that Dreamstime has chosen to include some of its best selling images from its primary collection.
I received a marketing email from Pixmac today encouraging people to look at their
Easter Egg pictures in preparation for Easter. They have 29,723 images to choose from.
To infinity, and beyond! Roger Ressmeyer is one of 20 candidates with the chance to win a sub-orbital space flight. All he needs is lots of votes from people like you. Roger has been passionate about going to space all is life. And wouldn’t it be great to have a professional photographer actually fly in space. With your Facebook votes you can help him fly! Vote here (
http://apps.facebook.com/spaceracecompetition/entries/147)
A little over a month ago
we wrote about the new Internet craze call Pinterest which claims to have over 10 million users. In our story we linked to a blog post by Sean Locke where he explored the copyright infringement issues. For additional information on this hot topic read posts by
Kirsten Kowalski and
Allen Murabayashi.
A few years ago when a photographer wanted to make his images available as posters or fine art prints he usually searched for a publisher with access to a network of retail outlets. Assuming the publisher thought the image had market potential he would normally would pay a one-time fee for the rights to make several thousand lithographic copies of an image and through retail contacts make the product available for customers to purchase. The Internet and Print-On-Demand (POD) technology has dramatically changed this market.
This article provides links to several stories that track the historical sales of Getty Images and may be useful in understanding sales trends of the company.
Image creator success stories in the current educational publishing environment are few and far between. The strategy one photographer used when licensing educational re-use of an image may be instructive.
Pond5, the pioneering online marketplace for stock media and creative
components, announced today that the one-millionth clip had been added
to its stock video collection, making Pond5 by far the largest and
fastest-growing collection of royalty-free video on the Web. The site
also offers millions of stock images, audio files, and other creative
components for use as raw material in media productions of all types.
iStockphoto has announced a partnership with iGoogle to provide users a new selection of beautiful and immersive full-page themes. Initially, there are more than 30 themes in the
iGoogle Themes library.
Robert Harding World Imagery
www.robertharding.com, a travel and global imagery specialist agency has acquired
Specialist Stock. Specialist Stock is a comprehensive collection of environmental and nature themed still photos and footage that is regularly licensed to international broadcasters, publications and the education sector.
Anyone asking themselves whether or not they should get into video should look at Corey Rich’s videos “
WHY” and “
HOW of WHY.” Corey is a filmmaker/photographer as well as a teacher. Yes, these videos were made to promote and sell the Nikon D4, but for the interested filmmaker they go far beyond that.
As of March 1, 2012
Imaginechina will be representing the images of
The Associated Press in the mainland China market.
ASMP’s “
The Future of Licensing” webinar with Frederic Haber, of the Copyright Clearance Center; Henry Oh, entrepreneur and digital content distributor; Eugene Mopsik, Executive Director of ASMP and Richard Kelly, moderator was held yesterday and can be downloaded here. Licensing was defined as a process that allows a customer to use something that is too expensive for them to own outright.