y 661
RANDOM THOUGHTS 84
September 7, 2004
PACA Seeks Executive Director
The Picture Agency Council of America has announced an immediate opening for an Executive Director to manage and coordinate the organizations activities. This is a full time position and offers competitive salary and benefits. The deadline for applications is September 24, 2004. Resumes or proposals should be sent to
resume@pacaoffice.org.
This position will be directly responsible to the PACA Board of Directors. A list of job responsibilities and the skills that the ideal candidate will possess can be found at:
www.pacaoffice.org/pclassifieds.html
SAA White Paper On RF
StockArtistsAlliance (SAA) has posted a new white paper on its web site that explores the RF licensing model in great detail. You can read this paper by going to
www.stockartistsalliance.org and opening document entitled
SAA White Paper: Understanding Stock Licensing Models.
Since its inception the SAA has been opposed to RF and has advocated the Rights Managed licensing model because they believe it to be in the best interest of photographers. However, in this paper the SAA has recognized that photographers need to "diversify their business opportunities" and that they need more detailed information to make "informed business decisions about how to market their images."
They also acknowledge that RF can be profitable for a "small group of high-volume production-oriented stock photographers." While far from a ringing endorsement of RF this paper takes a more tempered and balanced approach to RF than the SAA's position has been in the past.
Klein Outlines Growth Plans
In an interview with the London Times, Jonathan Klein outlined a few additional growth plans that had not been mentioned heretofore.
He said, "Within 12 months we will be doing something significant in India and China, as well as putting down some deeper roots in other parts of the Far East."
He also reiterated Getty Images intentions to build a strong presence in Germany and to have that in place before the 2006 World Cup, and to have their presence in China well established before the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
Sources tell Selling Stock that Getty Images already has a team working on a Chinese language web site now that they have introduced their Japanese language web site.
There are rumors that the "significant" activity in India will be an investment in a technology operation that may reach beyond the stock photo industry into new lines of business, but the Times article gave no hints as to what these new lines of business might be, or whether these rumors that the investment would be outside the stock photo industry have any substance whatsoever.
The Times story also indicated that Mark Getty has recently stepped back from a full-time role at Getty Images to focus on helping manage his family's investment portfolio and establishing Sutton Place Managers, a media investment firm.
Klein also told the Times that Getty Images has about a 10% share in the $1 billion global editorial images market. Thus, he is estimating Getty's editorial sales at about $100 million. Based on sales in the first half of 2004 the News/Sports/Entertainment/Archive divison should have sales of about $70 million for all of 2004. This should mean that about $30 million from the Creative section of the site is being allocated to Editorial use. Selling Stock believes that the market for Editorial Images is less than $1 billion which would mean that the Getty Images share is greater than 10%.
PictureArts Expands Creative Team
PictureArts has announced the promotion of Sarah Fix to Associate
Creative Director, and the addition of Scott Libolt of Drea Solan to its creative team. Libolt is Director of Imagery for Brand X Pictures, and Solan is PictureArts' Asset Manager.
"This company is growing quickly, and it's imperative that we continue to develop the structure of our most important workgroup, filling these positions with the best possible talent," explains PictureArts President and CEO, Jeffrey Burke. "Giving Sarah greater responsibility, and bringing Scott and Drea on board allows us to continue evolving our collections and strengthen our creative operations."
Libolt has worked as Studio Art Director for Corbis and Senior Photo Editor for Westlight. Solan comes to PictureArts after more than thirteen years of digital production experience, most of it with Workbook and as Digital Production Manager at Workbookstock, where he handled the quality control of meta data and imagery, and production of all stock CD and Web content.
Fix will assist Creative Director Lorraine Triolo in the development and execution of content and visual strategies, and the streamlining of creative workflow. She will also devote a significant amount of time to artist relations, assisting with contract negotiations and spearheading photographer meetings and events.
"My biggest focus right now is planning PictureArts' first Contributors' meeting, which is very exciting. It presents a fun opportunity to communicate with our contributing artists," says Sarah. "I'm also thrilled to be involved with creative planning for PictureArts' brands. It will be great to be able to make an impact on the big picture issues."
As the Brand X Director of Imagery, Scott will continue to cultivate the visual strategy of the collection, oversee edits for all incoming submissions, and maintain production schedules for financed shoots and CD products. He will also manage photographer relationships and actively recruit new Brand X artists.
As Asset Manager, Drea Solan will oversee the continued management of all keywords and future development of metadata systems for PictureArts' images. He will be working to
create consistency in information assets across FoodPix, Brand X Pictures, Botanica, NonStock and any other future product lines.
Copshots.com
www.Copshots.com is a new subscription based RF company focusing exclusively on law enforcement, fire fighting and emergency medical service imagery.
CEO Jonathan Grace says, "While working on a project for the national sheriff's organization we realized we needed photos for the print material and web site. We search the web for suitable photographs and found one at a major stock photography web site that would have cost us nearly $13,000. After researching the law enforcement stock photography category, we saw that it was sorely lacking in the way of quality imagery at affordable prices."
"Our goal is to offer the most comprehensive collection of law enforcement/firefighting/EMS imagery in the world at an affordable price. That's why we charge just one flat fee regardless of usage." He also indicated that they offer exclusive images for cover shots, editorial pieces and national advertising campaigns, but it is not clear how that fits in with their one flat fee price.