Online
After reading about the new
Facebook TOS I began to wonder if Facebook would be able to resell images their advertisers acquire from Shutterstock as part of the new
Facebook/Shutterstock deal.
Many Internet users seem to believe that it is OK to use any image they find online for wallpaper on their site. The next step is to grab a bunch of images they like and create a site that makes the images available to others for free wallpaper use. And, once they’ve gone to the trouble to create a site the site owners figure they might as well make a little money by selling a few ads.
ASMP has published “
The Instagram Papers,” a very valuable analysis of Instagram Terms of Service. Every photographer who is considering posting images on Instagram, wants to retain control of his/her images and hopefully earn some money from them should be familiar with the information in this report.
Looking for inspiration? Check out
Blend Images The Blog! at blog.blendimages.com for amazing photos, illustration, graphics and fine art. For a little over a year now the stock photo production company has been regularly showing small collections of the work of amazing visual artists. The works are not limited to photography, but include, illustration, painting, collage, architecture, music, video and more.
Many expect users of mobile phones with decent cameras with constant connectivity to the world to be the next disruptors of the stock photography business.
Crowd sources photojournalism is expected to cut into the business of the long-suffering professional news photographers. Here are some thoughts as to why crowd-sourced mobile photography may not be the boom angel investors are hoping for.
Shutterstock has reported a record 24.3 million downloads and $56.8 million in revenue in Q2 2013. Revenue per download grew 5% year-over-year to $2.33. This was driven by a continued shift toward on demand, direct sales and footage downloads, all of which carry a higher effective price-per-download. The Shutterstock collection has grown to more than 28 million images and over 1 million video clips.
Stipple, the leader in image-based advertising and e-commerce, (
see previous story) has partnered with
Getty Images to help advertisers better reach their image audiences and to help publishers monetize photos more efficiently.
Earlier this month Cengage Learning Inc., the second biggest publisher of college-course material in the U.S., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it tries to restructure its debt of about $5.8 billion. Under a deal with some of its senior lenders, the company will try to use the bankruptcy case to eliminate $4 billion in debt,
Alfonso Gutiérrez, President of CEPIC has provided some updated information on the CEPIC Image Registery (CIR) that Selling Stock reported on earlier
here and
here. See his report.
Internet entrepreneur and prolific angel investor Fabrice Grinda recently commented on his
blog that stock photography may be the “best business ever” – for the organization marketing the work online, not the producer.
As a result of technological advancements, and the new image search techniques on the horizon, we are about to enter another paradigm shift in the way stock images are licensed. Delaying or ignoring this new trend in image marketing is not a viable option. It will move forward whether individual creators like it or not. The only option is to figure out how to adapt to this new reality in a way that will allow creators to continue to earn a living.
Recently, Google engineer Matt Cutts was asked if stock photos on a web
page have a negative effect on ranking compared to the use of original
photography? In a new Google Webmaster help video he said, “To the
best of my knowledge it doesn’t really make a difference whether it’s a
stock photo versus an original photo,"
Anyone interested in a career as a photographer – as well as those photographers in mid-career -- needs to carefully consider how the business is changing. If we look at image use on the Internet it is undeniable that more images are being made available for viewing. However, for professionals this is not good news.
More image use does not mean more demand for professionally produced images. It does not mean that there will be more opportunities for photographers to earn their living taking pictures. In fact, the opportunities to earn a living as a photographer are declining. Here’s why.
Last week we wrote about the
miniscule royalties that appeared on Getty’s February royalty statements. Many Getty Connect sales showed a royalty of $0.00.
Getty has acknowledged that they made a rounding error on the recent statements and will report micro-royalties in fractions of a cent up to 5 decimal points in the future. Conceivably, a photographer could earn $0.00001 (one thousandth of a cent) for one license.
Getty Images makes it hard for some customers to purchase RM images. See what I learned when I tried to license usage of 4 images from Getty. We complain about the unauthorized use of images online and then we make it almost impossible for many potential image users to find out how to license images legitimately.
Anyone who reads the comments on Selling Stock knows that travel photographer Bill Bachmann is a strong advocate of Rights Managed licensing and adamantly opposed to ever making any of his images available as Royalty Free. Imagine his surprise when he discovered that someone had found one of his images on Bing, grabbed it and used it as a background for another photo. And the other photographer was so proud of what he had done that he explained that the image he created was a "Bing Royalty Free background with model added."
Serban Enache, CEO of Dreamstime has explained in a
blog post how Google’s new image search techniques make it more likely that unauthorized use of your images will increase. Every image producer should read this story.
In the growing clamor and uproar about the free images available through Google Drive Rick Becker-Leckrone, CEO of Blend Images, made some points on the
Stockphoto blog that are worth examining. See the
previous article for more background.
Instagram has taken another shot at updating their Terms of Service. Peter Krogh, author of the DAM (Digital Assets Management) Book and Chair of ASMP’s Digital Standards Committee has reviewed the new terms and concluded that for the professional photographer trying to earn a living they are “still terrible.” Read his very thorough analysis
here.
This is the third in a series of articles on the image collection that is available to Google Drive users. (It looks like there may be many more articles as more details unfold.) To see the first two articles go
here and
here. This is not just a microstock issue. Hundreds of traditionally priced RF images are involved.
iStock has provided an explanation on Google Drive issues described in my
previous post. The following was posted on the iStock forum late yesterday.
Sean Locke (one of iStock’s highest earning contributors) discovered recently that some of his best selling images are now available on GoogleDrive for
FREE. There is a major thread in the
iStock forum. I’ll try to summarize what seems to be known so far.
In observance of its 5-year anniversary of Reportage by Getty Images the company has put together a collection of some of the most compelling photojournalism shot by Getty photographers. See this anniversary gallery
(http://www.reportagebygettyimages.com/news/).
Recently several subscribers have asked questions, the answers to which might be of interest to all subscribers. So I’ve decided to share the questions and my answers here.
Getty photographer are complaining that their images aren’t being seen because over 365,360 iStock Exclusive+ images have been placed on the Getty site and are being given search return order preference. iStock photographers are complaining because images from various Getty brands are being pushed into The Agency Collection on iStock. TAC now contains at least 58,546 images.