This story is not about stock photography. Lately, I have been concerned about the state of Democracy in the U.S. This story outlines some of my thoughts. It is an issue that should concern every U.S. citizen, and maybe citizens of other countries. If you have friends who might be interested in this subject, please feel free to forward the story or use the information in any way.
It should come as no surprise that, in recent years, online waivers and release forms have grown in popularity, especially during the past year. They’ve made it much easier to collect information while maintaining pandemic-approved standards. The stock photo industry, for example, has benefitted from online photo release forms. It provides an effective and efficient way to collect releases from models and online waivers will continue to be utilized as a better approach to signature-collecting.
I launched Selling Stock in 1990 with the goal of helping professional photographer understand the stock photography business and the opportunities it offered. For a couple decades many photographers earned significant additional revenue from the licensing of stock images. A large number earned their entire living by producing photos on speculation and licensing them as stock.
The chart below allows you to easily track the growth trends of Shutterstock quarter-by-quarter over the last 11-years and see the number of images in the collection, number of downloads and the gross quarterly revenue at the end of each quarter. You can also see the average revenue-per-download and revenue-per-image-in-the-collection trends.
Shutterstock has reported Q4 2020 revenue of
$180.9 million up 9% compared to $166.4 million in Q4 2019 and up from $165.2 million the previous quarter. Revenue per download was
$3.91 per-image compared to $3.44 in Q4 2019 and $3.79 the previous quarter. The average revenue per download for all of 2020 was $3.68 compared with $3.43 for all of 2019.
Photographers got a late Christmas present when President Trump signed the massive 5,593-page, $1.4-trillion omnibus spending and COVID-19 relief bill, titled the
Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021. () Buried deep within this omnibus spending bill was the 63-page
CASE Act.
I purchased my first Nikon camera in 1958 when I lived in Tokyo. At that time Nikon was the premier Japanese camera company.
Nikon has announced that they will now move all manufacturing of new equipment from Japan to Thailand. The reasons are simple: Blue Collar workers in Japan average
$18.94 per hour -- Blue Collar workers in Thailand average
$4.15 per hour.
After
my article a few days ago about
Wirestock's questionable deal with Freepik, I got some comments and pointers that I want to summarize here.
If Jon Oringer of
Shutterstock donated his annual salary of $4,598,580 to image creators who produce the products Shutterstock licenses, and divided it among creators based on the number of images licensed, how would that benefit image creators?