Archives: August, 2006
News
iStockphoto announces plans to offer stock footage
The leading stock photography micro-payment site, iStockphoto, has announced that it will soon begin to offer royalty-free (RF) stock video, film, and animation clips to micro-payment customers for as low as $5 per 30 second clip. Currently iStockphoto is seeking to build its library of motion products and is soliciting content from amateur and professional videographers. iStockphoto claims to have received thousands of requests to offer video over the years but is not exactly the first micro payment site to venture into the medium. In February of this year Shutterstock announced plans to begin offering footage and others are sure to join in soon to capitalize on the relative affordability of pro-sumer video cameras in today’s marketplace.
News
Photolibrary acquires Anthony Blake Photo Library
After acquiring Monsoon Images in the US in April of this year, and opening new offices in India, the Sydney-based stock photo company, Photolibrary, has continued its aggressive global expansion by making another key acquisition, this time of the UK’s leading food and drink image agency, the Anthony Blake Photo Library (ABPL.) ABPL’s archive holds over 200,000 rights managed images representing the work of 100 photographers. The collection covers every aspect of food imagery, “from fast food to Haute cuisine, from paddy fields to supermarkets,” according to the company press-release about the acquisition.
News
Getty Images to launch Rights-Ready licensing model
As foreshadowed by Jonathan Klein in Getty's 2nd quarter conference call, Getty Images has announced it will offer its clients a new licensing option that “makes licensing fast, flexible and predictable while delivering a level of rights control that limits the possibility of over-exposure in the marketplace," according to Robert Gubas, Getty’s vice president of product marketing. The new model called “rights-ready,” will apply only to images from a specific brand, also new, called “Riser” which will launch later this month with approximately 80,000 images.
News
Pirate Party fights copyright
There are many political parties with unusual names and policies around the world and some enjoy moderate success on the political stage. Britain has its Official Monster Raving Loony Party, America a Know Nothing Party and a Flat Earth Party and Canada, believe it or not, a Marijuana Party, while Germany has a Mother with Child Party, a Motorists’ Party, A Non-Voters Party (!), a Spiritually Aware, A Pogo Dancers’ Party, to name just a few. Sweden has the Pirate Party, which was launched at the beginning of the year. The focus of its manifesto, according to the Pirate Party of Austria (PPÖ), is on "copyright reform, exemption from punishment for making copies for private, non-commercial purposes, a ban on digital rights management (DRM) and a reduction of the period of copyright protection to five years." Stefan Hartmann, VISUELL
News
ImageState offers new food collection
The UK based stock photography company ImageState is attempting to re-build from the turmoil earlier this year when it was forced suspend trading of its ordinary shares on AIM pending “clarification of the Company’s financial position”. Ultimately the brand was sold back to Sheldon Marshall and ImageState has recently announced the launch of a new rights managed food collection called Foodfolio. This collection of 5000 images will be offered through distributors on a non-exclusive basis. The images range from international dishes, ingredients, fruit, deserts and beverages such as beers and wines.
News
Jupiter Media has acquired RoyaltyFreeMusic.com
Jupitermedia Corporation (JUPM) has announced the acquisition of a leading RF Music producer called RoyaltyFreeMusic.com. The acquisition gives Jupiter one of the top brands and URL’s to offer RF music and over 1,100 wholly-owned tracks of high quality royalty free music. This new acquisition will likely strengthen Jupiter’s music offering and complement its previous RF music acquisitions (Steve Shapiro Music Library - April, 2006, Crank City Music - March, 2006, BBM.net - December, 2005).
News
EPA and Yonhap announce agreement
The European Pressphoto Agency (EPA) and the Korean News Agency Yonhap have announced the signing of an agreement under which Yonhap will become epa’s exclusive partner in South Korea for the marketing of epa’s world-wide newsphoto production. Launched in 1981, as the nation’s key news agency, Yonhap News Agency offers its domestic readers news reports from various parts of the world through its global news network. It provides newspapers, broadcasting firms, major internet portals and other on-line organizations with more than 2,500 articles each and every day on all sectors including politics, the economy, society, culture and science on a real-time basis.
News
Jupiter Media posts weak second quarter results
In his opening statement on Jupiter Media’s management conference call to discuss the company’s second quarter results with analysts, CEO Alan Meckler remarked, “We did not have a stellar quarter per our guidance estimates but we did continue to build a stellar company.” Wall Street took little comfort in this news as reflected in Jupiter’s stock price since the 2Q results were made public after the close of the market, yesterday. The company’s gross revenue for the second quarter of 2006 increased by 20% over that for the same quarter in 2005 from $29.1MM to 35MM and gross margins remained relatively flat over the same periods at 64%. Its operating margin, however, fell significantly from 26% in the 2Q05 to only 12% in 2Q06 and operating income dropped from $7.6MM to $4.4MM. Wall Street has continued to hammer Jupiter’s stock as a result. After closing at $9.40 yesterday, August 8, it has dropped, as of this writing, to $6.77 today.
News
New leaders at Corbis Outline
Corbis has announced the appointment of two new co-Directors at their celebrity portraiture division, Corbis Outline. Lisa Diamond and Sherrie Berger will divide Corbis Outline’s global market with Ms. Diamond working out of Corbis Outline’s NYC office and covering the East Coast and Europe while Ms. Berger, located in Los Angeles, will cover the West Coast market as well as Asia. Both managers bring extensive experience to their new posts, having worked at Outline since before Corbis acquired the agency. Ms. Diamond, has been with Outline since its inception and served most recently as its director of artist relations. After managing ABC Televisions West Coast photography department, Ms. Berger has now been with Outline for ten years, at the agency’s Los Angeles office.
News
Scoopt partners with Fotolibra
Scoopt, the citizen journalism picture agency has announced a partnership with Fotolibra to offer more traditional stock photography to its customers. The two services offer very different and distinct content and are attempting to promote each others respective offerings. The reasoning behind the partnership was described in an e-mail sent by Scoopt on August 10th “As you know, we deal mainly in breaking news and celebrity material... the kind of pictures and videos that make tonight's evening news, tomorrow's newspaper and weekly and monthly magazines. We don't really deal with 'stock' photography, which is to say anything creative or artistic or non-newsworthy.”
News
Template Monster and Fotolia announce partnership
TemplateMonster.com has announced a partnership with micro-stock site Fotolia which allows the website template provider to use Fotolia images in the templates it sells. In addition, beginning on August 14, all Template Monster customers will receive a "10% Bonus" when purchasing images from Fotolia. According to the terms of the agreement, each time a template is sold with a Fotolia image, the owner of the copyright to that image will be paid according to the usual Fotolia pricing policy and licensing agreement.
News
Jeff Clark joins Wizkids
Jeff Clark, Formerly the COO of PictureArts Corporation, has accepted a position as EVP Finance and Operations for WizKids, Inc., an industry leader in collectible gaming. Clark brings with him a wealth of experience which includes stints at Getty Images, Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro, and Disney’s Consumer Products Division in senior finance roles. "Jeff’s mix of strategic vision, passion and discipline, combined with his impressive business and finance experience make him a solid choice as WizKids EVP Finance and Operations", said Lax Chandra, WizKids’ CEO.
News
BAPLA Picture Buyers Fair 2007
BAPLA, The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies has announced the dates of its Picture Buyer Fair for next year: 9 and 10 May, 2007 in the Business Design Centre in London. The prices for exhibitors will remain unchanged. In addition, BAPLA also announced more good news concerning the 2007 event: "A bigger party, more entertainment and fewer speeches!" Visit www.pbf.org.uk for more information. Stefan Hartmann, VISUELL
News
Getty to distribute Discovery Channel footage
Discovery Communications, owner of the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, among other brands, has signed an exclusive deal with Getty Images to distribute its entire stock footage archive, Discovery FootageSource. Designers and art-directors seeking wildlife footage of the natural world will now have access to Discovery’s vast stock footage collection. Getty already serves as distributor for Discovery’s still image archive, Discovery Channel Images. Both the film and photography collections feature a wide array of subjects including animals, nature travel, technology and industry to be used by visual communicators worldwide.
News
Art Resource now representing The New York Botanical Garden
Art Resource, a New York City based fine art specialist stock image agency, has announced that it now represents the images from The Library of The New York Botanical Garden. This library is packed with botanical and horticultural image and is particularly strong in the many aspects of horticulture and landscape design. The 3,100-volume folio collection is notable for its holdings of fine 18th and 19th century botanical illustrations.
Features
A brief chat with Haim Ariav
Haim Ariav is a professional photographer and new-media professional with several years experience running photography based internet companies. After recently leaving a21 / Superstock Haim started a new business called Glossy Finish working with professional photographers to cover amateur sporting events and utilizing a digital workflow to offer image based products with the images. Naturally we were curious about this business model and asked Haim for more information about this new venture.
News
StockPhotoFinder signs NewsCom; Launches unique search tool
The stock photo search and referral site, StockPhotoFinder.com, has announced a partnership with NewsCom who will supply StockPhotoFinder (SPF) with over 4MM images. This will more than double the number of images in SPF’s database bringing the total to over 7MM. Though NewsCom is known for its editorial and current events content, the deal includes all of the Jupiter Images Royalty Free imagery that NewsCom represents. NewsCom joins over 200 suppliers of images who have placed their products with SPF. The company does not take commissions on license fees for images found through its site, but simply charges the suppliers marketing fees based on the number of images they place with SPF.
News
Lonely Planet contributing travel images to Navman
Lonely Planet Images has announced a deal with the satellite navigation company, Navman, to contribute images to be downloaded for free and viewed on GPS devices. The photos supplied by lonely planet contain unique geographical data which is coupled with NavPix™, a breakthrough technology that combines a picture of a place with its exact geographical coordinates. Consumers will no longer need to know the address for the places they are trying to find but can simply click on the picture and the GPS device will guide them to the selected landmark. Navman has created thousands of NavPix snapshots of various tourist attractions – hotels, shops, restaurants, and more – across 19 major cities including London, Paris, Milan and Madrid.
News
A21 reports 2nd Quarter 2006 results
A21 Group, owner of Superstock and ArtSelect, reported an increase in net revenue of 94% from 2Q05 to 2Q06, rising from $2.3MM to $4.5MM. Of that 94% growth, 84% came from the acquisitions of ArtSelect and Ingram Publishing earlier this year, and 9% came from organic growth. We can extrapolate that ArtSelect and Ingram contributed $1.975MM of revenue, while real organic growth at Superstock was $209K. Over the same period, growth in expenses outpaced revenue growth, however, resulting in greater losses. The Cost of Revenue jumped 137% and Selling, General and Administrative expenses nearly doubled, causing the company’s gross loss to increase from $0.7MM in 2Q 05 to $1.7MM in 2Q 06 and its negative Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization to increase from a loss of $343K to a loss of $990K.
Features
Photojournalism online - The balance between business and passion
An Editorial by Jose Azel
The founder of photo journalist agency, Aurora Photos, discusses the challenges facing photo journalists and his agency as the publishing industry grapples with the Internet and more and more content delivery goes digital. Jose Azel has been a working photo-journalist since 1981. He has had his images published in National Geographic, Smithsonian, Life, Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated, and GEO Magazine, as well as shooting corporate assignments for the outdoor industry. In 1993, he co-founded Aurora Photos, an agency for photojournalists which he has expanded to carry commercial advertising imagery as well. Azel also launched theIndependent Photographers Network, which was later bought by the Dutch multinational publisher, VNU, parent of Photo District News.
News
Berlin photographers protest free photos
The Senate Office in Berlin, apparently in an effort to promote tourism, has made an extensive collection of images of the city available on-line at high resolution and free of charge on its website with some restrictions. The “free” use restrictions are explained in English on the site: "Visual material may be used, reproduced, or distributed free of charge only if the copyright notice for each photo appears in accordance with copyright law. Special conditions apply to commercial uses (e.g., the sale of any products), which the user must negotiate with the photographer." Nonetheless, the United Photographers of Berlin, a photographer trade association, has sent a letter to the Senate protesting the free image site on the grounds that it has completely undermined the market for Berlin images from photographers and photo agencies who license them. They requested the city administration take the free images down and refer interested parties to professional picture licensors. The protest letter (in German) can be found here. Stefan Hartmann, VISUELL
News
Getty launches Rights Ready model with Riser collection
Getty Images has launched the Riser collection with more than 80,000 images, making good on its promise to introduce the new Rights-Ready (RR) licensing model by the end of August 2006. The new model has been modified slightly from the original announcement in response to concerns from photographers. Instead of offering images with an unlimited term they are now offered the nearly-unlimited term of ten years from the date licensed. Each image will be licensed to a single “end-user” which has been defined as a single brand rather than a single (entire) company. If a company would like to re-use an RR image for another brand they would be required to obtain an additional license.
News
Natalie Pinkham to sue Daily Mail over stolen Prince Harry photos
British TV personality Natalie Pinkham recently discovered pictures from 2003 depicting her and Prince Harry in a bar were stolen and published in The Sun newspaper Aug 15th, and then printed again Aug 16th in the Daily Mail. As the sole owner of the pictures, the London Press-Gazette is reporting that Natalie Pinkham has taken no legal action against The Sun, but intends to sue the Daily Mail for "flagrant" breach of copyright. The same article quoted Rex Features, a stock photography agency, stating that “rights to publish the photographs legally might have cost up to £250,000 (approx $500,000) if sold on the open market” However, the newspaper might have to pay double the pictures' theoretical price if a judge rules that the breach was flagrant or deliberate.
Click here to view the original article.
News
Getty to represent AP Film Archive
Having announced just two weeks ago that the company had signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Discovery Communications for its vast footage archive, Getty Images announced today it had signed an agreement to distribute the footage archive of Associated Press, AP Film Archive. Like Discovery, AP states that it made the deal in order to expand the distribution of its footage assets beyond the editorial and into the commercial marketplace. According to Alwyn Lindsey, Head of Video Archives, Associated Press Television News, "Partnering with Getty Images complements our own sales and marketing activities and allows AP Archive to continue its mission to deliver compelling content to communications professionals in every part of the licensing realm. Use of event driven content in the creative sectors is a new area of growth for us and Getty Images excels in dealing with these customers."
