Archives: November, 2006
News
Photolibrary acquires Index Stock
The Photolibrary Group of Sydney has purchased Index Stock Imagery of New York. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Index CEO, Bahar Gidwani, has left the company. Dan Russelman, currently president of Index, will manage the office for Photolibrary. The company has stated plans to retain the other 41 employees at Index for the foreseeable future.
News
PhotoShelter announces partnership with fotoQuote
PhotoShelter, a leading online archive and marketplace for professional photographers, has announced an exclusive licensing agreement with Cradoc Corporation the developer of fotoQuote, to grant PhotoShelter subscribers immediate access to fotoQuote's price information within the PhotoShelter e-commerce function. In addition, fotoQuote data will be used to populate a matrix of average pricing data and users will be able to set up multiple pricing profiles and adjust the value of those profiles as a percentage of the matrix price.
News
Digital Railroad announces partnership with JaincoTech
Digital Railroad, a leading provider of Web-based application services for the professional photography industry, and JaincoTech, the recognized leader in integrated digital imaging services, today announced a partnership to provide Digital Railroad members with access to high quality keywording and scanning solutions from Mumbai, India based JaincoTech. JaincoTech is a preferred supplier to Alamy, Corbis and Getty Images and Digital Railroad members will be able to outsource to the industry experts and also enjoy special discounts on JaincoTech's services.
News
Idols now representing the Mephisto archives
Idols, the UK based celebrity agency, has announced that is is now representing the Mephisto archives. The name Mephisto has been synonymous with Jazz music since the image library formed in 1985. The archive dating back to the mid 1950's contains over 600,000 live and studio images, both color and black and white depicting the Parisian Jazz scene along with more recent soul, fusion and popular music from around the world. The oldest photographs date from the Birdland show at Pleyel in 1956 featuring Miles Davis and Lester Young with contemporary images incorporating Jazz legends such renowned talent as Oscar Peterson, Fats Domino, Al Green, Dizzy Gillespie and Curtis Mayfield.
News
Contrast acquired by Austria Press Agency
The APA (Austria Press Agency) has announced the acquisition of Contrast photo GmbH, one of the most well-known picture agencies in Austria. As a result, APA has stated that substantial restructuring will occur for both enterprises: By the end of the year, APA images, a division of the press agency, will be merged into the Contrast photo GmbH. The new enterprise will then be named APA PictureDesk GmbH. The two picture agencies have combined billings of 1.5 million EUR and a combined offering of over three million pictures on-line.
Features
“We are not newcomers for the picture desks”
Horst Zsifkovits, Vice President Getty Images, spoke to Stefan Hartmann about his agency’s Editorial Division, about the company’s competitors and about what Getty does not intend to doStefan Hartmann: First of all, congratulations on your new position. The title sounds as though you will now be travelling around a lot. Have you already moved closer to the airport?
News
Researchers teach computers to keyword images
Researchers at Penn State University are claiming to have made a major breakthrough that could impact search engines that rely on keywording or tagging to identify images. The researchers have "taught" computers how to interpret images using a vocabulary of up to 330 English words, so that a computer can describe a photograph of two polo players, for instance, as "sport," "people," "horse," "polo."
News
Dreamstime broaches editorial imagery
The Romanian-based micro-stock site, Dreamstime, has launched a photojournalism section titled 'In the News' for editorial imagery depicting current events. Despite the editorial nature of the imagery in the section, however, contributors may not upload images of recognizable persons unless they have model-releases.
News
BAPLA launches quarterly online magazine for art-buyers
The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies (BAPLA) has posted the first issue of its new quarterly publication, Credit, which they call the "Ezine for image buyers." The publication will feature articles on legal and other issues of concern to the stock photo community written from both image library and image buyer perspectives. According to the trade organization's press release about the on-line magazine, "This is image buyers’ opportunity to voice their opinions about the industry, to the industry." BAPLA will distribute the magazine to 11,000 art-buyers.
News
Jupiter ups stake in micro payment stock photography sites
Jupitermedia Corporation (Nasdaq: JUPM) has announced an increase in the company's ownership of HAAP Media Ltd. which operates two photo-related web-sites, the micro-payment site, Stockxpert.com (www.stockxpert.com) and stock photo community site, Stock.xchng (www.sxc.hu). Jupiter increased its equity ownership to 90% of HAAP, based in Budapest, Hungary, having made an initial equity investment in 49.7% of the company in January of this year. Terms of the transaction, which is expected to close in the 4th quarter, were not disclosed.
News
Alaska Stock wins design awards for “North of Normal” campaign
Alaska Stock Images, the Anchorage-based specialty agency for all things Alaskan, and its design firm, Mad Dog Graphx, also of Anchorage, have won two prestigious design awards from Creativity Annual Awards. The stock agency's "North of Normal" campaign, which features a series of self-promotional direct mailers won the two awards in the Best Campaign Series and the Best Single Promo categories. The North of Normal mini-catalogues showed seasonal images of Alaskan wildlife, landscapes and the Alaskan lifestyle by over twenty of the agency's photographers.
News
Content Mine offering stock photography franchise opportunities
Content Mine International AG has announced plans to offer franchise opportunities with their database of approximately 100,000 images, with plans to grow to 500,000 by the end of 2006. Content Mine will offer each Franchisee a fully customized web front-end where they can offer their choice of content from the archives and also upload their own content to the system. In addition, uploaded images can be released to other Content Mine franchise partners for greater distribution.
News
Jupiter posts disappointing 3Q06; Meckler cites “negative surprise”; Stock takes a hit
Alan Meckler, CEO of Jupitermedia Corporation (Nasdaq: JUPM), opened his comments about the company's 3Q06 calling the results "disappointing as a result of a negative surprise to management." That negative surprise came in the form of weaker than expected revenue from its images division's third party distributors. The company's profit from continuing operations plummeted from $43MM in 3Q05 to only $1MM in 3Q06. Not surprisingly, Jupiter's stock closed the day down $3.27 to $5.83, just slightly above its 52-week low of $5.75.
News
October meeting of photo industry associations considered a success
Last month we reported about the planned meeting of representatives from eighteen photo industry trade associations to address issues of common interest and set plans for collective action on such issues as licensing and technical standards and so-called “orphan works” legislation in the US. The meeting took place as scheduled in New York City on October 31 and was deemed a huge success by all who attended. The leadership of ASPP and PACA initiated this historic meeting, which was hosted by the Society of Illustrators.
News
Getty Images delays 10-Q filing while committee investigates stock option grants
Getty Images (NYSE: GYI), has announced that its board of directors has formed a special committee to conduct an internal investigation into the Company's stock option grant practices and related accounting in response to an SEC inquiry. According to a press release issued by Getty Images The review is being conducted with the assistance of outside legal counsel retained by the special committee. In addition, Getty Images will delay the filing of its its Form 10-Q quarterly report until the special committee has completed the investigation causing the report to be late.
Editorials
Editorial: Scary math – A closer look at Micro-Stock numbers
To any observer of the stock photo industry, the spectacle of both CEOs from the two most important publicly traded companies in the business reporting about their "disappointing" results for the first nine months of 2006 must give one pause. In both cases, the problems appeared to arise, at least in part, from the softness of the RF business. Getty CEO Jonathan Klein said lower-than-anticipated RF revenue in its most important market, North America caused the disappointment. Alan Meckler blamed Jupiter's 3Q weakness on a "negative surprise" from the company's 320-strong third party distributor network, a part of the business management has no control over and for which the reporting schedule does not permit advance notice of changes in volume.
News
Map Resources releases royalty-free city maps
Lambertville, NJ based Map Resources has released a new set of royalty-free city maps for designers. The detailed maps of 10 new major US cities include downtown maps that show every street, and metro maps with regional details. All map features are in separate layers for easy editing with Adobe Illustrator, with up to 60 layers per map making it easy for users to turn layers on or off as needed to create precisely the image they need.
News
Transtock expands offering to include more than just cars
The specialty stock photography library Transtock which offers a focused collection of transportation photography has announced the release of a newly expanded website located at http://www.transtock.net. The Venice, California based library claims to offer “The largest searchable database of high-quality transportation photos on the Worldwide Web”, which started with automotive imagery and now includes more than 100,000 images. Subjects available in the collection include nearly every mode of transportation including boats, ships, submarines, jet skis, motorcycles, bicycles, airplanes, helicopters, jets and racecars.
News
IPTC publishes photo metadata software support list
How does the software industry implement IPTC metadata standards in their digital photo management software? The IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council) has published a list of more than 50 software applications that support the photo metadata standards IIM (Information Interchange Model) and IPTC core. The list provides an outstanding overview of the usual software solutions utilizing IPTC standards along with comments from the corresponding software vendors.
News
Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines 2.0
The Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines (UPDIG) has released updated guidelines for digital imaging. The release includes an executive summary with 12 concise guidelines and a Complete Guide for those looking for more detail. The guidelines were produced primarily from the photographer’s perspective but UPDIG has labored to incorporate the concerns of all users of Digital imaging to make the guidelines useful for anyone involved with digital imaging.
News
Rex Features sponsors post-cards for children’s charity
The British stock photo company, Rex Features, has donated the use of a group of its images to Plan-UK, a charity for impoverished children around the globe. Founded nearly 70 years ago, Plan is one of the largest child-centered community development organizations in the world. Over 120,000 people in the UK sponsor a child with Plan and the money they give is used to help create practical, sustainable solutions to community problems, to build safer, healthier, happier futures for children.
News
Getty opens new tap for images with “Lifesize” collection
In keeping with CEO Jonathan Klein's promise to open the taps to allow more images to flow into Getty's archives, the company has invited any photographer, -- "professionals and amateurs alike," according to a press-release -- to submit images for inclusion into a new collection. Getty calls that collection "Lifesize" and will license images from it under the Rights-Ready model.
Features
A brief look at visual search technology
In August of this year, Google purchased the image recognition technology firm Neven Vision. The acquisition inspired wide speculation about the many applications for the technology, from mundane administrative chores like organizing digital photo albums to high-tech crime thriller tricks like spotting wanted fugitives as they pass by security cameras. The technology also has an obvious application for our industry of enhancing the image database search features on stock photo company web-sites.
News
Stock photo production company “Eyecandy Images” has launched
On November 16th at the 2006 PACA (the Picture Archive council of America) annual conference a new stock photo production company called Eyecandy Images was born with offices based in New York and London The company founded by BJ and Richeille Formento plans to produce both Royalty Free and Rights Managed images to be distributed by 3rd party resellers. Both principals have reported experience at major advertising and photo agencies and according to industry veteran Jack Hollignsworth their new company is “an example of the way forward for the industry” as quoted in a recent seminar about wholly owned content.
News
Alamy takes on wine, food, and travel imagery from BKWine
Alamy Images has signed an agreement to represent the work of wine and food reportage photographer, Per Karlsson. Karlsson, and his wife, Britt Karlsson, manage the wine tourism business, BKWine, from Paris. The tour business affords the couple to opportunity to travel to the important wine-making regions of Western and Eastern Europe and parts of South America. While traveling, they collaborate on feature stories about the places they visit, with Britt writing the text and Per taking the photos.
News
Masterfile announces enhanced searching with Tag Clouds
The Toronto Canada based stock photography company Masterfile, has released a new search related feature on its site called Tag Clouds. Tag Clouds are a unique way of displaying keywords with a visual cue to the viewer letting them know the most popular words and phrases used to arrive at a particular image. The more popular the keyword the bigger the font is displayed. This can be helpful for designers who are not quite sure what keywords to use. By looking at the tag cloud the user can identify the more important keywords and click on any of the keywords to launch a new search.
News
Alamy goes green by reducing greenhouse gas emissions
The UK-based online stock photo company, Alamy, has announced a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Program to reduce the negative impact its business has on the natural environment. The company has focused on two specific areas where it hopes to lessen the greenhouse gas emissions from its growing business activities; air travel and electricity use.
News
The Cover Story files for bankruptcy
The Amsterdam based The Cover Story (TCS) filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. As a result of the reorganization of the company, it has closed its stock photo operation. Jan-Poul Douma, an image web-site software executive, purchased the remaining assets of the company after the bankruptcy and will manage it as a reportage feature story licensing business.
News
ANP Photo now offering assignment photography
The Dutch news agency ANP has now entered the field of assignment photography as a result of its takeover of Capital Photos. According to Bas van Beek, Director of ANP Photo, Capital Photos is one of the leading Dutch agencies for assignment photography and mainly works for industrial companies and organisations.
News
Photolibrary recognized by UK Trade & Investment
UK Trade & Investment, a UK government organization with promotes investment in the UK by foreign companies, placed the Photolibrary Group of Sydney on its short list for the Knowledge & Service Industry category for its 2006 International Business Awards which recognize Australian enterprises successfully investing in the UK.
News
A21 reports upbeat 3Q06
A21 Group, owner of Superstock and ArtSelect, has reported 3Q06 results showing significantly improved operating performance over the 2nd quarter. Year over year comparisons showed a dramatic increase in revenue of 190% from the 3rd quarter of 2005 to this most recent quarter. Those figures reflect, however, the added revenue from two acquisitions made earlier this year, those of Art Select, a consumer art and framing business and Ingram Publishing, a royalty-free image production company. Year-over-year, revenue showed organic growth for the third quarter of 10%.
News
Corbis signs partnership for India
Corbis has announced the signing of a partnership with a New Delhi company called IndiaPicture.com for representation of Corbis in the growing advertising market of India. IndiaPicture brings not only local knowledge and experience to the table for Corbis, but also a huge collection of images of the people, culture and lifestyles of India. The company boasts the largest online repository of images in Southeast Asia.
Features
Do buyers use search engines more than stock agencies to find images?
On Nov 16, wrote: I am a bit worried about whether buyers actually use google and search engines to license images?While there have been no bona fide studies on the subject, one can extrapolate an answer by looking at the volume of traffic that the agencies get, vs. that of image-search sites, like images.google.com. And while you could argue that not everyone that goes to image-based search engines are necessarily looking to license photos, I would argue that the sheer volume of such users would yield a higher total number of buyers, even though they might represent a much smaller fraction of the total traffic. For example, if only .1% of google searchers would actually license an image they found for a given search, the fact that the site itself gets hundreds of millions of searches a day, even the tiny .1% that might convert into buyers would still yield a higher total than what all the photo stock agencies yield.
Editorials
2007 predictions for the stock photography industry
2006 has been a really interesting year in relation to the stock photography industry-- companies being bought, sold and merged, entire new licensing structures being created, and more photographers than ever jumping on the stock bandwagon, Will this kind of activity continue in 2007? I've got a few predictions for what we can expect in the new year.
News
PictureHouse breaks record in NYC
The annual picture buyers fair in New York City held by Picturehouse Marketing Ltd of the UK took place this year on November 1st in the Puck Building in downtown Manhattan. By all measurements, the event, at which licensors of stock photography and stock footage display their offerings to art-buyers, designers and other users of stock imagery, was a huge success.
News
Study shows baboons capable of remembering images
The star of a study by the cognition psychologists Robert Cook (Tufts University in Medford) and Joël Fagot (University of Marseille) was Baboon No. 9. He and others of his species proved in a study lasting five years that apes have a highly developed memory that can store and call up several thousand images over a long period. Pigeons were also studied and also showed they had a remarkably good memory, although not as good as the baboons.
News
Getty launches new site for beta testing
Getty Images (NYSE: GYI) has launched it’s new website gettyimages.com for live beta testing. The new site located at beta.gettyimages.com allows customers to try out the new site and help in the development of the new site. The current beta site now combines the company's editorial and creative imagery with a focus on the needs of editorial customers. The full site is scheduled to launch in mid 2007.
Editorials
Editorial: Wall Street Journal and Today Show get the story wrong
The Wall Street Journal published an article on November 28, 2006 by Emily Steel titled "When Marketers See Double" about the growing number of cases where two different companies, sometimes direct competitors, have used the same stock image in their marketing materials. By a strange coincidence, the exact same article appeared in video form on NBC’s The Today Show. (See links below.) What we find interesting and perhaps disturbing about the both news items is their failure to accurately portray the forces at work that cause these duplicate uses and how marketers who use images can avoid the problem.
News
Wireimage opens office in Spain
MediaVast, the parent company of Wireimage has announced that it has opened a spanish office in Madrid, Spain. The office will be headed up by Ruth Macarrón who was appointed to the role of Sales Manager, charged with bringing the WireImage, FilmMagic, and Contour Photos brands to Spanish customers. Macarrón will report to James Claydon, who oversees European Operations out of MediaVast's UK office in London.
