Archives: February, 2007
News
Corbis launches royalty free CD store
Corbis, following up on its strategic move to grow its RF collection during 2006, has announced the launch of an on-line RF CD store to give clients faster and easier access to similarly themed RF collections. The Corbis Royalty-Free CD store will be a new webpage devoted entirely to RF CDs to take advantage of what the company sees as a significant growth opportunity, namely corporate customers building image libraries to support their advertising and marketing activities.
News
Tavin and Masterson open talent placement business
Two stock photo industry stand-outs, Jerry Tavin, former owner of Nonstock, and Michael Masterson, longtime veteran of Workbook and Workbook Stock, have joined forces to open an executive placement business for stock image companies, corporate and publishing clients and advertising agencies and design consultancies. The business will be a division of the executive search firm, Janou Pakter, Inc. (JPI.) which has offices in New York, Paris and Milan. Masterson will open a new office for the company on the west coast.
Editorials
Take photos, not a beating
Will snapping a photo get you popped in the nose, legally or literally? The latter's a good bet in a biker bar, but what guidance exists for other situations--especially in a climate of heightened security? "Since I've heard various people ask (or debate) these questions from time to time," writes Photoshop engineer Russell Williams, "here are some references you might find useful:"
News
Newscom appoints Tom Bannon as Sales Director and launches new brand identity
Newscom, a leading content provider based in Washington DC with more than 18 million images from the world’s top publishers, has announced the appointment of Tom Bannon as Director of Sales. Bannon, a stock photo industry veteran, comes to Newscom from Getty Images where he served as Director of Sales for National Accounts. At the same time, Newscom launched a new logo and brand identity.
News
New and improved website at Thought Equity Motion
Thought Equity Motion (TEM,) a supplier of online motion content, licensing and professional representation services, has launched a new web-site with features designed to facilitate the work of both clients and suppliers. The web-site also currently features a contest for the best thirty second commercial spot created by clients using sound and video clips provided by TEM. The winner will receive $500 and the possibility to earn royalties on future licensing of the spot.
News
Ellen Boughn joins micro-stock company Dreamstime
Ellen Boughn, most recently VP, Content Strategy and Product Manager of Rights Managed Content at SuperStock, a post she held from March to December of 2006, has joined the management team of micro-stock company Dreamstime. She will reportedly assist the company with content strategy and marketing. The move to a micro-stock company marks a change for Boughn who has worked at, or consulted for, several of the leading "traditional" stock photo companies including Corbis and Getty.
News
Digital Railroad receives $10 million for product development and international expansion
Digital Railroad who last year received $5.2 million in funding has announced that once again the money-train has arrived with the closing of a $10 million dollar Series B investment round led by London-based venture firm DN Capital. Digital Railroad has stated that the funding will be used in the further development of its product and for the expansion of international offices starting with an office in Milan.
Features
Visual case study: Sea Island Resorts
Sea Island Resorts is a luxury resort located on the Georgia coast, (approximately 80 miles north of Jacksonville, Florida and 80 miles south of Savannah, Georgia). The 80 year old resort has recently undergone a $500 million dollar renovation and is considered to be one of the top luxury hotels in the world catering to an upscale clientele with very discerning tastes. The Cloister at Sea Island was recently chosen as the site to host the 2004 G8 Summit for world leaders chaired by President George W. Bush. Meg Asaro and Karen D’Silva from Spark Visual Research take a closer look at the images used in the advertising for this resort and what appeals to the mature and affluent demographic often coveted by today's marketers.
News
Getty releases ‘MAP report’ a visual trend forecasting publication
Getty’s Creative Research team has made its first so-called “MAP” (Make A Picture) report available for purchase online. The report provides Getty’s take on cultural trends and how they will shape visual language in the future. The writers of the report researched over 2,500 advertising tear-sheets from around the world and surveyed 500 advertising,, design and marketing professionals. In addition, they evaluated image searches by 1.4 million customers on gettyimages.com, as well as 50,000 picture research requests and 120 re-branding exercises facilitated over a 12-month period. The first issue tackles women in the work-place (see photo.)
News
Jupter launching Web Video Summit and Web Video Universe
Following its plan to build up the JupiterEvent division, Jupitermedia (JUPM) has announced the launch of its latest tradeshow called Web Video Summit for those who create and or distribute video over the internet. The first show will be held on June 27th and 28th in San Jose and will be headlined by Dave Burstein. In addition Jupiter will be launching a companion website with an interstellar name called ‘WebVideoUniverse.com’ featuring information, news and resources related to this growing community.
News
Bruce Slywka named VP Sales & Marketing at A21
The A21 Group, owners of Superstock and ArtSelect, among other brands, have appointed Bruce Slywka to the position of Vice President of Sales and Marketing, reporting directly to CEO John Ferguson. In this newly created position at A21, Slywka will lead the company’s worldwide sales and marketing efforts for both the stock photo licensing and online consumer art and framing divisions.
Features
A brief explanation of digital photography file formats
Understanding file formats and knowing the correct one to use will save you a great deal of time in the future. Some file formats should only be used for web images, where others are ideal to get the perfect print.
Following is a list of the most popular ones and the file formats that you should consider.
News
Art Resource to represent The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The president of Art Resource, Dr. Theodore Feder, announced the addition of works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MOMA) in New York City to the wide collection of art objects whose image rights and reproductions his company represents. The arrangement will involve over 2,000 works of art from the Museum's collection in high-resolution digital form.
News
Investment group affiliated with Design Pics acquires The Irish Image Collection
The investment group Stock Collectors Inc, working on behalf of the Edmonton, Canada based RF production company, Design Pics Inc. (DPI,) has acquired The Irish Image Collection, founded by George Munday and based in Waterford, Ireland. Design Pics will open a London office to manage The Irish Image Collection and create new rights managed and royalty free content. The Irish Image Collection was audited by The Virtual Picture Desk (managed by George Sinclair) who will now edit the Collection for global syndication and will assist with the management of international distribution.
Features
The Next Steps for the PLUS Coalition: Interview with President & CEO Jeff Sedlik
The PLUS Coalition has just reached another significant milestone. Having earlier accomplished the monumental task of creating a comprehensive glossary of image licensing terms (the PLUS Picture Licensing Glossary has over 1500 terms) the Coalition has now released four additional international image licensing standards which, together with the glossary, comprise the Picture Licensing Universal System or “PLUS,” a system of standards that will simplify and facilitate image licensing for image creators, distributors and users alike.
News
PACA sets program for Annual Meeting in Washington DC area
The trade organization for the stock image industry in North America, the Picture Archive Council of America (PACA,) has announced a program of wide-ranging topics for its 2007 Annual Meeting. This year, the Meeting will take place just a few miles from our nation’s capital, at the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center in Alexandria, Virginia. The Meeting will open with a welcoming cocktail reception on Friday evening, May 4th and end with a dinner cruise on the Potomac on Sunday night, May 6th. Reflecting the growing complexity of the business of stock photography, the Program covers a wide variety of subjects of interest to all parties to the industry.
News
Jupiter Media launches new subscription service at royaltyfreemusic.com
Jupitermedia Corporation (Nasdaq: JUPM) who has spent the last year building up a library of Royalty Free (RF) music, has finally brought its entire music offering together into a single subscription product at royaltyfreemusic.com.The new site is composed of more than 6,000 music tracks and 10,000+ sound effects, all of which is wholly owned by Jupiter. Customers can purchase the content individually, on CDs, or purchase subscriptions for one month at $199.95 or one-year at $999.95, which is actually priced higher than Jupiter’s photos.com (one month = $139.95, one-year = $599.95) image subscription product. In addition subscribers will have access to the recently acquired StudioCutz.com's royalty-free music and to all new content as it is added.
News
Corbis posts 11% revenue growth in 2006; Announces microstock initiative for 2007
Corbis announced today that its revenue in 2006 reached $251MM, representing an increase of 11% on a currency neutral basis over 2005 ($228MM.) As a privately held company, Corbis has no legal obligation to make public is financial results. The press release announcing the revenue growth included no profit or loss figures. The release did include, however, an announcement that Corbis will venture into micro-stock in 2007.
News
New site launched for Hispanic and ethnic stock photography at HispanicShots.com
A new source for Hispanic stock photography has launched at HispanicShots.com. The site was created and developed by Michele Cordoba, an independent marketing consultant, in response to a void she perceived throughout her 18 years of experience in Hispanic advertising and marketing including positions at Spanish language newspaper La Opinion, Telemundo network affiliate KVEA-TV, and Univision flagship station KMEX-TV. With its concentration exclusively on Hispanic images, HispanicShots.com includes images arranged into six main categories; Home & Family, Business & technology, Financial & Retail, Sports & Recreation, Entertainment, and Health & Beauty, with a total offering of more than 400 wholly-owned images.
News
Getty consolidates its own royalty free brands
Getty Images has announced it will consolidate ten of the twelve RF brands it owns into three collections. Getty says the move will streamline and improve the customer experience on gettyimages.com. In the past, the company has adhered to a policy of maintaining and promoting the unique brand names of the collections it has purchased as well as those of third party suppliers it represents. In light of the many acquisitions of RF collections in recent years, the acquisition of the micro-stock business, iStockphoto, the introduction of the rights-ready licensing model under its own brand, Riser, and, according to management, yet more new licensing models to come in 2007, the need for simplification comes as no surprise.
News
Masterfile and amana form partnership
Amana images Inc. of Tokyo has agreed to become the exclusive distributor of Masterfile’s rights-managed collection in Japan. amana, the largest agency in its home country, will also represent Masterfile’s RF brand, “Radius.” The deal also calls for the Masterfile’s production team to collaborate with amana to produce more images specifically for the Japanese market.
News
Getty Images in talks to acquire rival JupiterImages
The NY Post is reporting that Getty Images has met with JupiterMedia to discuss a possible acquisition of the JupiterImages division of the company. According to the exclusive NY Post article the selling price could be more than $11 a share, or nearly $450 million including debt. Jupiter CEO Alan Meckler appears to have been focusing his recent efforts on building up his web publishing and tradeshow business and may be looking to cash-out on the image licensing business. Getty has stated in its last quarterly conference call that it plans to grow the business through acquisitions this year and the speculated acquisition of JupiterImages would give the company greater dominance over its closest competitor Corbis.
News
Mary Evans Picture Library representing New Scotland Yard picture archive
Mary Evans Picture Library has announced that it is now exclusively representing the picture archive of New Scotland Yard. The archive dating back to 1875 contains a varied collection relating to the policing of the Metropolitan Police District of London. The collection relates not only to interesting exhibits from crime cases (specifically dealt with by the Crime Museum at New Scotland Yard) but a whole range of interesting images reflecting the life of London as seen through the eyes of the Police Service. Amongst the collection are fantastic early images of undercover policemen and forensic work including fingerprinting and crime scene photography. The Archive also includes images of historic police vehicles, uniforms, badges, posters and specific picture sets of police involvement in such incidents as the Brixton riots and the Poll Tax demonstrations.
Features
Jupiter confirms sale talks with Getty Images and potential sale price of $350 million
JupiterMedia has broken the silence about a potential sale to Getty images by issuing an official press release responding to the flurry of articles published yesterday by the business press. The press release states "Jupitermedia confirms that it is currently in discussions with Getty Images, Inc. regarding a potential sale of the company to Getty Images in a cash transaction that would be valued at $9.60 per share [approx $350 million]." In addition Jupiter confirms that a proposed acquisition would be conditioned on the Jupiter Web business would be sold to a third party, and would likely be purchased by Alan M. Meckler, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Jupitermedia.
News
Getty Images acquiring WireImage for $200 million in cash
It’s no secret that Getty images has been taking steps to build up it’s entertainment and celebrity image business recently and now Getty Images has taken a leap forward by agreeing to spend approximately $200 million in cash to acquire WireImage, a leader in the realm of entertainment and event imagery. The deal also will include MediaVast, Inc. the owner of WireImage, and sub-brands FilmMagic and Contour Photos.
News
Archaeological stock photography and footage now available from SitesandPhotos.com
Sites & Photos has announced the launch of its new stock photography and footage site specializing in archaeological photographs and video. The Tel Aviv, Israel based business now offers more than 80,000 archaeology images and approximately1300 videos. Sites & Photos was created by the respected archaeologist and photographer Samuel Magal to serve the needs of academics, publishers, and scholars with high quality images. The site covers more than 400 archaeological sites across the Mediterranean basin, and offers both rights-managed and royalty-free images with more than 25 CDs, a subscription service, and images available for individual license.
News
corbis scraps annual meeting with press in favor of customer event
For the last several years, Corbis has held a meeting in March with the media and analysts to discuss the company’s previous year’s performance and its strategic plans for the future. This year, however, the company will instead have a meeting with a group of marketing and advertising industry leaders. The meeting, which will take place in New York City on March 6th, will give Bill Gates, CEO Steve Davis, President Gary Shank, and other Corbis managers the opportunity to discuss the state of the stock photo industry with executives from some of their most important clients.
News
ITN Source signs exclusive deal to represent footage from Australia’s Nine Network
The London based stock footage archive, ITN Source, has announced an exclusive worldwide distribution deal with Australian broadcaster Nine Network. Nine Network is one of Australia’s most popular television channels and its flagship news service, National Nine News is historically the country’s highest-rated national news program. The distribution deal includes footage from such noteworthy programs as, National Nine News, Nightline, A Current Affair, The Today Show, Sunday, Business Sunday, and locally-produced 60 Minutes stories.
Editorials
iStock models become “friends” for rent on MySpace.com
The New York Times reported yesterday that MySpace.com users who felt they needed more friends have used images of attractive models from iStockphoto to enhance their online profile. Apparently, a company with the honest name (at least) of FakeYourSpace.com has helped socially challenged MySpace clients by presenting the models, with fabricated comments to go with them, as friends of the user. Photographers who noticed the abuse alerted iStock who requested that FakeYourSpace stop using the images for this purpose. The company has complied. One wonders, however, whether iStock hasn’t committed a disingenuous act itself by this demand.
News
Getty Acquires The Michael Ochs Archives
As the industry awaits official word of the Jupiter acquisition, Getty Images has extended its buying spree. After agreeing to purchase WireImage last week for $200MM, the company announced today that it has acquired The Michael Ochs Archives, considered by most to be the most comprehensive collection of music and entertainment industry figures from the 1940s through the 1990s. The collection includes approximately 75,000 images covering every pop-cultural icon of the period, including Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Bruce Springsteen and many more. Getty has not disclosed the terms of the deal.
News
Fine art community site Imagekind.com closes $2.6 million in financing
The Seattle based fine art community marketplace, Imagekind.com, has that it is receiving $2.6 million in its series A round of financing. The company has stated plans to use the funds primarily for marketing operations and staffing. This round of financing was lead by Holtzbrinck Ventures. Other noteworthy investors include Crosslink Capital, Erik Blachford (former CEO of Expedia), Tom Hughes (co-founder of Photodisc), and many others.
