Archives: March, 2007
News
UPI puts news image archive online with Digital Railroad
After Corbis and, more recently, Getty have taken steps to increase their presence in the press and celebrity photography space, United Press International (UPI) has joined the fray by placing an archive of 300,000 of its news images online at www.upinewspictures.com. The web-site, which uses the Digital Railroad platform, features historical and contemporary images of international events, world political figures, entertainment celebrities and professional sports accumulated by UPI since its inception in 1907. The company will make the rights managed collection available for licensing for editorial uses.
News
Vintage stock photography site launches at RetroStockPix.com
A new site for vintage stock photography has launched at RetroStockPix.com. The site hails from Moorestown, NJ, and features the archives of Aladdin Color. Aladdin Color was started in 1957 by David Bard who created the images along with a few other staff photographers. In 1976 David Bard’s son Eric Bard continued in his father footsteps and began shooting for the business which he currently operates. The collection features images from the 1950´s & 60´s including the worlds largest collection of photographs from Wildwood, New Jersey's Doo Wop style Motels.
News
Leslie Hughes launches Equity Images, production company with a twist
Leslie Hughes has launched a photo production company under a new business model created to meet the demands of today’s multidimensional communications market. The company, Equity Images, will produce collections of images designed to provide clients with visual consistency accross the various communications channels through which they reach customers and the public, from print to web-sites, direct e-marketing and mobile devices. The business model calls for clients to cover the cost of production, but at a lower rate than “work for hire,” in exchange for access to the images for a limited time period, usually a year to two years. After that period, Equity Images, who will retain ownership of the photographs, will place them in its own archive for licensing as stock to the general market.
Features
Visual case study: Samsung Black Carbon Ultra Edition mobile phone
Samsung recently began promoting its latest mobile phone the Black Carbon Ultra Edition Cellphone. This phone follows in the footsteps of the Motorola RAZR and other sexy modern thin phones. This device strives to be a communication tool, mobile office, and entertainer. This mobile phone is small enough to fit in your pocket but the design positions this gadget in the spotlight as a high tech luxury accessory. Meg Asaro and Karen D’Silva from Spark Visual Research take a closer look at the images used by Samsung’s to position this product as no ordinary phone.
News
Jason Hawkes launches new aerial stock photography site
Veteran aerial photographer Jason Hawkes has launched a new e-commerce website featuring a unique collection of more than 10,000 aerial photographs. Hawkes is based in London and has specialized in creating aerial photography in locations around the world since 1991. In addition to offering images for stock licensing, Hawkes has produced more than 25 aerial photographic books, and his advertising and design clients include brands such as Nike, HSBC, Ford, American Airlines, Rolex, Toyota, Smirnoff, Mitsubishi and BP.
News
PhotoShelter offering one terabyte of storage for $1,000
PhotoShelter, the provider of online archiving, work-flow, distribution and marketing services for professional photographers, has lowered the storage fees charged to its subscribers with an offer of one terabyte (TB) of storage space at $1,000 per year. The company made the offer in response to the current ingest rate of 2.5TB of image files per week, a rate that continues to grow. The new price represents an almost 80% drop from its prices of less than a year ago of $400 per month or $4,800 per year for the same amount of space.
News
Getty and Jupiter end acquisition talks
In a brief press-release dated today, March 7, Jupiterimages announced that its discussions with Getty, originally made public on February 22, have terminated. As of this writing, (noon EST on March 7,) Jupiter’s stock was down 17% on the news to about $7.19 per share. Getty’s shares have also declined for the day, dipping by about 2% to $49.58.
News
Roger Ressmeyer resigns as PACA President
The Executive committee for the Picture Archive Council of America (PACA) has announced that it has reluctantly accepted the resignation of Roger Ressmeyer as President of the organization. Ressmeyer cited personal reasons for the resignation, which include a personal family matter and the demands placed upon him by his Business, preventing him from fulfilling his duties as President. PACA’s Nominations and Elections Committee presented a replacement slate of officers that was unanimously approved. The former VP, Patrick Donehue [Corbis] will serve as the President of the organization, Maria Kessler [Jupiterimages] will accept the role of Vice President, and Benjamin Winters [UpperCut Images] will serve as Secretary.
Jupitermedia looks like Uranus
What is one of the best ways to make investors really want to revolt against you? You can try announcing you are in merger talks after market rumors, and then just as quickly announce that merger talks have terminated. This morning Jupitermedia (JUPM-NASDAQ) did just that. Here is what the company is saying today:
News
Eyecandy Images launches new site; Signs with Alamy
Eyecandy Images, a recently launched RF and RM production company based in New York and London, has launched a new web-site and signed a distribution deal with Alamy, all in one week. The new web-site, at eyecandyimages.com, allows for on-line licensing and immediate download of images by registered users who can pay via credit card or invoice accounts set up in advance. The company also placed its entire RF collection on Alamy.com.
News
The Bridgeman Art Library has acquired the Fotomas archive
The Fotomas Archive, also known as the John Freeman archive, consists of approximately 250,000 wholly-owned black and white prints, glass plates and negatives, built up over some eighty years. The photographer John Freeman amassed this vast collection of photos and illustrations which include photos from his father’s career as a photographer, followed by his own. The collection features many leading figures in the arts including; Tolstoy, Keats and Lewis Carroll, as well as royalty, revolutionaries like Karl Marx and significant explorers, philosophers and scientists. Topics include scenes from Medieval daily life, the Great Plague of London and the Industrial Revolution across diverse categories such as architecture, maps, posters and topography, as well as some eye-opening photography of Victorian slums and Native American costumes.
News
Amana Group acquires Digital Archive Japan, Inc.
Tokyo-based Amana Group has acquired the Japanese royalty free production company, Digital Archive Japan (DAJ.) Amana, one of Japan's largest producers and marketers of both RM and RF stock imagery, has made strategic acquisitions of a number of graphics related companies in its effort to become the "total visual solution experts" in the Japanese market. In addition, the company seeks to improve its profit margin from its present 4.8% to 10% or more by 2009. The company hopes the acquisition of DAJ, one of the leading producers of RF in the country, will help achieve that goal.
News
Getty Images acquires citizen photojournalism pioneer Scoopt
Getty Images (NYSE: GYI) has announced that it has acquired Scoopt, a pioneer in marketing eyewitness images (citizen photojournalism) to mainstream media outlets. Scoopt was launched in 2005 and has gained recent notoriety when it supplied images to the media of the tragic Manhattan plane crash that killed New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle in October 2006 and coverage of the fierce January 2006 storms in the U.K., which brought devastation and disruption to large parts of the country.
News
Photos Horticultural launches new website
A new source for horticultural images has launched online at http://www.photos-horticultural.com. The new site hails from the UK and features more than 15,000 rights-managed and royalty-free images focused on the specialty niche of plants and gardens. Photos Horticultural was founded by Michael Warren in 1969 and grew to an offering of over 115,000 transparency shots including material from many other horticultural photographers from around the world.
News
London and Chicago: Image supplier trade shows coming your way this spring!
PictureHouse in Chicago on April 12
BAPLA Picture Buyers Fair in London on May 9-10
PictureHouse will hold its second annual picture buyers event in Chicago on April 12, beginning at noon. The event met with great success last year, when it coincided with the Annual Meeting of the Picture Archive Council of America (PACA,) also held in Chicago. This year, PictureHouse takes place on the same day as, and directly across the street from, the Annual Conference of the American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP.) Chicago area picture buyers should consider attending both events. The ASPP Conference, a morning event, offers panel discussions on digital image standards and “the changing image of the picture licensing business.” The PictureHouse trade show never disappoints in providing image buyers with a chance to meet new and old image suppliers and see the wide range of image sources available to them.
News
Paparazzi photographer arrested for extortion in Italy
The Italian authorities have arrested paparazzi photographer Fabrizio Corona on suspicion of having used compromising images of celebrities to extort money from the subjects. In a time-honored method used by the "photo mafia," less than honorable photographers photograph usually wealthy unsuspecting prominent persons in compromising circumstances. They then inform the subjects of the images which, if made public, would create unpleasantness for them. In exchange for a pile of cash, the photographer promises to keep the images from making their way to the front pages of gossip magazines.
News
Rugby and Australian Football media restrictions spark protests
The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and a coalition of the world's leading news agencies - including Agence France-Presse, The Associated Press, Reuters and Getty Images - protested against severe restrictions placed on press coverage of this year's Rugby World Cup in France.And in a separate action, WAN and the news agencies also protested to the Australian Football League against its refusal to provide media accreditation to global and foreign news organizations for any games in the 2007 season. The AFL has announced the creation of its own exclusive agency to provide the media with AFL images.
News
Citizen Image Launches ciSyndicate. Sell photos from your social network!
Citizen Image is an online tool for the distribution of user-generated photos to existing publications such as USA Today. They are announcing ciSyndicate, which includes their partnership with two image-sharing sites, "giving users the option to seamlessly sell images on Citizen Image," said their CEO Feargall Kenny. The two image sharing sites are third party social networks Pixpulse and Photagious. With these affiliations, Citizen Image has added 10,000 photos to their repository.
News
Jupiter posts 4q 06 numbers Revenue up, profit down
Jupiter Images announced its results for the end of 2006 today showing a 21% jump in revenue for the full year over 2005 to $137.5MM. The company’s revenue from its images division, which accounted for 78% of total revenue, actually grew by 32%, but this was partially offset by a drop in Online Media revenue. Nearly every expense category, however, grew at a faster rate during the year, leading to lower gross profit and operating profit margins. As expected, during today's conference call with analysts, the matter of the termination of the talks with Getty came up but CEO Alan Meckler would say only that Getty initiated the talks and the decision to discontinue them was mutual.
Editorials
Survey reveals royalty-free photos not popular with editorial buyers
The Big Bad Wolf of the stock photo industry, Royalty-Free, came along in the late 90's, shocking the photography world with rock-bottom bargain basement fees. Now, editorial photobuyers shy away from the too-commercial-looking images. "While RF opened excellent generic photography to graphic designers and publishers who normally could not afford top-level agency prices, it caused a clamor in the commercial stock photo arena," says Rohn Engh, director of PhotoSource International, who recently conducted a survey of 71 editorial photobuyers from magazine and book publishers. Photographers who expected to make a living from the images in their files feared and railed against RF.
News
Blink launches in Dubai as a portal for Middle East image buyers
Last year Celia Peterson began serving image buyers in the Middle East with the launch of arabianEye, a Dubai based stock photography collection sold direct at home and world-wide through distributors including Getty Images. Now Celia has launched Blink as a portal to distribute hundreds of thousands of rights-managed and royalty-free stock images to the Middle Eastern market along-side its home-grown brand arabianEye.
Features
Design Pics: where photographers are partners (Really!)
In the stock photo business, we have heard countless times that the managers and owners of stock photo agencies consider their photographers and artists "partners" in the business. Contractually, however, the artists have no true partner status with the companies that represent them. Many photographers have learned this the hard way when the companies they supply images to are sold. These "partners" get no share of the proceeds of the sale and, often, file integration delays with the new owner company cause their commissions to drop like a stone after the transaction. Not to mention the fact that their images may now be lost in a sea of content that the buyer represents, and the focused attention on a specific photographer's collection is lost.
News
Getty strengthens assignment service with launch of boutique agency “Orchard”
Getty has launched a new assignment agency called Orchard to meet what the company calls a “growing customer demand for streamlined customization.” Orchard will provide clients with all assignment-related services a client might need for a production from location scouting to travel logistics, managing budgets and hiring models, crew and, of course, photographers. The “boutique” assignment agency, as Getty refers to it, will deliver these services under two divisions: Orchard Artist Representation, which offers elite, award-winning photographers for commission based on their style, approach and specialty; and Orchard Global Assignment, which facilitates the commission of talent for projects driven by geographical location. The move fits with the strategy CEO Jonathan Klein referred to in his most recent conference call with analysts of providing every type of image licensing choice for every type of image buyer.
News
iView launches Getty Images submission plug-in
The London based digital asset cataloging company iView Multimedia Ltd. has just released a Getty Images iView Submission Utility allowing photographers to upload content directly to Getty Images. The plug-in automates the process by ensuring that image submissions conform to Getty Images submission standards and creates packages of images together with, metadata summaries and release forms according to be uploaded.
News
Introducing Celtiber a specialty archive from Spain and Portugal
A new stock photography site featuring images from Spain and Portugal has launched from Madrid Spain with a unique offering of Rights Managed (RM) images from Spain and Portugal. True to its roots, the new agency calls itself Celtiber, a name stemming from the Celtiberian people who were a kind of mix between the Celts and the Iberians considered to be the ancestors of modern Spaniards. The specialty niche collection is focused on places and events often missing from some of the bigger commercial libraries. In addition Celtiber’s founder David Guijarro stated that the library offers “pictures with a twist” and all files are available for immediate download or visitors can easily order prints of their favorite photos.
Editorials
A brief chat with stock photography veteran Ron Chapple
Ron Chapple, a successful photographer and entrepreneur who launched the innovative RF Thinkstock collection (Jupiterimages acquired Thinkstock in 2004) has launched a unique blog called ronshoots.com in which he shares his perspective on the profession of photography. The blog is a must-read for any aspiring photographer. He takes a "day-in-the-life" approach to the business, addressing all aspects of stock photography from hiring models to finding locations to technical issues with cameras, digital post-production work, to having the right open and always ready attitude. Given Ron's business achievements, professional photographers might also find his blog useful.
News
Virtual Picture Desk commuting on the Digital Railroad
The Virtual Picture Desk has announced that it will be working with Digital Railroad to store and manage the images from each of its 16 individual libraries in order to streamline its workflow and content syndication efforts. Currently The Virtual Picture Desk manages the editing and syndication for the Discovery Channel, DK Images, De Agostini, Japan Travel Bureau, the Irish Image and the Hoberman collections along with many others. The company plans to use the Digital Railroad platform to establish a unique branded archive for each of the collections, while maintaining administrative access to all collections with one unique member name and password.
News
Aurora Photos founds Select, a new assignment agency in NYC
Jose Azel, founder of Aurora Photos in Portland, Maine, has announced the opening of a new assignment agency called Select. David Laidler, who has extensive experience in editorial stock photography, will manage the agency out of offices in New York City. According to Azel, though the agency has its roots in the editorial business, they will work with both commercial and editorial clients.
News
LOOK Photography launches royalty free architecture collection
LOOK Photography, a specialist library from San Clemente California, has launched a new royalty free (RF) image collection featuring Home and Architectural imagery. The collection of 3,500 new images is focused exclusively upon Architecture, Interior and Exterior Design, Home Lifestyles, and the Home Environment. The images are available direct through http://www.lookphotoagency.com and the company is looking to expand its network of distributors.
News
Mark Butler, RF heavyweight moves to UpperCut Images
The UpperCut Images division of Punchstock announced today that Mark Butler has taken the position of Vice President in charge of Sales and Distribution. Originally founded by Punchstock owner Miles Gerstein as an RM collection, UpperCut Images will soon distribute a portion of its collection under the royalty free licensing model. Butler will manage worldwide distribution for the entire collection and oversee the launch of the new RF division.
Editorials
LIFE Magazine about to fold
Hardly anyone outside of North America has ever had a copy of Life in their hand but its reputation in many countries is almost legendary. The magazine mainly made an international name for itself as a platform for top-class photography and reportage. Now, it is – once again – due to cease publication: as Time Inc. announced to the New York Times, the last issue will appear on 20 April. The reason given is the decline in advertising revenues.
Editorials
Interview with iStockphoto Founder and CEO Bruce Livingstone
Recently I had the good pleasure of sharing a few drinks with Bruce Livingstone (the undisputed king of microstock) at a crowded noisy bar in Manhattan. At 35 years old Bruce Livingstone is a pioneer in the world of stock photography having created iStockphoto, the first successful micropayment stock licensing business. After selling iStockphoto to Getty images last year for $50 million, Bruce continued as the CEO of the business and appears to have retained much of the passion that drove him as an entrepreneur. As one might expect Livingstone has become a very busy executive who graciously consented to answer a few questions about his recent success and future plans for the business.
News
Newscom to carry BBC Magazines content in the Americas
Washington DC based Newscom, an aggregator of stock photos, graphics, illustrations and news and feature stories has added BBC Magazines to its list of suppliers. The magazine division of the British Broadcasting Corporation publishes, among other magazines, two leading food and lifestyle magazines in the UK, “Good Food,” and “olive.” Newscom will have the rights to license content including photographs and stories from those magazines in North, Central and South America and will add content from other BBC publications to its syndicated offerings later this year.
News
ThoughtEquity signs March of Time collection of historic footage
The stock footage supplier ThoughtEquity Motion has signed an agreement to represent the March of Time collection of historic newsreels and television documentaries originally produced by Time, Inc. and now owned by HBO. The March of Time footage collection includes over 70 million feet of film and covers the most significant world events between 1913 and 1967. The archive includes a wide variety of both serious and light-hearted subjects from footage of the devastation wrought by the bombing of London during World War II, to Albert Einstein smoking his pipe, actors such as Carol Lombard and Bob Hope signing autographs to Arturo Toscanini conducting a radio orchestra.
