Archives: November, 2007
News
A totally new search experience at BrightQube
The stock photo industry is rife with claims of “new” technological advances designed to make the process of finding images much more intuitive and easier for the picture researcher. In essence, however, these features involve minor improvements to an on-line search method that, over all, has changed very little for the last several years. Recently, BrightQube, a relatively new company on the stock photo scene has launched a new search technology that can truly back up the claims to being “new” and different from all the others.
News
Getty releases 3Q07 financials
In his opening remarks to investors on Getty’s 3Q07 conference call, CEO Jonathan Klein referred to the corporation as a “broad-based digital media company.” The term reveals how Getty management now strives to remake itself in the face of the changing landscape of the image licensing business. The company’s profit results, on the other hand, reveal how it really isn’t “broad-based,” at least not yet. The lion’s share of Getty’s revenue continues to come from still image licensing, a business segment that appears to be contracting at Getty, while the new businesses it has entered have yet to help the bottom line.
Features
Give your digital camera wi-fi with the new Eye-Fi SD card
"Has anyone seen my SD adaptor?", "Hmm...which one of these USB devices can I unplug?", "Babe...will you upload these photos from Lisa's birthday party?". Never ask yourself these troubling questions again. Photojojo brings us the incredible automagically uploading SD card adaptor. Amaze your friends and family alike with this seemingly magic device.
News
Obituary: Jane Kinne, friend
The photography community mourns the loss of Jane Kinne, who passed away early Saturday morning. Mrs. Kinne spent over fifty years as a photo agent, consultant to photographers and agencies, and an expert on copyright and other legal issues concerning images and image reproduction. Along the way, she brought her boundless and positive energy to bear on the creation and management of several photo industry trade associations. Most importantly, as a good friend and mentor, she gently but firmly coaxed from those of us lucky enough to know and work with her, an eagerness to bring our own positive energy to the business at hand.
News
Cultura bringing ‘European-flavoured’ RF images to the world
A new specialist library has launched in London featuring European-flavoured royalty free stock imagery. The company is distributing its first set of more than 5000 images through traditional stock licensing channels including Getty Images, Corbis, Jupiter images, Veer, Masterfile, Photolibrary, Etc. “In a market full of generic looking imagery our goal is to raise the creative bar and to produce outstanding photography for our distributors and their customers. Our other goal is to create a community for our photographers, one that encourages interaction and the sharing of ideas” states Anthony Harris CEO of Cultura Images.
News
Getty Images acquires the Tim Graham Royal Photo Library
Getty Images has announced that it has acquired the image library of Tim Graham a photographer who has been covering the British royal family for more than 30 years. This unique collection, spans four generations of the royal family and contains over 200,000 images. Graham has over the course of his career gained unprecedented access to the royal family including official events, one-on-one portrait sessions, and behind-the-scenes moments. Several of his books of royal photographs have been international bestsellers. The collection will be housed at Getty Images’ Hulton Archive in London.
News
Corbis acquires Veer
Yesterday, Corbis announced it has purchased Veer, the RM and RF production and distribution company based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The stunning move solidifies Corbis’ position as a leader in the creative stills market. It also makes Corbis more like its two main competitors in the “big three,” Getty Images and Jupiterimages. Now, all three companies have multiple platforms for marketing to buyers at various price-points.
News
Thought Equity Motion expands through global partnerships
Thought Equity Motion (TEM), a leading provider of RM and RF footage, has launched a global partnership program giving the company direct access to markets throughout Europe and South America. The company has signed TIPS Images & Film in Italy; Central Order in Germany, Austria and Switzerland; and Latin Stock in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, to its Premier Partner Program. The move completes TEM’s expansion into all major markets having acquired in August Film World, an Australian company with a sales network throughout the Asia Pacific region.
Features
Visual case study: Target ‘Do 5% Good’ campaign
One of the major success stories that marketers have clung to in recent years is the worlds second largest discount retailer Target Corporation. This is a classic David and Goliath story with Target ($52 billion in 2006) Vs Walmart ($315 billion in 2006). Against such a foe many others have been crushed (Kmart, Montgomery Ward, and others) but Target not only survived but thrived by changing the rules and focusing not just on the lowest price but also on designer merchandise creating a new market for ‘value-priced cool’. Meg Asaro and Karen D’Silva from Spark Visual Research take a closer look at the images used by Target in one of its most recent campaigns called “Do-gooder” or “Do 5% Good” where customers are rewarded with the knowledge that 5% of all income is re-invested back into their community as a charitable contribution.
News
Moodboard sells $1000 royalty-free image
moodboard, a recently launched website that combines low-priced micro-stock imagery as well as premium-priced RF, has announced the sale of its first royalty-free (RF) image for more than $1000. The company states in its press release that they believe it is the most expensive single image sale in the royalty free industry. The sale comes four months after launching moodboard last July. The image depicted here, comes from the moodboard+ collection where prices range from $135 to $2125.
Features
Mr. Stock Smarty Pants speaks about Google Images
First of all, Mr. Stock Smarty Pants (or, as I’m sometime known, MSSP) wants to acknowledge the editors and management of About The Image (ATI) for their obvious brilliance and eminent good taste in bringing me on board. It’s not as if I need a job, but I thought this might be good for a few laughs and the boys who run ATI seem pretty desperate for some high-quality content. And to you, the readers of About The Image, I just want to say that the vast treasure trove of opinions and information about the stock industry which resides in my brain is now at your disposal, or at least until such time as ATI bounces one of their checks to me. Send me your questions…and don’t worry, NO question is too difficult for me to answer.
News
Jupiter releases 3Q07 results
News
Mary Evans now representing the National Magazine Company
The UK historical image specialty library, Mary Evans Picture Library, has announced exclusive rights to represent images from the National Magazine Company archive. The collection includes imagery from many popular magazines including such publications as The Queen, Good Housekeeping, Harper's Bazaar, Nash's magazine, and many other related periodicals. The first set of images from the National Magazine Collection is currently available and further content will be added in weekly installments from the archives which date back as far as the 1860s.
News
Crestock holds Photoshop contest for designers
The Norwegian micro-stock company, Crestock, plans to hold a design contest that will require contestants to create designs using Photoshop and featuring a pre-selected set of images from the company’s archive. Winners of each of the four-rounds of the contest will be chosen by popular vote on the site and a jury of digital artists. Contestants will compete for the grand prize, a Quad Core Mac Pro with Dual 30" HD Cinema LCD displays.
News
Westend61 launches revised website with new digital magazine
Westend61, a Royalty Free stock production house based in Munich Germany, has announced that it will now be producing a digital magazine called “Westendstories” to appear on its new website which has just undergone a major redesign. The company intends to release Six issues each year featuring photographs, productions, and campaigns with a strong emphasis on the visual experience.
News
Corbis realigns global sales operation
Corbis has announced the lay-off of 125 employees in an effort to streamline its customer service operations. The lay-offs affect all regions of the company’s global operations and will entail the fading out of some local offices and replacing them with regional sales centers and outside sales teams for which the company is actively recruiting.
Features
Book Review: Freeze Frame by Douglas Kirkland
Freeze Frame by Douglas KirklandGlitterati Inc., October 2007
352 pages/hardcover/450+ photographs/$50.00
Douglas Kirkland intrigues film and photography lovers with a fifty-year roundup of rarely seen intimate shots of actors and crewmembers taken on more than a hundred motion picture sets. Freeze Frame gets off to an auspicious start in the 1960s and accelerates without pausing right through the millennium.
News
Getty Images refines $49 Web-Resolution license
Getty Images, Inc. (NYSE: GYI) has announced that it has refined the terms of its controversial new $49 Web-resolution license for rights-ready (RR) and rights-managed (RM) images. The changes come after concerns were raised by photographers and photographer’s groups who felt the previous terms were too broad and unclear. Among the changes the new license now restricts the customer not just by the file size they are given but also by the display size where the user is only permitted to display the image online at sizes up to 150 x 180 pixels (similar in size to the images displayed in this article). Further, the new license terms restrict usage to a single page on one website, to 10,000 recipients for a single promotional email for RM, and to a single email blast for RR. The licensing parameters for royalty-free (RF) images remain unchanged.
News
‘Sputnik Mania’ Wins IDA ABCNEWS VideoSource award for best use of news footage
Sputnik Mania, a historical documentary chronicling the tumultuous early days of the space race has won the IDA ABCNEWS VideoSource Award for Best Use of News Footage in a Documentary. ABCNEWS VideoSource, in partnership with the International Documentary Association (IDA), has presented this award annually since 1997 to a film or video that best uses news footage as an integral component of the work.
News
News Brief: Layoffs at OnRequest
OnRequest Images has reportedly laid off eight employees as part of a restructuring in an effort to achieve profitability. Vice President of Sales Mark Mansfield was among the staff members let go. OnRequest, which was originally founded five years ago with a controversial custom stock business model has changed its model to one of assisting corporate clients to source brand-relevant imagery.
News
News Brief: NI Syndication chooses Capture software
The UK’s largest publisher of national newspapers has chosen Capture Ltd’s software for management of its syndication service. News International, the publisher of such notable UK newspapers as The Sun, The Times, The News of the World and The Sunday Times will use Capture Office Online (COO) to streamline and automate its sales process for both pictures and text.
Features
Interview with Alamy CEO James West
The UK-based image portal, Alamy, recently took the unprecedented step for a privately held company of releasing its revenue figures to the public. The figures show a company on an impressive trajectory having grown total sales from US$129K in 2001 to US$24.2MM in 2006. Founded by its CEO James West and his uncle, Mike Fischer, in 1999, Alamy also manages to dedicate significant sums to medical research and invests in technology to reduce the company’s carbon footprint. We spoke to James West recently to learn more about the thinking behind Alamy’s unique approach to the stock photo business.
Features
Book Review: Extraordinary Circumstances by David Hume Kennerly
Extraordinary Circumstances by David Hume Kennerly
The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford
University of Texas Press, October 2007
224 pages/hardcover/125 tritone photographs/$49.95
Extraordinary Circumstances documents the unusual life acceleration of Gerald R. Ford as he takes his place in history during times of heightened political turmoil. As Ford’s personal photographer, David Hume Kennerly, who has a rather nonchalant shooting style, set the White House darkroom standard in the 1970s by developing fly-on-the-wall shots of the powerful comings and goings of a U.S. President. There isn’t a grip-and-grin or was-my-face-red snap to be found in this book. Dave, as Ford called him, was a trusted friend.
News
News Brief: Andy Hill joins photolibrary
The Sydney-based stock photo company, photolibrary, has announced the appointment of industry veteran Andy Hill to the position of Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the North American region. Hill comes to photolibrary with considerable stock photo sales management experience, having served as Director of Sales for Getty Images New York, Director of Sales for Associated Press and more recently as VP of Sales for Punchstock and Uppercut Images.
News
NordicPhotos acquires Norwegian picture agency GV-Press
NordicPhotos has announced the acquisition of GV-Press, one of the largest picture agencies in Norway, and the fifth stock photography company to be acquired since 2003. The company has stated plans to continue operating GV-Press as before allowing the agency to build its business in Norway and further establish itself as one of the leading image collections in the Nordic.countries. GV-Press was founded in 1988 by Gerd Verdu and currently represents more than 50 collections in the Norwegian market and providing with an established clientèle from many of the major magazine publishers in the region.
News
Dreamstime announces winner of “Shoot With Ron Chapple” contest
Tomasz Trojanowski of Sosnowiec, Poland, has won a trip to Maui, Hawaii, to participate in a workshop given by veteran stock shooter Ron Chapple. The micro-stock company, Dreamstime, held the contest among hundreds of its leading contributors for the all-expenses-paid learning experience. Trojanowski has been a Dreamstime contributor since 2004 and has submitted an average of 80 images per month since joining.
Features
Book Review: Iraq: The Space Between by Christoph Bangert
Iraq: The Space Between by Christoph Bangert
powerHouse Books, October 2007
118 pages/hardcover/74 color photographs/$35.00
Christoph Bangert enters an allegorical hallway in his photographic essay, Iraq: The Space Between. Unable to turn back, he must decide which door to open next. As he anticipates views beyond each new portal, he occupies himself by taking pictures inside the corridor. While languishing in the slipstream, Bangert captures the places where things like socks go when they don’t come out of the dryer.
News
Keystone to be acquired by Swiss and Austrian media companies
Austria Presse Agentur (APA) of Vienna and Schweizerische Depeschenagentur (SDA) of Berne have announced plans to acquire Keystone AG as of January 1, 2008 with APA taking a 60% interest and SDA, 40%. The Zurich-based Keystone, Switzerland’s largest stock photo company employs about 90 people and generates annual revenue of approximately Euro.10MM (US$15MM.) The parties have not disclosed the terms of the deal which is still subject to approval by antitrust regulators.
News
Cruise ship sinking in Antarctic waters a lucky wind-fall for new agency
The misfortune of the passengers and crew aboard the cruise ship Explorer became a piece of good luck for a relatively new stock agency specializing in marine biology. A vessel carrying a photographer with the agency Splashdown Direct happened to be just fifty-five kilometers away and was one of the first to arrive on the scene to assist in the rescue effort when the Explorer sent out distress signals on November 22nd. Photographer Michael Nolan’s images of the rescue and sinking ship were seen in newspapers and on TV and internet news outlets around the globe.
Features
Mr. Stock Smarty Pants speaks of too many photographers, too many pictures
Mr. Stock Smarty Pants is pleased to report to you that he has been deluged with questions about the stock picture industry since his bi-weekly column of wit and wisdom debuted in About the Image a fortnight ago. And in this, my post-Thanksgiving attempt to educate the unwashed masses, I have deigned to take on an array of questions from a rather confused fellow named Jonty (but what kind of name is “Jonty,” anyway???):
“Dear Mr. Stock Smarty Pants: Why has the internet and the digital age blown the market for stock images into a million tiny pieces. If the market has grown why have prices come down? Are there too many photographers? Too many pictures? Too many distributors? How and when will it change?”
News
Getty consolidating channel, running test in the Netherlands
Getty Images’ RF distributors in the Netherlands learned yesterday that their territory will be the location of an interesting test on the part of Getty images. The move comes as part of an on-going effort to consolidate the channel business, world-wide where Getty has ended its distribution agreements with over 100 channel resellers in 2007 and, the company says, is focusing its efforts on partnering with only its performing channel distributors. The test in the Netherlands entails ending its agreements with all its distributors there in order to assess the added value the distributors bring vis-à-vis Getty’s wholly-owned office in that territory. The Netherlands distributors affected are Van Beek Images and Image Select.
