Archives: February, 2008
News
Getty releases 4Q07 results Revenue Up, Profit Down
On the company’s 4Q earnings call, CEO Jonathan Klein focused on the sequential quarterly improvements in the company’s performance. From the 3rd quarter to the 4th quarter, revenue has grown 4% in every segment of the business. He acknowledged that year over year comparisons were less flattering to the company (1% on a currency neutral basis,) but, he argued, the improvements from the 3rd to the 4th quarters of 2007 prove the company’s efforts to right the ship – stabilize the creative stills business and grow other parts of the company – are paying off.
News
ASPP NY Film Series presents: The Photographer, His Wife, Her Lover
As part of its ongoing film series, the American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP) New York Chapter is presenting the film: The Photographer, His Wife, Her Lover, a fascinating documentary from director Paul Yule chronicling the life of photographer O. Winston Link, who was known for his lovely black-and-white pictures of America’s steam trains.
News
Photolibrary back to business after Index Stock commission woes
Having wrestled with a PR nightmare over its handling of back commissions owed to photographers of Index Stock imagery, the agency it acquired late in 2006, photolibrary has gotten back to the business of licensing images. In a February 1st letter from CEO Glenn Parker to contributors with the heading “Update for Index Stock Artists,” the company addresses marketing plans for the coming year, which will entail eliminating the use of the Index Stock web-site and concentrating on efforts to strengthen the photolibrary brand. The letter also offers an explanation of where the accounting matter stands vis-à-vis pre-acquisition commissions owed.
News
Getty Images releases second edition of MAP Report covering visual trends for 2008
Getty Images, The world’s largest stock licensing company has released the second edition of the MAP Report (what Makes A Picture). The Map report, created by Getty Images global creative research team, provides insight into visual trends that will change the look of mass-communication. This year´s report is entitled AspEn, with a strong focus on environmental consciousness, or ideals of “aspirational environmentalism” as it relates to marketers who are attempting to “out-green” each other. The report states that in 2008 brands will have to be more aware of careless uninspiring use of environmental visual clichés. The report is available for purchase as an English-language PDF for (US $750, £400).
Features
Visual case study: Cadillac CTS
General Motor’s Cadillac brand has been struggling in recent years to appeal to a new generation of luxury car buyers who seem more interested in status-boosting foreign luxury cars (Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Etc…) than the same old luxury car their grandparents drove. To counter this perception GM has taken drastic measures by pulling half of Cadillac’s $300 million-plus ad business from Burnett, who has managed Cadillac advertising for more than 75 years, and placed it with Boston-based Modernista!, the agency that recently revitalized the Hummer brand. Meg Asaro and Karen D’Silva from Spark Visual Research take a closer look at the imagery used by Cadillac to help lower the average age of Cadillac drivers, restore the company’s brand image, and convert new luxury automobile owners.
News
Adobe Stock Photos to be discontinued
Adobe has announced Adobe Stock Photos, the service integrated into Adobe Bridge, will be discontinued as of April 1, 2008. An FAQ is posted to address common questions (especially if you’re an ASP user), and there are uninstallers for Mac and Windows that let you remove ASP from Bridge if you’d like.
News
Dreamstime opens door for un-released editorial imagery
Dreamstime has expanded its policy to accept non-model released and non-property released images that are directly pertinent to current events, news and political stories, and social and cultural scenes. The micro-stock company has created a new license for editorial use and encourages photographers to shoot current news events for submission to their data-base. Traditionally micro-stock companies have carefully managed their contributors submissions and avoided accepting imagery of recognizable people without model releases.
News
Ableimages launches new rights-managed image collection
Ableimages a small stock production house was founded in 2005 by stock industry veterans David Harrigan, who has held senior roles at Imagestate, Corbis, and Getty Images, and co-founder Gabriel Giglio. The small agency whose mantra is to “keep it small, lean and keen” is now announcing that it has launched a new rights-managed (RM) image collection to be sold through a global network of distributors.
News
Keywording.com develops method for converting captions into keywords
Keywording.com, a Portland Oregon based firm that specializes in keywording images for stock agencies and independent artists, has announced that it has developed a method to efficiently convert photograph captions into relevant keywords. The process was developed by the company’s managing Director Kirsti O’Sullivan, in response to a growing demand get images to market faster and at less cost. “Most photographs will have a caption. We can take that caption and jump-start you towards great keywords at a very reasonable price,” states O’Sullivan.
News
Deborah Free takes over Picturehouse US
Deborah Free, who many stock photo industry colleagues know through her work for various agencies and at industry events, has taken a leading role in the picture buyers event business, Picturehouse. Free has acquired the exclusive rights to the Picturehouse name and business in North America.
News
Icon Sports Media utilizes Spitfire Photo platform to launch new site
Icon Sports Media, a specialty library of more than a million sports-related images based in southern California, has announced that it has launched a new site utilizing Spitfire Photo’s technology platform for online image management and sales. The new site located at IconSportsMedia.com includes over 1 million images covering more than 100 unique sports worldwide. In addition the new platform allows Icon Sports Media’s photographers to utilize a quick upload and syndication utility making new images available to buyers faster than ever before.
News
Image thief steals photos from Flickr to sell on iStockphoto
According to a news report posted by Stephen Shankland on Webware.com (a CNET web-site,) Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir, a professional photographer from Iceland and a user of the Flickr photo-sharing site, has discovered several of her images were posted on iStockphoto by a third party using the screen name “vulcanacar.” iStock has shut down vulcanacar’s portfolio and removed his or her account from the site.
Features
Photojournalist Felix Masi documents the post election violence in Kenya
Felix Masi, an accomplished photojournalist and native Kenyan has been documenting the post election violence in Kenya. The haunting images images reflect the chaos that has overtaken the country after claims of rigging in the recent general elections (held on December 27, 2007) between President Kibaki of the Party of National Unity and the Orange Democratic Movement candidate Raila Odinga. “Having witnessed and recorded images of suffering, killings and poverty in Kenya, the flawed election should be a wake up call for African leaders, the cause of violence in Kenya is triggered by marginalization and lack of equal distribution” states Masi.
News
Two films with historical stock footage win at BAFTA Awards
The film ‘Atonement’ won for Best Film and ‘This is England’ won in the Best British Film category. Both received awards at the 2008 BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Awards held in London’s Royal Opera House. Both movies feature a selection of news, music and history content sourced from the Granada, ITN, British Pathe and Reuters catalogues, all licensed from the stock footage agency ITN Source.
News
News Brief: Latin Stock enters RF market
The Latin Stock Group, a consortium of stock agencies in Spain and most South American countries, has become a new entrant to the specialty RF category of Latino lifestyles with the Latin Stock Collection. The organization that has represented suppliers from around the globe for two decades now produces its own RF imagery for export through other distributors.
News
Corbis makes marketing push for its micro-stock site SnapVillage
Corbis has made a new marketing push to promote its answer to the micro-stock phenomenon, SnapVillage, which the company launched late in the second quarter of 2007. Corbis says it will now start to “aggressively target customers, including introducing its first advertisements, launching direct marketing activities and expanding its search engine marketing.” As a relative late-comer to the micro-stock business, SnapVillage will now compete in earnest with the Getty’s iStockphoto, Jupiter’s Stockxpert, and several well-known independent businesses in the micro-stock space including Dreamstime, Fotolia and LuckyOliver.
News
News Brief: LuckyOliver lowers pay-out threshold to $25
The micro-stock and mid-stock company, LuckyOliver has lowered its pay-out threshold to contributors from $100 to $25, the lowest in the industry. In addition, for the remainder of this month, the company will reduce the threshold to $1.
News
News Brief: PhotoAlto opens sales office in the big apple
The Paris-based royalty-free image supplier, PhotoAlto, has opened a sales office in New York City. Marci Gershel will run the new office on West 15th Street in Manhattan. The company, has had a presence in the US market through it’s office in St. Petersburg, Florida for several years but wants to establish closer working relationships with the bigger client-base in New York City.
News
New Zealand’s More Images is launching Keedup as separate keywording business
Three years ago More Images, a New Zealand based stock photo agency, launched a keywording service called Keedup to serve the needs of photographers and photo agencies from around the world. Now the company is launching Keedup Ltd as a separate privately-owned company in order to better promote growth of the new business. “With our relatively low wages, and high education standards we are delivering keywording at the standard of US and UK companies, but at a greatly reduced price” states the company’s founder Kevin Townsend.
News
Ian CheeWah appointed Managing Director of ITN Source in North America
ITN Source, a leading provider stock footage from the UK has announced the appointment of Ian CheeWah to the post of Managing Director for its North American business. With this appointment ITN Source is attempting to reach new customers in the US market with its archive of over 800,000 hours of footage including collections such as Reuters and Fox Movietone. “The US is a prime consumer of archived video, accounting for nearly 45% of global sales, and it is the hub of future growth worldwide,” said Mr. CheeWah. “As the market continues to heat up, this role driving ITN Source’s business in America was extremely attractive, offering the opportunity to ensure ITN Source becomes the industry leader.”
News
Getty to represent Bob Thomas Sports Photography and Popperfoto
Getty Images, London, has announced the addition to its offerings of the historical image archive Popperfoto which includes the Bob Thomas Sports Photography collection. Bob Thomas, himself, owns Popperfoto which he has, up to now, marketed through various distribution partners world-wide from their offices in a small village outside of London.
News
Mike Watson launches Moodboard Unlimited where the image buyer sets the pricing
Mike Watson, who is best known as the founder of the royalty free agency Digital Vision (which sold in 2005 to Getty Images for $165m) has been experimenting with stock image pricing with his latest ventures Mike Watson Images and Moodboard. The company has experimented with pricing Royalty Free images much higher than the current market value at over $1000 and also dabbled in microstock with images as low as a few dollars each. Now the company has announced the launch of Moodboard Unlimited, a new stock photography site where the buyer sets the pricing based on what they think it is worth. According to Mike Watson “It may seem like a crazy idea, and the creative industry might think there’s a catch, but there’s not! Pay what you want!”
Features
Mr. Stock Smarty Pants answers questions about fair royalties
Dear Mr. Stock Smarty Pants: I have been reading your columns in About The Image and think they’re great. I’m a photography student who is hoping to graduate soon and get into the stock photo business. My problem is this: I have never signed a contract with a stock agency and I don’t know what sort of arrangement would be fair regarding royalties on sales of my pictures. Is this something that varies a lot? Do I have to be careful? Can you brake down what sorts of splits are typical in the business today?
Sincerely yours,
Christopher in Atlanta
News
Photoshelter names Andrew Fingerman as VP of Marketing and Genevieve Harley as Director of Sales
PhotoShelter an archiving and marketing solution used by professional photographers to host their online archives has announced that it has appointed Andrew Fingerman to the post of Vice President of Marketing and Genevieve Harley to be the Director of Sales. The new hires are part of an initiative where PhotoShelter executives have committed to spending $1 million to promote the PhotoShelter Collection (a stock photography collection from the company’s roster of nearly 20,000 photographers) to creative professionals who buy stock photography.
News
PLUS expands board of directors
The Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS,) an international non-profit organization dedicated to creating standard image usage rights terms and definitions, has added a number of board positions in order to broaden the scope of its leadership to include various interested trade groups. The new board members include Clement Mok, designer, consultant and former creative director of Apple Computer, Inc., and Alan Newman, Chief of the Division of Imaging & Visual Services, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., among others.
News
Getty adds film scores from Lionsgate to its music archives
Getty Images continues to pursue avenues of growth apart from its principal business activity of licensing still photography. On the audio content licensing front, Getty has just signed a deal with the independent film production company, Lionsgate, whose most recent feature film ‘3:10 to Yuma,’ received an Oscar nomination for its musical score. The deal includes scores from other well-known Lionsgate films ‘Monster’s Ball’ and ‘Crash’ as well as music from the company’s television productions.
News
Getty makes deal for $2.4 Billion
In a press-release issued today, Getty Images has announced an agreement to be bought by the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman LLC. The reported value of the deal of $2.4BB (or $34.00 per share) exceeds by 60% the originally estimated selling price of $1.5BB quoted by the New York Times when Getty first made public its intention to seek "strategic alternatives." According to the release, Getty’s Board of Directors has agreed to the deal and will recommend its approval to shareholders. The company expects to complete the transaction during the second quarter of 2008.
News
The Cover Story launches new website
The Cover Story (TCS) an editorial photo agency based in Amsterdam, has announced the launch of a new version of its website located at TheCoverStory.com. As the name implies The Cover Story was founded by people with solid editorial and magazine publishing experience, and the new site is geared towards the demands of magazine producers as a one stop shop for features and editorial stock. Key areas of the new site include the Showroom, Exclusives, Events Calendar and Features Library consisting of 19 different categories.
News
Panther Media teams up with DigitalPhoto to sponsor photo competition on Climate Change
Panther Media, A micro-payment stock photography company based in Munich Germany, is sponsoring a photo competition in conjunction with the German magazine DigitalPhoto to create images highlighting global climate change. As noted in the following exceprt from the company’s website the agency has been spurred on by the plight of its namesake, the Black Panther. “We have sad news for you: our heraldic animal, the Black Panther, that should normally stroll through the Asian jungle as described in Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, is threatened with extinction. The recent climate change is responsible for this tragedy.”
News
BAPLA picture fair opens to non-member agencies
The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies (BAPLA) will host its seventh annual Picture Buyers Fair (PBF) at London’s Business Design Centre on May 7 and 8. In a change of policy that promises to enhance the variety of suppliers at the fair, the trade organization has invited any and all picture agencies to exhibit at the show, rather than restrict participation to BAPLA member agencies, only, as they have in the past.
News
Alamy terminates contributor contract over model release issue
According to a posting on the company blog, Alamy has terminated the contract of a contributor for falsely stating that an image had a model release. Alamy claims that it acted after the agency was contacted by a a person who was the subject of an image marked as released but was confident he had never signed one. When asked to supply proof of the model release the contributing photographer admitted having not received a release but was maybe hoping to track the person down later.
News
Jupitermedia´s microstock site Stockxpert.com now offering Footage
Jupitermedia Corporation (Nasdaq: JUPM) has announced that Stockxpert.com, a micropayment site competing with Getty’s iStockphoto, is now offering royalty-free footage. The site features both standard and high definition video as well as Flash video priced at $10 to $50 depending on the resolution required.
News
Ian Martin and Lorena Ros win Getty grants for editorial photography
Getty Images has awarded grants of $20K each to two editorial photographers for their outstanding works of social and cultural commentary through imagery. Ian Martin of Oakland, California, and Lorena Ros were selected from a pool of 139 applicants from 29 countries. The winners will also receive collaborative support from Getty to pursue their respective projects.
