Archives: November, 2008
News
Photolibrary now distributing healthcare imagery from Medicimage
Medicimage, a specialist library from the UK, featuring a medical & healthcare stock photography collection has announced a distribution partnership with Photolibrary. Terms of the deal give Photolibrary exclusive rights to market Medicimage content in the United Kingdom and non-exclusive rights in United States, Australia, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, The Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand. “This is a unique agreement which brings together the respective unrivalled strengths of specialist photojournalism and international marketing and distribution of both companies; it also introduces specifically into the UK market, for the first time in many years, a collection of much-needed fresh, original and newsworthy medical images,” stated David Davis, chairman of Medicimage.
News
Electric Lane now offering training in keywording and output of digital images
Electric Lane, an imaging consultancy located in the UK, has announced that it is running two new workshops in London next January. The first workshop lead by Liisa Kaakinen on January 15th is focused on Keywording for image professionals with instruction on how to attain consistent keywording utilizing keywording schemas, controlled vocabularies and thesauri, and productive methods of captioning and keywording. Trainer Liisa Kaakinen is an experienced keywording specialist, previously Head of Metadata at Amana Productions, and now in charge of keywording and thesauri for Amana image distribution in the West. ‘Liisa helps specialist agencies set up suitable schemas and has a deep understanding of the needs of global agencies for secondary distribution. Keywording training is in short supply. We are delighted to be able to offer this course,’ states Sarah Saunders, Director of Electric Lane.
News
Imvest acquires Idols celebrity stock photography agency
Imvest Ltd, an investment company owned by David Jacobs and James Claydon, has announced that it has acquired Idols a celebrity stock photography company based in London. This follows Imvest’s recent acquisition of London Features in August 2008 another celebrity photo agency with over 8 million images going back to the 1940’s. In the past 20+ years of operation Idols has developed an archive of more than a million images focused on high-end music and celebrity portraiture.
News
KeyIndia Graphics partners with Pictory AG to offer outsourced imaging services in Germany
KeyIndia Graphics, an Indian company offering photo retouching, scanning, keywording and digital asset management solutions has announced a new partnership with Pictory AG in Mainz, Germany to offer out-sourced services in the German market. Pictory AG is a startup founded by Clemens Molinari, a well-known veteran in the German prepress and imaging business. Molinaristates “interest in
outsourcing services in the imaging business will grow enormously. We are very happy we found a partner renowned for quality and reliability because this is the key issue in this business.”
News
StockShop launches OnDemand assignment service
Stockshop, a small boutique rights-managed (RM) stock agency from Boston has announced that it has launched an OnDemand service allowing buyers to commission assignment photography. “Increasingly, our clients were looking for the flexibility and control of a custom shoot, without the intensive manpower and expense.” stated Maggie Hunt, President and Owner of StockShop LLC. “On Demand provides creative professionals with fresh solutions to their image needs.”
News
Dreamstime reaches 4 million images and 1 million users
Dreamstime, a Brentwood Tennessee based micro-payment stock photography business, has announced that it is celebrating a two-fold achievement. First the company has attained 1 Million registered users supported by a growing collection that has recently topped the 4 Million mark doubling its library of images in less than 12 months. “Our success is based on an absolute supply and demand premise; you need images for buyers and buyers to increase the demand for images,” states Serban Enache, CEO and co-founder of Dreamstime.com.
News
Shutterstock reaches milestone of 5 Million Images
Shutterstock, a New York City based micro-payment stock photography subscription service, has announced that it has attained a new milestone surpassing 5 million images in its collection growing at a rate of 70,000 images per week. The company also recently touted that it has surpassed 100,000 editorial images. “Since January, we have added over 2 million new royalty-free images to our library, and our weekly library growth rate has recently reached more than 70,000 new images per week,” said Jon Oringer, founder and CEO of Shutterstock.
News
BAPLA appoints Simon Cliffe to post of Executive Director
The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies (BAPLA), a trade association for picture libraries in the UK with more than 380 members, has announced that it has concluded it search for an Executive Director with tha appointment of Simon Cliffe. Cliffe will assume the post, vacated by Linda Royles earlier this year after 10 years in that role, in early 2008. Commenting on his appointment Simon said; “Representing this industry during such a time of change represents a challenge that for me, no good leader with any self belief could have turned down. The first two or three waves of the digital explosion are behind us but I believe there’s plenty more to come. If we can embrace that properly and in a timely manner, we can not only ride any storm thrown at us by the credit crunch but also build an extremely exciting future for this industry. The plans for BAPLA are ambitious, the members of BAPLA are talented and I can’t wait to get started”
News
Picture-House NY Gaining Steam
This year’s annual picture buyer fair in New York City broke records for vendor participation and buyer attendance. The eight-year old event, run by PictureHouse Marketing US, LLC, took place on October 29th at the Altman Building in Chelsea and attracted over 100 stock photo companies. Most importantly, the number of stock photo users and buyers exceeded 850, a nearly 25% increase from the previous year with more ad-agency personnel as opposed to editorial buyers in the mix.
Jupiter records a $22.6MM Loss for 3Q08
On the heels of the announcement of an agreement for Getty Images to purchase Jupiter Media’s image division, Jupiter announced its 3rd quarter 2008 results. The company saw total sales drop by 11% from $$34.8MM in the 3rd quarter of ‘07 to $31MM, this year. On an unusually brief conference call with analysts about the third quarter results, CEO Alan Meckler stated that the poor performance was due to wide-spread problems in the general economy. “...but we’re doing something about it,” he added, referring to the Getty deal. Beyond that, Meckler said he would have no comment about the proposed sale of Jupiter Images.
News
VIEW Pictures hosting Photographers’ Open Day
London based VIEW Pictures, a specialty stock photography library with more than a decade of experience offering architecture and interior design imagery, has announced that it is hosting an event called ‘Photographers’ Open Day’ on the 25th of November. The Open Day has been organised to allow View Pictures to reach new photographers and provide artists with a chance to meet the team, and network with View’s leading photographers.
News
McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Pearson, adopt PLUS Image Licensing Standards
The Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS,) an international non-profit organization dedicated to creating standard image usage rights terms and definitions, has announced that tree major publisher have announced that they will adopt the PLUS Picture Licensing Glossary definitions in their contracts. The three publishers, McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Pearson, have also committed to encouraging image suppliers to begin embedding PLUS license metadata in all images within one year. “The PLUS standards benefit publishers and their suppliers by simplifying and clarifying the process of licensing and managing images. We are in the process of implementing PLUS standards, and we would find it very useful for our image suppliers to adopt PLUS standards as well.” stated Bonnie Beacher, Senior Director of Contracts, Copyrights and Permissions at McGraw-Hill Education.
News
Fotosearch acquires micro-payment company Can Stock Photo
In a message to its membership community Can Stock Photo, a micro-payment founded by Duncan Enman in Halifax, Canada, has announced that it has been acquired by Fotosearch a royalty-free stock photography portal in Waukesha, WI. Similar to when Getty acquired iStockphoto, Fotosearch has decided to continue operating Can Stock Photo as a separate company Enman, who created Can Stock Photo while a university student in Nova Scotia, Canada, will remain involved with Can Stock Photo.
News
ArabianEye produces medical, vacation, luxury lifestyle, and youth RM collections
ArabianEye, a stock photography agency based in Dubai and specializing in imagery of the Arab and Islamic world, has announced that it has produced four new specitly rights-managed (RM) collection on such topics as medical, vacation, luxury lifestyle, and youth. Each the new collections features approximately 1000 images that have been produced and are wholly- owned by arabianEye.
News
Africa Media Online conducts African Photo Entrepreneur Program for photographers
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Africa Media Online, the parent company of Africanpictures.net, has announced that it has hosted an educational program with a select group of professional photographers called the African Photo Entrepreneur Programme (APEP). The program was created to empower African photographers to become globally competitive and included an initial session with 40 photographers who were invited to the first training session in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pietermaritzburg last August. The partipants originate for as far afield as Kenya, Nigeria and Liberia, and were selected from among more than 150 applications in a process that included a portfolio review and in-person interviews.
News
Mazer Corporation launches stock photography business to serve educational publishers
The Mazer Corporation, an educational publishing company based in Dayton Ohio,has announced that it has launched a stock photography licensing business called Mazerstock. The Mazerstock archive features imagery focused on K–12 and postsecondary education and related imagery. “Mazerstock has eliminated the need to sift through commercial content while looking for appropriate editorial content,” said Content Manager Lydia Mazer. “We’ve worked to create a diverse collection of world leaders in stock photography and independent photographers, and we’ve hand-filtered every single image to make sure that it is educationally appropriate.”
News
Buzz Foto counting on experienced photojournalists to drive future growth
Buzz Foto, a paparazzi agency from Los Angeles, has announced that it is basing its corporate growth plans on recruitment efforts to attract the best experienced photojournalists. Buzz Foto was founded in 2006 with what the company describes as a “talented, yet untrained, pool of photographers.” Due to increasing competition in the marketplace the company is looking to develop a roster of top-tier photography talent in order to stand-out from the crowd.
News
Google digitizing 10 million images from the LIFE Photo Archive
Time Inc. has teamed up with Google to digitize more than 10 million images from the LIFE’s Photo Archive to be made available online utilizing a hosted image service from Google. According to a recent press release “ninety-seven percent of the photographs have never been seen by the public” and the archive contains some of the most iconic images of the 20th century, including works from great photojournalists Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, Gordon Parks, and W. Eugene Smith. Thius follows an announcement in September where Time Inc. is teaming up with Getty Images to launch a similar photo viewing site at Life.com.
Features
Book Review: Windows of the Soul: My Journeys in the Muslim World by Alexandra Avakian
Windows of the Soul: My Journeys in the Muslim World
by Alexandra Avakian
National Geographic Focal Point (September 30, 2008)
208 pages/hardcover/150 photographs/$40.00
Windows of the Soul: My Journeys in the Muslim World is the first title released in National Geographic Books’ new imprint, Focal Point. In accord with Focal Point’s mission to, “draw on the most outstanding photography of today’s journalistic elite,” Alexandra Avakian’s memoir is exceptionally influential. Avakian’s enviable assignments from leading journals spanning twenty years resulted in a massive body of work. Her 150 selections for this book reflect an exclusively personal and brave assemblage of Muslim life.
News
ImageSpan offering LicenseStream platform with PLUS licensing standards
ImageSpan Inc., a software company that offers a content licensing platform for digital media based in Sausalito, CA, has announced that its digital content licensing and royalty settlement service is set-up to implement licensing standards created by the Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS) Coalition that have recently been adopted by three major publishers.
News
Hemis signs deal to distribute Alaska Stock Images in France
Alaska Stock Images, a specialty agency featuring photos from from Alaska and Antarctica has a new a new distribution partnership with Hemis to represent the content in France. Paris base Hemis, specializes in marketing travel pictures for editorial and advertising customers in the very competitive marketplace of France. Hemis CEO, Bertrand Gardel noted, “Hemis, the leading travel imagery in France have found in Alaska Stock, the top quality images and professionalism that is in accordance with our vision of tomorrow’s photography. With no doubt, this collection will have a great success in France.”
News
George Sinclair launches distribution business called Universal Images Group
George Sinclair, Founder the stock photography consultancy Virtual Picture Desk, has launched a new business called Universal Images Group Limited focused on becoming a distribution portal for Virtual Picture Desk clients looking to syndicate their work through additional 3rd party channels. The new business will be based in the UK lead by Graham Everitt who was recently appointed to the post of Business Development Director. Everitt is a stock licensing industry veteran who formerly managed the Antony Blake Stock Food Agency.
News
NordicPhotos launches new stock photography website
NordicPhotos, a stock photography agency with offices in Stockholm, Reykjavik and Oslo has announced that it has unveiled a new website. The new site contains many of the typical features found in modern stock photography websites with an innovative design created by award-winning graphic designer Igor Kazakoff. The new website helps to further consolidate the collections obtained through series of acquisitions including the latest acquisition of the Norwegian agency GV-Press based in Oslo, NordicPhotos new web site is now available in five languages; English, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Danish.
News
Moodboard launches stock photography blog called ‘the factory’
Moodboard, a stock image brand created by the UK-based production company Mike Watson Images, has announced that it has launched a new blog site called ‘the factory’ with information targeting photographers and creative professionals. According to a recent press release the blog has three main sections: Artspace – where the moodboard team share their favourite images, write about things they’ve come across that have inspired them; Workshop – containing interviews and comment; and a Here’s Us section with information on the moodboard team.
