Archives: July, 2009
News
Sodapix sponsors image editor’s meeting and supports German Advertising congress
Sodapix, a stock photography company from Switzerland, has announced that it has teamed up with the press agency Remotephoto in sponsoring this years image editor’s meeting on July 18th in the “Trend quarter” Zürich Binz. The meeting is an annual convention; Getty Images supported it last year, after Keystone backed it in 2007.
News
Dreamstime releases “Stock Rank” an interactive stock photo review tool
Dreamstime, a Brentwood Tennessee based micro-payment stock photography business, has announced that it has introduced a new feature called “Stock Rank” that pairs two images on the screen and challenges the user to select the best photo—the photo most worthy of purchase or download—based on concept, subject, aesthetics, lighting, composition, etc. This feature was initially established as a quality assurance system utilized primarily by the agency’s editors as part of their training to review the commercial aspects of stock submissions. “We’re making the feature available to all members. It’s fun and will allow all users to learn to understand the difference between the images, degrees of quality and what actually sells,” said Serban Enache, CEO and co-founder of Dreamstime.com.
News
Kursiv releases KIM Keywording 1.5
Kursiv, a swiss stock photography agency that also offers keywording software called Kim Keywording, has announced that it has released a new version of its multilingual keywording software. KIM Keywording 1.5 offers many workflow improvements and introduces a simple method to prioritize keywords. The new version is a free upgrade for existing users. In a recent press release the company stated “KIM Keywording has been designed to take the pain out of keywording and to make the process both fast and reliable”.
News
ArabianEye launches website dedicated to photography production and photographer representation
ArabianEye, a stock photography agency based in Dubai and specializing in imagery of the Arab and Islamic world, has announced that it has launched a new site dedicated to production and photographer representation located at arabianEyeproduction.com. “arabianEye has been producing standout shoots for years – and we’ll continue to inject that same professionalism, originality and reliability into the shoots,” said Celia Peterson, Director, arabianEye. “Today’s digital media offers powerful and seemingly endless ways to create, communicate and connect. This amazing new site makes it easier than ever for our clients to get exactly what they want.”
News
News from Japan: Photo Book Printing Big Business
At the photography business trade-show in Tokyo, Mr. Masahi Kitamura, Chairman and CEO of Kitamura Co., Ltd. discussed the printing of “Photo Books” as a driver of growth. Photo Books are simply photo albums made from digital images, but with digital technology, they can be produced quickly and are now used not only for family pictures but to memorialize special events of any kind, business and social.
News
Art Resource now representing works from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
New York based, Art Resource, a specialty library featuring fine art imagery, has announced that it has been selected by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) to serve as its exclusive world-wide image rights and reproduction agent. LACMA joins a growing roster of over 130 major museums for which Art Resource is the exclusive representative.
News
TopFoto opens new photography gallery
TopFoto, a stock photography library specializing in historical images, has announced that it has opened The TopFoto Gallery, a new space hosting photographic and visual image exhibitions of international, national and local interest. At launch the gallery is featurung a long-unseen exhibition of the work of the late John Topham, originally shown at the Impressions Gallery of Photography in York (1982). Based in Edenbridge, Kent (45 minutes direct train from London Bridge) the TopFoto Gallery includes The Eden Valley Gallery for local exhibitions, as well as rare historic displays from the archives of House of Jaques, sports and games manufacturer since 1795 and still in the original family’s ownership and whose building houses the gallery.
News
Fotoglif launches new micropayment site focused on serving bloggers and web publishers
A new stock photography business has launched in Toronto called Fotoglif, with a focuse on serving images to bloggers, social media fans, and other Web publishers with royalty-free and timely images. The beta version of the Fotoglif image-sharing community and licensing platform is available now live at Fotoglif.com. The site features more than 3 million images, with thousands of new ones from professional photographers and respected news agencies added each day.
News
Stock Artists Alliance’s free metadata seminars serves nearly 800 picture professionals
The Stock Artists Alliance (SAA) , a trade organization for stock photographers, announced last May that it was launching an educational speaking series called getMETAsmart made possible with an award from the Library of Congress and supported by industry partners. Since then SAA is touting that it has already held seven, free educational events over the past two months, with nearly 800 participants from around the country. The Stock Artists Alliance plans three more getMETAsmart events for this fall.
News
Art Wolfe, Tom Mangelsen, and David Doubilet launch outdoor stock photo agency
Outdoor photography legends Art Wolfe, Tom Mangelsen, and David Doubilet have recently announced that they have launched a virtual stock photography agency called WILD Photography located at wildphotography.com and operating on the PhotoShelter platform. This trio (and others they plan to recruit) has stated that they will no longer be submitting work to the major stock agencies and instead will be leveraging their collective brand power and wealth of contacts to sell direct to clients.
News
ITN Source contributing footage to Digital Images for Education
ITN Source, a division of ITN and a leading provider of stock footage from the UK, has announced that it has won a competitive pitch to supply 210 hours of stock footage to Digital Images for Education, an initiative funded by JISC Collections. The footage will be used to launch a collection of video footage and stills available free of charge to UK higher and further education institutions starting in the summer of 2010. “Moving imagery is increasingly in demand in the education market and ITN Source is a major player in this space, both in the UK and beyond” stated Neil Meadows, Sales Director of ITN Source. “This is a fantastic opportunity to provide students with great editorial led content that will enhance their understanding of how Britain was shaped over the last 25 years .We thank JISC Collections for choosing to work with us and look forward to the launch of a successful project.”
News
Bridgeman now representing Cyril Power linocut prints
London based Bridgeman Art Library, a specialty library featuring fine art, history and culture related images, has announced that it now represents the estate of Cyril Power. Cyril Edward Power (1872–1951) was an English artist best known for his linocut prints and for co-founding The Grosvenor School Of Modern Art in London in 1925. “We are hugely excited to have been given the opportunity to license the highly creative and dynamic linocut prints of Cyril Power which we believe will be hugely popular for licensing, spreading the importance of his work which has been largely hidden till now,” stated Adrian Gibbs Collections Manager at Bridgeman.
Karen Bernstein of Everett Collection has passed away
Karen Bernstein, who worked in the stock photo industry for 30 years, for companies such as Image Bank, FPG, VCG and the Everett Collection, passed away on Friday, from complications relating to a brain tumor. She was 60 years old. Karen had a singular career in our industry and was witness to many extraordinary changes during that time. She specialized in international and was a familiar presence at conferences and such as CEPIC and PACA. She most recently attended the CEPIC conference in Dresden.
Wikipedia in public content licensing spat with Britain’s National Portrait Gallery
Recently wikipedia volunteer Derrick Coetzee took images from the British National Portrait Gallery (NPG) and uploaded them to wikipedia in an effort to make them available to a broader audience. The gallery claims that the 3,300 hi-res images were recently digitzed at a cost of nearly £1m and the Gallery is now upset that the images are now available to the general public on Wikipedia.
News
Mary Evans now representing Alinari Archives
Mary Evans Picture Library, a specialist library from the UK featuring historical images, has announced that it is now representing Alinari Archives, a leading Italian source of historical images, in both the UK and the USA. Founded in Florence in 1852, Alinari is the oldest photography archive in the world. “Although Alinari is represented by other companies in the UK, they are a natural partner for Mary Evans; since we have the most diverse and in depth historical collection in the country, our clients expect to be able to source such a prestigious collection as Alinari from us, and now they can.” stated Paul Brown, Managing Director of Mary Evans
News
Imense now featuring images from Ingram Publishing
Imense, a Cambridge (UK) company producing leading image recognition and retrieval software, has announced that images from Ingram Publishing are now available on the Imense image search portal imense Picturesearch. “Ingram Publishing’s approach to creative direction and editing means that they stand out from the increasingly homogenised collections available in the RF market. They compliment perfectly imense Picturesearch’s strategy of representing independent RF producers that offer something differentiated and visually innovative” stated Stuart Cox from imense Picturesearch.
News
Fotolia launches premium subscription plan
Fotolia, a popular micro-payment stock photography site, has announced that it has launched a premium subscription plan, giving access to Fotolia’s entire collection of high resolution vectors and images, and high definition videos. Pricing is based on the required number of downloads per day (ranging from 25 to 250) for as little as $249/month.
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Getty appoints iStockphoto to manage free stock photography site SXC.hu
Earlier this year when Getty images completed its acquisition of JupiterImages the company also acquired a popular free stock photography site located at sxc.hu. The popular site reported in 2006 to have over 25 million page views monthly and over 500,000 registered at the time it was purchased by JupiterMedia from the Hungarian company Haap Media. The previous strategy was to use this free image site to upsell users to its own micro stock platform located at Stockxpert.com and now Getty Images is seeing the potential to continue operating the free site as a means to funnel traffic to its own micro-payment site iStockphoto.
News
Superstock Six Months Down the Road: Thriving and Hiring!
The consortium of RF producers who purchased Superstock in a bankruptcy sale in January of this year has kept their promise to keep the business running. Not only is the company, which was put in Chapter 11 bankruptcy under its previous management at A21, still going but according to CEO Lanny Ziering, is profitable and company seeks to fill a couple of key positions.
