Conditions seem especially ripe for the speedy ascendancy of moving imagery to a position of central importance in the content licensing business.  Print media continues to suffer declining readership and ad-sales.  Broadband access has reached ever growing numbers of households.  Many say the new media and broadcast television will merge.  To me, it looks more like the new media will, ultimately, lay claim to the broadcast industry and transform it into a small part of the amorphous whole we refer to as "the Internet."  All of these conditions combine to create a growing market for moving imagery.

Continue reading "A conversation with Kevin Schaff, CEO of Thought Equity Motion" »

Posted by Chris Ferrone at July 17, 2007 | Comments (0)

Christina Vaughan is part of a new-breed of stock photography professionals to emerge in the last decade. She is young, intelligent, passionate and independent. As the founder and Co-CEO of Image Source, Vaughn has proven to be a visionary in stock photography production having built Image Source into one of the largest independent stock production houses in the world with offices in Koln, New York, and London and nearly 100 employees. Naturally, we had a few questions for Ms. Vaughn having watched the rise of Image Source over the years and Christina was kind enough to accept our request for an interview.

Continue reading "Interview with Image Source founder Christina Vaughan" »

Posted by Chris Ferrone at May 21, 2007 | Comments (0)

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.

Continue reading "Interview with iStockphoto Founder and CEO Bruce Livingstone" »

Posted by Brent Phelps at March 29, 2007 | Comments (0)

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.

Continue reading "A brief chat with stock photography veteran Ron Chapple" »

Posted by Chris Ferrone at March 23, 2007 | Comments (0)

The PLUS Coalition has just reached another significant milestone.  Having earlier accomplished the monumental task of creating a comprehensive glossary of image licensing terms (the PLUS Picture Licensing Glossary has over 1500 terms) the Coalition has now released four additional international image licensing standards which, together with the glossary, comprise the Picture Licensing Universal System or  “PLUS,” a system of standards that will simplify and facilitate image licensing for image creators, distributors and users alike.

Continue reading "The Next Steps for the PLUS Coalition: Interview with President & CEO Jeff Sedlik" »

Posted by Chris Ferrone at February 14, 2007 | Comments (0)

In recent years several companies have begun to offer technology services to photographers that were previously only available to large stock agencies with large IT departments. Evan Nisselson the Founder and CEO of Digital Railroad has been one of the pioneers seeking to bridge the technology gap by offering an online storage and marketing solution connecting photographers and image buyers with all of the convenience of a large stock agency or newswire service. Evan Nisselson, has worked in the photography industry for 14 years and has experience as a CEO, VP, photo editor, software developer, lecturer, moderator, contest judge, published photographer and digital imaging consultant. Recently Chris Ferrone caught up with Evan and asked him the following questions.

Continue reading "Interview with Evan Nisselson of Digital Railroad" »

Posted by Chris Ferrone at July 28, 2006 | Comments (0)

Stefan Hartmann interviews Charles Swan

The English lawyer Charles Swan is considered one of Europe’s leading experts on the law relating to photography. After leaving the Simkins Partnership last year, he set up Swan Turton, a London based media law firm comprising twelve lawyers covering all areas of the media and entertainment sectors including music, film and TV, theatre, advertising, publishing, visual arts and photography.

Swan is also Chairman of the international lawyers’ association Adlaw International, which advises advertisers and agencies on cross-border advertising campaigns. He was the first non-photographer director of the Association of Photographers in the UK.

Continue reading "Caricatures, orphan works, and the legacy of the Normans" »

Posted by Stefan Hartmann at April 25, 2006 | Comments (0)

Recenty Pat Hunt interviewed Randy Taylor, one of the cofounders of StockPhotoFinder and long time expert in image searching technology, after he launched a Mac-only Widget. The Widget makes searching faster, easier and more fun. See what else Randy has up his sleeve.

Pat: Please tell me about the “Widget.”

Randy: First, I must give credit to Evan Frohlich who is in charge of software development. He created both the Widget and the StockPhotoFinder.com web site, great examples of how gifted he is at programming and interface design. The Widget is a fabulous toy that has wonderful business applications. It is only usable with the Macintosh Tiger OS 10.4 operating system. It is a Dashboard tool that allows you to search for stock photography through our StockPhotoFinder site without using a browser. It gives instant and direct access to search without having to go to any individual website. At the same time we have added functionality to make it more valuable to the buyer and the seller. It automatically watermarks the images on the fly upon download of the preview image. If you go directly to a stock agency site and download their preview, you may have the watermark. If you download that same preview through the Widget, you will have the email address and the web address of that stock photo agency. We realized that there are many places that don’t have watermarking and the image can get lost very easily. There is the possibility of unauthorized use. The Widget is very fast and you can get price quotes through it. Well over half of our users are on Macs, so the Widget is appropriate for our user base.

Continue reading "StockPhotoFinder launches widget" »

Posted by Pat Hunt at December 23, 2005 | Comments (0)

The market for on-line archiving and image marketing services to photographers has heated up recently. Exciting announcements in this sector include Digital Railroad raising over $5MM in venture capital this past summer and IPN Stock launching its �on-ramp� collaboration with Adobe Stock Photos in October. Photographers and stock photo companies looking for low-cost digital storage of their images and web-site and marketing services now have a wider range of choices, each offering their own combination of archiving fees and commissions rates for on-line sales including, 20/20 Software, Digital Railroad , IPN Stock, NancyScans, and PhotoShelter .  A new and interesting arrival to this field, PhotoShelter.com was founded by HotJobs.com veteran, Allen Murabayashi. PhotoShelter offers an inexpensive and customizable package for on-line image archiving and on-line licensing of stock imagery. The following is an interview we conducted with Allen last week.

Continue reading "Interview with Allen Murabayashi, founder of PhotoShelter.com" »

Posted by Chris Ferrone at December 21, 2005 | Comments (0)

Not long ago I noticed some insightful comments to a story I posted from Tim McGuire a Photographer from Seattle. After doing a little research I discovered that Tim has a wealth of experience as a stock photographer who has contributed images to Getty, Corbis, and other stock agencies. Tim also has experience as a former Vice President for the Stock Artist Alliance (SAA) for two years and currently makes his living as a stock Photographer. I asked Tim if he would be willing to complete an e-mail interview in order to share more about his experience and views on the stock licensing industry and Tim generously agreed.

Continue reading "Inside The Studio with Tim McGuire" »

Posted by Brent Phelps at October 05, 2005 | Comments (1)