Category: Micropayment Stock Photography
News
ibid closing its doors after forty years
Last week, we received a comment from San Francisco photographer Jeff Singer concerning our story about Jupiterimages offering photographers from its micro-stock site, StockXpert.com, the opportunity to have their images distributed through one of Jupiter’s signature RF brands, Dynamic Graphics. Singer laments the declining standards of both clients and suppliers in our industry that, from his perspective, this development epitomizes. As further evidence of the difficulty the current environment poses for professional photographers, he cites the news that ibid, a boutique agency founded with uniquely high artistic standards in 1966 and known for its magnificent archive of contemporary black and white photography, will cease operating as a business at the end of this year.
News
Jupiter bringing up shooters from the “farm team”
Jupiterimages has announced a program to allow contributors to its micro-stock site, StockXpert (the sister product to the popular stock.xchng free image site), to submit images for possible distribution under its mid-price range RF brand, Dynamic Graphics (DG.) On a page on the StockXpert site dedicated to the program, the company invites contributors who have been members for at least three months to submit exclusive-only imagery.
Editorials
Editorial: there’s gold in them thar $49 images, (we hope!)
Getty’s decision to launch a new $49 web-use product earlier this month caused many of us in the industry to scratch our heads. A group of photographer associations articulated the reasons for concern over the move in a letter of protest to Getty CEO Jonathan Klein. The letter outlines what the photographer groups perceive as the negative implications of the product: the loss of high-value digital license revenue, devaluation of RM licensing, erosion of prices across the board, reduced return for photographers, and reduced recovery value for unauthorized usage. Nick Evans-Lombe, Getty’s EVP of Imagery, Products and Services gives us the company’s first public response to the criticism in a letter posted on Getty’s contributors site. That letter provides some insight into Getty’s thinking on the matter while still leaving important questions unanswered.
News
Getty answers critics of the $49 web-use product
Getty Images has responded to the howls of criticism of its all collections $49 web-use product by way of a letter posted to its contributor site from the company’s EVP of Imagery, Products and Services, Nick Evans-Lombe. In the letter, Evans-Lombe makes the following points in defending the one low price for images from any collection:
News
Dreamstime contest offers “Shoot with Ron Chapple” prize
The micro-stock company, Dreamstime, has announced an innovative contest which is sure to create a “buzz” on the site and among micro-stock photographers. The winner will receive an all-expense-paid trip to Maui, Hawaii to participate in a shoot with veteran stock shooter and businessman, Ron Chapple, an established leader among stock photographers. Dreamstime will choose the winner from among entrants who participate in three “assignments” posted on their site. The company holds periodic assignment contests in which participants must submit portrayals of a specific subject or concept.
News
Dreamstime partners with OpenPhoto.net
The free stock photo web-site, OpenPhoto.net, now offers its users a search link to the micro-stock site Dreamstime.com. Founded in 1998 by photographer and journalist Michael Jastremski, OpenPhoto offers a collection of user-posted photographs for use primarily by not-for-profit entities such as schools, churches and charitable and arts organizations. The images are offered under a Creative Commons license which allows for largely unrestricted use excluding commercial uses.
News
Modern Postcard makes deal with iStock, apologizes for slight to photographers
Last week, Modern Postcard (MP,) a printing and mailing house business specializing in direct-mail postcards, announced a deal “coming soon!” to offer images from Getty’s micro-stock business, iStockphoto. The announcement came in an email to MP customers sent at 5:00PM EST on Friday, August 24, 2007. Within five hours, the company sent a second email to the list with the subject heading: “Modern Postcard Apologizes.”
News
iStockphoto exclusive photographers get a bonus
iStockphoto announced that all of its exclusive members – those who offer their work exclusively in iStock – will receive 100% of all revenue generated on their images during he entire day yesterday, August 20, 2007. According to the company, this represents over $100K distributed among the 2,300 excluisive members as a result of one day’s worth of downloads from the site.
News
Cadmium launches microstock collection site
The UK provider of royalty-free stock photography and illustration, Cadmium, has teamed up with PantherMedia – a Munich-based photo agency, to launch a new microstock site called the Cadmium 120K+ collection. Created in response to customer demand for lower priced, royalty-free stock photography, the 120K+ collection offers over 120,000 royalty-free images for users working to a tight brief and budget.
Features
Editorial: Virgin Mobile gets burned with Creative Commons photo from Flickr
It was bound to happen. The moment we old-timers in the stock photo industry have all been waiting for has finally arrived. A high profile client got burned by using down-market images that, it turns out, had no model releases. I and, I suspect, many colleagues got more than a little satisfaction out of the news.
Editorials
Editorial: Microstock in Context
While I think it’s fascinating that the Microstock phenomenon seems to dominate both industry-related blogs and external sources covering the world of stock photography these days (Hello Wired!), I think it makes sense to add to the discussion about Microstock’s potential long-term impact on the industry by offering the following points:
News
Mike Watson offers micro-stock and premium royalty free images on moodboard.com
Mike Watson, the founder and former CEO of DigitalVision, who recently launched a new RF production company called Mike Watson Images, has launched a new web-site where he will offer both low-priced micro-stock imagery as well as premium-priced RF. The web-site, called moodboard, will offer what it refers to as “quality” micro-stock imagery starting at US$15 for a low-res file and premium RF imagery starting at US$150.
Editorials
Editorial: The real villain is oversupply, not micro-stock
Certain friends who attended CEPIC conference in Florence earlier this month tell me the issue of micro-stock put a cloud over the whole affair. Of course, those comments did not come from my friends among micro-stock company personnel, whose outlooks remain decidedly sunny. I wonder, though, whether the old guard can fairly blame micro-stock for the commercial stock photo industry’s troubled outlook. Naturally, the micro-stock model can only have a detrimental effect on the traditional business, over-all. But what if micro-stock never happened? Would the industry truly be much better off? I doubt it.
News
Shutterstock’s collection reaches two million images
Ten months ago the fledgling micro stock subscription service (launched in 2003) was proud of achieving the major milestone of ‘1 Million Images’. Little did they know that due to a growing awareness of microstock and subscription licensing the collection would double in Less than one year; exceeding two million images. In fact the company has stated that the collection is growing at a rate of approximately 25,000 images per week. This growth has been realized despite the company’s claim that less than 40% of the images submitted meet the companies standards to be added to the collection.
News
Freerangestock.com – a revenue model for free images
Chance Agrella, a professional media designer and photographer, has launched an advertising supported web-site that gives away stock images with a royalty free license and available for commercial use at no charge to the user. Google Adsense provides the only source of revenue for the site, Freerangestock.com. Now, Agrella has introduced a revenue share model with photographers who supply images to the site whereby they will receive 80% of the revenue from Google-loaded ads that appear with their images.
News
Dreamstime partners with free image search engine Picfindr.com
Picfindr.com, an image search engine that pulls results only from sites that offer images free of copyright restrictions for commercial use, has agreed to add low-cost micro-stock images from Dreamstime to its search results. Picfindr will display Dreamstime images for a given search whenever the search fails to retrieve appropriate images from the various sites it trolls for free image results. Dreamstime is the only micro-stock agency aligned with PicFindr.
News
iStockphoto adds consumer video formats and additional languages
The leading microstock site, iStockphoto, Is now converting its video content to include the .wmv and .mp4 video formats to make the content easier to use without manipulation. The company has also added localized sites in Japanese, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Polish and Russian, making the Getty-owned microstock site fully searchable in 12 languages.
News
Dreamstime partners with mobile content provider Boom Bucket
The micro-stock company, Dearmstime.com, has formed a partnership with Boom Bucket Mobile an online provider of content for mobile phones including wallpapers, animations, ring-tones, and video. The deal with Dreamstime will help meet a growing demand for mobile screensavers by increasing the number of available images on Boom Bucket to over 1MM.
News
Shutterstock is helping micro-stock photographers gain access to red carpet
In order to build a library of celebrity images the subscription based micro-payment site Shutterstock is taking matters into its own hands by using its customer service reps to help its 60,000+ photographers obtain press passes. The company is targeting red carpet events such as film premieres, award shows, concerts or political rallies where it plans to leverage the Shutterstock name to obtain the credentials in exchange for exclusive rights to sell the images created at the event. It is not clear yet whether credentials will be granted and the decision will surely be made on an event-by-event basis. Shutterstock appears to be the first micro-payment stock photography site to aggressively pursue celebrity content.
News
Getty acquires iStockphoto for $50 million
iStockphoto, the world's most popular stock photography website, has announced that it has been acquired by Getty Images, Inc, the world’s largest stock photo company. This acquisition gives Getty Images the leading micropayment stock photo site with a proven community-focused business model boasting millions of loyal customers. This follows the recent announcement by Jupiter Media to acquire 49.7% of Stock.xchng and stock.xpert and further signifies that the industry is evolving in ways to serve the budget-conscience stock photo user. Jonathan Klein, Getty Images' co-founder and CEO, had this to say about the acquisition. "We have pioneered most of the important developments in the imagery industry in the last ten years. This time we want to help grow and champion the sort of revolutionary thinking iStockphoto represents as we lead the imagery business to the next stage of growth, serving all markets at every price point." Getty is planning to continue operating iStockphoto as a separate brand and Bruce Livingstone, iStockphoto founder, CEO and president, will remain at the helm of iStockphoto. Specific terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed. Click here for the original press release. Daryl Lang at PDN is reporting the purchase price of $50 Million.
Click here to view editorial published by Chris Ferrone.
