StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

A21 Group/Superstock: More Bucks

The A21 Group , parent company of Superstock, completed a $2.25mm financing "round". Details here.

Creators Cycle, Stockmedia.net and Stock Photo Finder

Regarding a recent and ongoing discussion at the Stockphoto Yahoo Emailgroup about Stock Photo Finder, Digital Railroad and other companies, some readers mailed and asked why Creators Cycle, Stockmedia.net and Stock Photo  Finder all seem to share the same address in New York:

1123 Broadway, Suite 1006
New York, NY 10010

Three brands and one address? Same people, same technology? Someone (perhaps Randy Taylor) out there to set us straight? Clarifying this subject might help some readers who are in two minds how to act.

[To someone obviously related to  ShutterPoint: spam commenting this blog every single day won´t work.]

Posted by Andy

New Gorilla: JupiterMedia Buys Dynamic Graphics Group

and therefore the brands of the Dynamic Graphics Group (Creatas, PictureQuest, Liquid Library) for $38,175,000 in cash and 1,483,073 restricted shares of Jupitermedia common stock.

After the acquisitions of Comstock and Thinkstock (hooray1 and hooray2) "acquiring Dynamic Graphics Group makes Jupitermedia the third largest company in the world in the field of selling and distributing stock photography, stock footage and other imagery," stated Alan M. Meckler, Chairman and CEO of Jupitermedia. More here.
PS: Alan Meckler calls his blog "Internet Media Commentary" (see also this).

These are the rules (?)- the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.

[Image Link]

Posted by Andy

Corbis To Fire Zefa Staff And Other Stuff

Some more or less serious reading for the weekend: "Citing Redundancies, Corbis Trims Zefa Workforce" (pdnonline), "Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog, Photoblog: How Photographers Are Making The Internet Work For Them" (shutterbug), "Fotolog, World's Largest Photo Blogging Community, Welcomes One Millionth Fotologger" and finally "Photos, Blogging And Fair Use" (pdnonline).

Posted by Andy

World Press Photo 2005

Just one image of this years´ World Press Photo contest. More here.

[Nature: 1st prize singles; Sandstorm, Chad by Jahi Chikwendiu, Washington Post]

Posted by Andy

Corbis: Need A Half-Time Employment?

"Gates says he spends about 50 hours a year on Corbis business" (David Teather/The Guardian, "The software billionaire's $170m sideline").

Posted by Andy

Photo Agency Aina Working Out Of An Ex-Taliban Prison

How to sell you photos globally if you´re just  the middle of nowhere?
The February 2005 Issue of The Digital Journalist covers the subject "Afghanistan Through Afghan Photojournalists' Eyes".
Geographic photographers Reza and Manoocher created the first photo agency in Kabul called Aina (Cookies on!), working out of an ex-taliban prison (Link).  Aina was created in 2002.
The technique they are using is Digital Railroad (Cookies On! See also here), a system "that simplifies work, streamlines marketing, and expands revenue opportunities for photographers and agencies".

"The contrast between technology at work and at home is stark -- most photographers do not have access to electricity or running water in their homes."

[via Evan Nisselson]

Posted by Andy

New Companies from Central Europe

Depressed by the economical downturn? Look at some new companies:

After the entry "istockphoto.com: "Bringing the price down to a level where everybody can afford to buy a stock photo" and a recent comment by Bahar Gidwani of Index Stock Imagery ("istockphoto.com: You do the math") regarding Dreamstime and FreeStock here´s another new RF agency: Bildunion. They are offering images for 9.99 Euro (10.69 Euro including Tax) with no limitation regarding time, media and place of use or image size. Mostly material for illustrations, but also some real nice images (sorry, can´t link to them) that could be considered to be close to serious photography.

Two other new companies: Konrad Dienst and Artur Krüger over at confessMEDiA finally have launched their first and new website (sorry, no english version so far) some days ago. Their main product, the Communication Server, creates virtual photo portals for photo buyers and - together with their partner agencies - for photo agencies. But as always: the clients in Europe and US are top of the line but the dumb traditional media in our industry won´t listen. Not even one single word. Why? Is it just because the mighty German Press Agency (Deutsche Presse Agentur) bought APIS Picturemaxx through one of their subsidiaries three months ago? There are rumours regarding pan-european anti-trust laws and how they might apply to reality.

Another new company is Kappa Motion Media. Founded by the former co-founder of Digital Collections, Dennis Zierahn, Kappa is heavily focussing on software for broadcasting and stock footage companies: indexing, archiving, storing/media management, retrieval and scene detection of digitized film, video, motion and footage for rights management and new distribution channels like video-to-handy (handy = mobile phone; related: "Stock Footage: Need a Disaster? An Assasination?"). Stock footage might be the next hype ("Stock footage: Look no further than the newly organized, digitized and revitalized stock footage industry"; "The footage industry is set to grow dramatically" and "will increase and over time may approach that for still imagery", so Jonathan Klein of Getty Images on Dec 9th, 2004).
After looking at what Kappa´s doing practically, footage retrieval over the web is only a small piece of what can be done... . Watch out.

BTW: Getty had revenues in 2004 of $ 34.2m from footage sales (5.5% of the total revenues of $ 622.4m), the average license fee for a clip of stock footage was $ 629 with a final 2004 quarter rise of 25.5% compared with the last quarter of 2003. Corbis instead is unable to give figures breaking down revenues between footage and photos (Link).

[Links to Footage agencies and the new business field of mobile phones: "Traditional Stock Photo Industry Player Delivering Content On Mobile Phone"; "Corbis delivers content on mobile phones"; "After Corbis and Superstock, Getty Images Supplies Content To The Mobile World"]

Posted by Andy

BusinessWeekOnline Buys Phototalk

... not yet, but they have started to link to this blog in the article "Bill Gates´ Photo Op" (BusinessWeek Online, The Tech Beat). Besides this, something about the recent Warhol and Marvel deals (also mentioned here and here):

"Corbis sees its secret sauce as being expertise and service. Its newest business is a case in point: rights representation. It represents organizations with large collections of visual imagery, starting off with Andy Warhol Foundation and Marvel Enterprises. More will come."

And, of course, the typical Bill G. visionary incantation: “If you want to be the first in something, you have to be ahead of your time" - - before continuing with "Still, some of the vision won’t be here for another five more years—people putting photos in their homes.”

Posted by Andy

Eisenstaedt's Classic Decisive Moment Going Digital

Stimulating: "Future Report. A Look At What’s Ahead For Photography In 2005…And Beyond" (Shutterbug) and "From Kodachrome to Cameraphone": "Eisensta[e]dt's classic decisive moment" vs. "The camera phone, in this context, appears to be the 21st Century equivalent of the personal diary."
If you intend to send your pix to this site sponsored by public venture capital, don´t buy this clumsy  1.3 MP device like I did ... just move to China and grab this one. - Eisenstaedt would have been happy.

[© Image Life, January 28, 2004, pp. 4-8]

Posted by Andy