StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

Micro Distributors of Stock Photography

The Stock Asylum has launched a new directory for ‘micro-distributors’ of rights-managed stock photography “to help buyers of rights-managed stock photography [to] locate fresh imagery from a multitude of web sites”:

“These ‘micro-distributors’ represent a vital, emerging stock photography source that few buyers know about because it is hard to access.“ [...]
“Every time one of the big distributors buys a smaller competitor, image creators find it harder to place work in the remaining libraries,” Rovtar noted. “Fewer distributors offer fewer contracts to image producers and take fewer images from those who have contracts. Furthermore, the photographer’s share of image sales has eroded considerably during this process,” Rovtar added. [...]
“All of this means that many quality photographers have truly incredible work that is not represented by mainstream suppliers.The good news for license buyers is that much of this work has little or no publishing history. It’s fresh, it’s not filtered through a big company’s artistic department”[...].

Full context in "Micro-Distributors Shine on New SA Listing".

The Stock Asylum features a new article about the new website of Mira (Creative Eye is the artists’ cooperative that owns Mira) and their deal with Image Span.

Bric-A-Brac from Prague/CEPIC

The european photo trade show CEPIC 2005, June 16 - 19, Prague, started for me with the long and annoying registration procedure at the desk in the entrance hall that late registrants like me and other usual suspects truely deserve. Fortunately the two beautiful ladies of the newly founded consultancy Pepper Stark Ltd. in London were right in front of me.

I had been warned by someone who is more clever and smart than I ever will be that "In my experience, these conferences are mostly about schmoozing, meeting, greeting...not my strong point, anyway" but as always I was blissfully ignorant. And in fact, the best place to meet people had been in front of the Zofin palace, just on the right sight in the garden and parkway vis-a-vis the river Moldau.

After the late registration, the second disaster is that networking thing. If you talk to everyone about his business, you´ll have no one to talk to in-depth in the evening simply because you would have to answer to all these myriads of plans, new projects and alliances "Hey, are you sure or don´t you just don´t know what your competitor is doing and planning?"

So there is little to report from my side. I had to learn that Getty Images is picking up another agency - Retro File. Yet there is no confirmation avalaible on the net, but the information is from a TOP 10 photo agency and thus a source that I trust (the same kind of information I had about a year ago when Thinkstock was sold). [Update June 24: int the meantime this deal is confirmed: see PDN]

IPNStock  is partnering with german Fotofinder, but obviously no one over there knows how to handle Businesswire or a similar service, so again there is no confirmation avalaible on the net. And before I could ask Ali Paczensky, Fotofinder´s CEO , he left the scenery with a bottle of sparkling wine to celebrate another deal he just closed with another CEO I´m to shy to name.

The biggest miscarriage happend in the Rights Seminar. Without advcance warning, a german lawyer started to talk about his subject - in german. I don´t know what all the other visitors from Spain, Japan, the Antarctic etc. were thinking in this moment. Shortly after he began, his speech was simultaneously translated into english by another lady. So shortly after the german "blablabla" the english "blablabla" followed. That for sure had been one of the most painful experiences in 2005.

Then, in the opening plenary session on thursday, there had been a panelist speaker who simply couldn´t open his mouth to talk. Only a small gap between his teeth showed up and a long and meaningful "Zzzzh" left his mouth. Fifteen minutes of "Zzzzh" can be real long. One CEO entering the door of the auditorium listened shortly, started to giggle and left the room laughing.

On the other hand the exceptional presentation of James West/Alamy ("Image Trading in 2010"). I have an old presentation from him ("The Digital Exchange Model"; use this link for downloading the old ppt-file) from the year 2000, but this time: no slides with words, just a few pictures to illustrate his ideas. BTW: Picture Archive News features an interview with James. Although it is likely that this was an email interview, the stunning news is that Alamy has 86 employees. Recalculate this to what is spent monthly for employees and compare the number of employees to the staff number of photo agencies in the worldwide TOP 5 - TOP 15 area ... .

Had to learn again that outside Central Europe obviously no one knows what these (and formerly here mentioned) new Middleware Technologies like the Communication Server (ConfessMedia) and OpenGate (PictureMaxx) are about. But outside in the garden I ran into Dr. Hartmann of VISUELL and hopefully we will be lucky to sketch out the advantages together with some testimonials in the autumn issue.

Talking to portal owners, I underwent the fear some are having regarding the technology and the business modell of StockPhotoFinder. How many customers will this company attract who later will say "Goodbye my dear" to classical portals? Anyway, earlier I  wrote about "Those who attended New Orleans [last PACA meeting on November 2003] will remember the fireworks sparked when one art director said she prefers using GOOGLE to going to an agency ...".  Dagmar Fabricius of StockPhotoFinder explained that this incident had been one of the bottom ideas to found the company.

So far. What amuses and amazes me the most is how small these conferences and trade fairs of the "Stock Photo Industry" are. No comparison to any convention of the professional field I used to work in earlier. The RSNA for example has some 60,000 attendants.

And what happend elsewhere? Kodak announced the end of an era in these days when they said they would no longer manufacture black-and-white papers after the end of the year; the Photolibrary Group has acquired the Garden Picture Library; Bahar becoming an early pensioner (50+), although his company Index Stock launches a company blog; Alan Meckler realtime blogging from the CEPIC; and finally Jay DeFoore leaving PDN ("Send ... vitriolic send-offs to jdefoore@pdnonline.com").
 

Video Blogging, Vapnik´s Support Vector Machines, Video-On-Demand and Bayesian Networks

In the last days C|Net has published a bunch of articles on Videoblogging and Video-On-Demand:

• "Netscape co-founder eyes video blogs" about the new startup of Mark Andreessen (24 H Laundry): "A blogging and social networking site for consumers that will include video [...], 24HL, as in "airing your laundry," is largely funded by its founders, according to one Silicon Valley venture capitalist. [...] Since retiring from Netscape, Andreessen has lived the life of a gentleman entrepreneur. [...] More recently, he, along with Netscape alum Mike Homer, launched the Open Media Network, which caters to broadcasters, independent filmmakers and average people who want to distribute their films on the Internet for free."
• On the edge, the former articles also mentions the "TiVo with search"-tools of Gotuit Media. More about this in "Dawn of a new ad age" at the bottom. Similar an article ("IBM's 'Marvel' to scour Net for video, audio") on Marvel, IBM´s new internet search technology for footage, which is based on MPEG-7: "The 'How Much Information?' survey conducted by the University of California at Berkeley determined that television stations worldwide produced about 123 million hours of total programming in 2002. Of the total, 31 million hours represented original programming, which translates to 70,000 terabytes of data.[...]
  The prototype system can scan through a database of more than 200 hours of broadcast news video and use 100 different descriptive terms to classify and identify scenes. IBM hopes to come up with a list of 1,000 descriptive labels by April.
  A query takes about two to three seconds. Marvel is based on the MPEG-7 data format, but it can search on any standard video format."
• "Video content set free on Web" about the new startup of J.D. Lascia, Ourmedia ("the grassroots media revolution"), which hosts video for free: ""We're still at an early stage of the multimedia-rich Web. The Web is not going to be Web logs and text; it's going to be people posting video and podcasting and taking part in the citizens' media that's just starting to explode." Ourmedia's ultimate goal is not to amass a huge collection of video, but to establish open standards that will make vast multimedia libraries and archives across the Internet accessible through any number of social networks, blog tools, portals and media-sharing sites. [..] "One of our goals is to create an open format for video so that there are no more format wars," Lasica said. "It's crazy right now. It's confusing to people when they can't play video, and it's very frustrating.""
• "Google readying Web-only video search", only a week old, but already widely quoted, about the old and new plans of Google-Video: "Longer term, Google is preparing a payment system for a premium video service that would let people pay to watch full video clips. Google is talking to several top-tier content providers, including Hollywood movie studios, to gain agreements for aggregating their video and selling premium or pay-per-view access. "The ultimate endgame is streaming video, otherwise Google can't get video advertising dollars," said one source. "They have to figure a way to get video into their world to capture those dollars."" Similar "Yahoo, Google turn up volume on video search battle".

Corbis Signs Deal With Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Similar to the deal Getty Images has closed with Universal Studios, Corbis has signed a contract with the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios to sell their photographs and film footage:

Seattle-based Corbis will offer advertisers and editorial clients around the world the licensed use of MGM's library. [...]
Los Angeles-based MGM holds rights to more than 4,200 titles in all. [...]
Corbis recently launched its rights representation business with partnerships with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Marvel Enterprises Inc., along with acquisition of the Roger Richman Agency, which represents more than 50 of the world's most recognized personalities.

More here ("Corbis gets licensing deal for MGM library").

The Snowball Effect: Digital Railroad Gets $5.2 Million Venture Capital

Digital Railroad, the company that went online last year with an impressive broad range of services for professional photographers and photo agencies, today announced that it has secured a $5.2 million in venture capital from Morgenthaler Ventures and Venrock Associates (Venrock is also the VC behind Digit Wireless).
I wrote earlier about Digital Railroad, the idea, the concept, the small history of some other companies who acted rudimentary in this special business field earlier and finally how the customers, especially the single professional photographer, might benefit. Yes, the  single professional photographer, the mysterious person that had been totally forgotten in the present Stock Photo Industry game of "G. buys ABC" and "C. buys XYZ".
Shortly after I published this story in August 2004 Stock Index Online published an article about Digital Railroad which was apparently wrong on some  points. Finally, after some back and forth, Stock Index Online changed the article.
The internet party of 1999 is over. Remember, this company does not deal with possessing huge image libraries or vast collections of heritage images like Heritage Partners/Contentmine. Getting funding in today’s rough economic climate is a clear sign of trust and makes me think where this company might stay in two years... . Among others, new Digital Railroad members are Eyevine and CalSportMedia.

Regarding companies selling software and related services to the Stock Photo Industry, there are presently only five companies with venture capital in the background (maybe shortly six, but more about this later, after the CEPIC photo trade show).

Update: If you read the last but one paragraph here at PDN, don´t forget that the parent company of PDN, VNU USA, is also the parent company behind IPNStock.

Stock Photo War of the Widgets: StockPhotoFinder Introduces Widget For Desktop Image Search

Apple users might love it:  StockPhotoFinder has introduced a free Widget

to facilitate searching the databases of stock photography agencies and commercial photographers". [...]
Similar in functionality to a web browser, the Widget is faster, more direct and easier than other options for searching commercial imagery. It leverages the dynamic, new Dashboard technology from Apple Computer. 59% of StockPhotoFinder.com users search for stock imagery on Macintosh computers. [...]
StockPhotoFinder’s Widget offers image users the ability to conveniently search for databased images, download and try out watermarked previews in a design layout, and then directly contact the rights holder for e-commerce or assisted licensing.

Note: you must be running Mac OSX 10.4. And for those 59% the NYT has the background of what happend this week: "What's Really Behind the Apple-Intel Alliance".

Getty And Corbis Win: E-Data Patent Invalid

Finally E-Data has lost the "Freeny download patent"-battle :

Photo-licensing company Getty Images Inc. and competitor Corbis Corp. won a court ruling that they aren't infringing a European patent by allowing customers to download digital images. [...] Koos Rasser, a lawyer for Port Washington, N.Y.-based E-Data, said it wouldn't appeal the decision. ("Seattle Post: Getty and Corbis win image patent dispute")

See also the Financial Times, "Judge declares Freeny download patent invalid" and InternetNews, "Court Tosses Patent Case Against Corbis, Getty":

E-Data first sued Getty and Corbis, two digital stock photography providers that let users browse, license and download images online, in Europe in February 2004. It piled on the U.S. suit in May of that year.
Although the two suits were filed against the individual companies, they soon buddied up to present a united front against E-Data's claims. In London, the cases were joined for trial. E-Data's U.S. case against Corbis hasn't been resolved. [...]
Corbis and Getty also asked the courts to rule on the validity of the patent. In the UK, the judge invalidated the patent, leaving E-Data's licensing push in the lurch. E-Data executives weren't available for comment.
While the Freeny patent expired in the United States in 2003 and was set to expire in the EU in 2005, both countries' laws allow companies to sue for back damages, and E-Data had planned to do so.

Similar in "Court rules against E-Data in 'Freeny' patent case" (The Register). Among others, Apple had been willing to pay an undisclosed amount of royalties in August 2004 for the iTunes Music Store.
Here´s the link to the site "E-Data Facts" by Getty Images.

Footage, The Next Hype And A Big Idea

Some weeks off the blog and a lot of stuff to work out:

• Index Stock modifies its Image Search System (Link)
• Getty Images selling the footage of Universal Studios (Link): "Universal Studios, part of NBC Universal, is the first major motion picture studio to have its footage searchable via its own "portal" on a leading imagery site. At the Getty website, Universal is now offered as a search category alongside Archive Films and Image Bank. Getty says the new alliance represents "a significant step forward in the strategic development of Getty Images film, which has grown over twenty percent for the past three consecutive quarters" (John Flewin/Footage.info, no direct link available; John Flewin is to the footage industry what Jim Pickerell is to the stock photo industry, and far apart from that - how to say - questionable  E-Data-thing last year at the CEPIC).
  This corresponds to rumours that some traditional photo portals are starting to add footage sections to their websites. I wrote about that earlier: after Visual Search and Middleware Technology (Communication Server/OpenGate) the next big step will be the convergence of stock photos, footage, TV clips and mobile image and video content in one place. Some people were requesting the link to a formerly mentioned article, here we go:  "Stock footage: Look no further than the newly organized, digitized and revitalized stock footage industry".
  

  

• Getty plans ot acquire Photonica/Iconica for $51M (Link); read the brilliant PDN-review here: "Getty's Acquisition Of Photonica Gets Mixed Reviews" (JDFoore) and "Getty acquisitions position it on fast-growth track" (Business Journal)
  
• a21group reports QI 2005 financial results (Link)
• Jupitermedia buys GoodShoot (Link)
• "Analysis #15--Six Trends That Will Change the Industry" (Bahar Gidwani)
• Randy Taylor explains the success story of StockPhotoFinder.com (Link)
• Bruce Livingstone, CEO/istockphoto.com, interviewed by Sam Decker
• Imagestate has signed a distribution deal with Hachette Filipacchi Photos
• "Industry Analysis: Are Digital Cameras Impacting the Stock Image Market?" (CP/Heidi Tolliver-Nigro)

And now some other weeks off the blog. Here´s something to entertain you: Getty Images has set up a nice page about the footage project "The Big Idea". Watch this clip (Quicktime).

Posted by Andy

OnRequest Images - A Threat To The Stock Photo Industry?

Today the ASMP (American Society of  Media Photographers) published an open letter written to the Art Director Club (Link). Ocularly the reason is simply that the Art Directors Club is willing to accept "sponsorship funds from On Request Images for your upcoming gala event."

Actually ASMP (and the Stock Artists Alliance, Advertising Photographers of America and Editorial Photographers) is bringing up concerns about the business model’s long-term viability of OnRequest Images:

We have heard troubling stories from photographers who unwittingly engaged in this model [...]
The business model known as 'Custom Stock' does not appear to provide a viable and sustainable income for professional photographers and hence this is not a practice we can support. [...]
We urge you to not ignore the threat that "Custom Stock" brings to our industry.

A bit different Bahar Gidwani (Link): "I've heard nothing but good things about the opportunities OnRequest is creating for artists and the images they are making for their customers." A more detailed response from him in "Industry Comment #10--Is Custom Stock Good for Artists?" and finally a link to the ASMP position paper.