StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

Adobe Stock Photo Service Adds Creatas, Goodshoot, IT Stock And Thinkstock Images

The Adobe Stock Photo Service, the stock photography service that offers royalty-free images, has added four other brands of Jupiterimages to its collection:

Creatas Images (www.creatas.com), Goodshoot Images (www.goodshoot.com), IT Stock Images (www.itstockfree.com) and Thinkstock Images (www.thinkstock.com).

The JupiterImages brand Comstock Images (www.comstock.com) is already a part of Adobe Stock Photos when it was launched with Adobe Creative Suite 2 in April 2005. Currently Adobe provides access to 335,000 royalty free images. More here and here at the Stock Photo Industry Press Release Cemetery, where Adobe states that "Over one million low-resolution comp images have been viewed from Adobe Stock Photos in the first 90 days of operation".

Related services of Adobe are the Adobe Photographers Directory and Adobe Rights-Managed Photography.

QuickLinks for 2005-08-30

• The Corbis CROP photo catalog series has been awarded the "red dot award: best of the best" in Communication. zefa's portfolio book, ‘Connected,' has also won a red dot for communication design; Designer Today

• Photoshopping hurricane Katrina; Washington Monthy. Related: Hurricane Katrina: Photos and Video of the Storm's Impact, NYT, and Hurricane Katrina vs. the computers, News.com

• Flickr Fans To Yahoo: Flick Off; Weird, and Yahoo Faces Flickr Community Resistance; PaidContent.org

• North American Nature Photography Association honors photogrpahers at annual summit; Fotolia

• NPPA Partners with Western Kentucky University to Teach Photojournalism; PDN

• Women of Protest Gallery; Fotolia: "Library of Congress has released on online gallery of images depicting the activites and events of the Womens movement".

• Streetsy: a street-art photoblog is "a new street-art photoblog from Gothamist Jake and Slower.net Eliot. All the pictures are released to the public domain so you can use them for whatever purpose you want, with or without crediting the site." (Signal vs. Noise)

• Off topic: "Bush, while setting up for a photo op for signing the recent CAFTA bill, flipped an extended middle finger to reporters," in "Bush's Obscene Tirades Rattle White House Aides", Capitol Hill Blue; via niekhockx.nu | shutterclog

Visa Pour L' Image, Perpignan: 17th Festival International Of Photojournalism

Visa pour l'image (August 27 - September 11, 2005) starts today with around 3000 photojournalists and 280 press agencies from 50 countries (Peter Marshall); all will  be present during the professional week (August 29 - September 4, 2005).

It´s great to see that this year no one is talking about the problems that the festival was facing last year ("This year, as you all realize, the very existence of Visa pour l’Image was in the balance", so Jean-François Leroy in 2004).

This pdf-file (25 pages) lists all exhibitions, all evening events (Aug 29 - Sept 3 only) and shows, awards, meetings, interviews and the symposium. The photojournalist and writer Patrick Bard will moderate the panel discussions investigating the question: "Is Photojournalism a political statement?" More also here at PDN.

And, since VNU Business Media USA is obviously pushing IPNStock, I like to tell that Digital Railroad will have a booth at the Visa Pour L'Image photojournalism festival.

Osama Bin Laden´s Stock Photography Group At Flickr and Photographers Rights

Thomas Hawk who recently wrote "The Next Step For Flickr, Stock Photography" ran into trouble with the police again. The second time in just four weeks.

Just like other photographers before him (No Photos, Please: AMERICA, WHEN WILL THIS END? PART I and PART II; YOU ARE NOW ON THE NO-FLY LIST: Photographers, A 90-Pound German Shepherd And The Patriot Act) Thomas

went down to Oakland's warehouse district to shoot. No sooner had we begun than we were stopped and confronted by Sheriffs. They required each of us to turn over our IDs and then proceeded to detain us for about 20 minutes. [...]
There is a chill in the air in this country right now but I'm not sure that taking it out on the rights of photographers is the correct answer. We were committing no crime and peacefully assembling for the purpose of our passion, photography and it's pursuit in a group that we call Flickr.
This particular cop asked that I not take his photograph.
I took this shot anyway when he wasn't paying attention.

Thomas already had trouble with the police earlier ("No taking pix of San Fran building from the sidewalk?") this year.

FeedBlitz For The People At intranet.gettyimages.com, intranet.corbis.com, And Elsewhere

Tired of hanging all day in front of the screen, juggling with Bloglines, newsreaders, Kinja, Osama´s recent Podcast-RSS and his new Atom-feeds, switching from Alan to MadPixBiz and to Gay and Lesbian Stock Photography, from Bahar and Will to the Stock Photo Press Release Cemetery? Tired that your sys admin and your boss do know what you are reading during working hours?

FeedBlitz is a very young service that lets you receive entries of special selected blogs via email. Your email is always on, your browser or newsreader may be not. You can even read them on your cell phone or PDA.

Doesn´t sound too revolutionary? FeedBlitz already is today what the old service of Bloglet never became: reliable. You can even setup anonymous accounts (check "Private" in your profile), so the owner of the blog doesn´t know who subscribed to the blog.

Next, as a blog writer, you don´t have to hand over your own blog´s password -- as you were required using Bloglet -- because FeedBlitz is working with simple XML-feeds. I´m surprised that Steve Rubel is still using Bloglet.

The best for your boss (or his boss) however might be that your company doesn´t leave these little nasty referrers anymore at the blog you (or your boss, or your PR company) are just reading, like:

• intranet.seattle.gettyimages.com/OnePlaceHome.asp
• host80.uk.corbis.com
  (that guy had been workig on a saturday -- not to bad for an employee --  reading this old message on Photographer Patrick Riviere)
  
• outbound-nyc.gettyimages.com
• intranet.corbis.com/About_Corbis/Snapshot/details_0805.asp
  (the headline at the top is too short to display the full URL)
• outbound-emea.gettyimages.com
• host9.nyc.edelman.com
  (a NYC-based PR company working for Getty Images)
• etcetcetc.

It´s also not too bright if those dump blog writers observe that -- just at 09.00 AM local time in Seattle, London and New York -- these referrers are coming in.

This might sound to your boss like: he/she went to work, turned the computer on with a cup of coffee in the hand, started reading blogs, ended up snorting with laughter and went home to file a resume and CV to another company.

This might sound to the PR company of your company: heck, we have a problem. Not with the employees and not with the performance of all the bosses, but with this company at all.

Next, it´s not too bright to google for "Corbis IPO" or similar incredulous things, or even "xyzcompany lawsuit" or "mycompany sold to yourcompany", directly from your desk, if you are working in a big or mid-sized photo agency or PR company. Referrers are kind of omnipresent.

Furthermore, it´s not too smart to download blog content directly to your computer and save it to your local hard disk in a directory called "file///E:/MyCompany/Projects/Competitor/Kill..." as a document for the presentation next morning.

Long story short, sign up for FeedBlitz using the button to the right "Subscribe StockPhotoTalk!", create a Google account, set the preferences there to HTML-mail, let FeedBlitz mail you all the stories from this site to your Google account, then you can copy, change, extract, google and even delete the stuff just as you like it.

And, best of all: if you sign up for the Press Release Cemetery (there is a special button for that particular feed on that site: "Subscribe the Cemetery!"), then you´ll receive all the press releases for free (Link 1; Link 2) in your email!

And, if you are a weird person, you can even sign up for MadPixBiz (again, there is a special button for that particular feed on that site: "Subscribe MadPixBiz!"). The frequency of posts over there is very low (who in the world has consistently the time to write such bizarre stuff?). But the quality... .

However, with an email subscription you won´t be able to read the comments here or see the track backs.

Finally, if you don´t empty your browser´s cache, then the monkey at the top won´t shake his head.

QuickLinks For The Weekend

• The SearchEngineWatch blog looks at "Image Databases to Find "Visually Similar" Imagery and More" and takes a look at Cydra, who has just released a new version of their image database (they claim about 150 million images) and old buddy company Cobion allowing you to search for text found inside an image.

• "Corbis Restructures Again"; PDN: "Gary Shenk and Mark Sherman elevated to senior VP posts. Two other senior VPs -- Jennifer Hurshell [Senior V. P. Commercial Image Licensing of Corbis] and  Joe Barrett [SVP, Marketing] -- have been forced out of the company. Reorganizations have become almost commonplace at the company, which has announced a restructuring in each of the last five years."
  Maybe they even cut the contact with Trylon Communications.
  So Pat Hunt has to look for a new panelist for the Photoplus Expo 2005 seminar "What Stock Business Model is Right for You?"

• "Hasselblad launches the next generation of professional photography" with 22 MP and DNG support; Fotolia Blog and Adobe Blogs/John Nack

• "Condé Nast Plans Business Magazine and Web Site"; NYT

• "DNG Update, Part II"; Adobe Blogs/John Nack

• "A Camera for Those Who Like to Take the Broad View"; NYT

• "World-killing disaster photoshopping contest"; Cory Doctorow

• Queerstock, Gay and Lesbian Stock Photography, provided by Getty Images; read the experiences of Kate in "The Subtext of Stock Photography", where she started sourcing an image from GettyOne for an article on home heating tips and ended up, using Getty's "concept search", at a "very happy, congenial, gay couple", "filed under "Heat" as a concept".

• "Getty While It's Good" in The other Stalwart, Markets, Business, The Economy takes a look at Getty Images, JupiterMedia and the market conditions.

• JUPITERMEDIA REVISES 2005 FINANCIAL GUIDANCE, just released, with a future expectation of 2006 revenues of  m$163.0-165.0, compared to expected m$128.0-130.0 for 2005, also look at the expected net income.

• "Only 48% of Photographers Backup Images"; PhotographyBLOG

• "Kodak Trims Operations, Cuts 1,000 Jobs"; Yahoo News: "The moves are part of a dramatic overhaul begun by the world's biggest film manufacturer 20 months ago to eliminate up to 25,000 jobs by mid-2007".

• "The demise of the geek bloggers"; The Blog Herald

• Perfect: a weblog on "Optical Illusions Etc.".

• Corporate Gibberish Generator, via niekhockx.nu: "We don´t reinvent the wheel ... we just make reinventing the wheel easier". Enter any name you like!

• "Jupitermedia has announced that Getty Images will not sub-distribute images from the various PictureArts collections after Dec. 16. Jeffrey Burke recently said that JupiterImages wanted to continue the agreement and added that, in his opinion, Getty will have considerable trouble replacing work from the Foodpix, Botanica and Nonstock collections, all of which are brands of PictureArts." (Stock Asylum: "Getty Ends Agreement with PictureArts...")

German Photo Agency Trade Show PICTA Died Unpeacefully

More Kraut stuff no one cares about: as Visuell reports, the PICTA, the German Photo Agency Trade Show, in its current form, died an unpeaceful death.

The PICTA, operated by the German Association of Press Photo Agencies (BVPA), intended to become the german counterpart to the british BAPLA, the european CEPIC and the US PACA Conference. The fair took place only four times (2002 - 2005), and, strange to say, always in Hamburg (for non-Krauts: Hamburg belongs to the northern part of Germany, close to the polar region, with wimpy weather, extensive rain, clumsy cab drivers, and 50 year old rich ladies with gigantic horse stables, but no family or social life in the background). Someone else, Heinrich Heine, called the inhabitants earlier "moneybags".

However, some photo agencies of Southern Germany weren´t to happy with the fact that this one and only german fair in this buiness field singly took place in Northern Germany and decided to establish a southward pendant in Munich, called "Bild Archiv 2005" (Image Archive 2005), operated together with  the Marketing Fair Munich.

Thus, a small country like Germany had two trade shows in the same business field. Even more better, the southern fair occured just two weeks after the northern fair in April 2005, resulting in the trouble for the exhibitors to constantly arrange and rearrange exhibition furniture, displays etc. Krautig, eh?

The new solution for the PICTA includes a cooperation with another marketing fair, the Marketingservices. The PICTA will be arranged together with this fair, including an annual change of the location between Frankfurt and Hamburg.

The next date for the PICTA 2006 is May, 16 - 18, 2006, in... ? Again in Hamburg.

Hint: so far it is only a rumour that East Germany is planning to set up a third fair, called "The Erich Mielke Bigger Picture Trade Show", in Berlin. Erich had been one of the founders of participatory or "citizen journalism" and hired an army of amateur photographers who were instantly taken pix all day and night of all East Krauts.

Spencer Images Open For Business, Looking For Artists

John Spencer Ellis launches a new stock photography site that is specific to the health, fitness and wellness industry: Spencer Images, Fitness & Wellness Stock Photography, based in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA. The company belongs to John Spencer Ellis Enterprises, a leader in the fitness industry.

Spencer Images will be working with about a dozen of photographers in the beginning. John says that they are open for new artists: "We are soliciting the participation of photographers who would like to use the site for the sale of their photography."

Photographers who provide photography to Spencer Images before the official launch of the web site in August are offered a higher compensation structure.

More information for photographers here and here.

The War Continues: Jupitermedia Launches JupiterImages Unlimited Subscription Service

Jupitermedia has just launched the JupiterImages Unlimited Subscription Service with "unlimited access, at multiple resolutions, to over 330,000 images (Brand X, Comstock Images, Creatas Images, Goodshoot, IT Stock Free, Thinkstock Images, Photos.com, AbleStock.com and PhotoObjects.net).

Each photo is available in multiple resolutions, ranging from 1MB up to 75MB. Two subscription options are available, full access for all file sizes, and low resolution access for Web/multimedia resolution images. Each option includes access to the entire collection of images.

Will Jonathan Klein of Getty Images still call this "crap" ? Getty offers about 50,000 images in its subscription service Creative Express with plans to expand the offer to 80,000 images by the end of the year.

How will Bahar Gidwani/Index Stock Imagery respond to it ? Can he respond to it at all? Index Stock is offering about 75,000 images in its subscription service.

And by the way, where is Corbis? As PDN writes today in "Corbis Restructures Again", Corbis has just fired Jennifer Hurshell (Senior V. P. Commercial Image Licensing of Corbis) and Joe Barrett (SVP, Marketing).

Is this new or extended offering of Jupiter only a too fast and blindfold reaction to the new subscription service of Getty Images, Creative Express? Note, if you just only react, then you are not moving independently.

Some days ago on July 14, 2005, Meckler wrote that he thinks Getty Images is in a panic.

What is happening right now just seems to demonstrate that Meckler is in a panic, just some 10 days after Getty Images has introduced Creative Express. Would Meckler have done this step if Getty had not introduced Creative Express?

Read also: "JupiterImages' New Subscription Service ..." (Stock Asylum):

"Likewise, Jeffrey Burke, JupiterImages senior vice president of product strategy and former owner of the PictureArts stock photography agency, was similarly unconcerned about the new competition.
"Their (Getty's) subscription service has a lot of similars and old materials. My creative team reviewed it the day it was launched and they were not impressed," Burke commented.

Read also: "JupiterImages Announces Expanded Subscription Service" (PDN):

Meckler says the new service is not a reaction to Getty Image's new Creative Express subscription service, which launched last week with 50,000 images at a cost of $1,599 or $1,999 a year.

"We've been working on this for four months," Meckler adds.

Next there is "News from JupiterImages" (Publish):

An executive at the Darien, Conn.-based company said JupiterImages will be adding anywhere between 500 and 1,000 new images each month.

This for the moment, more here at the Stock Photo Press Release Cemetery.

PhotoPlus Expo 2005 Seminars: Some Giants, One Lame Protected Duck Called IPNStock

At first sight, the panel for one of the PhotoPlus Expo 2005 seminars, "What Stock Business Model is Right for You?" seems to be perfectly equipped (see all panelists here).

But, if IPNStock is "leading the industry in Internet technology, dynamic growth and creativity", then either there is something wrong with Internet technology, dynamic growth and creativity today at all or the lame Donald Duck Dot Stock was recently acknowlegded as a PACA member.

Or is it just because VNU Business Media USA is the parent company of the PhotoPlus Expo, of IPNStock and of PDN?

Besides, how much does this fact influence PDN´s coverage of competitors of IPNStock? Read the last paragraph at the bottom here to fully understand the consequences.

Maybe I should ask Brad Kuhns, co-founder of IPNStock, in a few weeks in NYC during the session, before "handouts of company information" are being distributed to the audience... . I will.

For the uninitiated: it is however a fairy tale that, after years of utmost research and continued innovation, IPNStock has introduced rights-managed RSS photo feeds for picture buyers.

That had been someone else: Digital Railroad.

Another seminar worth to attend is "Maximizing Stock Photography Income" with Tom Grill as speaker:

Conceptual image-production strategies are the most proven and successful methods for creating stock images that sell repeatedly. We will examine the psychology of the Internet image purchase and demonstrate the best way to analyze sales results. The maxim of the Internet age is to “Earn more while shooting less.”

Next, there´s Jack Hollingsworth in "Royalty-Free: An Insider's Guide to Success" and "Your picture is Important: The Concerned Photographer (Cornel Capa)" with Eugene Richards, Eli Reed, Donna Ferrato etc. as speakers. This panel deals with the life and work of the contemporary photojournalist.

Link to the full Conference List with all seminars. Here are all dates for the autumn 2005:

• PhotoPlus Expo, Oct. 20 - 22, 2005; New York

• Picturehouse, Oct. 19, 2005; New York (295 Lafayette Street, Puck Building)

• Picturehouse, October 31, 2005; London (11 Hoxton Square, London N1 6NU)

• Digital Railroad Events and Demonstrations, August - December 2005; around the world

• PACA Tenth Annual International Conference, Oct. 14 - 16, 2005; Redondo Beach, CA.