StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

Getty Images, Flickr And The Reinvention Of Outdoor Advertising

Yesterday Getty Images received the "2005 Business Excellence Award for Innovation". Jonathan Klein, the co-founder and CEO of Getty Images said, "Throughout history, imagery has proven to be an astounding force for change".

Last year on December 08, 2004, Getty Images announced the "Five Top Imagery Trends For 2005" (More in "The Future Of Stock Photography And Imagery Trends For The Future") and stated:

We will also see a virtual re-invention of outdoor advertising, as companies push to leverage plasma and LCD screen technology. These screens will be enabled to receive rich visuals through digital signals, creating "mini Times Square-like" displays on bus shelters, in office and hotel lobbies, elevators, sports arenas, and on billboards and other traditional out-of-home venues.

Now, with its astounding force for change, Flickr is responding and apparently some might not have fully understand the consequences of what is happening.

Mediamatic, an Amsterdam based company, created Playing Flickr v2.0 ("Imaginative Keyword Conversations in Public Space"), a public space installation in the bar/restaurant/club 11 that "allows its visitors [via SMS] to select tags or keywords which will project associated Flickr images onto the club’s panoramic wall screens" (holly marie).

Note that the images showed during the installation are not necessarily the best images available at Flickr and in fact they are not. Flickr should set up a professional image management department and hire some picture editors, pick up the best images for possible selling and marketing through distribution channels, improve the keywording/tag system, solve the legal issues with licensing, rights clearance, model releases etc. with a workaround and figure out a way to pay the photographers. Flickr has perhaps a stronger daily input of noteworthy stock photos than the micropayment sites. Flickr has some jewels in its hands, and the only problem remaining is if and how are they able to select and market these jewels. All it needs is a "can-do" attitude.

I don´t know the details of the deal between Mediamatic and the owner of the club 11. But for shure he has been able to generate some bucks more than without the installation. If he can hire Mediamatic (this includes the Flickr users as the producers) and if Flickr is able to solve some remaining problems, then any businessman, company or ad agency can showcase noteworthy stock photos in "bus shelters, in office and hotel lobbies, elevators, sports arenas, and on billboards and other traditional out-of-home venues" and elsewhere.

The quality will certainly not/never have the peak quality of some of the Getty imagery and a difference will remain for ever. But this difference is getting smaller in the low-end part and I´m sure there is a bigger market for Mediamatic/Flickr. What has happened in Amsterdam sounds pretty much like: "Getty, we don´t need you. You have great artists for sure. You have great images for sure. No doubt and no disrespect. But for the moment WE TAKE OVER. We did the virtual re-invention of outdoor advertising as you were sleeping. These are our images and our lifes and some of our images are pretty great. This is what we want to see in our sports arenas and our offices."

Imagine the power of a temporary joint venture of Mediamatic/Flickr, some micropayment sites and some of the best photoblogs (photoblogs.org currently lists 11,851 photoblogs in 93 countries and 42 languages).

As a play of thoughts: it would take a new independent distribution company to negotiate with Flickr, micropayment sites and some photoblogs to become the “outlet factory” for the best images of these sources and to streamline the offerings. The problem for the moment is the keen competition beetwen the micropayment sites, but, if their best imagery would be united as one force (like a normal classical photo portal), they will gain more visibility as if they were acting alone. This new company would represent in a nutshell the best imagery from these three sources and market them as a single pool, unifying their imagery as one force (and still the micropayment site can pursue their own business, for them it´s just another way to generate revenues). As a search engine (not as a independent distribution company), Yotophoto -- like Pixsy -- is a early and first step in this direction (see "Interview With Mark Thomson/Yotophoto"). - It´s juicy to notice how VCs with experience in the picture business are interested in these ideas, starting to fund both sides of the table. So, towards the notorious objection raisers at the PDN online forums ("What is flickr"), this is not satire.

Imagine this pool (neither Flickr, a micropayment site nor an aggregation of photoblogs can do this alone) would have access to Adobe Bridge. Imagine a pool image subscription model (no one would care anymore about low-end subscription services from other companies because of the jewels of Flickr, micropayment sites and photoblogs). Imagine some kind of a unified PLUS licensing system for those pool images (the problem for the moment are the specific conditions at each micropayment site). Imagine these source would have access to the GalleryPlayer. Imagine if these pool images would be searchable via Visual Search, then the task of keywording (Flickr´s problem for the moment) would be less important. Besides this, imagine if Flickr would create an own micropayment site with constant influx of imagery. A reader wrote, "just think if they create a contest for specific subjects in the low-end part, then you´ll have a correspondent OnRequest Images business model" (ok, this latter is now really weird!).

Finally Flickr should hire Thomas Hawk (1; 2; 3) for business development. He was right: instead of Yahoo, Getty or Corbis or another player should have bought Flickr.

Related:

• An Interview with Flickr's Eric Costello: "We’re working on new features to increase the relevancy of tag search results. It’s quite exciting because there are a lot of fantastic photos on Flickr that people don’t always find. I think it’s going to change the nature of Flickr a little bit. It’s pretty cool."
• Flickr: How To Displace Getty Images and Corbis

[Links to larger image sizes here and here]

 

QuickLinks For 2005-09-27

• Masterfile expands with direct sales operations in Germany, Italy, Netherlands, the U.K and has hired Tomas Speight (formerly co-CEO at zefa visual media, later sold to Corbis) as Senior Vice-President International. Tomas feels that he "always thrived in an entrepreneurial environment". Details here.

• SuperStock/A21 closes deal with Art.com: details here.

• Thomas Hawk, quoted here different times, is somehow obsessed with the subject "High Quality Stock Photography and Flickr". Look at his blog to see the many entries related to this subject. Now he writes about "Public Domain Art on Flickr" with a recent blog update.

Related in general: The Stalwart-Markets-Business-The Economy: "Coming With Their Battering Rams" and his earlier post he mentions.

• I had to take down the earlier post "QuickLinks For 2005-09-26"; more later. So this is a unusual short QuickLink list. But here are tons of interesting things.

• Besides "monitoring video feeds in real time", Images Get Their Own Search Engine looks at "within five years we'll see some 'simple but cute' consumer applications for visual search".

Stockxpert: Run, Forrest, run!

"Run, Forrest, run!"

The next new stock photography micropayment site is open for business: Stockxpert, launched on Sept. 11, 2005.

Earlier, in 2004 ("Free" Stock Photography and Royalty "Free" Stock Photography Sites without Breaking the Bank) and in 2005 (Free High Quality Stock Photography), I published here two lists with micropayment sites.

Meanwhile no one knows exactly how many of these stock photography micropayment sites do exist out there. Some of the bigger ones are certainly Dreamstime, Shutterstock, iStockPhoto.

One of the earliest (and also a "major") player had been stock.xchng. The creators of this site are also the people behind Stockxpert. The blog stainedscreen offers a nice comparison chart (iStockPhoto, stock.xchng and Stockxpert) and looks at some details.

I don´t know if he expected to get an answer to top his post, given this kind of audience, but recently Jean-Pierre Lescourret (Corbis) wrote ironically in the Stockphoto.net discussion group about "260000 stockphotos for $139": "...the progress we should support".

Via stainedscreen and sitedesignmagazine.

Related:

• New Yahoo Group For Micropayment Stock Photo Agencies
• Free High Quality Stock Photography
• The Future Of Stock Photography And Imagery Trends For The Future
• istockphoto.com: "Bringing the price down to a level where everybody can afford to buy a stock photo"
• Paradigm Shifts In Stock Photography
• Where to Find Free Images and Visuals for My Blog

SuperStock/A21 Closes Deal With WireImage To Push Its Purestock RF Collection

SuperStock today announced that it has closed an agreement with WireImage, one of the largest entertainment and sports photo wire services in the United States. SuperStock will provide WireImage with non-exclusive distribution rights to 6,000 images from its Purestock Royalty-Free collection.

SuperStock content is available through the Creative Tab on WireImage's website. Including already WireImage Stock and other image offerings from third-party RF collections, this new label is called WireImage Creative.

The parent company of WireImage -- and of WireImageStock.com, FilmMagic.com, ContourPhotos.com and WincReps.com -- is MediaVast. Investors of MediaVast include Time Warner and a nice bunch of other fellows, even my beloved Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. More details here at the Press Release Cemetery.

QuickLinks For 2005-09-22

• Hard core: "On September 7th I signed with Wijeya Publishers to redo their IT Times magazine ... anyways, I end up needing stock photography so I use Flickr"; Indi Samarajiva in "Free Stock Photos From Flickr".

• Times Company Announces 500 Job Cuts: "The announcements by two [also Knight Ridder] of the biggest newspaper companies in the country reflect the uncertain outlook for newspapers as some readers and advertisers move to other media ... Colby Atwood, vice president of Borrell Associates, a media research firm, said, "I expect to see more of this over the next 10-plus years as the newspaper industry adjusts to its smaller role in news dissemination and advertising"; NYT.

• Vertical Growth Drivers - Image Search on the Rise: "Image search was the main vertical driving the growth experienced by four top five search engines"; Nielsen//Net Ratings, p. 2 of the pdf-file.

• The future shines bright ahead? Ron Rovtar of the The Stock Asylum discusses the future of the stock photography industry in "Future Stock...", Part I one three articles.

Next, the Stock Asylum has published "The Second Annual Stock Asylum 103", a list of 103 quality rights-managed stock distributors "helping stock buyers find fresh photography". The index is separately searchable in a standard and an extended version. Especially fresh imagery can be found at UpperCut Images, Halo Images, Gallery Stock Limited, Desert Dolphin, Millennium and Glasshouse images. (Link to the Press Release)
 

• "The ultimate value of Flickr will be in the 5% of their photos that represent superior photography"; Thomas Hawk in "The Rise and Rise of Flickr".

• Andre Nantel/Digital Apoptosis in "One small piece at a time":

For a bit more than a year, I was using a "regular" agency to see if I could make some equipment money with this hobby of mine. It didn't work out.

To put it simply, contrary to what some may say a 3.5 MP camera simply doesn't cut it in the stock photography world. On the other hand a new market has opened up. Microstocks will sell your images for about a dollar and they count on volume to make it worth your time. For the past five weeks, I have submitted about one hundred images to three of them, Dreamstime, Shutterstock and iStockPhoto.

So, does it work? In the past 5 weeks I have sold 184 images for $58.

• After Scoopt and SpyMedia,the next new photo agency for citizen journalists is Cell Journalist; details at picturephoning.

• "If you happen to be in the Bay Area next week, the Aurora Forum is presenting what looks to be an interesting panel discussion on documentary photography and democratic ideals" ["Cameras and Cultures: The Myth of Objective Documentation"]; John Nack/Adobe in "Photography event this week and next".

• "A new service now available: A MINOX laboratory copies pixel by pixel onto traditional chemical film"; Mark Goldstein in "Copy Your Digital Photos Onto Film".

• Please modify your browser security settings:

"GalleryPlayer Media Networks (www.galleryplayer.com) is now available on Windows XP, bringing the world's finest HD art and photography to millions of PC and high-resolution displays.

GalleryPlayer Media Networks has signed license agreements with over twenty-five of the world's leading sources of rights-managed art and photography including The New York Times, National Geographic, The Time Life Picture Collection, New York Public Library, The Andy Warhol Foundation, Rachel Hale, Bruce McGaw Graphics, Corbis, Dorling Kindersley, George Eastman House, America 24/7, Art Resource, Artist Rights Society, and other major museums, brands and collections" (Link to the press release with prices etc. and here´s the link to the Imagery Content Partners).

GalleryPlayer announced on July 18, 2005, that it has closed a $4.0 million series B financing round led by Menlo Ventures.

• This is great! Graphic Design USA has released the 12 webpages thick study "19th Annual Stock Visual Survey" called "The New Face of Stock", including a review of the Getty Images portal; via the uncle of Natalie.

Recent Analysis On Getty Images, New Numbers From Corbis

Newratings.com in Getty Images "neutral," target price raised:

Analysts at Robert W Baird maintain their "neutral" rating on Getty Images Inc (GYI.NYS). The target price has been raised from $75 to $84.

In a research note published this [September 20] morning, the analysts mention that the company's main competitor, Corbis, has reported its 1H05 revenues and ex-FX organic growth at $111.5 million and 4.6%, respectively. The results were significantly lower than Getty Images’ revenues and ex- FX organic growth of $363 million and 13% for 1H05, the analyst says. Getty Images is likely to have gained market share during the period, according to Robert W Baird.

The Q3 2005 Earnings Conference Call of Getty Images takes place October 20, 2005.

The mentioned Corbis revenues of $111.5 million corresponds to the revenues for the first two quarters of 2005 Corbis recently reported and indicates a 33% growth over the full year 2004, with a pro forma growth of about 6.6% (Getty: about 16.5%).

Corbis said that 79% of its revenue were related to the licensing of RM, 10% to the licensing of RF and another 10% to other services. The company generated 42% of its revenues in the Americas, 53% in Europe and about 3% in Asia with a overall revenue split of 40% in Editorial and 60% in Commercial.

This year, Corbis had acquired eMotion (Link), image100 (Link), Zefa (various links) and the Roger Richman Agency (Link).

a21 Reports Second Quarter Financial Results

A21, the parent company of Superstock, recently raised $1M through stock sale (see the bottom of the linked page). Today the company announced the financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2005.

Gross revenues for the second quarter of 2005 were $2,327,000 compared to $2,527,000 for the same period in 2004. Gross revenues were $4,639,000 in the six months ended June 30, 2005 compared to $3,325,000 in the six months ended June 30, 2004.

"Second quarter revenues are up over the first quarter of 2005," said Albert H. Pleus, Chairman and CEO of a21. "Additionally, revenues for the first two quarters of 2005 are up 12% sequentially over the prior six month period."

"During the last quarter, we introduced "Purestock," a Royalty-Free brand designed to provide the professional creative community with quality images at the highest resolutions and at competitive pricing. The collection launched internationally in more than 100 countries, and the second wave of Purestock content will be available in September 2005, followed by a full schedule of releases in 2006," Thomas V. Butta, Vice Chairman and President of a21 and CEO of SuperStock, added.

More here at the Press Release Cemetery.

QuickLinks For 2005-09-20

• Adobe Photographers Directory wins a WebAward for outstanding achievement in website development. Adobe says " now that the directory is linked from Adobe Bridge, we hope that more photographers and designers, ad agencies, and other clients will find each other through it."

• During the ASPP´s (American Society of Picture Professionals) Fourth Education Conference next year in San Francisco (March 23 -26, 2006), VIMA Technologies and Idee Inc. will present a session about Visual Search and Image Monitoring. -Hey, where´s PicScout?

• ZUMA Press, Inc. the largest independent picture agency and wire service in the world, and Meximerica, a U.S-based Spanish-language newspaper publisher, joined forces to broaden the reach of Meximerica's content. The deal grants ZUMA worldwide rights to license the daily picture production of Meximerica's network of RUMBO daily newspapers.

ZUMA properties include DOUBLEtruck Magazine, KONA Pictures, zReportage.com, ZUMA Press and the KeyStone Picture Agency.

• In the recent issue of Visuell, Klaus Plaumann, Marketing Director at Picture Press and manager of the STERN photo documentation, explores the current situation in the german picture business, taking into account especially the recent developements in the US (new subscription services, Adobe entering the game, Royalty Free still rising etc.).

  According to Plaumann, it seems that the status in this special segment is as wonky and shaky as the overall status in Germany (read "With Germany´s Surprising Economy, Karl Marx Comes Back" and "Germany Loses Its Own Election"). His article starts with "Change your business NOW" and ends with "If we don´t change and adopt, we clearly set ourselves aside".
  

  The article is interesting to read (although recent developments like micropayment sites or OnRequest Images are missing), but in german and requires registration.

• a21 Inc./Superstock raises $1M through stock sale. As the Business Journal of Jacksonville writes,

  a21 Inc. has raised more than $1 million by selling 7 million shares of the company's common stock to a trio of investors. a21 sold the shares to Ahab International Ltd., Ahab Partners L.P. and John L. Steffens.
  Jacksonville-based a21 is the parent of stock photography company SuperStock Inc.
  Last month a21 announced it had changed auditors and would file its quarterly earnings report late.
  a21 (OTCBB: ATWOE) has still not filed its quarterly report with the SEC, and is listed as delinquent on the OTC Bulletin Board. If it does not file the report by Sept. 22 its shares of common stock may be removed from the OTC Bulletin Board.
  a21 noted in an SEC filing last month that its board named Thomas V. Butta chief financial officer. Butta, the president of a21 and CEO of SuperStock, replaced William E. Murphy IV, who resigned from the company.

  More in "Non Reliance on Prev Financials, Audits or Interim Review" (September 19, 2005):

  In addition, the Company determined that it had not properly reflected the SuperStock purchase price allocation of goodwill and the deferred tax liability in conjunction with the SuperStock acquisition.

• Shortly after the Fotofinder, Picturemaxx relaunched recently the portal website Picturemaxx.net.

• Pro domo: the FeedBlitz subscription service is currently not working for the Press Release Cemetery. More later.

One Item Less On The Shopping List: Reuters Acquires Action Images

Last year, EMPICS, the UK based international sports photography and photo marketing agency, which was established in 1985 and offers Picture Buyers a digitised sports photolibrary of over 650,000 images (another 1.4m images are held offline in physical storage), had been sold to The Press Association (PA), the national news agency of the UK and Ireland.

Now Reuters, the world’s largest international multimedia news agency (revenues in 2004 £2.9 billion, 15,300 staff in 91 countries), has acquired London-based Action Images, the specialist sports photography agency "in a deal designed to continue the expansion of Reuters global picture business".

Action Images owns an archive of more than 7 million sports images with more than 1.5 million available online, is number one for football and the UK’s largest independent sports photographic company. Clients include FIFA, UEFA and all of the UK’s national newspapers.

According to Reuters, "the deal enables Reuters to expand the sale of its pictures beyond its traditional media client base into the commercial market, and to build the Action Images brand in markets outside the UK. Action Images will also have access to Reuters world class sports news text and graphics, and will use these to create multi-media products for its clients."

Action Images´ founder David Jacobs remains as Managing Director of the Action Images. Monique Villa, Global Head of News and Pictures at Reuters, becomes Chairman of Action Images, and Philip Kelly its Chief Executive.

Reuters notes also that it "has acquired Image Group Limited, the holding company of the Action Images group. The gross assets of Image Group Limited as of December 30th 2004 amounted to £1,821,494."

More here at the Press Release Cemetery.

QuickLinks For The Weekend

• The Time/Richard B. Woodward in "Picture Perfect: In the age of citizen photos, Witness shows that professional news photography is still peerless" about the new book of Reuel Golden ("Witness: The World's Greatest News Photographers"), a senior PDN editor:

The book nonetheless reinforces certain clichés about the profession. Golden must know that war photographers aren't all selflessly heroic, and he fails to mention the crushing might of the industry's superpowers, Getty Images and Corbis, which have gobbled up independent agencies and driven down the price that unaffiliated news photographers can earn for their work.

It is television that generally dictates what becomes a memorable image these days by endlessly repeating video clips ... this book gives a select group of photographers a chance to try to even the score.

Related: "Journalist deaths in modern conflict" (APAD blog)

• The September Issue of Photoblogs Magazine is online (download link for pdf-file).

• Alexa rankings again. As QT Luong of Terra Galleria writes, he had a look at the Alexa rankings described in "Avanti, Avanti! Randy Taylor On Search Methods, Technology Providers And Marketing Channels" (see the links there to the Alexa-pdf-files of StockPhotoFinder):

"It is interesting to note that several individual photographers have achieved Alexa ratings for their own websites that exceed ratings of most of the agencies listed."

Avanti, Avanti! Randy Taylor On Search Methods, Technology Providers And Marketing Channels

Some days ago, in the StockPhoto.net Yahoo Group, Fred Voetsch of Acclaim Images wrote:

"Stockphotofinder has gone nowhere and produced nothing ... they were all hot and heavy about their Alexa stats until they tanked after showing a tiny bit of success. I haven't heard anything about sales coming from the site".

Yesterday Randy Taylor of StockPhotoFinder/StockPipeline reponded in a series of five emails (1; 2; 3; 4; 5) from his private email account in the StockPhoto.net Yahoo Group. He is writing about StockPipeline, Alexa, Google Searches, "Search Methods At Stock Photo Agencies & Search Engines" and "Technology Providers vs. Marketing Channels".

His answer is long, interesting to read, so here´s what he responded in a nutshell, compiled from his emails:

In its first ten months since launch, the use of the industry's stock photo search engine [StockPhotoFinder.com] by professional researchers rose from zero to a quarter million searches monthly.

SPF launched new marketing September 1st, which includes in-office demonstrations to corporate clients and its new ad campaign on Google.

Alexa rankings are like watching a horse race, fun to watch, but I wouldn't bet much money on it. In my opinion, they're not to be taken too seriously. If interested in that perspective, there's an article in SPF's May newsletter that explains Alexa rankings in detail, available at this URL:
http://www.stockphotofinder.com/newsletters/StockPhotoFinder-News-May-05.pdf

Perhaps of greater interest, there is a list of Alexa rankings and launch dates of the top stock photo agencies, as of April 21, 2005 at this URL:
http://www.stockphotofinder.com/documents/Alexa-Rankings-042105.pdf

Using Google is a definite trend amongst people looking to license images, especially low-cost ones. The first I heard picture buyers talking about "Googling" was at a PACA conference two years ago (PACAoffice.org). I remember thinking it would be great if one could "Google" prequalified collections of images from professional suppliers and have a more suitable tool for professional picture research than other search engines.

It is my belief that stock photo agencies will ultimately adapt their search methods to those of Google, which has become the defacto training ground for future researchers.

No Stock Photos of Talking Heads, No BATHroom Breaks For Poor Black Neighborhoods

"The photographer and editors on this story were looking for other angles in their coverage of this event, something that went beyond the stock pictures of talking heads that these kind of forums usually offer," explained Reuters' Stephen Naru. "This picture certainly does that." (Editor&Pubsliher, "Reuters Photog Captures Bush at U.N. With 'Bathroom Break' Note")

"U.S. President George W. Bush writes a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York September 14, 2005." (Reuters with the original picture)

"The photo by Denver-based Rick Wilking, taken over a man's shoulder, shows an official -- identified in the caption as President Bush -- scribbling in pencil on a small white piece of paper that already contains the words: "I think I MAY NEED A BATHroom break?" It is unclear if Bush is in the process of responding to that message or wrote it himself." (Editor&Pubsliher, "Reuters Photog Captures Bush at U.N. With 'Bathroom Break' Note").

BATHroom break?

"Some NOLA evacuees believe the levees were blown up to destroy poor black neighborhoods" (Photo by Jacob Appelbaum)

QuickLinks For 2005-09-14

• Welcome to the Club!

The rise of email interviews in the Stock Photo Industry continues: Will of Photo Archive News does it, Brent of About The Image does it, I did it in the past, now Pat Hunt is interviewing Christina Vaughan, Founder/CEO of Image Source, in "Image Source:  RF Leader" at MacTribe. It seems to be -- except for question number 4 -- an email interview, but anyway, it´s the content that counts.

Unfortunately this interview does not have the excellent quality of the former interviews with Randy Taylor (StockPhotoFinder) or David Norris (OnRequest Images). It is mostly a pure marketing speech with endless superlatives and does not respond to the wide-spread and constant rumours that Image Source is the next item on the shopping list of someone else.

Christina´s answer so far is "certainly 2005 has been an interesting year with many of my old colleagues and competitors selling their business" and "we have our sights set further afield - the next stop will be Asia - an important goal for Image Source".

Even more or less quirky places like Cologne, where one of the offices of Image Source is located, are subject to the marketing speech ("incredible city", "dynamic and vibrant"). Is this more weird Kraut stuff (also here) or simply eau-de-Cologne?

Anyway, if we´re all lucky we can read the same stuff in some weeks again at Jim Pickerell´s Pickphoto -- after you had to read his "I was granted permission to reprint" again and after you had paid (like it happened in the past and recently with the reprinting of press releases, Link 1 and Link 2) for this permission ... just to get finally the permission to read for money what is elsewhere available for free. Sorry, this is MadPixBiz.

As I wrote earlier in "Industry Veteran John Flewin Of Footage.info Enters The Promising Press Release Business", footage industry veteran John Flewin of Footage.info created a blog (Footage.info News) that republishes press releases already visible at his main page Footage.info to expand his business activities and to achieve a higher Google ranking.

• IPNStock, in an attempt to reach the sky, announces new members and staff. Patricia Bayley, former photo editor for Digital Vision, has been hired as IPN’s new Photo Editor. More here.

• The StockAsylum looks at "UpperCut Starts Promotional Blitz...": "With about a year of photography production preceding the launch, the library represents the first really new collection of general rights-managed stock photography to hit the market in several years. [...] He added that there should be about 20,000 images online by the end of the year."

• "Visa Pour L'Image, A Report" (Tiffinbox) of what happend this year.

• Scoopt, the first picture agency set up specifically and exclusively to help amateur 'citizen reporters' sell the pics they take on their cameraphones to the media (Link), "has finally made it's first sale to the Bristol Evening Post." (Picturephoning in "Scoopt sells first major cameraphone shot" and in "More on Scoopt's first sales")

• Spy Media, the new News Photo Network For Everyone: "Scoopt soon will have a competitor in selling citizen news photos. A U.S.-based start-up, Spy Media, is set to debut in early October. Its model is slightly different, serving both citizen photographers and professional photojournalists, who upload photos to a website, where picture editors can buy rights to images" (via Picturephoning quoting Poynter.org): "Whether you witness a tornado tearing its way through South Dakota, or a celebrity visiting a refugee camp in Eastern Europe, Spy Media is the place for you starting October 3rd."

• "On Monday, The Associated Press will begin offering articles and "experiences" in multimedia formats, with audio, video, blogs and wireless text"; NYT in "A.P. Fashions a News Feed for the Young".

• "Photoshop weblogs, podcasts, and more"; John Nack on Adobe, Adobe Blogs.

• Howdidodi: "Google is set to launch its own dedicated blog search facility [Google Blog Search] in what will likely be a major competitive threat to existing players including Technorati, IceRocket, Blogpulse and others" (BlogHerald, "Google to launch Blog Search" and later in "Google Blog Search Reviewed": "This is about as useful as…..Technorati, with half as many results but without the error messages").

• The small companions of the professional photographers... . I don´t write about hardware; there are many other sites. Only in the case that icons or jewels appear. One of these icons had been in former times the Ricoh GR-1 ("Ricoh Caplio GX: A new Ricoh GR-1 for the Digital Age?") and Ricoh attempted to repeat this success story with the Ricoh Caplio GX and recently with the Ricoh Caplio GX8. Now they launched the Ricoh GR Digital (Link 1, 2, 3) and, as the name and the features are clearly demonstrating, this camera is the true descendant of the Ricoh GR-1.

• Schaukasten is a pretty great new blog "dedicated to the aesthetic values of movie art beyond the screen."

QuickLinks For The Weekend

No big thing this week with somehow less or more remarkable things like earlier, but these important links about Photojournalism and Video, off the grinning Stockphoto topic:

Dallas Morning News photojournalist and Pulitzer Price Winner David Leeson has been covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina with three videos:

Jefferson Parish

Oil Spill

Stray dogs

Last year, Leeson published "Dust to Dust", a big quicktime file (275.7 MB) about the war in Iraq ("The film tells a personal story of what it was like to be an "embed" and presents a war you didn't see on TV").

More in "War Feels Like War: Photojournalists Onto The Battlefield Without Military Protection".

Related:

Crisis of photojournalism: Seeking ways out (Editors Weblog)
Images of Disaster and How They Were Captured (Poynter online)

Just aside: in the last days BoingBoing ran two stories with the statement "Some NOLA evacuees believe the levees were blown up to destroy poor black neighborhoods", adding "the rumors appear widespread among some evacuee populations. They also appear in Ben Ehrenreich's LA Weekly story, "Baghdad on the Bayou" ... Robert shook his head at my naiveté. "They had to get the poor people out so they could get the space."

Related and excellent as always, Dennis Dunleavy in "Spinning the Big Easy: Why FEMA Doesn't Like to See the Dead": "Some police and military personnel have stopped, beaten, arrested and threatened journalists covering the flood's aftermath."

OnRequest Images Raises $8 Million In Second Round: Starbucks Enters The Stock Photo Industry

New bicycles and iPods for all employees. The big money is coming back to young companies, even if some (ASMP) think different ("OnRequest Images - A Threat To The Stock Photo Industry?").

OnRequest Images had been very active in the last weeks ("OnRequest Images Expands Offerings with Launch of Custom Assignment Photography Services") and offers now three products: Custom Assignment Services, Custom Stock Images, and Custom Stock Libraries (one flat fee covering two years of unlimited use). Next, they launched the "Next Generation Network For Photo Models" on August 10, 2005. Now they received their Second Round:

"Today, Norris' OnRequest Images is announcing that it has raised $8 million in venture capital to boost its sales and marketing. The 45-employee company has raised $12 million to date. [results in $4 million for the First Round]

The investors include Seattle-based Frazier Technology Ventures and Maveron, also based in Seattle and founded by Starbucks' Howard Schultz. What Norris also found were investors with expertise in his line of work. [Hint: this last sentence appeared earlier in the original story of the Seattle Times; Maveron has also invested in Potbelly Sandwich Works]

OnRequest uses the Internet to help match photographers with companies looking for specialized photographs. The difference between OnRequest and Getty or Corbis is that its network of photographers tailors a shoot to a particular company versus having a company sift through a library of images to use."

More here at the Seattle Times technology reporter: "$8 million is raised for images startup" and "Venture Capital: Frazier Technology 'on the move' in Seattle":

"Corbis spokesman Dov Schiff said the company's assignment business, which includes well-known photographers such as Ed Kashi, Peter Turnley and Dimitri Daniloff, is growing fast but still represents a small percentage of overall revenue. For large advertising campaigns such as Absolut Vodka or Sony PlayStation, Schiff said companies want to hand-select the photographers and images they use.

"The big advertising agencies don't want four or five people shooting on spec, they want a specific photographer and they want to custom design the shoot," he said. "It is kind of like college ball versus pro ball."

Still, Frazier Technology's Jordan said OnRequest is a "great Web play" because it efficiently matches the needs of advertisers with photographers. In that regard, he said it is similar to eBay.

OnRequest Images CEO David Norris, who co-founded the company in 2002 and chose Seattle for the headquarters because of the presence of Corbis and Getty, said they can offer corporations custom imagery at stock photography prices.

"People can get exactly what they want, quickly and efficiently and at a price they can live with," said Norris, adding that the images can be produced in less than 72 hours and at a cost that shaves millions of dollars off a traditional photo shoot.

As a result of the investment, Frazier Technology Ventures general partner Gary Gigot will join the company's board. OnRequest employs 45 people, with plans to double in the next 12 months. It has more than 300 customers, including Procter & Gamble, Charles Schwab and The Discovery Channel."

OnRequest Images will change the industry like Royalty Free did years ago. The lamentation and whining of some will continue with the same output peak as it happened years ago regarding Royalty Free. For those OnRequest Images will remain an ugly toad, for others (the global network of 1,600 photographers) it is or will become a big nice toad with lots of money in it.

[Image: Incredible OnRequest Huge Animals]

Partners of OnRequest Images include Alamy and Index Stock Imagery. More here at The Press Release Cemetery.

After Inventing The Google Of Stock Photography, StockPipeline Is Randy Taylor´s Next New Venture

Earlier Creators Cycle, Stockmedia.net and StockPhotoFinder, now StockPipeline: 1123 Broadway, Suite 1006, NYC 10010, is getting pretty much overcrowded.

Serial entrepreneur Randy Taylor ("We want to be the Google of stock photography") of Stockphotofinder founded his next venture: Stock Pipeline, aimed at photographers, artist’s reps and small stock photo agencies. StockPipeline recommends the use of Keyword Compiler, also located at ... 1123 Broadway, Suite 1006, NYC 10010.

Getting serious: in a nutshell, StockPipeline, as a completely automated, artist-controlled business platform for the licensing of stock photos, links photographers and picture buyers, providing what is necessary to completely control ecommerce, licensing and hi-res image fulfillment. Photo sellers receive 100% of the licensing fees, Stock Pipeline the transaction fee ($25), with zero commissions on sales.

Services include:

• Multiple price lists that you can select from or create to your ability to limit usage restrictions and countries of access per image

• Eight language search

• Client-controlled resizing "on the fly" upon download

• You can band together several photographers and operate as a company or cooperative (PhotoShelter offers the same feature)

• Image suppliers benefit by maintaining of their brand and direct relationships with their clients, and from online keywording and captioning

• Drag & drop image upload that automatically extracts IPTC/File Info captions and keywords and creates your thumbnails, previews and 56 MB deliverables

• One year minimum, starting at $50 a month for up to 1,000 high resolution images, monthly rates increase at $5.00 per 100 images. The one-time setup fee is $200.

More here at the Press Release Cemetery:

StockPipeline.com is technology sales tool, not a marketing channel. To assist the essential need of marketing, it has made special arrangements with StockPhotoFinder.com, the stock photo search engine that is rapidly growing marketing for image suppliers with its 100% royalty model. Those who leverage their direct marketing via the Stock Photo Finder will receive a $100 discount on the setup fees at StockPipeline.com, as well as the perfect fit of an e-commerce platform that is ideally suited for direct marketing.

Just aside, for the usual lame ducks, Randy Taylor noted earlier at Mactribe:

Footage is also the future. We are implementing the process for footage. It’s just a matter of time before we will have available footage for a search. The process has a common lightbox and all the same functionality as still imagery. It will be here by the end of the year. We are already searching millions of pictures. We expect to be searching 10’s of millions of pictures and footage clips.

H. Armstrong Roberts Launches ClassicStock.com

As reported earlier here and here, Retrofile was recently sold to Jonathan Getty Images. H. Armstrong Roberts writes:

Getty Images recently acquired the Retrofile brand name and trademark, the entire Black Box Collection and a selection of archival images from H. Armstrong Roberts Company. The Black Box images have been transferred and the images are now available at Getty Image´s site under the Retrofile creative brand. The H. Armstrong Roberts images are presently being transferred and will be available shortly at the same location. Soon your bookmarks for Retrofile.com will take you directly to the Getty Images web site.

ClassicStock.com will be your future access to the hundreds of thousands H. Armstrong Roberts vintage, retro, historical and archive images not acquired by Getty Images. Additional resources available at ClassisStock.com will continue to include Popperfoto historical views as well as unique images from individual contributing photographers, the Airstream Collection, the Wisconsin Historical Society, Ewing Galloway Photography, Camerique International and American Stock Photography.

Until the launch of ClassicStock.com these vintage image resources are presently available to you at: www.Robertstock.com.

Your current Retrofile.com registration username and password will also be transferred to ClassicStock.com.

Jerry Kennelly Of StockByte: "Failure Was Never An Option, You Work Your Ass Off To Meet Your Deadline"

Long Labour Day weekend and time to browse. The Sunday Business Post Online looks in Getting the picture at Jerry Kennelly of Stockbyte and the history and future of his company:

“I wanted to do something in photography, and I wanted to do something on an international scale,” he said. Both of Kennelly's ambitions have long since been realised. His company, Stockbyte, is now the fourth-largest supplier of royalty-free photographs in the world, behind global giants such as Getty and Corbis, the stock photo agency owned by Bill Gates. [...]

The firm, which employs 35 people, made an operating profit of more than €1 million in the year to the end of April 2004.Things have since moved on. “We have had serious growth since then, and the figures are now much more significant,’' Kennelly said. The Stockbyte business model is simple. The company takes thousands of generic images from around the world and sells them at high volume and low cost. The client pays for the photograph once and can then reproduce it as often as desired with no additional cost. Stockbyte has about 60,000 images on file. [...]

“They [publishers] were caught between a rock and a hard place,” he said. “That is where we got the idea for royalty-free photographs. It was a no-brainer to me that this was going to be a great business.” [...]

Kennelly knew he needed more finance if the firm was to shoot more pictures and generate more sales. He approached the main banks, who were not interested. There was no bricks and mortar involved. Thanks, but no thanks. But ACT Venture Capital in Dublin appreciated his idea, and took a 25 per cent stake in the firm in 1997 for €300,000 and a working capital loan of €600,000. [...]

“When you are into photography, it is like having a sense of art or of music. You are looking at a shot, figuring how you are going to take it, crafting it in your mind. “It is visual literacy. There is no compromise and there can't afford to be. Our success is down to our standards and the fact that our pictures are better than our rivals'. We refuse to compromise on our pictures. If that means renting a 747 aircraft for one picture, we will rent it. Simple as that.”

Kennelly and his team travel extensively building up their stock of photographs. A team of six recently returned from the US, where they were shooting for three months. In addition to the core Stockbyte team, the payroll for the shoot included an auxiliary staff of 20 and another 30 models each day. The company outsources its post-production operations to India and Hong Kong, but retains its creative process at its Tralee headquarters. [...]

Earlier this year Kennelly launched another company aimed at the lower end of the market, called Stockdisc. The pictures are not as sophisticated as those of Stockbyte, and sell for a lower price. Stockdisc now has a library of 15,000 images.

“We are debt-free and self sustaining, so we can move forward and look at other things. Stockbyte recently signed a partnership deal with Getty, under which its images will be available to Getty customers. The deal is likely to result in a huge sales uplift for Stockbyte, and has also fuelled rumours that the business will eventually be sold to Getty. “I suppose people would say that all right. But I want to keep the business while I am still adding sustainable value to it,” said Kennelly.

It´s a longer and well-written story, so continue here.

Regarding Stockdisc, the brand

was launched March 2005 targeting mid level users with aggressive CD price points. Stockdisc is already achieving substantial revenue streams and is now set to be another major player alongside Stockbyte. 15,000 images and 80 CD based image collections now shipping. 25,000 images and 120 titles shipping by September.

Research indicated a shortage of supply of contemporary images for this sector and since its launch in March has already has already achieved substantial revenue streams.

Between both brands (wholly owning all of their imagery), over 40,000 new images will be launched during 2005, making them the fastest growing stock creators globally. Stockbyte has been profitable since its launch in 1997 and in the past three years has achieved 50% year on year profit growth. Its 2005 figures will considerably exceed this performance. Stockbyte/Stockdisc is now the largest privately held royalty-free stock photog company by sales" (Link)

Kennelly is also a part of the Ernst & Young 2005 Entrepreneur of the Year Shortlist.

Index Stock Imagery Responding To The Recent Changes In The Stock Photo Subscription Market

One of the major disadvantages of blog content management systems is certainly that you have to go back to a special entry to see if someone has responded. The following is a comment that doesn´t deserve to vanish in the comment area.

Bahar Gidwani of Index Stock Imagery today responds to the recent entry "The War Continues: Jupitermedia Launches JupiterImages Unlimited Subscription Service". He writes:

Thanks for asking how we will respond to the recent changes in the subscription market. As you know, I responded immediately to Getty's move with a comparison on my blog between their sub and ours. (http://www.dimdump.com/dimdump/2005/08/industry_commen.html)

The comparison was unflattering, to the Getty product. After I did it, I learned that Getty's sub has yet another hole in it. I'm told that the right to use images from the sub ends, if the subscription ends! That means that tons of Getty sub users could be hammered for infringement, if they keep using a subscription image they thought was royalty-free, after the end of their sub!

[Click continue]

QuickLinks For The Weekend

• "All the pictures that I currently have with Alamy were shot on consumer level digital cameras"; Jonathan Ryan, Alamy - Image Preparation.

• Getty Images announces the three winners of Getty Images Grants for Editorial Photography 2005 during the Visa Pour L’image in Perpignan, France: Balazs Gardi (Hungary), Scott Lewis (US) and Kai Wiedenhöefer (Germany). Read more about Balazs Gardi, Scott Lewis and Kai Wiedenhöefer (Link to Grants for Editorial Photography)

• Overused Stock Photos at Ford Motor Company; Fotolia: "In a full page Time Magazine AD Ford Motor company features boring and overused stock photography. Wake up designers! These images have been used for almost 10 years".

• A Baby Step Toward Wi-Fi Photos; NYT: "Two new digital cameras from Nikon have more than megapixels to recommend them. They also include Wi-Fi transmitters for wireless networking. How useful is that?".

• In the interesting follow-up Technology Can't Always Trump Mother Nature, Dennis Dunleavy, based on Where Are Those High-Tech Miracles Now? (Poynter.org), looks at the news coverage of citizen journalism working with camera phone and video streams regarding the hurricane Katrina, whereas Gregory A. Favre/Poynter writes: "Is there a man on a telephone pole who can call us? No, he's been replaced by cell phones that don't work".
  Related: Combining Professional and Citizen News Photography; Steve Outing, Poynter.org.

• As Ron Rovtar of the Stock Asylum writes in an email, "I just wanted to call your attention to a page we just uploaded at The Stock Asylum.  It contains links to a number of organizations that are accepting donations for Katrina disaster relief.  Most of the links are to pages that will let folks make direct credit card donations.  We're trying to make it real easy for folks.  The link is at:
  
  http://www.stockasylum.com/text-pages/articles/aasm092005-katrina.htm ".

DONATE! There is also a Flickr Katrina Relief Auction.

• Again hurricane Katrina:
  

  "There is a brewing controversy over two very similar images, showing people from two different racial backgrounds.

  Black people loot, White people find. Two photo agencies [Associated Press and Agence France-Presse] with obviously shitty copy editors.

The controversy has spurred commentary from other well known bloggers such Romenesko and Gothamist." (via Tiffinbox)

• With lots of images: A visit with the Photoshop engineers at 345 Park Avenue, San Jose, CA, PhotoshopNews; this and ...

• Depth of field calculator Widget, via Visualfood.net, a new and pretty cool blog by Mirko from Croatia.

• Imaging Numbering, Filing and Retrieval; Ernest H. Robl/ASPP.

• BuyPixel  is "a new royalty-free picture library for all photographers who want to sell their work with a fresh concept in Royalty Free Image Library", aimed at amateur photographers to reach a wider audience. Buypixel is the brainchild of London businessman Sass Jahani. Revolutions here, revolutions there, revolutions  are everywhere: "Buypixel is going to revolutionise the way people buy and sell images." Other than the press release and the main page, the ABOUT US page adds that the service is also aimed at professional photographers.

• Does size matter? Sensors, resolution, and output; Jay Savage/DPW.

• Pro domo -- For subscribers to the Feedblitz service: there had been delays and interruptions in the last days with the delivery of emails due to trouble with the Typepad feeds and empty date fields (as Feedblitz says); but, while being a free service, Feedblitz has a great customer service and the problems should be resolved by now.