StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

a21: Third Quarter 2005 Financial Results

A21 (ATWO), the parent company of SuperStock, the Royalty-Free brand Purestock, Ingram Publishing, has released the QIII/2005 numbers. Some highlights:

•Revenues for the third quarter of 2005 were $2,064,000
(compared to $2,077,000 for the same period in 2004)

•Revenues were $6,703,000 in the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2005
(compared to $5,402,000 in the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2004)

More details here. Related:

• A21 Aqcuires Ingram Publishing; New Stock Photo Subscription Service Ingramstock Launched
• a21 Reports Second Quarter Financial Results
• All a21 related recent entries here (a lot!)

Technorati Tags: A21; SuperStock; Ingram Publishing; Stock Photo Industry

Interview With Fotolia´s CEO Thibaud Elziere: "Microstock Sites Can Capture Up To 30% Of The Existing Market"

I discovered the new start-up Fotolia via a TrackBack of their blog back in April 2005 and, after their six month beta period, was impressed by their concept and thus the difference to other micropayment sites. It´s about time that new and young people are entering the stock photo industry game of "I´ll buy you before you acquire my competitor", together with new ideas and fresh blood.

A game, that is still dominated by 40+ years old grandpas with starting gray hairs. Some of these grandpas were about 26 years old when they started their own businesses. Regarding the traditional media, also still ruled by 40+ years old grandpas, it´s sometimes difficult for these young companies to find the attention they deserve. So I peppered Thibaud with some questions and here are his reponses.

Andy: Thibaud, could you describe your professional background and your experience in the stock photo industry, as well as the experience of your two co-founders, Oleg Tscheltzoff and Patrick Chassany?

Thibaud: I am still young, 26 years and I did an engineering school in France and a management school in Germany. My experience in the stock image industry is more as a buyer than as a photographer. I was in charge of marketing/communication in some start-up web agencies and had to deal with images quite a lot. Oleg is an very advanced amateur photographer, who shots with a Canon Mark II. Moreover our team is composed of two professional photographers (Chad and David) and one famous model (Aiste). Last but not least, we have Patrick who is an online service specialist with demonstrable successes of creating and selling web services.

Spam Blogs In The Small Stock Photo Industry: A Weird Phenomenon

Although we probably all feel that we´re all pretty much important individuals, this is not reflected by the overall size of the stock photo industry, which is in terms of money -- admit it -- very small, if compared to other industries.

One might add that in Central Europe a mid-sized cheese producing creamery company generates just the same annual revenues as industry leader Getty Images.

Remember that years ago Jim Pickerell of Pickphoto wrote that North Americans are spending eight until ten times more money for toilet paper than for stock imagery (quoted from memory).

Finally, a lot of investors would still be satisfied and happy people today if they had sunk their money not into some special stock imagery companies in the past 15 years, but instead in the toilet paper industry -- ok, that´s another story.

With this in mind, I´m astonished to notice that more and more spam blogs stealing content from other stock photo industry related websites are appearing. Apparently, there must be lots of money in "stock photo industry spam blogging".

[© Cartoon JD Frazer]

International Stock Imagery Association Looking For Contributors And Board Directors

Frankly, although there had been about 4 posts in 4 weeks on the recently founded International Stock Imagery Association (ISIA), this is not going to become an ISIA-dedicated blog.

But is has always been my understanding that it´s necessary to support young auspicious companies and associations in start-up modus.

So here´s the recent declaration of ISIA Executive Director Clarence Walker:

What’s In It For Me? More News From The International Stock Imagery Association (ISIA)

I wrote earlier about "StockImagery: A New Yahoo Group For Professional Stock Photographers", founded by Clarence W. Walker (Stock Imagery was the old synonym of ISIA), then "International Stock Imagery Association: Continues To Grow, Selected Interim Board Of Directors" and that ISIA selected the Board of Directors (Link to the new ISIA forum).

Executive Director Clarence Walker mailed today an official declaration named: "International Stock Imagery Association: What’s in it for me?"

As it certainly will no be very easy for this young association to reach its audience via the traditional media, here´s what he wrote in detail [Update: here´s the full press release with more details]:

PicScout Monitoring 1.2 Million RM Images Of Corbis

Getty Images had just extended its partnership with PicScout back in August this year, monitoring Getty Images´collections on the Internet and in over 2,000 magazines throughout Europe and North America.

PicScout is now extending the partnership with Corbis for monitoring the usage of 1.2 million Corbis Rights Managed images. PicScout states that it is meanwhile tracking the usage of over 4.5 million images at all for the "world's most prestigious" image libraries.

QuickLinks For 2005-11-20

• Photos That Don't Capture Reality, but Change It. A follow-up on the four-day international fair Paris Photo: "Clearly, the market for art photography is booming"; NYT, via FotoStoria

• The new International Stock Imagery Association has selected the Board of Directors. The officers are:
  
  • Jim Hunter- President
  • Theodoros Papageorgiou- Vice President
  • Chuck Goodenough- Secretary
  • Clarence Walker- Executive Director

The new ISIA website, although already online, will officially launch in a few days: "The International Stock Imagery Association announces the upcoming launch of its brand new web site and member forums. We hope to "GO LIVE" no later than November 30, 2005." I´ll link to the site when everything is ready to run.

• The Flickrization of Yahoo. How the founders of a hot young photo-sharing site are helping to change the focus of the search engine giant; Business 2.0

• Using Flickr for product marketing; Hypergene MediaBlog (via Steve Rubel)
  • Related: Getty Images, Flickr And The Reinvention Of Outdoor Advertising

• FlickrNation, Episode 2; Thomas Hawk

• Here are the links again (some readers were asking) to
  • The New Face of Stock, 19th Annual Stock Visual Survey; Graphic Design USA
  • Just My Type; Graphic Design USA

From A CEO´s Blog To An Employee´s Email Response: More Strange News How To Abuse Google Ads

I had been reluctant to comment the Getty/Google/JupiterImages issue mentioned here, because when I read it first last tuesday, it was not possible to reproduce the findings Meckler described any more. However, the history of the back and force at all is interesting, and so are some new findings (notice the screen shot to the left, after clicking this Google search for "Getty Images"):

• Alan Meckler, Nov. 15:

"Now let's turn to Getty Images' marketing tactics on Google in France and the United States. Taking the low road in Internet marketing, Getty has been busy buying Google keywords for JupiterImages' trademarks such as "Thinkstock", "Comstock" and even more amazingly "AbleStock" (our Canadian brand that Getty has never distributed). Of course this is illegal and wrong. One wonders why a company of Getty Images size and stature would resort to such low level and illegal tactics?"

• Ron Rovtar some 10 hours later, Nov. 15:

"There is case law on our side," Meckler noted when ...

What´s This? A Conceptual Superior High Class Or An Outrageous Micropayment Stock Photography Bread?

What´s your guess at first sight?

Had this picture been taken by any photographer of any micropayment site, like iStockphoto.com, ShutterStock, Dreamstime, Stockxpert, stock.xchng or Can Stock Photo?

Is this bread beyond the realm of human understanding?

Or was it simply delivered via of some of the new subscription services?

MediaStorm Launches Special Online Publication

Short note for the people who are tired of the acquisition game "I´ll buy your competitor before you´ll grab this company". Back to the roots:

MediaStorm´s Brian Storm (Ex-VP of News, Multimedia & Assignment Services for Corbis), Robert Browman (Ex-Senior Editor for News, News Assignment Representative and Multimedia Producer for Corbis) and Joe Santa (Ex-Multimedia Design Director for Corbis) have launched a new online publication with projects by renowned journalists, filmmakers and artists. Details (this press release doesn´t show the images of the original, so point your browser to MediaStorm).

Among others, also involved are Elodie Mailliet (CD for Corbis Outline) and Eliane Laffont (Editorial Director for Hachette Filipacchi Media).

Digital Railroad: Charles Mauzy Named As President

Reuters reports today (yet otherwise no official press release availabe; see also The Seattle Post Intelligencer on this topic) that Digital Railroad has named "former Microsoft Corp. executive Charles Mauzy president of Digital Railroad":

Charles Mauzy left Microsoft on Monday for the New York-based company, after serving as general manager of the Windows Media, Entertainment & Technology Convergence Group [more backgrounds here and here].

The Step From Stock Photography to Stock Footage: Randy Taylor Launches StockMotionFinder

One could assume: NO BIG THING. For some people footage portals, as the necessary addition to stock photo portals, do not exist any longer only as a play of thoughts in the distant future, but are a present reality, together with the convergence of stock photos, footage, TV clips, mobile image and video content all in one place.

But, while others lame ducks are still sleeping and obviously intend to continue THE BIG SLEEP a bit longer, Randy Taylor of StockPhotoFinder and of StockPipeline instead already noted earlier:

The Legends Archive: Content Mine International Completes Acquisition of Transglobe

John would have had his fun!

First Sheldon Marshall/Heritage entered Content Mine, then Sheldon bought Impact Photos, afterwards/coevally he left Content Mine, now Content Mine announced that is has completed the acquisition of Hamburg-based Photo Agency Transglobe (no link anymore available), a historic photo archive with an estimated number of two million prints and vintages.

Content Mine has rebranded parts of the Transglobe portfolio showing mainly images of people from arts, film, politics and sports to “The Legends Archive”.

[Image © Content Mine International/The Legends Archive]

Sheldon Marshall Leaves Content Mine As Shareholder

Nearly one year ago, Sheldon Marshall, Executive Chairman of Heritage Partners, acquired a "controlling interest" in Cologne-based photo agency Content Mine International AG.

Thanx to a recent comment (unfortunately in german... ) of Frank Golomb, CEO of Content Mine, on the last post ...

Heritage Partners Acquires Impact Photos

Heritage Partners (Executive Chairman: Sheldon Marshall) has announced the acquisition of London based Impact Photos.

More about this acquisition later, for the moment read this. The emphasis of the library of Impact Photos "is on real people in real situations. Our images touch on every aspect of people's lives around the globe, especially Asia and the developing world. In addition, we have an extensive collection of more generic travel images". When Impact Photos launched their new website back in February 2004, the company had about 20,000 images online.

International Stock Imagery Association: Continues To Grow, Selected Interim Board Of Directors

A while ago in October, I wrote about "StockImagery: A New Yahoo Group For Professional Stock Photographers", founded by Clarence W. Walker. At that time, Clarence intended to found the International Stock Imagery Association.

As you probably know, there had been a long back and forth regarding this new association at the Stock Photo group. Some people were clapping, while others seemed to be -- how to say -- outrageously disappointed.

Most Read Recent Stories Of 2005

| Like in 2004, a small compilation of the "Most Read Recent Stories Of 2005".

JupiterImages Acquires French RF Distributor PR Direct

JupiterImages has just announced that it has acquired all of the shares of PR Direct SAS, a leading french distributor of about 900,00 royalty-free digital images for business users and creative professionals. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Alan Meckler noted in his blog that

One terrific beneifit for Jupitermedia is that many of our wholly owned brands have robust sales in France through the PR Direct sales operation. Also several months ago we purchased Goodshoot - a French company that produces its own royalty free photos.

The Last Wake-Up Call: Crediting The Source!

Will Carleton of PhotoArchiveNews (he is way longer online with his blog, since 2001) and I have decided to join forces in this matter and to put the same message on the front page today (here´s the link to Will´s posting):

If you would like to use any content on this site or a news story originating from this site please do so but remember to credit or link back to www.stockphototalk.com.

For those few who are abusing the free nature of the WWW take note:
Allways credit the source.
You know who you are - and we know where you are.......

Thank you
Andy.

Here´s some of the background:

The Flickrs Of Video: Who Will Be Doing The Footage Retrieval?

I wrote in the past about "Getty Images, Flickr And The Reinvention Of Outdoor Advertising"/"Flickr: How To Displace Getty Images and Corbis" and had been astonished to experience how many ad agencies had been reading this article.

With the rise of more and more footage web sites -- both pro and amateur -- TechCrunch compares the "Flickrs of Video" in a comparison chart. The article so far got 60 comments.

But in the end, just as in the case of the real Flickr,  it´s all about searching.

Mission Impossible Accomplished: PLUS Coalition Unveils Universal Picture Licensing Glossary

I had been writing earlier in May 2004 about the Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS) Coalition and their aims: "An inter-organizational, worldwide group working cooperatively to create and disseminate a universal picture licensing language for the benefit of picture licensors and users alike."

Thanks to a hint of Jeff Sedlik, President & CEO of the PLUS Coalition, the association has now published the Universal Picture Licensing Glossary version 1.0, recently announced at the 2005 Picture Archive Council of America (PACA) International Conference in Redondo Beach.

Stock Photo Market Size 2005: New TWGA Report For The Stock Photography Industry

TrendWatch Graphic Arts has released the study Stock Market 2005: Market Sizing. The company states that this is "the first comprehensive market sizing report for the stock image industry".

From start-up to mature company: as everyone knows who has ever done some research on the size of the stock photo industry, this can be a real and long pain-i-t-a (pardon my language, but it´s true!). Doing so in the nineties, was a real nightmare. The conditions have changed only a little in this millenium. That´s why TWGA writes, "the stock image market is one of the most difficult to size."

Veer Helping Hurricane Victims

With all the mumbo jumbo around new technologies and the latest news on the "Who-is-buying-who game" (and I have to admit that I´m sometimes on top of this!) some other things that should attract our attention are often forgotten.

Nine weeks ago Ron Rovtar of the excellent Stock Asylum emailed me and draw my attention to a new website the Stock Asylum had uploaded containing "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."

Veer has now announced the launch...

World Picture Network Partners With FilmLoop

FilmLoop is a pretty cool service and application I missed to mention. Cooperation partners include iStockphoto, PhotoBucket, but, in my eyes more important, even the World Picture Network (WpN).

"WpN represents over 500 of the world's best photojournalists in 71 countries. In this fast world of demanding media we were quick to recognize the value of distributing our images instantly over FilmLoop with the benefits of its real-time, universal updates, ease of use and visual integrity; Brilliant," said Seamus Conlan, founder & chief operating officer of WpN-WorldPictureNetwork.

QuickLinks For The Weekend

• Webcasts finally entering the picture business: piXlogic offers a webcast on November 15 about "Image Search Technology, Mimicking Human Sight to Mine Image Content".

• CanadaOne, a free online magazine for small businesses, interviewing immigrant Leila Boujnane of Idee Inc.:

"I came to the software industry completely by accident ...