StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

Veer: Director, Global Channel Sales (Calgary)

Veer provides visual elements for use in professional creative work, such as graphic design, motion design, advertising, and filmmaking. The image industry is a driving passion for the management and employees of Veer.

With thousands of satisfied customers, years of industry experience, and an unparalleled set of skills, the people at Veer have what it takes to deliver exciting, innovative products to enhance creativity. Want to join us?

Veer is currently looking for a:

• Director, Global Channel Sales (Calgary), reference number DGCS001

All details and contact information here at Worldwide Stock Photo Industry Jobs.

Deutsche Bank Analysts on Getty´s Latest Financial Results And iStockphoto

Two weeks ago, the Deutsche Bank and PACA published the results of their Stock Photo Industry Survey. The Deutsche Bank NYC/SF released yesterday a very interesting review of Getty Images´ preliminary results for Q4/2006 and full year 2006:

• We maintain our HOLD investment rating on shares of Getty Images, even though RF and RM volumes rebounded nicely in 4Q after a sub par 3Q. [...]

• While 4Q results were certainly encouraging, we think the growth of alternative licensing models and an oversupply in image inventory, could limit pricing sustainability of rights managed and royalty free images longer term. Micropayment image volumes continue to grow at low price points (sub $5) compared to the $500 RM and $240 RF licensing fee at Getty today. We continue to remain cautious on long term prospects. [...]

Getty´s Stock Up $4.12 (9.27%) at $48.56

Currently:

Credit Suisse analyst Brandon Dobell in a client note reiterated a "Neutral" rating and $50 target price. He said he remains cautions on the company, given weak growth expectations for core businesses, but said it is unlikely shares will fall due to an already cheap price. [...]
JPMorgan Securities Inc. analyst Frederick Searby in a client note kept a "Neutral" rating on shares.
But the analyst sees little reason for shares to rise or fall much ahead, since the stock price is low but fundamentals are weakening. For example, the print industry is slowing, while user generated content is posing a new competitive challenge, he added.
(Business Week, "Getty Images rises on 4Q report")

Image Source: Art Director

Image Source is the leading independent producer of royalty free stock photography.

Image Source currently has an opening for a

• Art Director in their Cologne office.

All details and contact information here at Worldwide Stock Photo Industry Jobs.

More Snippets From Getty`s Conference Call: "One of our five key initiatives for 2007 is to aggressively grow iStockphoto"

Getty´s stock was up after hours another $1.81 to $46.25.

A personal selection and compilation of what Klein said during the Conference Call:

• We did not have a great year, let's be clear, but we have emerged in good shape.

• Footage or Film continues to represent what we think is one of our best and biggest growth opportunities. We will be investing a significant amount in capital expenditure in building our footage digital workflow, as well as our new website for footage. Footage or Film comprised about 5% of our total revenue in the quarter as well as the full year. The growth was 13% in the fourth quarter and the full fiscal year. For Footage or Film, the average royalty rate was 30%, an improvement from 33% a year ago. We’re looking at a new licensing model for footage.

• We are very interested in entertainment footage or video, not just stills.

QuickLinks For 2007-01-30

• The New Face of Thought Equity Motion:
  Thought Equity Motion is out with a new version of its website.
  CTO Mark Lemmons.
  Tag: Thought Equity

A Snippet From Getty`s Conference Call

Shortly after the last Q3/2006 Conference Call, another website presented a full transcript of the Conference Call after the session had ended, way earlier than Getty did. Regrettably the transcript of the new Conference Call is not yet online.
Until then, one of the more memorable sentences of the Conference Call was definitely Klein´s statement: "I read on blogs about pricing pressure on RF, I don´t see it!"

Getty Images Releases Preliminary Results For Q4/2006 And Full Year 2006

Here are the numbers in detail:

Revenue in Total (T), with Sequential change (S) and Year-over-year-change (Y):

Y	Q4/04	2004	Q1/05	Q2/05	Q3/05	Q4/05	2005	Q1/06	Q2/06	Q3/06	Q4/06	2006
T	$162.1	$622.4	$178.1	$185.3	$184.5	$185.8	$733.7	$200.9	$204.8	$198.1	$203.5	$807.3
S	5.6%	-	9.9%	4.1%	-0.4%	0.7%	-	8.1%	1.9%	-3%	3%	-
Y	20.6%	19.0%	13.8%	23.3%	20.2%	14.6%	17.9%	12.8%	10.5%	7%	10%	10%

QuickLinks For 2007-01-29, II

• Getty Images shares up as investor buys stake:
  Shares of Getty Images Inc., the world's largest provider of stock and editorial photography, rose more than 7 percent on Monday after Blum Capital Partners LP said it bought a 5 percent stake and might seek board or management changes. [...]
  "Despite these changes, we believe that the stock-imaging market will continue to become commoditized," Kaufman Bros. analyst Barbara Coffey, who has a "sell" rating on the shares, wrote in an investor note on Monday. "We don't believe this will change by having a new investor in the mix."
  Reuters.
  Related: Previous Quicklinks 2007-01-29.
  Tags: Getty Images Blum Capital

QuickLinks For 2007-01-29

• Blum Capital takes stake in Getty, may seek change:
  Investment fund Blum Capital Partners has taken a 5 percent stake in Getty Images Inc., saying it might engage in discussions about an "extraordinary corporate transaction" or changes in the board or management, according to a regulatory filing on Monday.
  Blum said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it had no specific plans for a major transaction or proposal, but might engage other shareholders, board members or company representatives in talks.
  Getty, the world's largest provider of stock and editorial photography, has been investigating its past stock option grant practices and related accounting.
  Reuters.
  

QuickLinks For 2007-01-27

• More reasons to join the Hot Italian Bikini Image Awards during CEPIC 2007 in Florence in "IPTC/IFRA organize Global Photo Metadata Conference":
  A first ever Global Photo Metadata Conference is being organised by IPTC and IFRA, and will be hosted by CEPIC in Florence, Italy on Thursday, June 7, 2007.
  This is the first time an international conference has been focused exclusively on photo metadata, and should bring together all interested parties in the photo metadata field, from the camera manufacturer to the photographer.
  More information about the Conference is available from: http://www.phmdc.org/.
  Stock Artists Alliance Metadata Manifesto.
  Tags: IPTC IFRA CEPIC Metadata

Sipa Press Founder Goksin Sipahioglu Receives Premier French Order Légion d'honneur - A Comment By Pino Granata

I know Goksin Sipahioglu since 30 years.

I'm pretty sure he doesn´t care very much about the Légion d'honneur the french government has awarded him for his legendary career in the photojornalism.

He would rather prefer staying in his old office in Boulevard Murat together with his photographers and writers, talking about new stories to break.

QuickLinks For 2007-01-25, II

• Fotolia launches Fotolia Portugal and Fotolia Brazil.
  Still no office in East Frisia? Chad, this is very disappointing.
  Fotolia US Blog.
  Tag: Fotolia Copacabana party on all night with Didi Frohmann

FilmLoop: Despite A Cute Forrester Research Study, Grumpy VCs Ask "What´s your story?"

FilmLoop, the Direct-to-Desktop (D2D) photo broadcasting network ("photocasting"), was founded in 2004 by Prescott Lee and Kyle Mashima, a former Vice President of Strategic Development at Adobe, "hatched over a breakfast of hashbrowns and pancakes".

The company has announced in the past content partnerships and cooperations with iStockphoto, PhotoBucket, World Picture Network (WpN) and the Photo Marketing Association International (I have currently no information if these cooperations will be continued in the future).

One of FilmLoop´s early investors was Guy Kawasaki. Funded in May 2006 again with $7 million (Series B) from ComVentures, the investors were obviously pretty pissed, simply overwhelmed with emotion regarding the success of FilmLoop and have pulled the plug.

QuickLinks For 2007-01-25

• Smithsonian announces licensing deal with Corbis for images from Smithsonian collections:
  "There is no guaranteed annual revenue under the deal, and Corbis did not provide any money up front, said Smithsonian spokeswoman Samia Elia. Licensing fees charged for each image would go back into the museum's educational programs. The royalties from image sales vary each year, she said.
  At least 200 images from the Smithsonian have already been added to Seattle-based Corbis' image database with hundreds more to follow by the end of the year, Elia said.
  Corbis has similar arrangements with the National Gallery in London, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, said Corbis spokesman Dan Perlet."
  Herald Tribune/Associated Press. More details here.
  Tags: Corbis Smithsonian

Alamy ... Blogs?

I was feeling a little sheepish all day yesterday as I stumbled upon their blog before the official release and announced it in the AlamyPro Yahoo group while also leaving a comment on the blog (first one, yay, though it was deleted when the blog went ‘live’). I quickly received a phone call from Alamy who were wondering how I had found out about it given that it was unreleased and unannounced. “I just followed the link on your web site”, I said. Ooops.

Photographer John Joannides on his blog Making Images. The AlamyPro group (open only to contributors) on Yahoo is different from the meanwhile starving original Alamy Contributor group, also on Yahoo: "AlamyPro forum is almost twice as active as Stockphoto.net & micropayments COMBINED!" (Jeff Greenberg here earlier).

QuickLinks For 2007-01-24

• PhotoAlto presents its new RF image collection entitled Zen Shui with 1,200 new images, "photography where east meets west and life meets zen".
  More details here.
  Tags: PhotoAlto Zen Shui

Alamy Releases Quarterly Statement 2004 -2006

UK-based photo portal Alamy with currently 7.6 million RM and RF images released today the numbers for Q4/2006:

950,767 new images were submitted in Q4/2006 (Q3: 945,050), including 611,013 (Q3: 606,655) new RM images and 339,754 new RF images (Q3: 338,395).

All numbers, all details here (PDF-download).

QuickLinks For 2007-01-23

• Picturing Web Shoppers, Start-Up Taps 'Visual DNA' to Gather Data:
  British software start-up Imagini presents an array of photographs, and asks people which one best describes phrases such as "My idea of a good time..." or "Happiness to me is..." The software then analyzes the photo choices and comes up with what Imagini calls "visual DNA": a profile of a person's tastes, attitudes toward work and family and other characteristics. [...]
  Imagini's picture-based approach "solved one of the traditional problems of market research: It is hard to get people to engage and tell us about themselves," says Simon Hawkes, managing director of loyalty-management services at Nectar, U.K.'s biggest customer-loyalty program with 22 million members.
  WSJ, written by Leila A., not Leila B.
  Tag: Imagini

New Stock Photo News Search Engine Online

Paul Melcher is introducing his new Stock Photo News Search Engine (Beta) which allows the search over qualified and at first sight hand-selected sources reporting about the small stock photo industry, similar to the concept of the Yahoo Directory.

Jupitermedia/Jupiterimages: Vice President, Marketing

Jupitermedia Corporation (Nasdaq: JUPM), (www.jupitermedia.com) headquartered in Darien, CT, is a leading provider of original images and information for creative, business and information technology professionals. Jupiterimages provides photos and other graphic images electronically while JupiterWeb is the online media division of Jupitermedia.

Jupiterimages currently has an opening for a

• Vice President, Marketing in their Pasadena office.

All details and contact information here at Worldwide Stock Photo Industry Jobs.

QuickLinks For 2007-01-19

• Scientist, businessman merge talents to launch 3-D imaging business:
  After 36 years of research and development, scientist Eugene Nemirovsky has created a new, amazingly lifelike form of three-dimensional imaging, LifeDimensions-3D technology.
  The 3-D portraits capture every detail of the subject, from the hair on a person´s head to the texture of the skin. And because it shows all three dimensions at equal depth, the person in the portrait seems alive - and appears to watch you as you move from side to side.
  Each photographic image is laminated onto acrylic, so that no air can get to the image itself. The materials used in the 3-D process are guaranteed to last for a minimum of 80 years.
  "People sometimes forget just how short this life is; sometimes they don't leave enough memories," Nemirovsky said. By capturing what a person truly looks like, 3-D imaging makes "perfect memories for future generations," he said.
  PalmBeachPost.
  Tag: 3 D imaging

Reuters Tightens Editing Procedures, Appoints Stephen Crisp As New Middle East Chief Photographer

Back in August last year,

"Reuters withdrew all 920 photographs by a freelance Lebanese photographer [Adnan Hajj] from its database on Monday after an urgent review of his work showed he had altered two images from the conflict between Israel and the armed group Hizbollah.
Global Picture Editor Tom Szlukovenyi called the measure precautionary but said the fact that two of the images by photographer Adnan Hajj had been manipulated undermined trust in his entire body of work".

QuickLinks For 2007-01-18

• Why Dan Heller won´t go public after Why Corbis won't go public... yet, stating:
  •"Where there is no prospect for future growth" ?
  [2003: $140M, 2004: >$170M, 2005: $228M, Q1+Q2/2006: $127M, which may translate to about $254M for 2006, a possible increase of 11.4 percent over 2005]
  •"If they're even profitable--we don't know" ?
  Dan Heller is out with his very own view I do not always share on the "compelling story" of Corbis.
  Related:
  
  • Corbis´ New President Gary Shenk Being Groomed For Future CEO Position, Says "No One Really Knows How Big The Marketplace Is" (Nov. 29, 2006)
  • Google Can Make The 20th Century Stock Portals Like Getty And Corbis Irrelevant (Nov. 16, 2006)
  • BusinessWeek: Interview With Bill Gates And Steve Davis Of Corbis; Analyst Expects $2 Billion Market To Grow In The Mid-Teens Percent In 2006 (March 15, 2006)
  • Podcast Of Bill Gates´ Introduction Speech During The 2006 Corbis Annual Meeting (March 15, 2006)
  • News From The 2006 Corbis Annual Meeting: Corbis Acquires Beateworks, 100% Growth In Mobile Image Sales, No IPO Game In The Next "Two Or Three Years" (March 14, 2006)
  • Corbis Revenues Up, Still Not Profitable (March, 07, 2006; Daryl Lang/PDN)
  Tag: Corbis

QuickLinks For 2007-01-17, II

• While Jonathan was pretty busy playing around with Getty Images Live, Deb Trevino was so kind to respond to the reporter´s questions in yet another micropayment follow-up:
  
  Professionals lose business unless they are willing to work more for less ...  [...]
  
  "We recognized and have recognized for a while that we have to keep innovating and evolving," Trevino said, "and their model, which is user-generated content, was really interesting to us."
  
  iStockphoto, which also sells video clips, has 1.3 million members. Some 34,000 of them are contributing photographers, spokesman Kelly Thompson said. [...]