StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

Good Night: Buongiorno Vitaminic And Corbis Close Deal With Universal Studios

Together with Corbis, the multimedia provider Buongiorno Vitaminic (best company name ever) announces a licensing deal with the Universal Studios Consumer Products Group for the distribution of video clips, audio clips and stills from Universal's library of film and television, to consumers' mobile devices in Europe, Africa and Middle East.

Universal will provide Buongiorno with elements from up to 75 film & TV shows, which Corbis will clear the rights to. Buongiorno estimates that, through its brand Blinko and other distribution partnerships, the "Universal content will reach a potential audience of over 900 million clients (45% of the total 2 billion mobile users worldwide)."

The London Disaster

Credit: Murky

Flickr has created a pool with images showing the "London Bomb Blasts". Besides some people who only were taking pictures from the recent TV programs, other images are really fresh. To my surprise, I noticed the following announcement of Word Picture Network:

London Attack – Photo’s Needed.

“World Picture Network would like to see any images from the London Terror Attack taken by any member of the public to represent them in the Media. Photo’s could have been taken on a mobile phone, PDA or digital camera. WpN represent the work of some of the world’s greatest photographers and would like to solicit your help to cover this sad event in English history. This will not effect your ability to post blogs but by saying you are the copyright holder (Copyright of_____) when posting images it stops media publications from using them without you consent and breaking the copyright law.
Please email pictures to photos@worldpicturenews.com where we can view the image and get back to you about their use. [...]
Our very best.
All the staff at WpN.

More on WpN here at PDN: "Photo Agencies And The New Philanthropy". 
 

Credit:  Tim Bee

[Update July 11]. See also "Bystander Photojournalism Steals The Spotlight in London Coverage"/PDN:

“We’ve never been in a position to move [bystander] pictures so fast,” says WPN CEO Seamus Conlan. “Now you have a culture of people who have their own web sites, and who are blogging all the time.”

WPN posted a solicitation for images on www.flickr.com, asking to see any images of the attacks and offering to distribute the pictures to the media, says Conlan. “We got a couple of dozen pictures,” he says, including some images from an unnamed witness who photographed the Tavistock Square bus bombing from an office overlooking the scene. One of the images ran as an exclusive on the front page of the New York Post at a price Conlan isn’t disclosing (the photographer gets 50 percent of the sale, he notes).

Scoopt - A New Picture Agency For Citizen Reporters

After the launch of iStockphoto here´s another cool idea (Snap-Send-Sell) "to bridge the gap between amateur photographer and picture desk":

As Kyle MacRae/Glasgow-based Scoopt writes, "this week sees the launch of 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."

The website continues:

With so many of the public armed with cameraphones, real people could be taking pictures that the press simply aren't there to catch. There have been plenty of examples already of hobbyist photographers taking pictures that make the front page, but cameraphones now mean so many more people are in a position to get the scoop snap.

That's where our experience comes in. If you catch a scoop like this, we can make sure that the right people see your picture quickly. We will also ensure that you get a fair price for it. Sharing photos is fun but selling a scoop can be seriously profitable. [...]

Scoopt is a media agency that has been created specifically to help members of the public sell photographs and videos of newsworthy events to the press. We bridge the gap between amateur photographer – and by 'amateur', we means anybody with a digital camera or a cameraphone who just happens to be in the right place at the right time – and picture desk. [...]

When you send Scoopt a photo, you automatically grant us an exclusive worldwide license to market that photo for a period of six months. During this six-month period, you agree not to publish the photo anywhere else. When the six months are up, the license becomes non-exclusive.  [...]

After Corbis and Superstock, Getty Images Supplies Content To The Mobile World

Shortly after the recent story "Traditional Stock Photo Industry Player Delivering Content On Mobile Phones" the Wireless Developer Network comes up with a story "Getty Images to Supply Content to Sendandsee's Mobile Magazines":

Getty Images supplies editorial imagery content to Sendandsee's mobile magazines Whopla! and Riento!. This content partnership guarantees the quality of content and enables a virtually limitless development of Sendandsee's mobile magazine concept.
The agreement is an important bridge between the classic media and the new, emerging mobile media industry.
[..]
Sendandsee - a ... visual content distributor for the mobile media - has developed a mobile magazine concept that will go into production in several world markets during the third and fourth quarter of 2004.

Sendandsee is privately held and has its offices in Helsinki, Finland (Link to the press release). The Company has launched three weekly magazine titles for viewing on mobile phones, among them "Whopla!" (Celebrity Magazine) and "Riento!" (Sports Magazine). Each magazine will contain at least 16 pages of news, images, sound and video and will cost around two Euros per week.

Who -- older than 25 years -- will ever watch a magazine on a mobile phone? Or is the word "magazine" an euphemism in this case? See a snapshot of a page of "Whopla!" (Celebrity Magazine) here.

Related: "The world's first magazines for viewing on mobile phones"

Traditional Stock Photo Industry Player Delivering Content On Mobile Phones

[© Mike Shapiro]

It was only a question of time when companies which mainly operate in the “traditional” Stock Photo Industry (and some of their technology suppliers) would start to enter the world of mobile devices. 800 million camera-phones are forecast to be in use worldwide 2007 and 100 billion images will be captured with camera-phones in 2007 (sources: IDC and Nokia; keep in mind: these numbers are estimations).

Corbis recently have joined with mobile phone company Infospace to collaborate in providing photo and video content for delivery to mobile phones (downloadable video clips that include time-lapse cinematography, backgrounds and visual effects, action sports, Link).

Recently Superstock announced an agreement with wireless content provider 9 Squared, Inc., a provider of wireless entertainment solutions, to provide images to 9 Squared's network of mobile service providers and handset manufacturers ("more than 900,000+ contemporary, vintage, historical and fine art images" ... "We're excited by the prospect of this market segment", said Haim Ariav, President of SuperStock, Link).

Also a company dedicated to Image Search Technology has started to operate in this field. piXlogic´s software offers features as "Quickly find personal photos" (categorize and suggest a caption to each image), "picture based translation services" for multilingual environments and "shopping with an image", details here.

Questo blog è chiuso per ferie, fino all' 8 Agosto 2004

[© Grace and Katie]

Chiudo, per un circa settimana, questo weblog. Infatti, a mio modesto parere, per scrivere bisogna prima pensare e, i blogs spesso ti tolgono lo spazio per pensare.


(Hint for the person/CEO/BizDeveloper etc. who is constantly looking for "DigitalVision 2003 revenues", ""Image source" 2003 revenues" or "Index stock imagery 2003 revenues" and other good stuff-- Google hits are a tricky thing, especially with your really nice -- and static -- IP! So, no one has to work for Pixlogic, the company ("Visual Search") with Venture Capital from the CIA, just to know who you are...).
=:-)

Introducing New Categories

Some people have asked if there won´t be a better way to organize all those entries... .
The build-in google search might be nice, but shows often too many hits. On the other hand we wanted to add some new categories since weeks.
So here they are. 19 new categories. Assigning new categories to some hundreds of old posts is a tough (and boring) job, so for a couple of days (weekend) new posts will appear only irregularly.
[© Image creativemac.com]

[Update June 9, 2004: Forget it. There is no way to re-open over 300 posts and reassigning new categories to the old posts. So these new categories only work with future posts or some very important old posts which had been adjusted. Try the Google Search instead. Sorry]

New categories:

Corbis delivers content on mobile phones

Corbis have joined with mobile phone company Infospace to collaborate in providing photo and video content for delivery to mobile phones, allowing consumers to personalise their handsets with still and moving images. It seems like a move in the direction already pioneered by customised ringtones and fascia.
Consumers will now be able to personalise their mobile phones with downloadable video clips that include time-lapse cinematography, backgrounds and visual effects, action sports and more. Furthermore, InfoSpace Mobile will make a set of Corbis' images and downloadable video clips available to all of its distribution partners in North America.

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