StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

[Update] JPG Magazine says Goodbye

Emailed yesterday to subscribers by Laura Brunow Miner, Editor in Chief of jpgmag.com, the community of nearly 200,000 photographers:

We've spent the last few months trying to make the business behind JPG sustain itself, and we've reached the end of the line. We all deeply believe in everything JPG represents, but we just weren't able to raise the money needed to keep JPG alive in these extraordinary economic times. We sought out buyers, spoke with numerous potential investors, and pitched several last-ditch creative efforts, all without success. As a result, jpgmag.com will shut down on Monday, Jan. 5, 2009.

More here and here. (LO)

[Update] Michael Arrington yesterday:

But the attention the site received after the announced shutdown changed things, it seems, and a number of buyers have now approached the company to buy it and keep it alive (SmugMug is one of them, it seems).

Creative contempory photojournalism: Lunatic Magazine by Luna Photos

 

 

Shocking: Kraut Newspaper doctors photo taken by Getty and Masterfile photographer Elisabeth Coelfen

(Original photo intentionally in low resolution, Image © Elisabeth Coelfen)

B2.0 on Getty Images, Corbis battle 'microstock' agencies

Finally the Business 2.0 article mentioned here earlier is available online since this morning: "Photo wars: A $2 billion business gets rough".

Microstock: "Quality is in the eyes of the beholder"

"Our advantage is efficiency", says Shutterstock´s Jon Oringer. "And if Getty can use iStockphoto to upsell its customers, why can´t we use higher-priced photos to start moving into its market?"

Not too many people in Europe will possibly be so lucky to read the recent April issue of Business 2.0 with probably the best article "You ought to be in pictures" (six pages, written by Robert Levine) on microstock since a long time, because even newspaper kiosks in european airports sometimes don´t offer the print issue of Business 2.0 - or the April issue is already sold out.

Great Late Idea, Guys: Shortly Before Breaking Alexa´s 100,000 Barrier, PDNOnline Introduces Real RSS Feeds

Last year in spring American Photo announced a new website coming soon and introduced a new group blog later, under the immodest name State of the Art.

Following the ups and downs of various online media outlets for a while and the conversion from print to online, I found it very noteworthy that in contrast PDNOnline offered only RSS feeds for the most viewed, emailed, printed and saved articles, which makes offering of RSS feeds at all somehow completely useless.

The Real Heroes In 2006: Flickr, Getty Images´ Lifesize, Lightstalkers And YouTube

Both Time Magazine and American Photo have published in the last days news listing companies and people they think are Persons Of The Year and Innovators.

For a moment, let us put the visual world, captured through photography and footage, all into one box, and take into account the perspective of User-Generated Content, Social Networking or Social Media, Community and Crowdsourcing. Phrases which partly have become synonyms and unfortunately buzzwords. Here is my personal list -- micropayment stock photo companies are intentionally not included -- with the real heroes in the visual world of the year 2006 and the upcoming year 2007, alphabetically:

ImageClick Partners With JoongAng Ilbo

Seoul-based image distributor ImageClick announces on this date a partnership with the korean newspaper JoonAng Ilbo for the overseas copyrights of the editorial image assets of the company.

JoonAng Ilbo, one of the "big three newspapers" in Korea, published first in 1965 by Lee Byung-chul, also the founder of the Samsung Group, belongs to the JMnet (JoongAng Ilbo Media Network), engaged in newspapers, publishing and broadcasting, with offices in NYC, LA and Chicago.

The company says it was the first asian publication to offer internet news services to its readers in 1995 (in comparison, Yahoo started in 1994 as "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web").

Stock Photo Industry Magazine VISUELL: They Just Don´t Get It, Do They?

Old media in the stock photo industry.

New media in the stock photo industry.

Another day, and again another tiny little - how to say - trick?

As promized earlier, on every single day these apparent tricks would occur again, there will be a new notification, here and elsewhere.

 

Melcher Pulls Out The Hammer, MacTribe Pulls Story Off The Frontpage

Paul Melcher of Melcher Systems (NYSE: FAWM), formerly VP of Sales at Digital Railroad, started recently, as mentioned on Tuesday this week, his own blog A thought and began with a reply entitled "Royalty Free Wal Mart", as an answer to "Crowdsourcing and its True Impact on the Stock Photo Business" on MacTribe, published by Leslie Hughes, formerly with Imagestate, Corbis and The Image Bank.

[Illustration: Jörg Kantel]