StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

Pino Granata: The Misery of Contemporary Photography

Nowadays, most discussions on photography focus on the birth of some new microstock agency where pictures will be sold for a few cents or the closing of one of the new initiatives started to make money easily.

There are a few exceptions, but certainly there is no interest in promoting photography. Analysts have overlooked though that all those agencies that had gone public, they have now either gone bankrupt or have chosen to become private again. This is the case of A21, Getty Images and Jupiterimages.

What does all this mean? Probably, it just means that this option isn't viable and that no other agency will choose to go public. I have no idea how many investors have lost money, but I do believe there are quite a few such people.

Photography doesn't allow much return over investment.

Pino Granata: The Death of William Claxton

Every time I see a William Claxton picture I can´t help thinking of the time I had the chance to work with this great photographer.

For most people Claxton is the jazz photographer and this is partially true.

He worked for many years for Globe Photos, at that time the best celebrity photo agency of the 50's, 60's and 70's.

For more than 20 years I was the sales manager of an agency which represented Globe Photos in Italy and William Claxton was one of the best photographers of that agency.

A Tribute and Homage to Iconic Fashion Photographer Andrew Norton

 

 

Below are four examples of his work:

• for a new Estée Lauder campaign
• recent cover of the trendy Skateboard magazine
• shots for a new VW America campaign
• for a Saatchi & Saatchi campaign on Global Warming

Saturday video stream

Weekend and video time.

Thousands of photojournalists attended Visa pour l’Image in Perpignan. In contrast to previous years not even one single great video depicting the atmosphere of the festival and the imagery is availabe on the internet, except for these three small impressions from Luiz Carvalho/4SEE agency (1/2) and this TV5Monde episode. So far for video journalism and thus today no footage with Perpignan impressions worth to be displayed.

Here´s instead a video from Portland, OR, based photographer Ed Gowans about The Art of Food Photography, portraying in detail an assignment. "I don´t think I´ve ever seen a more complicated lighting set up in my life!", commented a viewer. -No microstock.
 

Nine Eleven Synopsis

• "Eight Magnum Photographers were there at what later became known as Ground Zero. In this story they give their eyewitness accounts of the attack and their perspectives on the consequences, five years later." (APhotoADay)
• "While perusing the archives of world-reknown photographer, Eddie Adams, I came across some photos I hadn't seen of the construction of the buildings .. As the government, land developers and families struggle to rebuild Ground Zero, here is a poignant reminder of how it started." (Allen Murabayashi)
• "Last year, photographer Martin Fuchs put together a multimedia gallery 'Four Years Later'. It was his first attempt to create a multimedia gallery, and he has recently re-edited it." (Peter Marshall)

Brand Equity And Visual Imagery: OnRequest Images Introduces The Visual Brand Project

OnRequest Images, which recently released in early May OnRequest OnPro, today announced the The Visual Brand Project™, a new initiative for measuring the economic impact that imagery has on brand equity.

OnRequest Images´CEO David Norris notes that marketers lack practical ways to measure the financial impact that images make on their overall brand value. According to Noris The Visual Brand Project will provide companies with a set of best practices for improving brand imagery and tools for determining the return-on-investment for their image expenditures.

Corbis, Getty Images And Slavish Copies

Yesterday Royce Bair, the founder of The Stock Solution photo agency, started a discussion about "Promoting stock photography via Creative Commons?" at the Stockphoto.net discussion group, asking the community

All in all, Creative Commons has a nice idea, but do you think it is really useful for the professional stock photographer who wants to promote his/her images?

Licensed For $24.000, The Shot Was Done 15 Years Ago

Recently two discussions started at the StockPhoto email group. One was entitled "Declining Sales at Getty", another one "How do we break into Getty Images?" (Brian Yarvin).

Travel photographer Glen Allison responded in a nice and long answer to an earlier post of Fabian Gonzales ("I looked at your portfolio on Getty. While I admire your work, I wouldn't say that many of the images you have that were accepted by Getty are more unique than other photos I've seen of the same subjects, or that your subjects are rare and unavailable"):

Stock Photos With A Message: How To Showcase Yourself Today As A Professional Photographer

Let´s go back to the roots, to the producers of the goods the stock photo industry is living from, let´s forget for a moment the business blabla of Who buys Who and Our technological capabilities exceed those of your company by far and let´s observe how professional photographers today build their very own business websites with blogs and the help of technological providers like (alphabetically) Digital Railroad, PhotoShelter, topixx, and other systems.

Getty Images Launches "Exclusive by Getty Images"

Getty Images just launched "Exclusive by Getty Images", a collection of "distinctive celebrity and editorial imagery".

The collection is "a premier online solution for magazine and newspaper customers seeking to differentiate their publications with highly distinctive imagery not available anywhere else" and offers "premium celebrity portraits, celebrity portrait archives, reportage features and editorial specials."

The imagery offered is created by "a growing network of elite photographers including international celebrity shooter Lorenzo Agius, renowned photojournalist Tom Stoddart and Pulitzer Prize-winner David Turnley." Additional photographers are Polly Borland, Mitch Jenkins, Kevin Westenberg, Julian Broad, Jonathan Olley, Derek Hudson, Uli Weber, James Burns, Dario Mitidierim, Judah Passow, Mike Goldwater, Christopher Pillitz, Joe McNally, Amy Toensing and others. Getty Images states that this is a "completely new product."

"Exclusive by Getty Images" is managed by Steve Blogg (director of photography, editorial contributors, EMEA), Nick Bull (director of photography, celebrity portraiture) and David Laidler (director of photography, editorial contributors, Americas).

Jonathan Klein had announced earlier during the 3rd Quarter 2005 Earnings Call some days ago that:

However, amid all the buzz and excitement of royalty-free, it would be a big mistake for any of us to lose focus on the rights-managed licensing model. Let me assure you, we remain very focused on this important part of the business. Rights-managed imagery represented 42 percent of total sales in the quarter. You would expect us to focus on so big a part of our business. Importantly, rights-managed revenue grew at a double-digit rate in the third quarter, and as Liz will share later, it too was driven by both volume and price. (Link, pdf-file)

The launch of the subscription service Creative Express of Getty Images is just two months old.

More details here.