StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

The Veer Blog: A Blog For The Creative Part Of The Stock Photo Industry

... and not "Which agency was bought today?" or stupid tec questions like "Using CIA-funded Image Search Technology, will I be able to find these secret images of the hidden early russian kings?"

Instead Veer, who recently bought Solus Images in November 2003, was awarded top honors by Applied Arts magazine in the 13th Applied Arts Design and Advertising Awards for the Veer web log. The press release states

This ... news blog is unique in the stock photo industry ... "when we started the company ... we wanted to share all the creative stuff we were excited about", said Jon Parker, founding partner and editor at Veer. "So many companies treat stock images and type like they're commodities - and their web sites are basically vending machines. We want to show that we're real people with real passions".
[...]
This is the first time the competition has included a distinct category for web logs, recognizing the ingenuity, design, and originality that goes into web sites devoted to periodic, dated entries in journal format. Veer's web log will be featured in the upcoming January 2005 issue of Applied Arts.

However, for obvious reasons the blogroll does not contain a link to thedesingweblog. ;-)

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...).
=:-)

How we beat Eastman Kodak

...and its little yellow boxes at point of purchase despite a clunky product and an irrelevant corporate name." The title of Paul Giambarba´s blog about the Branding of Polaroid, 1957 - 1977.
[Via APAD]

Read the context from the other side of the table in "Kodak: The next Polaroid? Slow transformation to digital photography forced Polaroid into bankruptcy. Will Kodak move quicker?" (Andrew Stein, CNN/Money, where the graph comes from, please note: 2003!):

A similar picture developed at Polaroid as the instant-film company cut thousands of jobs and introduced new products in an effort to keep up with its competition.

Polaroid began to see its sales drop off amid the introduction of one-hour or faster film processing, and the decline accelerated with consumers' move to digital. A raft of financial problems eventually forced Polaroid to file for bankruptcy in 2001, and most of its assets were bought in 2002 by the private-equity arm of Bank One.
[..]
"There's no similarities in how the companies deal with the transition to digital," he said. "Kodak has a well-thought-out digital strategy. It's moving to exploit every aspect of printing digital photographs, and some of these products have margins that come close to those in its film business."

INTO THE BLOGOSPHERE examines Visual Blogs

Into the Blogosphere [Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs] is a new

online, edited collection [that] explores discursive, visual, social, and other communicative features of weblogs. Essays analyze and critique situated cases and examples drawn from weblogs and weblog communities.

by the UofMN. The blog has a very interesting section called"Visual Blogs" (Meredith Badger, University of Sydney):

This paper focuses on the use of figurative photography and illustration within the blogging medium. It examines the ways images shape and alter how we view blogs and how blogs shape and alter the way we view the images placed within them. It suggests that ultimately both images and the weblogs that contain them stand to benefit from the relationship.

Heather Champ is mentioned, also Kevin Sites. Meredith Badger concludes:

Visual weblogs present a new aspect of visual literacy grammar, where images must be read in direct relation to the passage of time and as indivisible from the personality of the blogger themselves. Visual blogs show the process; how I got there rather than what I saw once I arrived. It is this aspect of visual blogs that make them a useful tool for pedagogy; they become a tool for examining how images operate online and how they interact with text. Visual weblogs are a starting point for debate and discussion. They emphasise the present tense – this is what I saw today, this is how things look to me from where I stand right now.

Start

Each time you start from scratch.