Recent Stock Photo Industry Press Releases

New Stock Asylum Directory Helps Image Researchers Find Fresh Visuals

Boulder, CO, June 27, 2005. A new internet directory announced today by The Stock Asylum will help buyers of rights-managed stock photography locate fresh imagery from a multitude of web sites.

“There’s a wealth of untapped, yet very high quality stock photography available on the web,” said Stock Asylum Managing Editor Ron Rovtar. “Unfortunately, much of it is spread out on web sites of small distributors and individual photographers, which makes it hard to find."

DIGITAL RAILROAD RAISES $5.2 MILLION FROM MORGENTHALER AND VENROCK

New York, NY (June 14, 2005). Digital Railroad, Inc. (www.digitalrailroad.net), the leading provider of Web-based application services for the professional photography industry, announced that it has secured $5.2 million in venture capital from Morgenthaler Ventures (www.morgenthaler.com) and Venrock Associates (www.venrock.com).
Digital Railroad will use the “Series A” funding to expand its online photo management, distribution and archiving platform. The company has developed a unique suite of Web-based services that enable professional photographers and photo agencies to manage, market, and sell their images with greater efficiency than with existing solutions.

INMAGINE™ launches its premier subscription-based website www.123RoyaltyFree.com

In line with its expansion plan and at the same time in response to the demand of its customers and contributors, INMAGINE™ debuts its primary subscription-based site, 123RoyaltyFree.com.

"We are thrilled to launch 123RoyaltyFree.com. The launch of this website has been long anticipated and it has finally come true today. INMAGINE™'s diverse collection of high quality images and excellent round-the-clock customer support and research service has won us worldwide recognition. As 123RoyaltyFree.com is wholly owned and managed by Inmagine Corp LLC, you can expect the same qualities from this new site,” said Stephanie Sitt, Director of Marketing and Sales of Inmagine Corp LLC.

Stock Photo War of the Widgets

New York, NY (June 9, 2005) – As ‘War of the Worlds’ cruises into
theaters, the War of the Widgets has also begun for the multi-billion
dollar stock content licensing industry. In the battle for desktop
search, StockPhotoFinder.com has entered the fray by offering photo
buyers a free Widget to facilitate searching the databases of stock
photography agencies and commercial photographers.

PictureArts Expands Collection Offerings with IBid Partnership

Thursday, June 9, 2005. PictureArts, the leading provider of specialty images for professional communicators, announced today an exclusive worldwide partnership with Ibid, a high-end rights-managed photography company based in Evanston, Illinois. Ibid is the fifth specialty image collection represented by PictureArts.

Media Bakery Adds 50,000 More Images From Image Source, Photodisc, Corbis, Medio Images, Digital Vision, Big Cheese Photo, Comstock and New Comer Blend Images

Monday, June 6, 2005. Media Bakery, LLC. (www.mediabakery.com), the multi-brand image aggregator, adds the next group of imagery as defined in the company's growth plan. With the addition of more than 50,000 images, Media Bakery's website is becoming the targeted local for Royalty Free content amongst creatives and graphic designers. "This brings our collection to well over 750,000 Royalty Free images and over 1,000,000 Royalty Free products including footage, audio and flash content", said Chad Newell, CEO of Media Bakery. "This new addition of content not only enhances an easy to use creative resource for our clients, it resenates our commitment to add quality collections to our already ace archive of imagery."

An Open Letter to the Art Directors Club

Today the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) - together with the Stock Artists Alliance, Advertising Photographers of America and Editorial Photographers - published the following open letter.

Thursday, June 2, 2005

Myrna Davis, Executive Director
Art Directors Club
106 West 29th Street
New York, New York 10001

Dear Ms. Davis,

As leaders of various photography trade associations, we are writing you to express our concern that you have accepted sponsorship funds from On Request Images for your upcoming gala event. This sponsorship is a passive endorsement by the Art Directors Club and we are confident that this is not the message you really want to be sending to the creative community.

On Request Images, and other developers and promoters of the business model that's now commonly called "custom stock" promote the practice of photographers working on speculation. These so-called "stock" images are actually assignments done on spec and yield only the "winning" participant any compensation. We have heard troubling stories from photographers who unwittingly engaged in this model, thinking it was a "stock" opportunity. The leadership of each of the undersigned trade organizations has independently come to the same conclusion: The business model known as 'Custom Stock' does not appear to provide a viable and sustainable income for professional photographers and hence this is not a practice we can support.