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."
“These ‘micro-distributors’ represent a vital, emerging stock photography source that few buyers know about because it is hard to access. Though our new internet search is not limited to small suppliers, it provides a level playing field where quality work can stand out regardless of its origin,” Rovtar said.
The Internet Stock Directory already contains 683 entries, representing tens of thousands of images. The Stock Asylum will add many more pages in the coming months.
The vast majority of links point directly to web pages containing stock images rather than to pages requiring keyword searches. This feature makes finding images quick and efficient.
A link to the the directory can be found among other resources for stock photography buyers near the top of The Stock Asylum home page at www.stockasylum.com.
Like all Stock Asylum resources, the Internet Stock Directory is an editorial effort, meaning it is compiled by Stock Asylum staff at no cost to the individual web site owners.
Stock photography is defined as existing photography for which designers, advertisers and publishers can purchase a usage license. Stock photography buyers often use such resources to save time or to gain access to photos that would be too costly to assign to a photographer.
The Stock Asylum will review web pages submitted by Photographers and stock distributors for inclusion in the Internet Stock Directory. All pages will be reviewed to make sure all the images are suitable and contain quality, salable images.
The Stock Asylum strongly recommends that every submitted page:
1) Represent a particular subject (business meetings, New York City, sports cars, for example).
2) Contain contact and licensing info or an obvious link to a page with this information.
3) Show a true variety of images with few “similar” images.
4) Display a minimum of six images per page, but more is better. The Stock Asylum will review pages with up to 100 high-quality images.
5) Offer model-released, rights-managed images available directly from the photographer or distributor. (Pages with non-released images of editorial subjects will also be reviewed.)
In addition to these basic links, The Stock Asylum will offer modestly-priced sponsor links, Rovtar said. Sponsor links will appear near the top of appropriate search results and include an image from the linked-to page.
Rovtar said The Stock Asylum was astonished by the number of micro-distributors it uncovered in a short period of time. He said the phenomenon appears driven by recent stock industry consolidations like the purchase of Photonica West by Getty Images and the acquisition of Zefa by Corbis. Getty Images is the largest stock photography distributor in the world while Corbis is the scond largest.
“Every time one of the big distributors buys a smaller competitor, image creators find it harder to place work in the remaining libraries,” Rovtar noted. “Fewer distributors offer fewer contracts to image producers and take fewer images from those who have contracts. Furthermore, the photographer’s share of image sales has eroded considerably during this process,” Rovtar added.
“All of this means that many quality photographers have truly incredible work that is not represented by mainstream suppliers. The good news for license buyers is that much of this work has little or no publishing history.”
“It’s fresh, it’s not filtered through a big company’s artistic department, and now it is much easier to find through The Stock Asylum,” Rovtar asserted.
