February 5, 2009 by pmelcher.

As rumors went, the reality follows. Bill Gates wholly-owned Corbis is closing down its microstock experiment, Snapvillage and merging it into its high value brand, Veer. yes, you are reading it right,  Veer will be the new destination for the corbis microstock offering. Called Veer Marketplace, it will develop into a full offering in two phases, this coming year. Not sure if exposing Veer customers to microstock is the best idea for the Veer contributors, but then, only time will tell.

Here is the official e mail send out by Corbis to its Snapvillage users:

“Dear SnapVillage Contributor,

As a contributor you know how fast microstock is growing. So do we! Corbis anticipates that within the next few years, microstock photography will represent more than 25% of the overall stock photography market. We are committed to taking a significant share of this market and providing photographers a leading brand and website to reach customers looking for affordable, quality photography and a great web experience.

We have learned a lot from SnapVillage, and we recognize that as the market has rapidly evolved over the past two years, we need a bigger, better offering to achieve success in microstock.

So today we’re excited to be sharing our plans to roll SnapVillage into a new microstock offering on Veer, which Corbis acquired in 2007. Veer is a highly successful stock agency specializing in creative rights managed (RM) and royalty free (RF). It has a large, established, global customer base, strong brand loyalty and an industry-leading website supported by winning marketing campaigns. These elements provide an ideal platform to rapidly build our microstock business and to help you sell more. We plan to build on SnapVillage’s assets to launch a new microstock-specific section at Veer called Veer Marketplace.

What does this mean for SnapVillage?

In the months ahead, we’ll be inviting SnapVillage contributors and customers to Veer Marketplace. Once Veer Marketplace is launched and fully operational, it will become Corbis’ only microstock brand and SnapVillage will be phased out by the end of the year.

What does this mean for you?

Good news! In the months ahead, we’ll be inviting SnapVillage contributors and customers to Veer Marketplace. Marketplace will offer contributors efficient uploading capabilities, a great user experience and your work will be showcased and marketed within the amazing award-winning design and community for which Veer is recognized. (There will also be other good stuff too but we can’t reveal all our secrets before launch!).

When does Veer Marketplace launch?

Veer Marketplace will launch in two phases with a small sampling of affordable images that can be purchased a la carte in late February, followed by a full launch mid year with contributor upload capabilities and credit-based pricing and subscriptions. You can read more details about this in the attached FAQ.

It will take time to complete this process so please bear with us. By mid-year you’ll have the chance to sell your work to a whole new crowd of people and become part of the Veer community.

Questions?

Want to learn more about Veer? Wondering if there is anything you need to do? Please read the Contributor FAQ to learn more about Veer Marketplace.

We also invite you to join the conversation about Veer Marketplace. We’d love to hear from you so register and create a profile to make sure as Veer Marketplace grows, we continue to meet your needs.”

Posted in Midstock, commercial stock, prosumer, corbis, Royalty free, Microstock | Print | 3 Comments »

February 4, 2009 by pmelcher.

No Time magazine. No People, Sports Illustrated, In-touch, Life & Style, Star Magazine or  National Enquirer among many others. The battle between Time Inc., Bauer Publications, American Media VS Anderson News and Source Interlink Cos has started. The 7 cents surchage per issue requested by the distributors has deprived the clients of about 4,000 Wal Mart in the USA to be deprived of their usual choice. Us Weekly, owned by Wenner Media, and OK!, owned by Northern + Shell, apparently, have accepted the hike and will be distributed. A key player in this battle of will is Wal-Mart itself, the biggest magazine retailer in the US of A, who has taken side with the distributors who, combined, represent 50% of the US magazine distribution. A magazine like People, who sells 1,4 million copies on the newsstand every week could lose 700,000 circulation in one week.

All this is happening at a time when most of these magazines have some of their highest circulation thanks to the awards season in Hollywood ( Academy Awards are Feb 22)

Time Warner ( Time, Entertainment Weekly, People, Sports Illustrated, Business Week, Fortune) has just reported losses in the billions of dollars while American Media ( National Enquirer, Star) has once again dodge a bankruptcy by renegotiating its multi-million debt.  It is obvious that there will be a resolution in the very near future since neither sides can afford to lose revenue in an already very depressed economy. As it seems that these publishers are not willing to pass the additional cost to advertisers or buyers, it would seem logical that once an agreement is obtained, it is the suppliers that will pay for the surchage. That means staff, writers and the photo suppliers.

It also seems that this will accelerate the publishers’ move to digital in order to remain independent from greedy distributors. However, image pricing on website is already at a ridiculous low and not much of a refuge for those of us who depend on photo licensing for a living.

More at the New York Post.

Posted in license, celebrity, magazine, TIME, photojournalism, transaction, finance, editorial | Print | No Comments »

February 2, 2009 by pmelcher.

While we see a proliferation of photography in our everyday lives, much more than we have historically have ever been subjected to, we also see it diminishing in size.

Before the 90’s and the advent of the web browser, our only interaction with still images was mostly in print magazines or huge billboards, along with catalogs, brochures and POP ( point of purchase) displays . Professionals would use a loupe to visualize slides in order to see its details. Some, like Life magazine, would use projectors against a big screen to select the images they would use.

It was a slow process, but however efficient. As our news pics, ads or family pictures migrated from print to digital, their size diminished suddenly. At first, it was web designer who, because  of  the limited bandwidth of our old phone modems (remember those ?), reduced every image to its bear minimum in order to make their site faster to load. The dictatorship of the thumbnail had arrived. Even later, when broadband arrived and became more popular, image size on the internet never really grew. This time, again under the orders of those web designers, it was in order to respect the average screen size of the majority of monitors.

Somehow, somewhat, these rules still remain. From Flickr to Facebook, from Cnn.com to Msnbc.com,  without forgetting the banner ads that populate the borders of our favorite destination, the great majority of images that we see everyday have been reduced to thumbnail size . Not even the size of a 1/4 page in your favorite magazine or a 4 x6 print.

We live in a thumbnail society. The amusing part is most print publication have not really capitalize on this difference, and if anything, have reduced the number of double page spread.  A huge mistake. Just look at the popularity of the Giga Pan of the Obama inauguration or the web site “The big picture“.

Photo agencies, worldwide, have put their catalog of images online and at a  thumbnail resolution , whether it is editorial or commercial stock. lots and lots of small images.Millions actually. To the point that some smart photographers have realized that what they sell is not the image, but the thumbnail of the image. When they shoot and prepare images to be licensed on the commercial stock market, they make sure that the thumbnail is more than perfect. They even push their luck by making sure that it will appear as perfect square, as those will stand out better in the thumbnail space allotted to them. And it works. Most editors, confronted by database holding million plus images, quickly choose from the thumbnail first, going for a larger preview only to confirm their choice. They will handle the full resolution much further down in the process, mostly after they have already licensed the image.

And why shouldn’t they ? The image will probably end up on a website anyway, at a size similar or a bit larger than the thumbnail they actually picked initially.

News photographers do not have this choice, obviously.  They continue to shoot with a full page magazine size in their head. Some still even think about the dying double page spread. None, or very little, have the thumbnail in mind.

Thinking about how your image will be seen as a huge influence on the way a photographer takes an image. No one would be crazy enough to use a large format camera for a website usage ( although I am sure some do anyways) as well as using a point & shoot for a glossy magazine cover.

The funny part is that, with no intended synchronicity, our equipment follows the same trend. All 35 mm photographers judge their work through a LCD panel no bigger than 3 inches wide. Sometimes, the same size as the final usage . The other ironic part, is that our televisions do not seem to stop its growth. Flat panel television seems to have liberate our sets of size constrain and more and more people are watching their favorite shows on displays the size of a wall. Strangely, at least in the US, the  networks seem completely oblivious to this change and keep programming shows that do not take any advantage of this new size (Ah well, maybe in ten years..).

Ansel Adams and many others would have never become famous or succesful in this internet/thumbnail age . Have you ever seen one of his images in the size of a small square? Not impressive. We could go on for ever and ever with example of photographers that just can’t live in a thumbnail size

.

This is an Ansel Adams picture viewed as thumbnail

    So what to do? Not much as of yet. As our TV sets merge with our computers, as our broadband continue to suck gigabits at speed light, our visual real estate/data capacity will continue to grow to a point where we will be able to enjoy National Geographic images the size of our walls with a resolution as close to reality as possible. Everything form Mediastorm’s great multimedia’s to a photo shoot with Angelina Jolie will finally blow up to a realistic size. Oh the possibilities…. However, this doesn’t bode well for the vertically framed  image, but that is another story.

Posted in magazine, celebrity, Cnn, technology, commercial stock, mediastorm, multimedia, editorial, msnbc.com, photojournalism, flickr, news | Print | 1 Comment »