North America woke up with the news that golden boy photo agency Shutterstock acquired no less than 2 companies in what seems as one swoop. One, in the music category, the other, in the photo licensing world. Obviously it is the latter that interests us here. Shutterstock’s announcement that it has acquired 60 years old … Read More →
Ever so often, the topic of the value of a photograph emerges from the bowels of online conversations. Very quickly, the conversation ends with the undisputed point that a photo should at least cover its cost. In other words, the more it costs to take a picture, the higher its value. Photographers, like any small … Read More →
The difference is what’s missing. In fact, it is only when a photograph does not show it all that it begins to become powerful and potent. Why ? because it forcefully demands viewer participation by understanding the concept. See, the big difference between a powerful photojournalist image and commercial stock is that one misses a … Read More →
There is a massive subterranean shift (no, not paradigm) happening right now in pro photography and it will define photography for at least the next 10 years. Like the movement of the continents, it is slow, hardly perceptible but irrepressible . Let me explain. For a very long time, pro photography was defined by its … Read More →
Popular saying declares that a photo is worth a thousand words. But how is it useful if those words are meaningless? How many times have we’ve read articles or books who bring us little to no information? Words, even a thousand of them, can be deceptively useless. So sure, photos can most of the time describe faster and better than text. But that … Read More →
JUNE 25, 2014 , Guest post by Robert Henson The annual conference CEPIC recently took place in Berlin, where international photo libraries congregate primarily to seek distribution for their images and/or image collections to represent for their clients. The industry they serve is commercial and editorial image licensing, and their clients are advertisers and publishers of all stripes … Read More →
Social Media opened our eyes to the reality that there is a massive talent pool of photographers that have not chosen the path of going pros. They enjoy taking and sharing photos just for the pleasure while they go on paying for their lives with other, probably more lucrative, occupations. Nevertheless, the technology world doesn’t see … Read More →
What the image sharing culture has revealed is that non-pros are much better at taking pictures than anyone thought. In an analog world, everyone kept for themselves: Pros shooting for large distribution periodicals and amateurs shooting for friends and family.With the advent of Flickr, we started seeing a large volume of non pros with high … Read More →
If a fly lands on your nose, right between your two eyes, it becomes invisible. You might feel it, but you do not see it. The obvious, sometimes, acts like a fly on your nose. Several announcements in the last few weeks has made it clear that the stock licensing industry is due for final … Read More →
Stock photos and stock agencies have a much bigger problem than declining usage fees. They just don’t work anymore. In the advertising web space, there is an expression that defines the fact that people do not click on advertising anymore. It is called “banner blindness”. What it means is that people have become so accustomed … Read More →