An Interview with Ulf Schmidt-Funke by Stefan Hartmann for PICTORIAL Magazin 04/2016. It was – actually – a discussion about an entirely different topic. But Ulf Schmidt-Funke was just about to travel to the USA, where he planned to meet with major market players – including Reuters, New York Times and Shutterstock – on behalf … Read More →
The issue seemed simple enough: Find a photo of a green landscape with a clean blue sky, add the company’s logo and tagline and post it on the homepage of the site. Sure, they could easily find an inexpensive photo that matched their need but after that, emptiness. For a small company with no in-house … Read More →
I was recently invited to speak at B&H Photo Video . Here is the resulting podcast: “Anyone, I mean, anyone can submit their photos for sale in the stock-photography market. (Are you a foaper?) But the question remains: is it worth it? No doubt, the industry has been transformed by corporate conglomeration and digital technology but, while … Read More →
Photographers and anyone involved in the professional photo licensing business have a love/hate relationship with social media. Great marketing tool to display their latest photographs but with no revenue. Worse, social media platforms generate millions on the content being shared. This might change. Tsu.co ( pronounce “soo”) is a recent newcomer in the crowded world of … Read More →
By now, unless if they have been living under a rock, everyone has heard- if not experienced- bitcoin. Some photo agencies have even experienced accepting Bitcoin in payment for licenses. However, what few know is how the technology behind Bitcoin could one day change the world of photography. Reduced to a very simple explanation, blockchain … Read More →
While there has never been so many photos taken and shared online, the world of professional photo licensing is not striving. In fact, most legacy companies have seen their revenue freeze or decline in the last decade, with rare exceptions. While at first contradictory, a closer analysis reveals that part of the issue seems to be linked to … Read More →
Ever since the launch of the first iPhone, mobile photography has exploded, propelled by social media’s accelerating effect. Everyone, every day, everywhere is a photographer. With more than a billion photos uploaded and shared daily, the world of photography has forever changed. While barely significant in its early years, this mass production of unsolicited images … Read More →
Public photo industry surveys are so rare and few that it is always a refreshing exercise to review one when they do come out. VisualSteam just released the 2015 edition of its Art Buyer Survey and it surfaces some interesting trends. Leslie Hughes, VisualSteam’s President and CEO, said, “Art Buyers are frustrated by stock agencies … Read More →
You wouldn’t think about it this way, but Wall Street tends to be highly emotional and jittery when it comes to stock photo licensing. When companies with voracious growths – anything above 30%- show any signs of slowing down, it starts running for cover. The reason is very simple: the stock only sought after characteristic from … Read More →
In the silence of mid-summer, the Copyright hub launched its first practical initiative. For those who do not know, which is the vast majority of everyone reading this, the Copyright Hub is the brainchild of the UK effort to help drag copyright legislation into the XXI century. It is a … Read More →