So, as it reaches $200 million dollars a year in revenue, Istockphoto is pushing the production of stock photography to its rim. The traditionally strong categories for stock imagery, like Lifestyle, Health, Parenthood, Teens, Green, Business are all being more than very well covered by the astute production of 100,000’s very smart microstock producers. For … Read More →
The PACA is about to release their stockphotofinder. Or at least a Beta version of it. For those who do not know, PACA stands for Picture Archive Council of America and regroups hundreds of RM and RF commercial stock agencies. They have recently decided, in committee, to create a photo portal for all its members … Read More →
Some photo agencies want to play with the big boys with no understanding of the fundamentals of business. Take Miami based photo agency PR photos. Right on the heals of the Getty Images announcement that they would charge $5 per image for cell phone usage on images of a certain very low size, that “agency … Read More →
The future of photography is exclusive content. Not exclusive as in no one else wants to shoot this, otherwise called “niche” photography. No, no. Niche photography is just exactly that : a specialized market. And with specialized comes limited. When photography was still film, print and slide, no one could really copy as they could … Read More →
Recently, a lot of chatter spread over the photo-related internet regarding a cover of TIME magazine whose image was sold for $30. It is not the first time that this magazine used a microstock image for its cover, and certainly not the last. The tea cup storm was a bit unfair to the magazine as … Read More →
One of the hardest and most lucrative task in photography, is editing. It is hard because it is not a science with clear established rules. Trends, fashion, moods, seasons, local culture, a lot can interfere in the process of finding the best image. It is lucrative, not because it’s a profession that pays well (some, … Read More →
There is a lot of talk these days that photography has become a commodity. According to Wikipedia, “A commodity is something for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. It is a product that is the same no matter who produces it, such as petroleum, notebook paper, or … Read More →
Who needs microstock anymore ? Thanks to a new plug in for Microsoft office, it has become child play to easily rip an image found with Google Image and include it into a presentation or word document. There are absolutely no copyright warning and nothing to advise the user that they might be breaking the … Read More →
Google just released a white paper on image pattern recognition, yesterday, in Miami. Not really a new concept and already developped by a few companies, like Imense, in the UK, this however is a sign that Google is going beyond text tagging to retrieve images. In brief, this technology uses the “knowledge” of Picasa, Google … Read More →
I was looking at this video of Clay Shirky presentation to TED TV today. It’s a little long ( 17 minutes) but very informative. especially the middle part. What made me thinking is how he portrays the development of media. If you do not have the time to look at the video, here is part … Read More →