Woke up this morning to this news: “Dubai, United Arab Emirates, July 21, 2008. Celeb Arabia, subsidiary of Dubai Photographers Agency, the source for authentic celebrity images, today announces the launch of its Middle East Celebrity Photo Collection at CelebArabia.com.” Cool, I thought… let’s discover Arabian celebrities :  The local Britney Spears or the Sheik Read More →

The truth about your photo organizations is that they have either no idea what they are talking about or they have no idea  what they are doing. Either way, they are slowly becoming obsolete and useless. Take PACA for example. The Picture Archives Council of America is preparing for its next “international” meeting to be Read More →

Barely waiting for the ashes of the CEPIC congress to cool down, Istockphoto descended on the island of Malta with a vengeance. In a quite ironical move, the microstock giant has picked the same location than the commercial stock industry association. The difference is that while one was only there to blabber endlessly about photography, Read More →

So revenues from traditional clients seem to decline. Price per image are stagnating, if not dropping, while market shares seem to be eaten away by more aggressive, younger companies that have much lower operating costs. The cost of entry in the photo agency world has dropped so low that a new photo agency is born Read More →

News of the sudden departure of Mary Ann Golan from the position of Director of photography might be link to this cover ? The image comes from a Shutterstock / Istockphoto contributor and was licensed for legendary pennies. Microstock on the cover of Time magazine sure is a milestone. It would be interesting to know Read More →

Just imagine. Just imagine if a company like Google, or Yahoo, or even Microsoft put their hand on microstock and social photography. Not only Istockphoto projections of $171 million revenue within a few years would be pulverized into unknown heights but it would be the end of both RM and traditional RF forever. Why ?, Read More →

  Fotolia, one of the big six microstock company, has somewhat launched the Reseller API, thus reinventing the agency-subagency model. In a nutshell, anyone can start representing Fotolia tomorrow under another brand without actually hosting any images. The API allows you to pretend you are hosting while every search and download is actually done behind Read More →

First, I have to admit I have always been a big fan of everything that comes out of the Ideeplex in Toronto. These guys have the best image tracking system I have ever seen, PixId, already used by the top photo agencies in the world to save countless hours in their billing process. They have Read More →

While photographers trade organization are wasting their time fighting issues like the Oprhan Work bill in order the save whatever they have left, and while photo agencies association seem violently silent, the world of editorial continue its downfall. According to Radaronline, Newsweek magazine got rid of 111 staffers last week ( didn’t even know they Read More →