A rather big parallel universe to the photo industry is the copyright industry. According to the Copyright Alliance, “The U.S. core copyright industries accounted for an estimated $819.06 billion or 6.56% of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in 2005.” That, of course, includes music, graphic, video on top of photography. One has to assume Read More →

One thing that has always bothered me is why the commercial stock companies always offer discounts on their images and never the editorial photo agencies. Hold it ! I am not saying they should. If you go on Royalty free websites, there is always, always a promotion going on. Get 2 images for the price Read More →

There are some that still combat royalty free in what seems to be an unfounded hope that it will disappear. Others that turn a blind eye towards microstock and its user generated content. If I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Then, there are those who strongly believe that this whole technology thing is just Read More →

I went to PictureHouse NY this year, not as an exhibitor, but as an image buyer. It was a very rewarding experience. The first, and probably foremost experience was the terribly empty and deserted video footage room. With at most 5 distributors, but none of the big players, they must have stared at each other Read More →

  “Digital Disciples make up the second-largest group (35%) and consider themselves serious amateur photographers“. According to The Kodak Photo Futures Report, the same Disciples are “the most likely to explore photo editing software and have ambitions to make money from their hobby”. Who knew? First who knew that Kodak was still in the photo Read More →

Jeff Kravitz (no, that is NOT him on the picture above), President and Founder of Filmmagic, bought by Getty Images in the $200 million Mediavast deal, has officially resigned. Citing impossible working conditions within the Mega image distributor, antiquated distribution system, one of the most succesful, and influential, red carpet photographer is slamming the door Read More →

There are many things we seem to forget while we all go about our daily business of licensing images. Some are good, some are bad, some are in between. In order to clear up the horizon, I made a little list. The Good ( or positive) : – Microstock : Introduced millions to licensing images. Read More →

let’s be honest for a while. What we sell is Time. If we consider the passing of time as a continuous flow, than a photograph is nothing more than a very thin slice extracted and displayed outside of its natural place. A bit like a very thin glass of water taken from a stream. It Read More →

One of the best kept secret of this industry is how agencies work in foreign markets. In the prints days, an agency would work with a sub agent in a specific country. Photographers would send process or unprocessed film and the agency would take it from there, paying for processing, editing, captioning and duping. The Read More →