The current photo industry and newcomers apply a completely flawed logic to licensing images. It is too often believed that if an image is largely seen, it will be licensed. The thinking come from primeval logic. It goes like this: – if an image is not seen, it will neverContinue Reading

One of the premises for the acquisition by Getty images of Istockphoto was that customers of the microstock site would eventually migrate to the higher priced imagery placed on the Getty images site. Instead, it has been a growing cannibalization of high end, full price paying customers to the microContinue Reading

It is not what you photograph that matters anymore, it is how you photograph it. It used to be that cameras, processing,  access and mostly distribution was the privilege of a few, all nicely rewarded by a comfortable income. This closed “Boy’s Club” had many high level entry barriers .Continue Reading

We hadn’t heard from the PLUS coalition for a while. This loose organization of visual professional who has been tediously trying to create a standard for licensing has suddenly burst out of its silence with two important announcements: 1) The ASMP has dug into its $1,3 Million  fund it hadContinue Reading

While everyone is searching for what commercial stock might become in the future, the Chinese might have one solution and it is quite revolutionary. Researchers from TNList, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University along with a Singapore based researcher, have put together Photosketcher, previously called Sketch2Photo. The principleContinue Reading

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’sContinue Reading

“The eventual goal is to have publishers create hybridized content that draws from audio, video and interactive graphics in books, magazines and newspapers, where paper layouts would be static.”. Gizmodo. Apparently Apple is working very hard with publishers to digitize their content for their upcoming tablet ( release date :Continue Reading

So the big buzz these days is all about social media. It started roughly with MySpace , followed by Flickr and now it’s all about  Twitter and Facebook.  A bit like the “Long Tail” theory has been improperly swallowed by a  lot of photography professionals, social media is all butContinue Reading

42 years is a lifetime. When these 42 years are made of excellence, passion, relentlessness commitment, inspiration, painful devotion, genius and unconditional dedication, it becomes a legend. Grazia Neri was not a business, it was an act of love, a huge warm embrace around the thousands of beloved and cherishedContinue Reading

3 days of sounds and fury, signifying nothing. To paraphrase Shakespeare, this represent Perpignan Visa pour L’image this year. Only a quarter of the crowd of the previous year, less then half the booth of agencies, a paparazzi agency replacing Grazia Neri’s legendary location and a couple of citizen journalistContinue Reading