The photo agency industry continues to complain and whine about its condition, endlessly consummated by demons it has created. For one, it has created this endless pool of incredibly mediocre photographer that has for far too long managed to make a living taking pictures. Its not amateur photography that isContinue Reading

let them eat cake, she had said. As the eyes of the world are turning toward China and the upcoming Olympics, this is a good time to reflect on how photography is evolving. Not as a medium, but as a media. Getty images licenses a series of exclusive images toContinue Reading

This is not the next challenging mountain  path of the Tour de France. It is neither the now too familiar trend of the Getty stock. It is, however, the devastating path of the Jupiter Image stock.  Minus 68% in six months, for a company that is neither linked to theContinue Reading

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 localContinue Reading

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 itsContinue Reading

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 thereContinue Reading

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 aContinue Reading

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. ItContinue Reading

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 andContinue Reading

  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 andContinue Reading