Getty images is not a newcomer in trading prices versus quantity. Quite the opposite. When a company wants to gain market share in an industry already heavily populated with suppliers, it reduces its cost of doing business to a minimum and slashes prices to force the competition into bankruptcy. EconomyContinue Reading

I don’t understand. I really do not understand the relation some people make between file sharing photo sites, like Fotolog or Photobucket and the professional photo industry. I do not even understand how professionals from the photo industry can declare that anyone can take a great picture. A great photoContinue Reading

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 :Continue Reading

As I was writing my post about the exploitation of the masses by a few, I realized I was missing one very important point regarding microstock: it is a pass time of rich people. For one, you need reasonably good quality camera equipment that still runs in the thousand ofContinue Reading

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,Continue Reading

Photography used to be about creating that one image that would sell over and over again. Film, processing, archiving, duping was expensive enough that editors would harshly cut through a shoot to find the quintessential image. As we all know, with the advent of digital, both photographers and agencies haveContinue Reading

Those who continue to believe that volume compensates for intelligence are heading for a painful awakening. I understand that social interaction and User Generated anything is very trendy these days, especially on the West coast of America where any new idea is a Great!! idea. But this belief that thereContinue Reading

A lot has been said about those who contribute their images to microstock sites or the free photo sharing sites. A lot of bad things, mostly, said by professional photographers. But an article in the NYT of today just juggled a thought I had years back as this trend wasContinue Reading

Mediavat. Let’s think about it for a while. WHAT HAPPENED?. No VC would invest in a company whose business plan is to sell within a year. Especially 15 Million dollars. For one year? That is what happened to Mediavast. Furthermore, no company would open an office in Amsterdam one monthContinue Reading

I have read many blogs and news snippets about Getty Images buying Jupiter Images for an obscene amount of US issued dollars. After what I have read and heard about royalty free microstock and looking at that space, if I was Alan Meckler, I would also quickly get out ofContinue Reading