It is not really the photo industry that is in danger of extinction, but rather a weird and strange animal that appeared about 50 to 60 years ago out of pure greed. Let me explain:  When photography became a job, the first photographers were troopers who would get up inContinue Reading

I am no friend of fair use.  “Fair Use is a USA law that provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author’s work under a four-factor balancing test.  In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fairContinue 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

Who said that editorial photography doesn’t pay ? Dave Hogan, or “Hogie” for those who know him well, is hosting the British prime minister in his 1.2 million pounds house for the summer. I have had the pleasure of working with Hogie for many years while at ImageDirect and canContinue Reading

Apple cracker jack buys debt from A21. Press release of the week Month Year : a21, Inc. Signs Non-binding Letter of Intent with Applejack Art Partners, Inc. Translation: A company with the dubious name of A21 (probably taken from a heavy drinking casino party) signed a non binding ( meaningContinue 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

Even in a world of quirky names, content continues to rule. Picapp, the source for free legal images for blogs, has just signed up celebrity news agency Splashnews as a new provider. Here’s the deal : 2 companies, one similar idea. How to license images to the high volume communityContinue 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