Category Archives: Stock

PicScout Joins LicenseStream In Push To License Images Anywhere

PicScout just announced a new product that will allow photographer to attach some sort of one click licensing to their images (here). This is the same as what LicenseStream has been offering for almost a year now and so there’s nothing revolutionary about it, but it will be very interesting to watch as more companies [...]

Selling Stock Independently

I think for many photographers the ability to license their images as stock without paying a huge commission to some middle man is the ultimate dream. And, to be honest I don’t think it matters a bit to buyers whether they get the image from Corbis/Getty or directly from the photographer as long as the [...]

Getty Bullies Photographers After Buying Agency

In this example Getty buys Mediavast (Wireimage) where photographers have a 50/50 royalty split more or less and after several months realizes that’s not their standard split and that they’ve been “overpaying” all this time. The solution of course is to charge them 80/20 until you recoup your money and then apply the standard 60/40 [...]

Getty Uses A Nefarious Tactic To Raise Rates

In this letter to a photographer Getty claims the 50% split was a typo and should have been 60/40 in favor of Getty [correction] claims the 60/40 split in favor of the photographer should have been 50/50 and justifies taking the extra 10% due to a typo. Seems like a slimy tactic to me.

Trunk Archive – Ultra High End Stock

There’s always been this problem in stock photography that the best images remain with people who care very little about licensing them to you. Often if I wanted to get some great stock pictures I would call photographers directly and ask them to go into their files and pull the contact sheets and send them [...]

Jupiter Media Sells To Getty

Wire story (here).

ImageSpan May Change Stock Photography Forever

Whats the biggest problem facing stock photography today? Is it finding pictures or is it licensing pictures? For a certain group of clients and buyers it’s finding pictures that meet a specific criteria, which inevitably includes a level of trust that the image appears nowhere else and that the model release is solid. That market [...]

Digital Railroad Teeters on the Edge

“…it’s reasonable to expect a very short period of time for the final resolution of DRR – no less than 30 days, and a maximum of 90, but I expect they will surely want everything either closed down or transferred to a new owner by December 31st at the latest.” — John Harrington, Photo Business [...]

Alamy To Open Sales Office in NYC

Alamy is setting up a dedicated sales office in NYC and charging all it’s contributors an extra 5% on sales to do so. The US market makes up 30% of their revenue at the moment but they think the dedicated sales team can ramp that up and increase gross payments to their contributors.
I’m not sure [...]

Photoshelter Stops Selling Stock

Effective 10/10/2008, The PhotoShelter Collection will discontinue stock photo licensing.
We’ve made a strategic decision to focus our efforts on enhancing our original product, The Personal Archive.
Explanation (here).

How To Buy A Photo On Flickr

Finding one is fairly easy, well, it’s not bad if you can’t find what you need on the traditional stock sites and you’ve run out or ideas where to look or, and this happens too, you’re sick of seeing the same handful of images for a package you run every single year and want something [...]

Photoshelter Announces New Stock Photography Event

July 20th is “Shoot the Day” and Photoshelter is throwing a huge event with classes, competitions and parties (here’s the website) and there’s plenty of stuff to sign-up for so get going cause it looks like spots are limited.
They’ve also got an interesting shoot competition happening where 20 PhotoShelter photographers will be chosen (after applying [...]

Stock Photo Keyword Zen

I consider myself a pretty good stock researcher. Mostly because I’ve done so much of it and partially because I like doing it (exceptions here and here). This is what I think makes someone good at stock research: The ability to identify great images as thumbnails, a massive list of agencies to search (here’s mine), [...]

The #1 Source for Stock

Photographer websites.
If I want to find the best stock in the world I just go to my favorite photographer websites and look at their portfolio and there it is, the top 40-60 photos they’ve ever taken, edited and ready to be published again.

Fill In The Blank Stock

Every once and awhile a designer would come up to me with a layout filled with holes. What goes in those holes, you might ask? Stock pictures of course. My job (and those who worked with me) was to take the layout and find photos that fit in the holes. If there’s a vertical hole [...]

Searching For Photos That Don’t Exist

Working as a Photo Editor at a National Magazine the monthly low point usually occurs when the editor reviews the layout illustrated with the shittiest photos I have ever seen that were the direct result of hours upon hours of stock searches for a subject that’s thinly covered and being told that, rather then kill [...]

Stock Photo Agencies

Here’s my stock photography list. If I’m missing anything good let me know.
General
Corbis
Getty
Alamy
Jupiter Images
Aurora Photos
Masterfile

Boutique
Magnum
A+C Anthology
Lens Modern
Aperture
Gallery Stock
Panos Pictures
Glass House Images
F-Stop Images
Redux Pictures
Stock That Doesn’t Suck
Independent Photography Network
Monsoon Images
Arcangel Images
Trunk Images
IC Worldwide
Bransch
Syndicated Celebrity Images
Corbis Portraiture
CPi Syndication
Contour Photos
Icon International
Exclusive by Getty Images
Lickerish
Art and Commerce
Vistalux
Lime Foto
Celebrity Pictures
August Image
JBG Photo
Headpress
Management [...]