Microstock photography

Last updated

Microstock photography,[ citation needed ] also known as micropayment photography, is a part of the stock photography industry. What defines a company as a microstock photography company is that they (1) source their images almost exclusively via the Internet, (2) do so from a wider range of photographers than the traditional stock agencies (including a willingness to accept images from amateur photographers and hobbyists), and (3) sell their images at a very low rate (from US$0.20 to $10 in the US) for a royalty-free (RF) image.

Contents

A number of microstock sites also sell vector art, and some sell audio (music) files, Flash animations and video as well as images. [1]

History

The pioneer of microstock photography was Bruce Livingstone, who created iStockphoto, originally a free stock photo site that quickly became an industry phenomenon.[ citation needed ] Livingstone sold iStockphoto to Getty Images in February 2006 for US$50 million. Many other sites sprang up in the years after iStockphoto's inception. Some of the larger ones are Alamy, Bigstock, Fotolia, Depositphotos, 123rf, Featurepics, Picxy, Pond5, Can Stock Photo, Dreamstime and Shutterstock.

After a few years of initial growth, the microstock industry began a period of mergers and acquisitions. The acquisition of iStockphoto by Getty Images in 2006 was followed by acquisition of StockXpert by Jupiterimages during 2006. [2] Consequently, Jupiterimages, a wholly owned subsidiary of Jupitermedia, was bought by Getty Images in 2009 for $96 million in cash [3] and resulted in the closure of StockXpert in 2010 because it was perceived to be non-strategic for Getty compared to iStockphoto. After the sale, Jupitermedia changed its name to WebMediaBrands. [3] BigStockPhoto was purchased by Shutterstock in 2009.

Starting from limited RF license, all agencies added various Extended Licenses; sites based on a "pay-per-download" principle introduced subscription and vice versa. Shutterstock, which was the only 100% subscription-based microstock agency, introduced a pay-per-download scheme and later acquired BigStockPhoto to extend their presence in pay-per-download niche. Newcomer Cutcaster.com extended the pricing model by introducing a model where contributors could set their start price or could choose to use a pricing algorithm and they allowed a buyer to pay the price shown or bid on the content and name their price. Microstock prices were significantly adjusted several times by the respective agencies in the last three years across multiple sites. Many microstock agencies started to sell video in addition to static pictures, and some started to sell sound clips.

2011 marked the first signs of microstock photographers becoming a field of professionals.[ citation needed ] Photographers with large, market-relevant, or high-quality portfolios now often collaborate with each other and negotiate with less-established agencies for better commissions or search positioning, and the increasing popularity among photographers of photography portfolio management solutions to increase their throughput and improve metadata quality to better align with principles of SEO in image search algorithms.

In 2012, Shutterstock became the first microstock agency to complete an initial public offering. The agency now trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SSTK. [4]

In December 2014 Adobe acquired Fotolia for US$800 million in cash. [5]

Practices and controversy

Each microstock agency uses a different pricing and payment scheme. In some instances the same photo can have several prices. Photographers can upload the same pictures on multiple sites or, with some agencies, become an exclusive supplier and receive an increased commission and additional benefits. [6]

There is no fee to post photos on a microstock agency website. However, microstock agencies do not accept all submitters or all photographs. Each employs a team of reviewers who check every picture submitted for legal issues and technical quality, as well as artistic and commercial merit. Photographers add keywords that help potential buyers filter and find pictures of interest. [6]

Some professional photographers who do not participate believe that microstock devalues the practice of photography, and that the business model is unsustainable. They see the growth of microstock sites as reducing their own incomes. [6]

A development that counters these critical opinions is the advance of on-demand photography (or crowd sourced photography, photography marketplaces, etc.). With the higher penetration of smartphones with ever-better cameras, most amateurs can create high quality photography wherever they are. Crowd photo services like CrowdFoto.net[ dead link ] or imagebrief.com try to tap into this vast potential by giving clients the possibility to publish a request (or briefing) that can be picked up and worked on by literally everybody who finds the briefing on their platform. These services reinstate the traditional model of a client asking a photographer to create a photo, but make use of the broadened number of amateur photographers.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Photographer</span> Person who makes photographs

A photographer is a person who uses a camera to make photographs.

Getty Images Holdings, Inc. is a visual media company and supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video, and music for business and consumers, with a library of over 477 million assets. It targets three markets—creative professionals, the media, and corporate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BENlabs</span> American licensing company

BENlabs, formerly BEN Group Inc, is a Los Angeles–based product placement, influencer marketing and licensing company. The company offers AI-driven product placement, influencer marketing services, music partnerships, rights clearance, and personality rights management services for the entertainment industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stock photography</span> Photographs with a specific use

Stock photography is the supply of photographs that are often licensed for specific uses. The stock photo industry, which began to gain hold in the 1920s, has established models including traditional macrostock photography, midstock photography, and microstock photography. Conventional stock agencies charge from several hundred to several thousand US dollars per image, while microstock photography may sell for around US$0.25 cents. Professional stock photographers traditionally place their images with one or more stock agencies on a contractual basis, while stock agencies may accept the high-quality photos of amateur photographers through online submission.

freeImages Website providing stock images

stock.xchng was a website providing free-to use stock photography and illustrations, its name being a reduced version of "stock exchange". The site was launched in February 2001 by Peter Hamza, and allows users to contribute, share and download high-resolution photographs and illustrations free of charge. Contributors are encouraged to submit material to enhance their photography career through wider public exposure. In 2009, the site had over 2,500,000 registered users and more than 400,000 photos. Until 2009, it operated parallel to its sister site, Stockxpert.com, until the site's parent company, Jupiterimages, was purchased by Getty Images, and the site is now tied in with the iStock library of paid images.

Mecklermedia was a U.S.-based corporation. The original WebMediaBrands was established in 1994, and headquartered in New York. Founded by Alan M. Meckler and Tristan Louis, the company provided business-to-business (B2B) services for creative, business and information technology professionals, including recruitment and event promotion.

Royalty-free (RF) material subject to copyright or other intellectual property rights may be used without the need to pay royalties or license fees for each use, per each copy or volume sold or some time period of use or sales.

iStock Microstock photography website

iStock is an online royalty free, international micro stock photography provider based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Shutterstock, Inc. is an American provider of stock photography, stock footage, stock music, and editing tools; it is headquartered in New York. Founded in 2003 by programmer and photographer Jon Oringer, Shutterstock maintains a library of around 200 million royalty-free stock photos, vector graphics, and illustrations, with around 10 million video clips and music tracks available for licensing. Originally a subscription site only, Shutterstock expanded beyond subscriptions into a la carte pricing in 2008. It has been publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange since 2012.

Bruce Livingstone is a Canadian entrepreneur who founded Calgary-based iStockphoto, an online distributor of stock photography.

DreamsTime.com is an online royalty-free microstock provider based in Brentwood, Tennessee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jon Oringer</span> American businessman

Jon Oringer is an American programmer, photographer, and billionaire businessman, best known as the founder and CEO of Shutterstock, a stock media company headquartered in New York City. Oringer started his career while a college student in the 1990s, when he created "one of the Web's first pop-up blockers." He went on to found about ten small startups that used a subscription method to sell "personal firewalls, accounting software, cookie blockers, trademark managers," and other small programs.

Bigstock is an online royalty-free, international microstock photography website that sells images via a credit-based system. Bigstock's photos, vectors and illustrations cost from between 1 and 6 credits each, depending on size, with credits ranging from $.90 to US$3.00. BigStockPhoto was founded in Davis, California, in the fall of 2004. Bigstock adds to its library every day as photographers and designers from around the world submit their work. As of June 2015, Bigstock had more than 25 million royalty-free images available.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">EyeEm</span> German technology company

EyeEm, pronounced "I am", is a German technology company that provides services related to photography. It was co-founded by Florian Meissner, Ramzi Rizk, Gen Sadakane, and Lorenz Aschoff in Berlin in 2011.

Yuri Arcurs, born Jacob Yuri Wackerhausen on July 27, 1979 is a Danish stock photographer and owner of PeopleImages.com. In 2007 he was the top ranked selling contributor at Shutterstock, Fotolia, Crestock and BigStockPhoto In 2008 Arcurs sold 650,000 images per year through 16 different microstock agencies

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Depositphotos</span> American company

Depositphotos is a company operating a royalty-free content website with headquarters in New York, USA. It was founded by Dmitry Sergeev in November 2009 in Kyiv, Ukraine. The Depositphotos library has over 200 million files, including royalty-free stock photos, vector images, video clips, and editorial files. In 2012, the Depositphotos library exceeded 10 million files in less than four years and was considered one of the fastest-growing photobanks in the world.

Pond5 is a New York–based online marketplace for royalty-free media. The company licenses stock footage, stock music, stock photography, sound effects, Adobe After Effects templates, and 3D models. Pond5 claims to have the world's largest collection of stock footage, and that they host more than 38 million clips as of September 2023.

Can Stock Photo was a stock photography provider which licenses royalty-free images, photos, digital illustrations, picture clip art and footage files on behalf of photographers, illustrators, and videographers. Founded in 2004, it was one of the earliest microstock agencies. The Can Stock Photo will cease exist on October 1, 2023.

Featurepics was a royalty-free microstock photography digital content agency that has been actively working in the stock photography market since 2007 based in Fremont, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unsplash</span> Copyright-free stock photography website

Unsplash is a website dedicated to proprietary stock photography. Since 2021, it has been owned by Getty Images. The website claims over 330,000 contributing photographers and generates more than 13 billion photo impressions per month on their growing library of over 5 million photos. Unsplash has been cited as one of the world's leading photography websites by Forbes, Design Hub, CNET, Medium and The Next Web.

References

  1. ↑ Stephen Shankland, "With site revamp, Fotolia adds vector art, ZDNet News, June 1, 2007
  2. ↑ "Jupiterimages acquires Stockxpert.com and Stock.xchng". Archived from the original on January 17, 2010.
  3. 1 2 "Jupitermedia Announces Completion Of Sale Of Jupiterimages To Getty Images and Change Of Jupitermedia Name to WebMediaBrands" (Press release). Getty Images. 2009-02-23. Archived from the original on 2009-02-28. Retrieved 2009-08-13.
  4. ↑ "Shutterstock Announces Closing of Initial Public Offering and Exercise of Underwriters' Option to Purchase Additional Shares". Shutterstock. 2012-10-16. Retrieved 2013-01-18.
  5. ↑ "Adobe acquires stock photo giant Fotolia for $800 million in cash". VentureBeat. 2014-12-11. Retrieved 2023-02-04.
  6. 1 2 3 Taub, Eric A. (2007-06-05). "When Are Photos Like Penny Stocks? When They Sell". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-02-04.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.