Plagiarised photos

I found an interesting post at PDNpulse about Blog readers catch Plagerizing Photographer.

It was quite interesting as the readers of the blog identified that a photographer was copying photos taken by other photographers.  there was an uproar (maybe an overstatement) and the photographer has taken the photos down.

Makes you wonder about microstock.  Do a search for jumping fish and you will find photos taken by Yuri, G Cohen, khz, velychko, K Brown, mikdam, lisagagne (I stopped looking but I am sure there were more and that was only searching shutterstock and istock).  Did anyone notice two of the biggest names in microstock in that list. 

None of microstock versions that I linked to above are exact copies like the ones listed in blog above, but they are very close.  So how far can you go with derivative works?

    

Microstock’s main market don’t use photos

iStock commissioned a survey of small and medium businesses in the UK to determine how they use images in their marketing.  The key finding are:

• 27% of SMBs don’t use imagery in their business at all
• Of organisations who use imagery, 51% use imagery on their website, 40% use imagery in presentations, 31% use imagery in marketing & advertising collateral and 14% use imagery in the office interior design
• 71% of SMBs use photography more than other types of imagery
• The majority of SMBs, still go in-house to source images, with 59% taking photos with their own camera, compared with 40% using online stock photography and 31% commissioning photography

See here for more detail

New Article on Getty and iStock

As part of filings made with the SEC, Getty has had to disclose some information which it would normally keep secret. 

One interesting quote is:

"The introduction of microstock has significantly increased the availability and usage of stock imagery. The advent of affordable high-end digital cameras and broadband Internet access has enabled semi-professional and hobbyist photographers to greatly expand the supply of digital stock imagery, and low microstock prices have put stock images within reach of far more potential customers. The primary consequence of the introduction of microstock has been to open the creative stock imagery market to new segments of users. Small and medium-sized businesses represent a large customer segment for which stock imagery was previously too expensive. For example, a dental practice might now include a microstock image of a boy brushing his teeth on its mailers to patients, whereas before it might have only shown a drawing of a tooth and toothbrush (or perhaps just a message in formatted text) on its appointment reminders because of the relatively high cost of stock imagery. Microstock also enables traditional stock image users to cost-effectively use stock images for interim uses such as storyboarding, customer pitches and internal presentations. Previously these applications would have contained lower quality, freely available images, or hand-drawn sketches. Customer research suggests that approximately 40-50% of microstock demand is comprised of entirely new end-uses, such as those described above. As a result of the combination of new customer segments and new end uses, volumes of microstock images are 15-20x greater than traditional stills.

Another interesting part is a comparison of sales volume between Getty and iStock, the market leader of macrostock and microstock respectively:

More details at this article from pdn.

The filings at the SEC are found here.

A problem with Royalty free - buyers perspective

Anyone see the problem with the two photographs?

That's right, two competing computer companies bought the same photo from Getty, doctored out the original computer and inserted their own low cost PC.

Even the photoshopping isn't that good. The arm of the kid on the left is blurry where they had to make up pixels, the computer int he photo on the right seems to hover in mid air. This is because the original photo featured a apple computer.

Note: this is not a "microstock" issue but an issue with royalty free photos in general as apparently the photo came from Getty, not its low cost son, iStock.

This is very similar to when Dell and Gateway sent the same girl back to school (different photo but from the same series with a model). More detail on royalty free vs rights managed here (with more examples of duplicates)

Original story

Microstock photo results for July

July was a best ever month for me thanks to great sales at shutterstock , istockphoto , StockXpert. The increase at shutterstock was expected as I have uploaded a number of new images there over the past two months and have really felt the benefit of the "new photo" effect. istockphoto was a supprise as it really took of this month for no apparent reason. This has happened before (in March) and wasn't sustained but hopefully it will be this time. All the other sites were a bit disappointing but the season pros were expecting the "normal July slow down" (caused by holidays in the US??) so maybe it was effected by this. August is quite a popular holiday time in Europe but hopefully there wont be an August slowdown as well as I have no Christmas shots to enjoy the Christmas rush which lots of people enjoy.

Sales are creaping back at Fotolia following the relaunch of its site. Sales dropped of considerably but in the second half of July, they were almost back to normal. They are still experiencing issues with there search engine so hopefully they will get this fixed shortly, or even better, the buyers find my photos at sites with a higher commission like StockXpert.

Below are percentages for the month to show how I have been going:

34% shutterstock BEM
12% dreamtime
5% Fotolia
23% istockphoto BEM
3% bigstockphoto
4% 123RF
16% StockXpert BEM
1% Featurepics
2% LuckyOliver

I am off on holiday shortly for a few month so posts will be very intermittent if at all. Hopefully i will get some great shots.

Shutterstock to issue press passes

Shutterstock has decided to join the big boys (Getty etc) and help its contributors get press passes to events. In return for assistance in getting the press pass, the contributor must agree to a 2 year exclusive deal with Shutterstock. This only seems fair.

What this does however, is shift the goal posts. Photos like this have traditionally been sold for large amounts. Time will tell whether Shutterstock can create the volume of sales to justify this from a business perspective (though I must admit that the thought of getting special access to events may make it worthwhile regardless – at least initially).

The big question is how will Getty and the like respond. Their photographers are use to getting big bucks for these and soon, the magazines will be able to get a full edition filled with just one shutterstock subscription. They cant try and block shutterstock securing passes as this will be seen as anticompetitive behaviour. Getty’s biggest ally may be the event themselves as they might not like photos from their event being sold for so little.

The practicalities have also to be sorted out. Big events like say the MTV awards may get lots of applications. Shutterstock will only be able to secure a few passes at the most so they will only support the contributors that have the right gear and the experience. As such, for the majority of the contributors, this new scheme might not apply.

It will also be interesting to see how this applies to countries other than the US. Will the photos generate enough downloads (since US is the biggest market) for them to help out those in other countries??

Note that at this stage, they will not be providing general passes and will be reviewing it on a case by case basis. As far as other companies go, iStock currently issues business cards to exclusive members but these dont carry any official backing from them. It will be interesting to see how iStock respond as thier hands may be tied by their owner, Getty. Scoopt (also owned by Getty) sells celebrity shots but these are "one off" shots where Getty's photographers are not around.

It will be interesting to see how this one plays out. In the mean time, here is their press release:

Shutterstock on the Red Carpet™

New York, New York—June 5, 2007—No more velvet ropes—at least not for Shutterstock® photographers. Shutterstock®, the world’s largest subscription-based stock photo agency, today announced the debut of a new program: Shutterstock on the Red Carpet. Working directly with its submitting photographers—a global network that exceeds 60,000—the company will work to facilitate the acquisition of coveted press passes, whether at film premieres, award shows, concerts or political rallies. While taking steps to secure preferred access for its photographers, Shutterstock will expand its library of celebrity images, a popular category among buyers. Shutterstock on the Red Carpet is the first such program to launch in the stock photography industry and represents an unprecedented level of support by an agency for its photographers.

Shutterstock is already a go-to source for the creative community: with a photo library numbering almost two million premium images, it has photographs and vectors in categories ranging from people and animals/wildlife to business and science. With Shutterstock on the Red Carpet, the company is positioning itself to be a leading resource for the entertainment/celebrity sector as well. As for photographers, the benefits are obvious: they will be positioned to take photographs that are almost guaranteed to sell well on the site.

“At Shutterstock we are very aware that our success is tied to the caliber of our photo library, and for that we are indebted to our photographers,” said Jon Oringer, Founder and CEO of Shutterstock. “If there’s something we can do to help them get the best, most desirable photographs, we’re going to do it. Shutterstock on the Red Carpet came from that kind of thinking—and we wish our photographers well on the red carpet!”

Shutterstock on the Red Carpet™: How it Works
Photographers work directly with a Shutterstock customer service representative to expedite the press pass application process—these representatives are available via email at presspass@shutterstock.com. Each event requires different information to issue a press pass, so Shutterstock asks that photographers be as specific as possible about their needs. There is a form online at http://submit.shutterstock.com/redcarpet.pdf ; photographers must fill out one per event and a Shutterstock Support staffer will respond within 24 hours. In return for enlisting Shutterstock’s press pass acquisition services and increasing their potential earnings by taking photos in a much-downloaded category, photographers must agree to sell resulting images exclusively at Shutterstock. (Note: these photos must meet the same standards of quality to be added to the site as would any other submission).blockquote>

Fotolia v2 - upgrades and payrise [updated]

[update - Fotolia have delayed the launch of their new site. They hope to get it up this weekend now. At least they postponed the upgrade rather than go through with it in an imcomplete state. Hopefully it will be up this weekend as it has been painfully slow their for the past week.]


30/5/2007 - The long awaited upgrade to Fotolia is nearly here.

The biggest news is that there is a payrise. While commission % are not changing, 1 credit which use to be worth US$1 is now worth US$1.36. Time will tell whether this effects the amount of downloads (ie. people buy less because it costs more) but it shouldn't which means that we get a 36% payrise - GREAT!

Other changes at Fotolia include more servers, a recode of the site, scrapping the exclusive buy out, a Database clean out and vector support. There have been a few complaints about the speed of the website (which can be extremely slow - very off putting for buyers - so hopefully this upgrade will address this issue.

I will give some more feedback once it is online.

From Fotolias blog:

Exclusive Buy Out license

Due to fraud issues and declining buyer interest, we have removed the Exclusive Buyout licenses. New licensing models will be introduced soon

Credit Value

We finally feel it is time to raise our prices however it will not be a drastic change. 1 credit will now cost $1.36 . This value is more accurate and equal to our other international countries who use the Euro as a basis of payment. This should be good news for photographers who will now see a 30% increase in commissions overnight.

Data base clean up

It is time for us to clean the database. Since the beginning of Fotolia, the quality of images has really increased. We have received millions of images and it is now the time to clean the database and give a chance to new images that sell as good as the oldest ones. Quality is and always will be the key to attract good buyers. After the launch of V2, images with no sales for 18 consecutive months will be removed from the Fotolia database.

Prices Changes

To simplify and improve the efficiency of the customer experience we have developed a new pricing system in V2. This new pricing model will bring in more customers and thus more commissions for all photographers.



New version

The Fotolia team is very excited about the V2 release. We have totally rebuilt the core code and infrastructure of the Fotolia website however maintaining pretty much the same design. V2 will increase stability, performance, and allow for new future opportunities. Searching, editing, and uploading have all been optimized to increase speed, accuracy, and performance. Some of the new features will include Vector support (SVG Files), image folder organization, and a flash upload system. Additional details will be published immediately following the V2 release to more fully describe the new features.

Microstock photographers average $3,900 in 2006

PDN has just released its survey on which the average microstock photographer makes $3,900. However, 58% of the responants earned less than $1,000 (sample of 865 microstockers). No doubt the pro will use this article to show there is no money in microstock (they averaged $85,400) but you have to remember that those pros will be doing it full time compared to probably only 1-5% of microstockers. To the other 95% of us, this is just extra money and at an average of $3,900 comes in very handy to buy new cameras/lens for us to continue our hobby. It also shows that if 58% earn less than $1,000, there must be a few who earn a lot more than $3,900.



Another statistic in the article is average $ per download. The figures in the study pretty much reflect my own experiences at Dreamstime, Istock and Shutterstock:



In all, nothing surprising out of the survey but good proof that it is a good way to money some money out of a hobby.

Why sell for as little as 20c

The common criticism of Microstock is that we sell our photos for nothing and that this devalues the industry.

When researching my last post - Earn $300 a day on microstock I came across Yuri Arcurs website. In his website, he explains why he sells on microstock and not at one of the larger agencies, like Getty, where he could earn $100's per sale.

"Selling my pictures this cheap makes some old school photographers angry. Photography is filled with tradition, and before digital cameras became accessible, stock photographers selling their pictures on agencies like Corbis of Getty Images were paid very well. Some (like me) think that they were paid a little too well. Charging $300 for a one-time usage of a picture of a flower was not unheard of, and this is still the price estimates found at Corbis and Getty Images today. In 2000, istock started a revolution in the stock photography field by selling pictures online (not by catalogue as in the old days) and selling these pictures as low as $1 per each picture. This price drop started a heated debate and an almost warlike conflict between the new microstock photographer (at the time mostly semi-professional or amateur photographers) selling their pictures for as low as $1 and other timers use to get an overly high price for their pictures. The old timers accused the microstokers of destroying their own ability to make real money by under pricing the value of their pictures and were also somewhat angry that these new pictures put an “unfair” mark on their own highly priced pictures.
…
I have considered being a Getty of Corbis photographer, but after reviewing their contract and looking at the sells of other Getty photographers, I was able to estimate that I would actually lose income by become one. So it seems that “underpricing”, as the microstockers were accused of, has gradually shown to be a “best pricing” polity instead, with great side effect: Breaking apart an old price conspiracy."


The reason I started with microstock is the ease of entry. The likes of Corbis and Getty would never accept me (they are like an old boys club). After selling for a while it also seemed to make sense. On forums like DPreview, the Pros critisised the microstockers but when they set out the large amounts they are earning, the amounts are matched by an equally large portfolio, resulting in an average price per photo per year similar to what I make. Sure my portfolio isn't as big but then I don't do this full time.


The selling for 20c each is also slightly misleading. From my sales, the average I earn from each DL is (approximately per sale - not per photo per year):

25c shutterstock This will increase to 30c folling the pay increase this month.
77c dreamtime
64c Fotolia
71c istockphoto
76c bigstockphoto
58c 123RF
110c StockXpert
190c Featurepics
80c LuckyOliver

You also have to remember that microstock works on volume (the walmart of photography). As such, while shutterstock pays out the least per download, it actual pays out the most per month due to the volume of sales generated by its subscription model.

Stockxpert move and stock footage

I was reading Alan Mecklers blog (CEO of Jupiter Images - Owner of Stockxpert), which noted that Stockxpert have moved their servers to Peoria (I assume in the US) from Hungary. They have increased the power of the servers and hopefully this will stop any fears people use to have that the business was based in Eastern Europe (the capital of internet crime).

Also note the last line that they are planning on doing stock footage in the near future.

Stockxpert.com moved.
Alan Meckler
May 07, 2007

That is the servers running the site are now in Peoria instead of Budapest, Hungary.

I am not a technical person, but this was an interesting and somewhat complex move. First our crack tech team based in Peoria and backed by our colleagues in Budapest oversaw a three month operation. Significant hardware was purchased and we now have 4x the amount of front-end processing power (Apache/PUP)in a load balanced configuration that allows growth over the Web site. We are also geared up for huge growth including a soon to be launched stock footage option on Stockxpert.

500 DL at iStock

Well I finally made 500 DL at istock today not that I will be going exclusive there.

It took me a while to get this as I gave up with iStock due to the number of rejections I was getting. However, my workflow has now improved and after I saw both the number of DL increasing, and the $ per DL increasing, I thought it was about time to start uploading again. It is now up to my second/third best producing microsite (with half the pictures).

Hopefully the next milestock wont take so long.

Here is the photo that brought me up to the 500 which incidently is my top seller (at 58). Thank you everyone who has bought this or rated it (or any of my other photos).


Link

Total number of photos on the Microstock sites

I haven't provided the total number of photos on line recently so thought I would provide an update.

From a desingers point of view (they are the ones that buy the photos so are very improtant), the number of photos is very important, after the quality of the photos on the site. From a submitters point of view, we want what the the designers want but we also want to have a bigger share of the total online photos (ie. if you have 10% of the photos on the site, you should earn more than if you just have 0.1% of the photos online).

Therefore, it is intersting to compare the number of photos on each site. So here gos. These are from the last time I looked but give you an indication:

Fotolia 2,820,839
shutterstock 1,671,459
istockphoto 1,576,000
dreamtime 1,093,949
bigstockphoto 997,000
123RF 700,000
StockXpert 478,000
Featurepics 229,550

Well, as you can see Fotolia is the biggest, but there total number is disputed as it may include rejected images. shutterstock claims to be the biggest and Fotolia hasn't said anything to dispute this.

dreamtime made it to the 1 million recently and bigstockphoto is nearly there to.

I am earning more from StockXpert than their total numbers suggest so number of photos cant be used as a direct proxy for earnings.

As an interesting comparison, the macrostock site Alamy has over 8 million images.

Dreamstime - promotion for competition winner

Dreamstime have negotiated a new way to promote their website which is going to have major advantages for the monthly winner of their competition - a 2 page spread in a digital magazine with a circulation of 90,000!!!

press release is below:

Starting next month you can be recognized as a published photographer and a Dreamstime competition winner! You'll be given a two-page spread in FlipNews to showcase your winning photographs together with a short description of yourself and hyperlinks to your Dreamstime portfolio page. FlipNews is a digital format magazine which is distributed world-wide to over 90,000 subscribed readers.

Their IT and web-savvy readers includes those interested in creating FlipBooks and e-Book publishing; and in improving photography skills and writing skills. They are also likely consumers of computer hardware and software; and purchasers of images and graphics for publication content. Assignment will be launched one month in advance. This prize is bi-monthly and will be awarded to the first place of the assignment. Photographers can win it only once, so if you have previously won it, the second place will be featured instead.

Full link