Welcome to StockPhotographer.info and this is our first newsletter!

We hope everyone will find StockPhotographer.info to be a true resource for news, information and other features dedicated to the stock photography industry. What you see now is only the beginning and believe us, there are many more features and resources currently under development.

The StockPhotographer.info team has been working extremely hard for the past six weeks or so. In that time we have put together a site that we hope will serve not only photographers involved in the stock industry at all levels, but also agency owners/representatives and stock photo researchers/buyers as well.

In this months Editor's Corner I have written about the current state of the stock photo industry and the future challenges we all face. The tremendous growth of the industry over the past few years has created many problems and challenges with increased competition, new licensing models and industry consolidations. At the same time, there are more opportunities open to us now than ever before.

I would like to take a moment to introduce and welcome our first two contributing authors, Richard Weisgrau and Perry Correll. Richard and Perry come from opposite ends of the photographic spectrum and will be writing regular columns for StockPhotographer.info

Professional photography has been part of Richard's life for nearly forty years. He is the author of three trade books on the business of photography with another one on the way. Richard also wrote a substantial portion of the ASMP literature as its executive director from 1988 through 2002. Richard's column, All About Business, will focus on the various aspects of the business of being a stock photographer.

Perry is a relative newcomer to photography. After exploring her talents in both painting and music, she discovered photography in the 1980s and has been exploring her talents in that medium since. She is contributor to Shutterstock and her column, The Micro Shooter, will reflect her experiences with the microstock model.

Be sure to check out this months Featured Photographer, Kirk Gittings. His commercial architectural photography has appeared in over 45 different magazines, 20 books and 4 monographs with nearly 100 magazine covers to his credit. In 2005 SHELTER FROM THE STORM: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF KIRK GITTINGS, a 32 year retrospective book was published by New Mexico Magazine and exhibited at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History.

I'd also like to mention our Amazon Affiliate E-shop. By buying books, digital cameras, lenses, memory cards or software through our E-shop, you will not only get some of the best deals around from Amazon but you will also help support StockPhotographer.info.

StockPhotographer.info has more contributors, more columns, more news and many more resources on the way. If you have questions or answers, please register to participate in our Forums. If you don't see a category or topic listed that you think is important to the industry, let us know and we will include it. By all means, give us your feedback. Tell us what you like or don't like. Let us know what we should include more of or less of.

 

Important New Legislation Proposal
A new Trademark law, formally entitled "HR 683 - the Trademark Dilution Revision Act", has already been passed by the United States House of Representatives and is now under consideration by the Senate Judiciary Committee. This Act contains certain anti-speech aspects, which will profoundly affect illustrators, photographers and many others by eliminating existing protections for non-commercial speech contained in the Lanham Act. It will prevent businesses, photographers, artists, illustrators and consumers from invoking famous trademarks to explain or illustrate their discussion of public issues.

Please read the message from Edward Greenberg posted on the StockPhotographer.info forums.

 

Jim Pickerell's 2005 Stock Income Survey
The biggest problem in trying to analyze the stock industry is a lack of reliable data. Most of the current surveys are several years old now.

Jim Pickerell has a stock income survey underway at Selling Stock that should help to shed some light on the current state of the industry. There are surveys for both photographer/illustrators and agency/portals.

The survey is not limited to those in the US and it will be very interesting to compare US and non-US results. The survey can be found at 2005 Income Survey or through the Selling Stock main page by clicking on 2005 Income Survey.

 

David Sanger's Story About How Google Base Has Helped His Stock Photography Business
David Sanger has a very interesting story about how he has used Google Base to increase sales of his stock photography. Read more here.

 

Digital or Die
By Richard Weisgrau

The handwriting has been on the wall for professional photographers for the past decade. The message has been digital image capture will overtake film image capture. New press releases (Jan 31, '06) from Fujifilm and Kodak indicate that the handwriting is true. Fuji is restructuring its operation by cutting jobs in film production and sales and expanding its China (digital) production. Kodak announced that digital product sales now exceed film product sales. Digital is now king of the hill.  Photographers who are quickly losing the choice between film and digital will have to migrate to digital soon, if not already done. But migrating to digital means photographers will have to make some important choices.

Read the entire article here.

 

Why Microstock?
By Perry Correll

It’s not that I couldn’t decide which way to go. It just seemed that microstock offered an entry point for someone like me, who had no experience. That was a year ago, though, and the playing field has definitely seen some changes in that time.

I had an established gallery on-line with a “set-your-own-prices” site that had garnered absolutely no response. An associate of mine who had a gallery at the same site experienced the same thing. I was constantly searching for other ideas and venues. I found stock sites, but the requirements seemed to consistently be beyond what I had available to me at the time.

Read the entire article here.

 

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