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Archive for September, 2008
09.24.2008 Mark Wood No Comments

Alamy takes on United States Market

As posted in the Alamy Contributor Blog, Alamy has made the decision to create a US presence for themselves.  They will hopefully have an office in New York by early 2009 in an effort to market their images to a US audience.

Other changes include a decrease of 5% for contributors giving us photographers 60% of direct sales (instead of 65%) and 40% of sales through distributors (down from 45%).  This commission change shouldn’t occur till early 2009 as well from what I can tell.

What this means for me

Frankly, I see this as a good thing.  While the 60% commission is lower than it was, it’s still higher than many other agencies.  (Many seem to split 50/50)  Also, as a US based photographer, it means that my images will be marketed heavily in their home country — hopefully allowing them to sell better.

Alamy has always been a European agency selling mainly to that area of the world.  Prior to this announcement, the percentage of sales to the US was apparently around 30%.  They project that this number will rise with the dedicated US office.

09.21.2008 Mark Wood No Comments

Photography Motivation

It’s odd.  I know that with any art form there is always the need for motivation.  And normally, I find that I enjoy the act of photography so much that I really don’t struggle with getting out to take pictures.  Hence, why I tend to take a lot of nature photography.  I enjoy being out in nature, and find it rewarding to record those moments in a form where I can share them.

But lately, it seems that I just haven’t found the time to get out and shoot much.  Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve been working a ton of hours.  I’m not really sure what.  But regardless, I have very few new photos to submit to either stock or to blog about.

Regardless, I’ll be attempting to get ou tand shoot more over the next few weeks.  I’m thinking of attempting some form of project.  I’ve always wanted to get better with certain lenses and therefore, I think I’m going to attempt a two week stint of only using the Nikon 50mm f/1.4.  It’s a fixed length lens so it will force me to really think of my composition.  I’ll let you know how it goes!

09.20.2008 Mark Wood No Comments

Lightroom Release Candidate 2.1

Adobe Labs has released a “Release Candidate” for Adobe Lightroom 2.1.  While this isn’t an official update, it’s no longer a beta release either.  In other words, it may not be perfect, but it should be relatively safe for the masses.

No new features are introduced, but there is a list of bug fixes and new camera support including the Nikon D700 and Nikon D90.  Great news for all those early D700 users as this would cause a major snag in a Lightroom work flow.

To get this update, go to the Adobe Labs page for Lightroom 2.1 and download it.  It won’t occur automatically due to its Release Candidate status.  Once it’s finalized, I’d assume that it will pop up as an update from within Lightroom.

As soon as I have a chance, I’ll be checking this out.

09.15.2008 Mark Wood No Comments

Focusing on Alamy again

Well, after the current uproar in the stock community with the demise of the Photoshelter Collection, I have done what I perhaps should have done in the first place and renewed my focus on Alamy.  Since the Photoshelter closure last week, I’ve submitted two batches of photos to Alamy and they have both been approved.  So I’ve just completed keywording all 29 images bringing my total to a few above 80 on sale.  By no means a large collection, but I believe I’m at least on track to get to 150 by the end of the month.

I’ll post a few of my current favorites in my collection in no particular order.

The following photo was taken while in Alaska.  We took a raft trip down the Chilkat Bald Eagle preserve outside of Haines.  I clearly remember trying to catch these speedy birds as they flew past.

This next photo was taken on the same trip.  This gives some perspective to the scenery.  Nothing makes a person feel so small as to spend some time in the Alaskan wilderness.

The views were absolutely breathtaking as we were on the Chilkat river surrounded by the Chilkat Mountains on both sides.

For those questioning, the above photos were all taken with a Nikon D50 with a Nikon 70-300mm VR lens.

The most amazing thing I found on the Photoshelter Collection during my brief time there was the friendly user forums.  With the demise of PSC, the forums were discontinued.  Thankfully, Digital Darrell has taken it upon himself to create the Stock Imaging Forum.  He’s opened it up to the public and would love for any stock photographers or those interested in the industry to jump over there and check it out.  It’s still new, but growing rapidly!

09.14.2008 Mark Wood 2 Comments

Photoshelter Critique

I make no qualms about it.  I’m saddened and a little bit upset about the dimise of Photoshelter. And after the interview posted today at PDN, I’m almost furious.

Let me just talk on a few key points.  While I don’t expect that many people to actually care, I have found this blog somewhat therapeutic and therefore, I write the following for my own clarity of thought as much as for anyone else.  Mind you, the interview was with Allen Murabayashi (CEO of Photoshelter) and Andrew Fingerman (Vice President of Marketing).

When asked about their low sales numbers, Murabayashi responded with this:

We had a system that had 25,000 photographers in it. A lot of photographers were submitting stuff like flowers, mountains, sunsets. That’s not to say those were the people you spoke to, but there was a lot of stuff that had lower commercial value. And the people who were shooting stuff that was in high demand, those were the people who were selling images.

Here’s the thing.  They touted that they were different because they had an edited collection.  They claimed they only accepted images with commercial value.  And yet they blame their lack of sales on photos of “lower commercial value”.  Then why did they accept the photos?  Come on.  Step up and take some responsibility for the closure!

Also, one of the biggest critiques of the closure was that they didn’t give the collection enough time.  Eight months is really not that long for a venture such as this.  Frankly, a two to three year test would be more fitting if they really are going to attempt to become a major market player.  When asked about the short time, the following was stated:

We had a few key assumptions that we were predicating the business on. One of them was that we could create a high volume of Internet sales, unattended sales, and keep the cost structure down.

Let me get this straight.  They expected sales to happen simply online with no assistance from them?  This is crazy.  This means that I should expect to sell images if I simply put them on my website and charge people fair market value.  Ya.  That’s how this works!  How did they expect this venture to ever take off if this was one of they “key assumptions”.

And finally, I will close with one of my favorites.

We knew that if we had ten years, and we could build up, then maybe we had a chance of growing organically. But that’s not the V.C. [venture capital] plan. And that’s not the way that the individuals here wanted to spend their time as entrepreneurs.

Okay.  So what they are saying is that they know that they could make the Photoshelter Collection work given 10 years, but they didn’t want to spend the time or source the correct investors.  Basically, they decided to take a model that needs 10 years and give it 8 months.

Needless to say, even though Photoshelter is staying open with their Archive program (a place for photographers to market their own stock photography), I am going to have no part of it.  Life’s too short to support businesses such as this.

With that, I will end my rant for the night!  Onward to upload to Alamy!

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