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Photoshelter Buyer Survey 2008

Google Image Search And Professional Photo Researchers

Earlier I  wrote about "Those who attended New Orleans [the PACA meeting on November 2003] will remember the fireworks sparked when one art director said she prefers using GOOGLE" to search for images and "to going to an agency, and then calling photographers directly."

At the recently held CEPIC in Prague Dagmar Fabricius of StockPhotoFinder explained that this incident had been one of the bottom ideas to found the company.

Now Christina Micek writes about "The Advent of Google Image Search and its Affect on Photo Researchers" at MacTribe:

Most people in the imaging world today are aware of an alternative to the ever-popular Google search engine: the Google Image Search. [...]
I have seen people in my field using this tool for a variety of functions [...]

For the professional photo researcher like myself, Google's new and popular image searching capabilities are both a hindrance and an asset when it comes to fulfilling my client's requests. [...]

Are we getting excited yet? One thing that needs to be addressed, if this is going to be the wave of the future for photography, is to put those who need content in touch with those that have content. We need to rethink and reevaluate the way in which images are used on the web. Photographers who have websites need to be aware of metatags, captions, keywords and how they are used with this new tool to maximize appropriate hits.

Nathan Tyler, Google's technology public relations contact, recommends that if photographers are interested in having their images represented in Google Image Search they should evaluate their own websites to make sure there are clear sitemaps that link to every page. They should be easily crawled by search engines and not be behind forms such as ID and PW requests. Frames and dynamically generated pages are also problematic. For more information on this please refer to www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters. I would recommend niche photographers who have specific collections that may not interest more generalized stock photography agencies, increase their sales by working within these constraints. [...]

I love using Google Image Search in my research, and I am often fascinated at where the journey can take me, from speaking to a small group of architectural researchers in Guatemala, to entomologists studying Daddy Long Legs in Great Britain. However, for my ease in licensing these rare and specific images, and for the ease of image creators in getting their best stuff to researchers and buyers, we should all be working together to make the possibilities opened up by the Google Image Search technology to work for us all.

Christina also points out that "when I get stuck finding a source, I often turn to another one of my favorite new search methods, Google Scholar (scholar.google.com), a search engine of scholarly journals. It can show me specific academic articles and sources on a wide range of subject matter from social interactions in Gibbons to fetal brain tissue implants to treat Parkinson's patients."

Scoopt - A New Picture Agency For Citizen Reporters

After the launch of iStockphoto here´s another cool idea (Snap-Send-Sell) "to bridge the gap between amateur photographer and picture desk":

As Kyle MacRae/Glasgow-based Scoopt writes, "this week sees the launch of Scoopt, the first picture agency ... set up specifically and exclusively to help amateur 'citizen reporters' sell the pics they take on their cameraphones to the media."

The website continues:

With so many of the public armed with cameraphones, real people could be taking pictures that the press simply aren't there to catch. There have been plenty of examples already of hobbyist photographers taking pictures that make the front page, but cameraphones now mean so many more people are in a position to get the scoop snap.

That's where our experience comes in. If you catch a scoop like this, we can make sure that the right people see your picture quickly. We will also ensure that you get a fair price for it. Sharing photos is fun but selling a scoop can be seriously profitable. [...]

Scoopt is a media agency that has been created specifically to help members of the public sell photographs and videos of newsworthy events to the press. We bridge the gap between amateur photographer – and by 'amateur', we means anybody with a digital camera or a cameraphone who just happens to be in the right place at the right time – and picture desk. [...]

When you send Scoopt a photo, you automatically grant us an exclusive worldwide license to market that photo for a period of six months. During this six-month period, you agree not to publish the photo anywhere else. When the six months are up, the license becomes non-exclusive.  [...]

Questo blog è chiuso per ferie, fino all' 8 Agosto 2004

[© Grace and Katie]

Chiudo, per un circa settimana, questo weblog. Infatti, a mio modesto parere, per scrivere bisogna prima pensare e, i blogs spesso ti tolgono lo spazio per pensare.


(Hint for the person/CEO/BizDeveloper etc. who is constantly looking for "DigitalVision 2003 revenues", ""Image source" 2003 revenues" or "Index stock imagery 2003 revenues" and other good stuff-- Google hits are a tricky thing, especially with your really nice -- and static -- IP! So, no one has to work for Pixlogic, the company ("Visual Search") with Venture Capital from the CIA, just to know who you are...).
=:-)

Introducing New Categories

Some people have asked if there won´t be a better way to organize all those entries... .
The build-in google search might be nice, but shows often too many hits. On the other hand we wanted to add some new categories since weeks.
So here they are. 19 new categories. Assigning new categories to some hundreds of old posts is a tough (and boring) job, so for a couple of days (weekend) new posts will appear only irregularly.
[© Image creativemac.com]

[Update June 9, 2004: Forget it. There is no way to re-open over 300 posts and reassigning new categories to the old posts. So these new categories only work with future posts or some very important old posts which had been adjusted. Try the Google Search instead. Sorry]

New categories:

Start

Each time you start from scratch.