StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

Corbis Introduces "Creativity 2.0" Blog

Written under the guidance of Corbis CEO Steve Davis, other contributors of the blog are members of Corbis senior management, like Ross Sutherland (Chief Creative Officer), Mark Sherman (SVP for Assignment and Emerging Businesses), Curtis Bowden (Global Rights Services), Dave Bradley (Global Marketing) and Gary Shenk (President). The blog runs under the Corbis domain http://weblogs.corbis.com/creativity2dot0com/ and is called "Creativity 2.0".

In his first blog post Steve Davis explains "While I am the CEO of Corbis, this is not the Corbis blog, and I will rarely discuss our business, strategy, customers or artists".

Related:

• Sport, Creative, Entertainment: Getty Images Introduces Blogs (Jan. 08, 2007)
  (Getty added the blog section "News" recently)

Gawker Media´s Consumerist Steals Again Photos, Now From Getty Images

This time not from Flickr, like they did ten days ago and publicly admitted the theft through Consumerist´s editor Ben Popken.

Instead they steal now a watermark protected image from Getty Images for a story on CompUSA, written again by mastermind Ben Popken. Thanks John for the hint, but I somehow don´t buy that "Getty opts not to pursue the infringement, because it's a free ad on a really popular site whereby their name appears prominently".

Related:

• Gawker Media: Consumerist´s Editor Ben Popken Admits Publicly to Steal Photos From Flickr´s Photographers (Feb. 16, 2007)

Gawker Media: Consumerist´s Editor Ben Popken Admits Publicly to Steal Photos From Flickr´s Photographers

Nick Denton´s Gawker Media blog network is generating a lot of traffic and money with the Consumerist blog which started in December 2005 and runs under the motto: "Capitalism is broken. We'll help you fix it".

Down to earth, Nick Denton said it´s "a shopping site". Consumerist´s editor Ben Popken explains in his brilliant post "Look At Our Flickr Faves" how this works in reality: "People are always complimenting us on our photos. The quality of the photo work shown on The Consumerist mainly stems from our preternatural ability to steal images from Flickr. Over the past few months, we´ve amassed a sizable library of favorites".

Popken then babbles that "transformative use means fair use" of images.

Magnum Photos Unveils The Magnum Blog

 

Magnum Photos today announced the agency´s new blog:

 

Alamy ... Blogs?

I was feeling a little sheepish all day yesterday as I stumbled upon their blog before the official release and announced it in the AlamyPro Yahoo group while also leaving a comment on the blog (first one, yay, though it was deleted when the blog went ‘live’). I quickly received a phone call from Alamy who were wondering how I had found out about it given that it was unreleased and unannounced. “I just followed the link on your web site”, I said. Ooops.

Photographer John Joannides on his blog Making Images. The AlamyPro group (open only to contributors) on Yahoo is different from the meanwhile starving original Alamy Contributor group, also on Yahoo: "AlamyPro forum is almost twice as active as Stockphoto.net & micropayments COMBINED!" (Jeff Greenberg here earlier).

New Stock Photo News Search Engine Online

Paul Melcher is introducing his new Stock Photo News Search Engine (Beta) which allows the search over qualified and at first sight hand-selected sources reporting about the small stock photo industry, similar to the concept of the Yahoo Directory.

United Superheroes: Black Star Rising Blogs With Jim Pickerell, Miracles Do Happen

Officially unveiled yesterday, Black Star is blogging.

Will it work this proposed way?

Sport, Creative, Entertainment: Getty Images Introduces Dedicated Blogs

I´m truly very late to mention this, since it happened already partly in June last year. Ever since Getty Images has introduced a couple of new company blogs dedicated to:

 

• Entertainment (online since December 28, 2006)
• Creative (online since October 2006)
• Sport (online since June 2006)

Gossip Gangsta Blogger Perez Hilton Vs. Celebrity Photo Agency X17: IP Attorney Notes "Impossible To Tell Who Would Prevail"

The LA Times (Robin Abcarian/Jessica Garrison) is out with a long two-page report on "Perez Hilton takes their best shots: The gossip blogger's use of an agency's paparazzi photos puts the legal spotlight on copyright infringement".

For people in the stock photo industry, the article starts with the surprising sentence: "It's hard to know whom to sympathize with in this fight".

 

Sigmund Freud, Alan Meckler, David Walker

David Walker: You brought up your ego, so here we go: Your blog is confrontational at times, and gives the impression that you take satisfaction in setting old scores and saying "I told you so." Is that a fair assessment?
Alan Meckler: Absolutely.
David Walker: Why? Do you feel that you have anything to prove?
Alan Meckler: Oh, I think it´s probably from growing up in a family where I got the short end of the stick ... My sister was always favored. There´s a lot of Freudian stuff going on here, probably. I´m sure that´s part of my striving to achive - I never could satisfy my father ... I didn´t make any money. I always had great ideas, but my problem was I went into too many fields. I t took me 23 years to understand focus.

[PDN´s David Walker interviews Alan Meckler in the Oct. print issue, p. 24]