Stock photography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Stock photography is photography or other imagery of common landmarks, concepts, and events that can be used and reused for commercial design purposes. Book publishers, specialty publishers, magazines, advertising agencies, film makers, web designers, graphic artists, interior decor firms, corporate creative groups, and other entities utilize stock photography to fulfill the needs of their creative assignments. By using stock photography instead of hiring a photographer to perform on location shooting, customers can save valuable time and stay on budget. With a wealth of images, stock photography databases that may be searched online save photo researchers valuable time when they are looking for just the right image. With today's digital delivery methods, images may be purchased online and delivered via FTP or email, the very same day.
Stock photography is sometimes called a photo archive, or just stock photos. The term photo archive often refers to the website or physical location where the photographs are stored. Photo archives are also sometimes called image banks. As modern stock photography distributors often carry stills, video, and illustrations, none of the existing terminology provides a perfect match for the state of the industry.
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Industry structure
Images are filed at an agency that negotiates licensing fees on the photographer's behalf in exchange for a percentage, or in some cases owns the images outright.
Pricing is determined by size of audience or readership, how long the image is to be used, country or region where the images will be used and whether royalties are due to the image creator or owner. Often, an image can be licensed for less than $200. The client may, however, request "exclusive" rights, preventing other customers from using the same image for a specified length of time or in the same industry. Such sales can command many thousands of dollars, both because they tend to be high-exposure and because the agency is gambling that the image would not have made more money had it remained in circulation.
With rights managed stock photography an individual licensing agreement is negotiated for each use. Royalty free stock photography offers a photo buyer the ability to use an image in an unlimited number of ways for a single license fee. However with royalty free licensing there is no option for getting exclusive usage rights.
Some stock photography sites offer low-resolution photography free for the purpose of preparing advertising comps to demonstrate a design. If the advertiser decides to use the image, the rights to use the high-resolution image then can be negotiated.
Professional stock photographers place their images with one or more stock agencies on a contractual basis, with a defined commission basis and for a specified contract term. Some photographers fund their own photo shoots, or develop imagery in cooperation with an agency, while others submit photographs originally produced as part of editorial (magazine) or commercial assignments. International professional stock photography organizations include the Stock Artists Alliance.
History
One of the first major stock photography agencies was the one founded in 1920 by H. Armstrong Roberts, which continues today under the name Retrofile.
For many years, stock photography consisted largely of outtakes ("seconds") from commercial magazine assignments. By the 1980s, it had become a specialty in its own right, with photographers creating new material for the express purpose of submitting it to a stock house. Agencies attempted to become more sophisticated about following and anticipating the needs of advertisers and communicating these needs to photographers. Photographs were composed with more of an eye for how they might look when combined with other elements; for example, a photo might be shot vertically with space at the top and down the left side, with the conscious intention that it might be licensed for use as a magazine cover. Leading agencies during this time included The Image Bank, Comstock Images, FPG, and Masterfile.
In the 1990s, a period of consolidation followed, with Getty Images and Corbis becoming the two largest companies as a result of acquisitions. Today, stock photography companies have largely moved online.
Photo archives
The following is a table of photo archives, image banks, or image search engines. If possible, please include rates or discount rates for different types of use.
| Name | Description | Images/Photographers | Commercial | Educational | Personal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 360-berlin | In German / English | 300,000+/ ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Acclaim Images | RF and RM | 33,000 / 40 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Action Press | In German | |||||
| AGE Fotostock | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Alamy Images | Wikipedia:Alamy UK based stock portal for RM and RF images | 3,400,000+ , 316 agencies, 4900 photographers | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Accent Alaska | Alaska | 275,000 / 106 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Banana Stock | $, £, € | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| bigcheese | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| BigStockPhoto | Royalty free | 150,000+/ 3,000+ photographers | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| BrandX | 20,000+ / ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Can Stock photo | Affordable royalty free stock photography community | 11,000+/900+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Catchlight Visual Services | Family life picture library | 60.000+/14 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| CITB-ConstructionSkills online image library | Images from the construction industry. Registration required. | Unknown | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Comstock Images | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Coolstock.com | American Photographs: Past, Present, Future.™ | Yes | ||||
| Corbis (DE) | Wikipedia:Corbis | 25,000,000+ | Corbis Professional | Corbis Educational | ||
| Cotheeka Stock Photo Agency | Fine Art Pictures and Commercial Stock Images | 10,000+ / Unknown | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Culver Pictures | Historical Photos and Prints | 2,000,000+ / Unknown | Yes | Yes | ||
| Dennis Kunkle Microscopy, Inc. | Scientific stock photography, mainly microscopic images | Yes | Classroom Only | Yes | ||
| Dreamstime | Royalty-free | 15,000+/380+ | ||||
| EarthScienceWorld.org ImageBank | Earth/Science Pictures | No | Free | Free | ||
| fStop | High-end, royalty-free pictures for designers | 4,000/100 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Free Digital Photos | Free pictures for websites, newsletters and documents etc. For commercial and non-commercial use. | 1,500+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Getty Images | Wikipedia:Getty Images | 25,000,000+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Henry Westheim Photography | RM Asia, including the Middle East. | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Hicker Stock Photography | travel, nature, wildlife | 15,000+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Iconica | Sleek interface | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| If Images | Wikipedia:If Images London based. Royalty Free and Rights Managed. | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Imagesource | UK-Based | Yes | ||||
| ImageVortex.com | Royalty free. | 5,000+/1,000+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Index Stock Imagery | First agency to go digital. also Photos To Go for small business licensing. Index Open and Photos To Go Unlimited for royalty free subscriptions | 900,000+ images / 1,700+ artists | Yes | Yes | ||
| Inmagine Photos | Image aggregator. Inmagine and Inmagine Asia. | 1,000,000+ images | Yes | Yes | ||
| iStockphoto | Created the concept of a micropayment photography site in 2000. Collection grows by more than 11,000 images per week | 500,000+ / 28,000+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| iStockpro | Royalty-free distributor for major vendors and independent photographers. | 500,000+ / 450 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Jupiter Images | bought FoodPix [1], Comstock [2], PictureArts (Formerly internet.com) | 500,000 | ||||
| Ron Kimball Stock | Transportation and Animals. | 500,000+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| LOOK | travel, outdoor, active-sports | 800,000+ /50 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| LuckyPix | Rights-Managed and Royalty-Free, Midwest, Chicago | 8,000+ / 90+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Masterfile | Rights-Managed and Royalty-Free, Multi-lingual. | 375,000+/200+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Matton : Royalty Free Images | Royalty Free Stock. Multi-lingual. | 750,000+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Mira | Creative Eye Cooperative. Artist owned, professionally managed | 40,000+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| morgueFile | Royalty-free photos | 30,000+ / 200+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Photofeatures International | Music Stock photos since the 60's | Yes | ||||
| Photonica | Indexed by photographer | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Pixerver | Free stock photography and digital pictures | Free | Free | Free | ||
| PunchStock | royalty-free photos, images, illustrations and stock photography | 750,000 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Seattle City Photography | Royalty-free stock photos and prints of the Seattle/Eastside | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| SeattlePhotographs.com | Stock photos of Seattle | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| ShutterStock | microstock by subscription | 300,000+ images / 13,000+ photogs | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| StockToGo | Download royalty free stock images for as low as $6.95 each | 250,000 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| the Stock Solution | Stock photography agency | 200,000 / 100 | ||||
| stock.xchng | Free stock photography exchange | 161,000+/ 14,500+ | Free | Free | Free | |
| Travel-Images.com | Images of 300 countries and territories - stock photography | >1 million / 200 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Trauma Imagebank | Medical photographs of trauma | Free | Free | Free | ||
| Veer | Distributor and agency. Royalty-free and rights-managed images, plus motion and type products | 350,000+ / 300+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Whalephoto | Whale and Marine stock Photography from the North East Atlantic | 10,000+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| wildcolour | A variety of Wilderness and adventure photography available for instant download | 10,000+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Wildlife & Genre Stock Images | Nature / Wildlife / Animals / Birds / Religion and more - Holy Land stock images | 30,000+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Zefa Visual Media | in German |
|
See also
- Everywhere Girl - a series of stock photos of an unnamed girl, which The Inquirer has been tracking as they pop up all over the web.
External links
Associations
- Stockphoto.net list of international and local stock photography associations
- Stock Artists Alliance worldwide photographers’ trade organization
Licensing systems
Forums (open)
- THE STOCKPHOTO NETWORK Yahoo mailing list, 2451 members
- Micropayment (Microstock) Yahoo mailing list, 370 members
- ASMP pro Advice advice for students from pros at the American Society of Media Photographers Yahoo forum, 677 members
- StockImagery International Stock Imagery Association Yahoo forum (new)
- Photo Business at Photo District News
Forums (restricted membership)
- Stock Artists Alliance Yahoo forum
- Editorial Photographers
- Alamy Pro Yahoo forum, 591 members
Weblogs
- Stock Photo Talk Andy Goetze's weblog of stock photography news
