I had a blast at this mini meetup! We had 6 people show up in total with lots of really great ideas. This picture of Al is the best portrait I have ever taken. I can’t really claim it as mine though, I just happened to be the guy holding the camera. As you can see by Daniel’s photo of the setup, it was truly a group effort.
I learned so much in 3 hours and had more fun with photography than I have had in a really long time.
Thanks again to Allan for setting it up and everyone that showed up.
I have been thinking about this for a while now. The microstock revolution started a few years ago but it still felt very old. It changed the game mostly for producers of content, opening the door for an entire new breed of photographers. Now you can fairly easily pay for your hobby with income from microstock and thousands are doing it.
One thing that hasn’t really changed is the licensing. There are two main choices, royalty free(RF) and rights managed(RM). RF images are paid for once and used forever. This is the main license for most microstock sites. RM images are paid for based on where and when they will be used. For example if I wanted to use a RM image for a magazine I would be charged based on how long I wanted the rights and how big my subscriber base is.
GumGum is out to change all that with a very web based pricing model designed specifically for images used on the web. GumGum wants to use a CPM model. CPM is a term that means “Cost Per Thousand, (no idea why it is not CPT). This is a pricing model used heavily in the online ad space. As a photographer I can upload an image and set my CPM pricing. Then a designer comes along and gets code to place my image on there site. GumGum keeps track of the impressions and charges the designer. This has a couple of interesting aspects from a photographers point of view:
I continue getting revenue for the life of my image on a site, assuming people are still looking at the page. This is similar to a RM license but last forever.
The image size you are uploading in theory can’t really be used for prints etc. The technology they use also helps stop a lot of typical image theft tricks.
From a designers point of view I think they get a fairly low cost image (the the video below $.20 per CPM) so they don’t have to pay a lot if the site/page is not successfully.
There are a lot of other things that are pretty cool. Check out the demo video below or go to the GumGum site.
As reported on Photo Business BlogPhotoShelter has just hired Genevieve Harley from Getty Images to be Director of Sales at PhotoShelter. They also hired former American Express Senior Product Manager Andrew Fingerman to be PhotoShelter’s new vice president of marketing.
I don’t know anything about these people but them sem like good solid experienced people to bring on board. If PhotoShelter can move over a lot of Getty customers that can mean nothing but good things.
I got accepted and I am uploading images. 123RF is one of those lower cost stock sites so I am thinking hitting the higher end with PhotoShelter and the lower end with 123RF and see how it goes for a while.
I have to say I was somewhat expecting this but it is still disappointing. I was a little overwhelmed with all the administrative work it takes to apply to sites, get releases, retouch photos, recall what pictures you uploaded to what sites etc… It was a bit overwhelming. Combine that with my 2nd child being born at the end of the month all conspired to to severely limit the amount of time I had to actually take pictures. This is bringing back memories of when I was a wedding assistant/photographer. The ratio of shooting time to administrative time is still pretty skewed.
I did get some ground work done though. Got Photoshop CS3 installed and started using Bridge to manage IPCT data which helps a lot. That way I don’t have to rewrite descriptions and keywords after every upload. I also got my scanner installed to handle the model releases.
Todo for Febuary: Actually get out and shoot something! I am taking my camera to work now and I went of a walking shoot today. I plan to do that every day I possibly can.
