Photo by Glenn Glasser / #PSC000169397

"PhotoShelter has found a better approach to stock photography. We're crushing old industry standards by treating photographers fairly. That's why 37,000 photographers from 130 countries are gathered here to provide the most fresh, diverse and authentic image offering available today. We're changing the image marketplace for good."

When we created the PhotoShelter Collection, we aimed to change the face of the stock photography industry by fundamentally altering the dynamics of how photographers were treated, and in turn, providing visual diversity to buyers that simply didn't exist. Tens of thousands of photographers from over 130 countries signed up and started uploading their images to PhotoShelter, and the buyers have followed. Each month we have stolen sales with major clients away from Getty and have become an increasingly large thorn in their side.

So it's flattering to hear that Getty Images is validating our approach and recognizing our success by reaching into the flickr community.  No other competitor in their history has forced Getty to change their model. This is a great sign of encouragement for us. Getty's CEO Jonathan Klein describes this new endeavor as "the best imagery from a fresh collection of high-quality images chosen by us from Flickr's diverse and prolific community." If it sounds familiar, it should be, something very similar is printed on our homepage.

But rather than compare lexicon, let's clarify some of the key points and differences of this announcement.

Klein stated in a Seattle Times piece that the deal "for us is not significant, but it's strategically extremely important." Flickr GM Kakul Srivastava corroborated this by saying, "From our perspective, on the Flickr side, we're not expecting this will be a huge stream of monetization for our members...The relationship, in the licensing piece, is purely between the photographer - the Flickr member - and Getty Images itself."

So, if it's not really about making money, what is it about? Why would the market leader (which is now held by a private equity firm whose sole goal is to make money) strike a deal in such a public fashion if they didn't intend for it to make money? Why would flickr consent to not taking a transaction fee? What is of such "strategic importance" to Klein?

The answer is in Getty's historical moves. It's about locking out competition from the industry to ensure a continued, virtual monopoly. Getty pays flickr for an "exclusive" deal to be their preferred stock content distributor because they are threatened by an open platform like PhotoShelter. Consider that if PhotoShelter succeeds, not only does Getty lose market share, but they invariably will have to give back more of the profits to photographers because they will need to compete for content.

As much as Getty would like to position this move as an open embrace of the community, it's not. Instead, it's a way to lock out competition, and allow them to continue with status quo. They're hopeful that this infusion of content can somehow staunch the flat/declining growth of their traditional licensing revenue, and why not? Their growth has historically been predicated on acquisition of boutique agency content until they bought virtually everyone up, and alienated thousands of photographers and buyers in the process.
 

We held a little Summer cocktail party the other week to get a bunch of our buyers together and have a drink. And to up the ante, we raffled off some images from the PhotoShelter Collection that were generously printed for us by the good folks over at AdoramaPix. Big thanks to the photographers that helped us make this event a success: Thomas Boyd, Gus Butera, Jason Florio, Kevin German, Julie Kuceris, Vincent Laforet, Nicholas Lorden, Matt Nighswander, Stacey Pittman, Matthew Porter, Gus Powell, Robert Whitman.

The interest in Shoot! The Day -- our killer day to replenish stock photography -- is growing daily, so instead of just waiting until July 20 to start having some fun, we approached some of our friends and partners and came up with a little weekly contest idea.

So on Thursday June 26, we're going to pick three people in the Shoot! The Day Community Site who have the best avatar as judged by us! That's right, all you have to do is create your community site account and upload a square photo that represents you. Next week Thursday we'll pick the ones that tickle our fancy the most.


THE PRIZES
Nikon Capture NX 2.0
Nikon's just released RAW processing and workflow tool. I don't think you can even buy it yet (although there is a free trial download here). I use Capture NX to process all my NEF files from my D3.  So does Darrell Young and Ed Rooney.

Apple Aperture 2.1
Grover loves this software. Vincent Laforet loves this software. And version 2.1 is seriously awesome -- much faster than its predecessor, and still with all the great image processsing and batch processing capability that defined this category of software.

Lowepro
I've been using Lowepro bags for years starting with their Reporter bag, then a Stealth Reporter, then a big Photo Trekker backpack, and currently I use a Computrekker because it's better for my back and holds a laptop. The stuff works, it's durable, and we're psyched that they joined us as a sponsor for this prize. This week, they're giving out the just announced Lowepro Nova 190 AW (that's "all weather" to you).


Could it be any easier to win a cool prize? Big ups to our friends at Nikon, Apple and Lowepro for helping us support the community!

The PhotoShelter Collection has what we refer to as "edited diversity." Although we allow almost any image to be uploaded, each image is reviewed by our team of photo editors with the goal of removing the stuff we don't think commercial photo buyers will be interested in. The process is a subjective one, we admit, but on the other hand, all of our editors have degrees in photography, and all of them have worked as photo editors prior to landing at PhotoShelter.

But the point of this post isn't too talk about the subjective. It's to talk business.

We often hear from photographers who are upset about an image(s) getting rejected and the fact that we don't include a reason for rejection. So first let me explain how the old stock agencies work. It used to be that in order to even be considered by an agency, you had to submit a body of work of several hundred images. Several hundred really good images to even be considered. If you've never had a portfolio review before, you might not really understand what editors consider to be good because in most cases it simply isn't what you consider to be good.

Then once you've submitted the images, it goes into some blackhole where some staff members review it, and a few months later (no kidding), you get back (some) of your stuff. The agency takes the stuff it likes, and returns the stuff they don't like. There's no note, there's no rejection reason, and that's how it is.

So why is this the case?