MacTribe gets in the designer's corner and takes a look at six leading high end producers of contemporary Photography and what makes their offerings special, including the U.K.'s Image Source, rookie upstarts Photoshelter, and boutique agency Blend Images...
Art Resource
Need a shot of Napoleon for that new ad campaign? Well you've come to the right place. The world’s most comprehensive source of fine art images available for licensing, offering images from over 6,000 museums, representing officially the Metropolitan Museum, MoMA, the Louvre etc. With over 350,000 images on-line and millions more accessible, they put the power of the masterpiece at your fingertips. Art Resource prides itself on being designer friendly. Their researchers settle for nothing less than the ideal image when making selections for design and advertising clients.
artres.com
DreamstimeBased in Romania, CEO, Serban Enache has built on yet another marketplace and offers imagery extending into the editorial market, reflecting events from social, cultural and political scenes. Offering both credits and subscriptions, image prices can double if their popularity increases. Dreamstime has become a major worldwide source of fresh commercial images, enabling designers, art buyers and others to buy credits that they can exchange for images. At the same time the pool of photographers and illustrators has grown as well as this group of amateur, semi-amateur and professional artists want into this new venue to showcase their portfolios and monetize them at the same time. The image collection has grown to well over 3.5 million images from its beginning in 2004.
www.dreamstime.com
Image Source A leading independent producer of royalty free stock photography. The business was set up by CEO Christina Vaughan and it has grown today be one of the leading high end producers of contemporary Photography in the world. Image Source focuses on high production value, contemporary creative images and the collection spans over 130,000 images. Image Source is responsible for the conceptualization, creation and production of every one of its own images - each of which are protected by the highest level of technical and legal integrity. The collection focuses on 100% Model Released Imagery of People in Lifestyle, Beauty, Business, Healthcare, Sport and Leisure - created by some of the world's top photographers and art directors.
www.imagesource.com
Photolibrary Photolibrary has been known for its specialty collections, “which have a longer useful life, and a more defensible position in terms of the market.” They include: The Anthony Blake Food Collection (now called Freshfoodimages), the Garden Picture Library, Oxford Scientific, and Monsoon Images. The Photolibrary Group represents over 250 of the world's leading brands and 2,000+ photographers from around the world, to bring memorable, workable content to the creative communities in Europe, America, Asia and the Pacific.
www.photolibrary.com
PhotoShelter
One of the new guys on the block, and is coming at this market from a totally different direction. Allen Murabayashi is CEO, and he has brought together a community of over 20,000 photographers offering two products to the photography industry. The flagship is Personal Archive, a subscription-based service, providing photographers with the tools needed to archive, distribute, price, sell, and market their images independently. The PhotoShelter Collection is said to be the “world’s first open-but-edited stock marketplace where 14,000 amateur and pro photographers from 140 countries contribute images for RM and RF licensing.” Unprecedented in today’s market, they offer 70% royalties to the artist. Four thousand new images are uploaded everyday, and photographers set their own prices, a change from traditional agent models. www.photoshelter.com
Blend Images:A brief interview with the team at Blend Images.
MacTribe: When and how did Blend Images get started?
Blend: Blend Images was founded in February 2005 by a prestigious group of some of the most experienced and successful stock photographers in the industry. The company is photographer owned and managed by key industry veterans. Blend was created in response to market demand for quality multicultural business and lifestyle imagery.
MacTribe: Is it fair to call Blend a high end stock photography company?
Blend: Blend Images is the world’s leading multicultural stock photography agency. We offer high-quality, premium collections created by some of the best photographers in the industry. We are dedicated to consistently providing imagery that meets exacting standards.
MacTribe:Is Blend more of a boutique agency in terms of its collections?
Blend: Blend’s focus is on providing visual content to those trying to reach multicultural audiences. We specialize in ethnically diverse business and lifestyle imagery, with a robust collection of more than 100,000 images online.
MacTribe: Can you explain your tagline "Celebrating diversity" is there a heavy multicultural theme in your collection?
Blend: Our tagline “celebrating diversity” embodies Blend’s brand positioning and our exclusive focus on multicultural imagery. The Blend collection celebrates ethnic and cultural diversity, reflecting the realities of today’s multicultural society.
Home Page image courtesy of Image Source.
All images used by kind permission copyright in order of appearance:
Art Resource
Dreamstime
Image Source
Photolibrary
Photoshelter
Blend Images
More Apple
More News
iPad Costs
iSuppli Corp., which generally waits until it can actually get the new Apple product to estimate its production cost, has decided to forgo hands on examination in the case of the iPad. They have--from just looking at it, it's amazing--decided the base model only costs $219.35 for Apple to produce. According to AppleInsider the base model won't make Apple anywhere near as much profit as the 32 GB model with 3G wireless priced at $729...that one reportedly costs only $287.15 to produce.
That's some profit! No wonder Apple execs have said they'd stay nimble on pricing! With demand for the iPad under scrutiny and this week's news that the "Take Picture" hint was removed from the Address Book app in the iPad simulator even we are starting to wonder if it's not worth waiting for the 2nd generation.
Trust us, it's painful to say.
Google Challenges the Internet
"Think Big" indeed. This time, Google is setting its sights on the very way we transmit information and asking people from around the country to nominate their city or state to be included in an ultra-high speed open internet network of Google's building. Set to include anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 people, this network will boast 1GB per second fiber optic connections that Google reps are hoping will bolster developer creativity, test new ways to build the infrastructure and challenge internet service providers to band together to create a better internet instead of shunning change to maintain their bottom lines.
This is huge news, and we hope our city is on the receiving end of the new interwebs...here's the official Google Blog if you want to read it all in detail or submit your community.
Dogs on Twitter
From the country that's given us karate and karaoke comes the newest iPhone app: that's right, Japan's Index Corp. has announced the release of "Bowlingual," the dog emotion translator. Latest in a long line of technological advances, this app (to be released this summer) analyzes Fido's bark and puts it into one of six categories, like "needy." Or "happy." Then it adds a caption based on the emotion and allows you to snap a photo of your pooch in its current mood; as if that weren't enough it can modify that photo to enlarge your pet's eyes...oh...so cute.
Seriously, the app is set to sell for $5 and will post your pet's barks to Twitter. Silly? Yes. Fun? Probably!!
Will you let your dog speak his mind? Tell us here.
