Flickr on Tuesday entered a partnership with Getty Images to offer its users a way to potentially make money off their photography.
The Yahoo-owned photo-hosting community will be a new resource for Getty, which can now contact Flickr members directly through the site and ask them if they want to share one or more of their images for use in a special Flickr-branded Getty collection.
Flickr members interested in getting their images featured in the special Getty gallery will have to simply wait to be contacted. Otherwise, Getty and Flickr are encouraging aspiring photographers to post their content on the Getty-owned iStockphoto, which also happens to have been a hotbed for Flickr photos in the past.
Flickr-hosted images that have been chosen to be included in the new collection will get a special link to the Getty page where they can purchase a license to use the shot.
In order to get paid and allow their images to be used, Flickr members must sign a Getty Images contributor contract, which stipulates that the photographer is the owner, and has any necessary model releases and originals. It also outlines the various rates based on size and intended commercial usage.
Those rates, not yet available, are likely to follow some of Getty's standard rates. As part of the deal, the only transaction is being shared directly between the photographer and Getty, meaning Yahoo will not be getting a share of that fee. According to Yahoo's rep, "Getty and Flickr have a separate business relationship."
The move is a special deal for Flickr, which currently does not allow for commercial transactions on the site outside of using partners for services such as photo printing. It's long been expected that Flickr would get around to implementing a system like this, if only to take advantage of the size of its collection, which averages thousands of user uploads every minute.
Update: Changes have been made to this article since it first posted regarding the link to the Getty purchase pages on Flickr as well as the nature of the business partnership between Getty Images and Yahoo.
BigStockPhoto.com, one of a host of "microstock" companies that sells images to advertisers and others who need stock photography, has overhauled its search engine in an attempt to improve performance and usefulness.
(Credit:
BigStockPhoto.com)
The new search tools are faster and can filter images based on parameters such as vertical or horizontal orientation to narrow down searches more quickly, the Davis, Calif.-based company said Wednesday. It also offers the ability to show similar searches to more easily find new but related choices.
"This is...the first of many steps we're taking to dramatically improve BigStockPhoto's user experience," said of BigStockPhoto.com Chief Executive and founder Tim Donahue in a statement.
BigStockPhoto.com has 1.2 million images in its library. It competes with a collection of similar companies, including new entrant SnapVillage from Corbis and with Getty Images subsidiary iStockphoto. The latter announced Wednesday it's enlisted more than 2 million members. Collectively they download images at a rate of about one every 2.5 seconds.
update Shutterstock, one of a host of "microstock" sites that lets photographers sell stock photography online at low cost, plans to announce a program called Red Carpet that strives to endow its members with press credentials.
(Credit:
Shutterstock)
"The company will work to facilitate the acquisition of coveted press passes, whether at film premieres, awards shows, concerts or political rallies," the company said in a forum posting on Monday. "While taking steps to secure preferred access for its photographers, Shutterstock will expand its library of celebrity images, a popular category among buyers."
Press passes typically enable photographers and other media representatives to cover events for free and often from preferred photography vantage points.
Shutterstock has 61,627 photographers submitting their work, but not everyone is automatically granted a press pass. To get one, they must sign up at Shutterstock for each event by submitting a form (click for PDF). Shutterstock will expedite the request process, the company said.
The service won't be for any old Shutterstock member or folks hoping for an easy trip to the latest concert, said founder and Chief Executive Jon Oringer.
"The only people who will be applying for this are established Shutterstock photographers--we have a relationship with them, have confidence in their ability as photographers, etc.," he said in an interview Monday.
And the company will monitor the photos from each event, he added.
"There is little room for abuse here, but if that were to happen, that photographer would immediately be banned not only from the program but from our site as a contributor," Oringer said. "We...want to be able to monitor each press pass and what comes from it--to make sure that we're adding quality pictures to the site (and) that the photographers and event coordinators are comfortable with the process."
Images from such events may only be sold through Shutterstock, the company said.
Shutterstock already has worked with event coordinators in the past to obtain press passes, for years in some cases, but the new Red Carpet program will formalize the process, Oringer said.
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