Archive for the ‘Asset Delivery’ Category
Affordable Editorial Images for Blogging?
I welcomed the move by Getty Images who have launched a new service for Web & Mobile images Sized, Priced and ready for digital use.
I have been researching the lack of affordable web sized editorial images for blogging, and looking at many blogs I find that most could be enhanced by a stock image or two, but the key problems as I see them are the lack of affordable editorial images at microstock ‘pay-as-you-go’ prices, and an easy method of search and delivery, and I personally think that editorial web image use has been much overlooked, with the focus being to over saturate the market with trendy commercial images.
Now that the ‘new commercial markets’ have dried up and growth by acquisition is getting to be less of an option for the bigger websites, how to maintain any business growth, I think that the target will become the editorial side of the industry.
Historically the thinking about the editorial use of images is around magazines and newspapers, along came microstock which targeted the commercial side of the business advertising and advertorial, with Istock becoming know as the art directors and designers ‘dirty little secret’, with the low cost images and aggressive marketing this opened up many new markets, like the small business users, personal websites, students and consultants that needed an image for a presentation.
Image by: Flickr/ahxcjb
New Businesses and Digital Real Estate
Every month we see one or two start-up companies hoping to take a slice of the merchants digital asset revenue, generated from digital artists license sales.
The new businesses or services are usually owned by people that have maybe tried contributing to the existing digital asset sites, created applications as a service to help artists submit their assets to the websites, or have an existing digital online business for other forms of digital assets.
Fire-starters that will either do well and soar or just crash and burn, these are the phrases I would use for some the new businesses, that are coming from a limited exposure to the world of digital asset delivery.
Content and usage is just the buyers problem?
Firstly I must say that this is by no means legal advice, just my understanding and opinions on some of the aspects of digital asset delivery via the internet.
Looking around the various Forums and Blogs I often read that the end client or customer is legally responsible for the image, and how the image is used, but what about the image content are you sure that you have no responsibility that you have not already discharged as an artist or agent.
There are some sweeping statements which are often used as a blanket response for all types of possible scenarios and image violations, but rarely do the posts and comments question the artists and merchants responsibilities, and was enough really done to protect the interests of the artist, agency, merchant, end client or customer?
PAWS for thought new model ideas
I have been looking at different ideas for a new digital asset delivery system, a model where the artist has more control and a bigger share of the revenue, and the assets are delivered direct to the customers browser, these are just my ideas and I would not be in a position to launch such a service so this is just a discussion point.
The key to any new model is putting the infrastructure in place, and that place for many of the recent businesses is in cloud technology and this is firmly the domain of Amazon Web Services, the biggest showstopper at the moment being Amazons FPS Flexible Payments System, this service will only work with a US bank account, until they change this it complicates the payment process, I have been in contact and they say they are looking at expanding this service to other countries.
Does Microstock have real Diversity?
I was reading this topic “Cultural Diversity, What is Needed in Imaging?” over on the Micro Stock Group forum, quite a lively topic with some good replies.
I posted a couple of replies myself and started to think ‘”just how diverse in other areas are the stock sites already?”, as we tend to have preconceptions and visual stereotypes, many images I see like this one here are departmental, as they fit nicely into subconscious boxes, the ones that spring to mind are the many family images which are mostly mum, dad, kids and grandparents, I then considered how many of these typical families I know myself and there are not that many, so what if I had to write an article with a single parent and child as the focus, how diverse is the selection of images and what images to use?
