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?
Keyword Editor for Photoshop
Over on the Micro Stock Group forum we were looking at Image keyword tools and the site owner posted a link to a tool he had used.
This Photoshop plug-in that helps photographers to add metadata keywords to their images efficiently and easily. Main tools: spell checker, correction suggestions, synonyms suggestions, sorting, deleting duplicate, and counting. Saving groups of words and complete Templates of Meta-data.
The plug-in has no limitations and is from 2006, I tried to visit the website for Deep Perspective but the link was not valid, but I thought it may be worth looking at the tool anyway.
If I had to start up a new microstock website
This was the title of a topic here on the MicroStockGroup, and there are many good points raised from the Photographers, but the general consensus is along the lines of a microstock boutique agency, with exclusive content both RF and RM, much along the lines of the Istock Vetta collection, invited contributors and selected content.
This is an option that many other microstock site might already be looking to follow, I thought hard about what would be my target market ,and I still really think that the largest most under serviced asset users, are still bloggers and content providers, and the small sizes are still the future of this industry, the niche collections are the cream and do have a place but are an already limited revenue stream.
PicApp one asset in unlimited blogs
There is a new service called Picapp much along the lines of the idea I have already written about here, they have licensed images from some biggest stock sites including Getty Images, Splash News, Corbis, you just use a plug-in which embeds an image in the body of your blog, the image will carry an advertisement that is how Picapp makes it’s money, you do not download or copy the image just embed it, what effect will this type of service have on artist revenue.
Contributing to a new business
It seems like there is a new digital media agency coming online every month so how do you decide to contribute to the latest business as an artist.
The new business already have their software and slick new website ready to go, and they now need customers and content, the customers will not even look at the business unless there is a large amount of quality content, so the first step for the new business is to find appropriate suppliers with artist content.
