The Advent of User-Generated Stock Photography

March 26th, 2008

After my last blog post about Flickr versus Getty Images and the advent of user-generated stock photo agencies, I got an interesting email from the PR/Marketing folks at PhotoShelter, a kind of hybrid between Getty and Flickr.  See below for an excerpt of their explanation of what PhotoShelter does.  

Two things learned here:

1) It really pays for companies to provide pro-active customer service and reach out to bloggers to explain new products and services.

 

2) The innovation in user-generated stock photography and journalism in general is just beginning.  It will be very interesting to see which mainstream news outlets adopt these services and when.  Or, how will services like Getty Images or AP adopt user-generated content into their business model to compete with services like PhotoShelter?

 

Obviously, the Getty Images name is synonymous with stock photography, but for the marketers, designers and even editorial producers, who are looking for the more “real” images for which they turn to Flickr-like outlets, the PhotoShelter Collection provides exactly this type of content and already has the necessary ecommerce infrastructure in place to make it a real-time solution.

The PhotoShelter Collection, is the first online marketplace to provide the benefits of a commercial agency and a wholly transparent sales system to pro, amateur and hobbyist photographers alike, while providing image buyers access to the widest and most eclectic array of commercial imagery that is quality-sorted, keyworded, priced, licensed and ready for instant purchasing. Since its initial launch to photographers on September 15, 2007, over 14,000 contributors have been accepted to The PhotoShelter Collection, and are contributing over 4000 images per day.

 

  • http://www.charlesandhudson.com Timothy

    Check out
    http://www.sxc.hu/index.phtml

    It’s been around 7 years and is free.

  • Diana

    Sería interesante tratar de dilucidar y analizar cuál es la “estética de lo real” que se ha moldeado a través de:
    1. El acceso a más y mejores tecnologías de generación de lo visual (cámaras digitales, teléfonos celulares…) por parte de los usuarios.
    2. Las nuevas posibilidades de distribución de estas imágenes “reales”, a través de los sitios que mencionas.
    3. El impacto de las nuevas posibilidades económicas generadas por estos sitios, sobre la estética de lo real (será que en algún momento, sitios como Getty se “apropien” de esta estética de lo real y lo conviertan -si no es que ya ha sucedido- en un bien de consumo? de qué maneras “lo real” en las imágenes se vería impactado?).

    Y… cómo van a reaccionar los usuarios ante estas nuevas posibilidades económicas y/o de distribución de sus imágenes “reales”? cómo las aprovecharán? impactará en su manera de producir imágenes, en su concepción de “lo real”?

    * Por último: como diseñadora que siempre ha trabajado en empresas con pocos recursos, ha sido muy útil el sitio que menciona tu amigo Timothy. Tiene algunas limitaciones, sobre todo en el motor de búsqueda. Pero las imágenes me parecen bastante buenas para ser gratuitas.

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