Archive for the ‘About fotoLibra’ Category
fotoLibra’s Most Popular Subjects
November 4th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Here are the most popular subjects photographed on fotoLibra, ranked by size.
It would be pleasant and profitable for all of us to see many more of the less well featured subjects, such as
Age
Extreme
Invertebrates
Customs
Law and Order
Civilisations
Humour
Military
Engineering
National
Lifestyle
Motherhood
Plants
Antiques
Cartoons
Astronomy
Finance
Cacti
Fitness
Ferns
Physics
Tools
Dance
Transport
Ecology
Heritage
Cycling
Family
Aesthetics
Adventure
Arts
Transport
Running
Books
Chemistry
Horse-drawn
Geology
Toys
Third World
Royalty
Textiles
Glass
Forestry
Amphibians
News
Tennis
Hospitality
Parties
Wine
Ceramics
Camping
Showbiz
Furniture
Indoor
Protest
House
Crafts
Marine
Prehistoric
Folklore
Sub Aqua
Media
American
Computers
Sport
Collecting
Jewellery
Biology
Lichen
Country
Clubs
Disease
Design
Private
Society
Places
Events
Tunnels
Hospitals
Drama
TV
Olympics
Zoology
Manuscripts
Cinema
Botany
Gay & Lesbian
Typography
Gyms
Disability
Science
Health
Archaeology
Maps
Hotels
DIY
Old Age
Entomology
Anatomy
State
Topography
Genetics
Anthropology
Mature Times
August 13th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Keen on your hobby? Why not turn it into a business?
I don’t know much about the magazine Mature Times, but I do know they’ve got EXCELLENT ideas. Because the nice people there have written an article about fotoLibra photographer Linda Wright (she of the wondrous Birds of Prey photographs) in which they say very nice things about the part fotoLibra had to play in Linda’s success.
Aw shucks! (scuffles foot shyly behind other heel).
Hovering Eurasian Kestrel ©Linda Wright / fotoLibra
New fotoLibra
July 30th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Say hello to fotoLibra 4.1!
As well as being faster, it’s got a host of new features:
• autoFocus is a rolling newsfeed with all the top stories to interest photographers and picture buyers
• You’ve all been asking for it — the Recent Sales tab shows a random selection of recently sold images so you can see what the market is buying
• Our new Thumbnail Size option allows you to view Thumbnails 400% larger than the default size
• The Latest News tab now sits at the top of the page so you can access it immediately without digging down deep into your Control Centre
• Your Hide Sidebar feature lets you view five thumbnails in a row — more pictures per page
• You now have the data option of flipping between Thumbnail and Records View, which will show you the photographer, pixel dimensions, caption and reference number for every image
• At last (many members will sigh) you can see if one of your images has been selected for a lightbox. As far as we’re aware no other stock agency / picture library offers this feature — but there is no guarantee that this will lead to a sale.
There are many other enhancements such as a speedier registration page — new members can sign up in seconds. Little things like the transition when you submit an image to a Picture Call have been smoothed out. You will notice several other detail changes.
BROWSERS: However you won’t notice any of these enhancements if you are using Internet Explorer 7 or earlier as your browser. You will see doughty old fotoLibra 4.0 chugging away as normal. Speedy new fotoLibra 4.1 works best on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms using Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome and IE8. Even Microsoft is recommending you should upgrade from IE7: please read this.
We recommend that Windows users should perform “Windows Update” regularly.
We hope you enjoy the new fotoLibra and find it even easier to use. Please let us know what you think
Selling Photographs through Flickr and Getty Images
June 23rd, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
There’s been much contention recently over the deal made between the snapshot sharing site Flickr and the behemoth of the picture library stock agency world Getty Images.
A couple of years ago the companies agreed that Getty could have their pick of the millions of images uploaded to Flickr. Of course not all of them are snapshots — some probably approach professional standards. But now Flickr has announced their “Request To License” programme. This is what they said:
“Starting today in the Flickrverse [bleagh!] Flickr members and visitors can work with each other through a new program with Getty Images called “Request to License”. We’ve built this program on the success of our launch of the Flickr Collection on Getty Images just over one year ago.
“So, how does it work? Under the Additional Information heading on your public photo pages you’ll see a “Want to license” link. Only you see this link. Visitors to your photos won’t.”
There is whipped up concern that Flickr members have no idea how to value their images and that Getty will rip them off. This is very, very unlikely.
Our concern at fotoLibra is that it’s Getty who have no idea how to value their images, as this week a Getty spokesperson was quoted by Amateur Photographer as saying:
“Flickr contributors will receive 30% of the fee and the average price for Rights-managed images is around $500 (£335). Royalty-free images are licensed at set prices based upon the file size the customer purchases. Flickr contributors will receive 20% of the fee and the average price for RF is around $200 (£134).”
(Incidentally fotoLibra member photographers get 50% of the sale fee and Platinum members get 60%.)
Well, that’s news to us. Getty’s ‘average’ prices, that is. I have lost count of the number of potential clients who have refused to deal with fotoLibra because “you’re so much more expensive than Getty Images.” Yet our average price for Rights-managed images is around $76 (£51), compared to their quoted $500 (£335). So maybe someone isn’t telling the full, entire, unvarnished truth here. And it’s not me.
If those quoted prices really are true, why hasn’t fotoLibra been swamped with buyers? Our photographers are every bit as good as theirs, and our average price is 15% of their quoted average price. That is a staggering difference.
I very much doubt that Getty Images averages $500 per rights-managed image sale. How I wish that were true! Perhaps it’s all smoke and mirrors, like those famous microstock offers of a dollar for a picture.
Picture Perfect
May 1st, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Another politician gets into trouble on the run-up to the UK General Election, to be held next Thursday, May 6.
The Liberal Democrat candidate for Arfon in Wales (that’s Bangor & Caernarfon to you and me) illustrated her campaign leaflet with photographs sourced — let’s be kind — thoughtlessly.
The slogan “Regenerating Welsh Towns” was accompanied by a photograph of a derelict building in the very English city of Bath, Somerset.
Her concern for jobs was illustrated by a Job Centre in Sidmouth, Devon. Another photograph showed a team of builders in Barnet, North London.
We must praise candidate Sarah Green for her international outlook, but when a campaign is fought on local issues, she really ought to source local pictures. There is an excellent picture library based in her county Gwynedd, I believe. We Welsh are particularly sensitive about such matters!
When Labour launched its campaign with an image of sunrise over a cornfield, I contacted them via their website to ask where they sourced the picture. It looked somehow American to me (yes, sunrise is sunrise, and a cornfield is a cornfield, but if you study a lot of images every day, as I do, national differences such as colour preferences become more marked).
Strangely enough, I haven’t had a reply. I would love to know where the British Labour Party purchased the picture. It would be great if it was a British picture library, a British photographer and a British field.
I wonder.
autoFocus
March 18th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
In her latest Newsletter Jacqui Norman reveals another new fotoLibra feature which is actually still on the drawing board.
It’s called autoFocus, and it’s envisaged as a rolling newsfeed of stories of interest to to picture buyers and photographers. I want it to appear as a tickertape band rolling across the screen but apparently there are technical problems with that which, though surmountable, are too development time intensive to commit to. We will see.
In whatever form it eventually appears it will feature stories drawn from a glittering variety of sources, from our favourite personal blogs to authoritative statements and declamations from industry bodies. Of course it will have to be selective simply because of the sheer volume of information available on the net, but it will not favour money, influence and brand loyalties over iconoclasm, plaudits, discoveries, brickbats and advice, or indeed vice-versa. It will not take sides on Canon vs. Nikon debates (or Exakta vs. Thornton-Pickard for our Heritage members).
But as you will realise these are all fine thoughts during work in progress. What we finally release may be quite different, but whatever happens it will only be as good and as useful as its source material. We want to make this as broad ranging as possible.
If you enjoy a photo blog, forum or website, and better still if you run or write one, please let us know so we can add it to autoFocus. Obviously it must have an RSS or Atom feed enabled, but don’t you worry your pretty little head about that, we’ll check it out.
We very much hope you’ll all enjoy it and find it useful, and we also hope you’ll tell us what you want to see.
Happy Snow Year
January 6th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Apparently this snow and cold isn’t confined to Britain. Seems like it’s snowing all over the world, except in Cape Town where that nasty Graeme Smith has been putting our plucky boys to the sword. It is glorious weather down there, 28°C, a warm breeze and cloudless skies. Yum yum. Newlands, and a bottle of Rust en Vrede to keep me company … a man can dream, can’t he?
Anyway, while it’s snowing — or, even better, when the sun comes out just after the snow, please get out there and use that camera. We always need snow shots, and cutomers usually ask us for them in May or June, so please be prepared now. As most of you know, I’m no photographer myself, but make sure you mug up on how to use that white balance control on your camera so the snow looks crisp and white.
Grey snow pictures don’t sell, except for gritty realist images of buses struggling to get up hills. We always need more grit.
Away from the winter wonderland, close observers will know that fotoLibra’s former technical development manager Neil Smith and I have been writing some iPhone apps together. Aaron’s Apps now has its own web site, so please check out http://aaronsapps.com to find out about the applications we’ve released (two) and the ones we have planned (eight at the moment).
New fotoLibra
October 1st, 2009
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
We’ve kept our heads down over the past few weeks but now, finally, it’s complete.
The new fotoLibra web site was launched a couple of hours ago. It looks great, it has a host of new features and it’s just as reliable and fast as it ever was.
Now we’re going to go out and party. So I’ll describe it to you tomorrow. But if you can’t wait, then explore fotoLibra.com right now.
Most Popular Searches
September 4th, 2009
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
When new members join fotoLibra they occasionally ask us questions (prodding us to see if we’re mortal, I suppose). If they do ask, perhaps the most common is “What are people searching for?”
It’s easily answered, and it’s of no commercial use to them or us.
The answer is
1. Sex
2. Breasts
3. Tits
Need I go on?
A professional picture buyer doesn’t do repeated searches anyway, so it’s hard to analyse the information. Most of them simply tell us what they want and leave us to do the searching, which is why we keep rabbiting on to our members about the importance of key words.
When I saw a list of the most pirated ebooks this year I had a feeling I could guess what would be on it. I was not wrong.
These are the books that have been downloaded through BitTorrent between 100,000 and 250,000 times this year:
1. Kamasutra
2. Adobe Photoshop Secrets
3. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Amazing Sex
4. The Lost Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
5. Solar House – A Guide for the Solar Designer
6. Before Pornography – Erotic Writing In Early Modern England
7. Twilight – Complete Series
8. How To Get Anyone To Say YES – The Science Of Influence
9. Nude Photography – The Art And The Craft
10. Fix It – How To Do All Those Little Repair Jobs Around The Home
Depressing, but not as depressing as I’d feared.
A Third of a Million
September 3rd, 2009
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
fotoLibra passed the third of a million images online mark this morning.
fotoLibra’s Gwyn Headley is speaking at a seminar at the Frankfurt Book Fair titled “From Gutenberg to Google: The Use of Imagery in Publishing.” It will be held on Friday October 16 at 10:00 in the Workshop-Raum.
fotoLibra’s unique feature for book publishers is its Picture Call — publishers can send a list of images they are looking for and fotoLibra’s 17,000 photographers in 160 countries go out and take them, with no obligation on the publisher.