Photographer Remi Thornton recently terminated his contract with Getty after finding out that the agency was allowing online retailer CafePress to use his images on potential merchandise without paying an up-front licensing fee.
In fact, according to Thornton, CafePress has an exclusive agreement with Getty, which allows them use any of the agency’s Royalty Free stock to populate their store, while only paying the photographer if the merchandise featuring their image actually sells. Read more…
I just sent Getty Images the email above, which, I think, is how I terminate my relationship with them. Hopefully. I’m not 100% sure, but I can’t seem to figure out any way to do it online, so I’m hoping that email works. Read more…
A new controversy is brewing in the world of stock photography. Just last month, it came to light that Getty had agreed to license 5000 of its stock photos to Google while paying the creators of the images a meager one-time fee of $12. Now, one of Getty’s most successful stock photographers is claiming that his account is being terminated in the aftermath of the first hoopla. Read more…
Back in early December, Google announced that the company would be adding 5,000 new stock images of “nature, weather, animals, sports, food, education, technology, music and 8 other categories” for free use in Docs, Sheets and Slides.
At the time nobody knew how Google got these images, who took them, or what kind of license they came with. The mystery continued on unsolved until a week ago when an iStocker discovered one of his own images in the search results. As it turns out, the use of these photos is the result of a little known licensing deal between Google and Getty Images. Read more…
Tim Olsen Gallery, a prestigious art gallery located in Sydney, Australia, has dropped popular Australian photo artist Ben Ali Ong after it was discovered that some of his photo artworks were actually based on uncredited Getty Images. An exhibition featuring Ong’s work, which was set to open this week, was canceled, and a number of art buyers will be refunded. Read more…
American private equity firm Carlyle Group announced today that it has agreed to drop $3.3 billion to acquire Getty Images from private equity firm Hellman & Friedman. H&F purchased Getty Images just four years ago for $2.4 billion, so it seems that the stock photo company is doing decently well. Read more…
Nate Jones over at Metro was recently looking through Getty Images in search of Olympic beach volleyball photos, when he came upon an interesting/”gross” discovery: some of the photographs focused on the body rather than the athlete or the sport. While other Olympic sport photos focus on action and emotion, it seems that certain beach volleyball photographers are intent on snapping images of behinds.
That got Jones thinking, “what if every Olympic sport was photographed like women’s beach volleyball?” He then decided to take other shots of other sports and crop them through the lens of volleyball photographers. Here’s a sampling of the hilarious images. Read more…
Well, there’s no question about it: photography is going to the robots — or at the very least Olympic photography is. First we saw Getty Images and the robotic rigs it was working on (among other things), then there was the Associated Press and its robots, and now we have a making of video from AFP showing off the D4 wielding rigs its photogs will be using.
On the one hand, it would seem Skynet will be very well equipped to photograph its future takeover. On the other, if you’re not threatened by the advent of robotic photography, this video is pretty cool.
Photo agency Getty Images is on the auction block, in a second round of bids that are climbing towards $4 billion for a potential sale. Investment firm KKR & Co. and private equity investment firm TPG are on the list of at least five interested bidders, the Wall Street Journal reports. Read more…
You may or may not know this, but Getty Images is actually the official photo agency of the 2012 London Olympics, and they plan on making this one of the most innovatively captured events in the history of photography. To do this they’ve enlisted as many new technologies as they can get their hands on: be it 3D, time lapse, 360-degree, or even helicam aerial photography/video, Getty intends on giving the people at home as immersive an experience of the Summer Olympic Games as possible.
Check out the video above for more info on both the how and the why behind Getty’s plans, plus a cool peek at the kinds of helicam shots we can expect to see in about a month and a half’s time.
