MicrostockGroup

Hi Friends,

The company I work for just launched our new multi-cultural stock photography site, GoGo Images at:  www.gogoimages.com . Although we are a "macro" site we are always on the lookout for great photographers shooting multicultural imagery. If you think you meet our requirements or want to know more please visit our submission page at: http://www.gogoimages.com/index.cfm?id=410

Here is the press release if you want to know a bit more about us.

GoGo Images Fills Gap for Multi-Cultural Stock Photography
Opens Stock Photography Boutique Featuring Latin, Asian, Indian, Black, Middle Eastern, Gay and Lesbian Images to Address 2-Million Image Gap

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GoGo Images, www.gogoimages.com, a stock photography agency, has opened the doors to the first specialty store of multi-cultural stock imagery depicting the accomplishments of Latin, Asian, Indian, Black, Middle Eastern, and LGBT population segments, to meet a multi-million image gap for use in marketing and publishing.

Source: GoGo Images   

·    GoGo Images fills gap for multi-cultural stock photography; opens stock photography boutique featuring Latin, Asian, Indian, Black, Middle Eastern, gay and lesbian images to address 2-million image gap. (Copyright GoGo Images).  View Multimedia Gallery
        
 
“65% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product is produced by people who are seen in 5% of the world’s existing commercial stock images,” said Joe Barrett, GoGo Images CEO. “40% of the world’s purchasing power is in the hands of people who are seen in 5% of the world’s commercial stock images. GoGo Images was founded to close this gap.”

Mirroring the marketing segmentation strategy of leading specialty retailers such as Sephora within the cosmetics industry, the GoGo Images boutique offers advertisers, marketers, and publishers a well-merchandized mix of premium multi-cultural stock photography, deliberately absent of other content categories. “Professional users are tired of pawing through millions of image SKUs in the leading stock photography mega stores to uncover the few hidden gems or the politically correct ‘United Colors of Benetton’ images,” said Jennifer Hurshell, Chief Creative Officer. “They’re under huge time pressure to find relevant content that can help sell their products and services to multiple target audiences in multiple regions, and actually pushed us to open a one-stop shop.”

Barrett and Hurshell — both self-admitted “recovering marketers” and image industry veterans — co-founded GoGo Images in 2006, following executive posts at Bill Gates-owned Corbis. The launch of the boutique follows the creation of GoGo Images’ multi-cultural royalty free (RF) stock photography collection, which can be licensed at more than 100 stock imagery distributors around the world.

“The new reality is that our content is highly salable on a global basis, not just within the markets it mirrors,” said Joe Barrett, CEO. “Clients tell us that increasingly — regardless of where their headquarters are situated — they have to localize their communications to the many regions in which they operate, and they have a hard time accessing relevant images.” Jeff Yang, VP of Iconoculture, the leading strategic consumer research and advisory service provider, agrees. “Successful global brands have to be both creatively and visually authentic. This requires the painstaking integration of deep customer insight and creative execution — going beyond the obvious need for diverse talent. In order to show that your brand “gets it” you have to get the nuances right.”

Carlos Segura, named one of the “World’s 100 Best Designers” in Taschen’s Graphic Design for the 21st Century, said, “It’s about time someone paid attention to this gap. GoGo Images has made my job easier by bringing together the highest quality multi-cultural content in an organized and tightly edited site.”

About GoGo Images

GoGo Images is a stock photography agency dedicated to produce, acquire, and represent the best multi-cultural commercial images to meet the 2-million image gap bemoaned by advertisers, marketers, and publishers around the world. The company’s highly focused content offering is based on extensive ethnographic research, trend-spotting, creative intelligence, and economic analysis, and is produced by the world’s top photographers. Clients can license this imagery at www.gogoimages.com, the first dedicated “multi-cultural imagery boutique,” or find the GoGo Images collection at more than 100 leading international stock imagery distributors.

The image size can be tricky and the correct file sizes can be achieved if you have really quality images. If you think your images can stand up to the test follw this link:
http://www.gogoimages.com/index.cfm?id=410 and submit a link to your work . We can let you know if the images pass the muster.  The potential difference is measured in dollars, not cents per image sale.

Great portfolio Andres.

The camera MP size can become a contentious issue for sure. The idea is that the final RAW image from the camera can produce, with some up-resing in Photoshop, a final 50MB, 300DPI, 8bit, Adobe 1998 Tiff image without noticeable flaws, distortion, pixilation, color banding ect. The image also needs to go through postproduction and have the most amounts of data possible to insure a clean outcome.

To tell you the truth the camera is just one small part of the equation of being a macro stock photographer. Our shoots cost  tens of thousands of dollars to plan, cast, locate and pay for locations, travel, style, light, produce, and edit.  Once the image return we send them through postproduction and key wording and finally ship out to our distributors. The shoot cost does not include the costs of marketing our images, setting up and maintaining distributors and hardware, and long-term storage.

When one looks at the equipment requirements and assumes that dictates the quality of the photographer, I think this is incorrect. I shoot most of my images on a Pentax KM film camera and my digital on a Nikon D200. Does this make me a bad photographer? I like to think not, however I don’t submit these as stock. Equipment requirements, like in most professions, merely describe a guideline for doing the job in accordance with a standard.

This is why I love to see the micro stock world flourish. It does allow a much larger swath of people the ability to contribute their photographic talent to a much wider audience with fewer cost and equipment barriers. It also allows people who may be limited by budgetary restraints access to a large pool of images an affordable price.

With our lowest web resolution size being in the neighborhood of $150, not everyone is going to be able to afford our images. The same can be said for macro stock photographers. It takes a lot of upfront costs, learning, networking, marketing and shooting to be a successful macro stock photographer, and not everyone is going to make it. I think in a larger context this can be applied to just about anything in life.

Corey,

Does the site focus on people images?  Not locations nor signs/texts in different languages?

Regards,
Adelaide

I am intrigued as to why a stock photo agency specialising in multicultural images should choose to call itself 'gogo'.

From Wikipedia:

Go go may refer to:

In music:

Go-go, a form of funk music that arose in the 1970s
The Go-Go's (1960s), a UK band
The Go-Go's, a 1980s American band
GO!GO!7188, a Japanese indie-rock band sometimes referred to as GoGo
"Go Go", a song by Galactic from Coolin' Off
In history and culture:

Gogo (ethnic group), or Wagogo, a Bantu ethnic group in central Tanzania
Gogo language, a Bantu language spoken by the Gogo people
Gogo (mayor of the palace), 6th-century Frankish mayor of the palace of Austrasia
Gogo, Burkina Faso, a department of the province of Zoundwéogo in Burkina Faso
In science:

Gogo (genus), a genus of Ariid catfish
Gogo Formation, a limestone nodule in Australia
Gogo Fish, Gogonasus, a Devonian fish named for the limestone formation
In fictional characters:

Gogo (Final Fantasy), from the Super Nintendo role-playing games Final Fantasy V and VI
Gogo Dodo, from Tiny Toon Adventures
Gogo Yubari, from Kill Bill - Volume 1
Estragon, or Gogo, from Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
Gogo Germain, from the 1958 film St. Louis Blues
In other uses:

GoGos, the original name of the children's game Crazy Bones


On the same subject there are TWO photo agencies that have chosen to call themselves 'gecko' for some unexplained reason, then there's another new one that is something like zymmetricle (but no-one will ever find it because the name is impossible to spell unless one has seen it first).

So, sorry - are you saying you expect contributors to foot a tens of thousands of dollars bill to be able to submit there?

No, I'm not.  Most stock houses  base decisions on content and quality of the imagery, correct metadata,  and proper releases. Cost of production has no bearing on the decision process. If you can get amazing photos, that fit within submission requirements,  out of a point-and-shoot with very little production cost you will probably be very rich. For the most part however stock photo shoots  cost money (Photographers, Models, Locations, Lighting, Food, Travel, Stylists, ect).
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That's a fairly typical '1st world' response. 

For y'all buyers wanting to pay way less, have a look around on some of the micros and find yourselves some excellent images by 'locals' who know their stuff and don't rely on the huge budgets to produce legitimate stock

Can you show some examples of these shoots please. I had a look at the site and to be honest all I could find were your general lifestyle type of photo's, nothing wrong with those but I'd like to see some examples of the 'tens of thousands of dollars' shots.

A few phrases I'd like to use:

1.  Please go-go away...you will fail because you are umm, 5 years too late

2.  Anyone who submits should go-go to a psychiatrist, because they probably submitted to all the other crap sites and failed.  One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - so please, go-go get yourself checked out. (Please keep in mind that I'm talking about the average microstocker)

3.  Go-go rivals YAYmicro as the dumbest name to date. 

Just my two cents, no one will listen, but I post regardless.

Corey...I'm curious if GoGo's definition of "diversity" includes Caucasian disabled and elderly people.