I do find it ironic that the same people who lose their mind at the thought of giving away their photos often are the same people who expect free software to power their business.

freeware is one thing, open source is another thing.

even microsoft and adobe gave out many products for free, freeware has always been part of the ecosystem.

but open source is quite another story.
there's nothing wrong using free versions of PS Elements or trial/demo versions of Lightroom.
by opposite using open source photo apps you know from the start these apps can be unstable, can be buggy, can be abandoned overnight, you don't know what their roadmap will be, especially if the developers cannot make decent money with it.

so, we've many choices nowadays but if sh-it happens we can only blame ourselves.
besides this reasoning has no ground in photography as PS is a de facto monopoly and nobody is going back using The Gimp or Corel Draw just for the sake of using free software or cheap software alternatives.

too many developers think the real cost in on developing applications.
no, it's on maintaining and upgrading and supporting the applications, so many things can go wrong with different versions of the OS or the CMS or the server, it's a hell .. you will spend more time debugging and fixing small issues than writing from scratch the whole app !

and finally it's always all about the money.
why nobody is making Gimp a superior product on par with PS ?
because the money isn't there, there's no demand, there are no coders willing to waste months or years for a failed product.

developers are the life blood of open source, if they bail out it's game over, it becomes abandonware, academic projects.

if there is a new site  opening up other possibilities
to a market already as pointed out by many here, saturation point  ms.

the stock industry seem pretty stable, if people start buying from new small sites it just means they will buy less from elsewhere, it's more or less like a sum zero game at the moment.

we have to wait and see.
i don't think new small sites have any chance to emerge right now unless they're backed by millions of $ to be spent in advertising, see the many 500px and similar sites that are still struggling to make steady sales.

we should not forget the real goal of these startups is NOT to make real profits but to gather a large enough customer base in order to be sold to the next VC and shareholder.

in other words, photography has never been as popular as today, and so is music, software, video, videogames, and so many creative applications and artworks.

and YET it's never been so hard to make money out of it like today.

there was a time people would pay 50-100$ per hour to code HTML 1.0 ... now they refuse to use your app even if it's free.

what's next, will they pretend to get paid as beta testers since there might be a few bugs in the code and so they will suffer from downtime and maintenance ?

and i've never seen such a pile of sh-it apps before the advent of Android and the Play Store ... not that i could care less but it gives us a rough idea of the dreadful situation and it's going to get worse for developers as far as i see it.

AF speed is only important if you are taking the sorts of pictures which need fast AF.

DSLRs are great in a studio. But walking around with one today is rather like having your cell phone in a belt holster IMO. And they kind of get in the way.

i would use such pocket camera only for street photography so yes AF speed is important !
but also power-on speed, i can't work with a camera taking 3-4 second to power on and focus, it must be instant-on like a DSLR.

so what's the problem ? slow cpus ? not enough memory ? crippled-down architecture ?
i don't get it, some of these cameras cost almost 1000$, why they can't just take the same electronics of a nikon D3000 for instance and make it mirroless  with a 35mm prime lens ??

the only reason might be they have no intention to cannibalize their DSLR market and i can understand their fears but .. ?

i tried a few mirrorless cameras recently and i'm of the opinion they're still a long way from being on par even with a cheap 400$ DSLR.

they're excellent for portability, weight, and size, but for anything else i'm disappointed, and i really wanted to buy one and my needs are nothing special, all i need is a good prime lens and a fast camera but none of them is fast as a DSLR especially regarding AF.

i think we'll have to wait 2-3 more yrs before seeing decent pocket cameras in the market, all i've seen so far as toys packed with all the bells and whistles and they don't come cheap, not at all.

Finally a ray of sunshine in all the doom and gloom that this forum normally had

It ain't gonna last long

The industry is still relatively healthy, but only as long as you're an agency.

No matter if prices are stable and sales are growing a little, due to the actual oversupply and saturation we will all need to produce more and earn less.

Now, the issue is about how much more and when, not about "IF".

As i see it, only stock factories or photo collectives have any chance to stay in biz 20 yrs from now.
many will diversify and many others will leave for greener pastures, no other options at the horizon.

There will be also further M&As and consolidation among agencies and therefore a further grip on our fees.
Well it's already a semi-monopoly anyway.

Said that, yes it's definitely a great job compared to being yet another corporate drone enslaved into a cubicle perpetually watching his back from blackmailing and office politics.

I think the moral of the story is that there's never been such a demand and acceptance for photography like today and before or later in one way or another there will be a way to monetize it and grab a small slice of the pie.

Actually we might even give away our photos for free and then making money indirectly with merchandising or whatever, that's what a couple friends of mine are doing successfully with their music studio and their bands .. it's awful but they have survived the MP3 revolution, piracy, and all the doom and gloom, i could many further examples in other industries if that matter ... it's a tough time for everybody and WW3 is about to start, we must be prepared for the worst.

There is no more wood for the furnace so it is time to burn the seats.

One thing is sure, buyers will still need stock photos so in one way or another the whole industry is here to stay.

I don't see any disrupting new technology or market change at the horizon, this is a mature and saturated industry, all the players know where they belong in terms of market share, prices aren't going to change much, demand is stable, and costs have been already cut to the bone.

There's little they can do at this point to change the game as long as they all sell the same sh-it.

I think Getty is just accepting the situation as it is, why should they be hellbent on getting back their leadership ? it would cost dozens or hundreds of millions in marketing and advertising and i'm sure they realized it's too risky and not worthy, and maybe they also hope SS will crash and burn for whatever reason due to their new status as public company ?

In fact SS is forced by their new shareholders to aggressively grow over time while IS can pretty much lose money for a long time and nobody at Getty will give a sh-it.

As for us, we should never ever expect anything positive regarding our fees, if i look at other cut-throat industries like textile or raw food all i can see is suppliers in the third world being treated like slaves and paid less than a pittance and kept by the bal-ls by greedy employers and foreign multinationals and with their local government more than happy to get bribes and billions in exchange for closing an eye on their abysmal living standards.

Matter of fact, nobody cares about our fees and nevel will, we're alone and our products are de facto dime a dozen and sold in bulk, photography has never been as devalued as today.

While i'm reading in this very moment the imminent announcement of new cameras being launched at Photokina costing an arm and a leg the guys at stock agencies are busy discussing how to further cut our fees or squeeze our bal-ls a bit more, strictly speaking they don't need us anymore, at least not the single niche photographer, while they're more than happy with photo factories and bulkers, i'm sure they'll be even more happy welcoming stockers from third world countries who are ok with a 100$/month wage and honestly i'm surprised they haven't already flooded the market considering their only disadvantage is the cost of the gear compared to their cheap salaries and their problems with proper keywording in english.

While I agree that the market is pretty well saturated, and will continue to get more so, I still don't see the logic in dropping standards to the extent they have been at iStock.
If you have plenty to pick from, why pick anything but the best?
It seems to me to be a classic example of "Skinning a gnat for a farthing, and spoiling a penny knife doing it"

i think they finally looked at the numbers and cold data and reached the conclusion they were too hard in the selection process and that buyers are more than happy with "good enough" images.

and probably it was too expensive to hire and maintain all those inspectors, lowering the bar means lower costs and a few less employees to feed.

Yeah, walk around with your camera and point it at stuff and keep clicking, upload 10s of thousands of whatever comes out and some of it will probably find buyers.

Actually it's called Street Photography and there's still demand for it.

for instance, the BBC website is using Alamy photos amost every day.
most of them are about travel locations and "people doing things".

i'm selling exactly that on alamy, no idea how other niches will perform, but the 100$ gross average is a bit on the high end in my experience.


 

it must be a fly by night magazine if they can't even pay for photos, they don't even have a .com domain and this is a big red flag.

Fees are below 50% because it's increasingly hard to sell images.

If it was so easy to sell online then try it out yourseld, build your own site, and see how much you're required to invest in advertising.

Microstock in particular is a cut-throat business, there's a good reason if SS is spending up to half of its earning in marketing and advertising.

If it's hard for the market leaders why it should be any easier for the average stock photographer ?

It's been like shared reflagged over a thousand times and who knows how many untracked. If I sue everybody I'd be filthy rich. Sadly that's not quite possible.

because we're still in the Wild West of internet.

the NSA can monitor pretty much anything under the sun and yet the governments still claim it's impossible to track piracy and copyright infringements when they know pretty well that a "web police" would just take 5 minutes to take down pirate sites and pirated content and get any info about the criminals.

there's just no political will to change the ongoing disastrous situation as it would "break the internet" as we know it ... nobody could easily engage in blogging, social networks, chats, and in particular nobody could post images lifted from google images or FB without paying for a licence or permission !

but it's not all doom and gloom ... recently Russian politicians seem to have found an agreement about treating blogging on par with journalism and this means they will have to be legally responsible for anything they publish including stolen pics, next turn it will be forums and then eventually social networks like VK and FB and Twitter.

a police state ? it's already a police state so who cares ? what it is now is just a heaven for pirates and scroungers leaving nothing to protect us.