Microstock Calendar

NEW YORK, NY – April 28, 2009 – Today, Fotolia (http://www.fotolia.com) one of the world’s leading sources for legal, low-cost imagery announced the launch of its microstock video collection, which will supplement its current library of more than five million images and illustrations with a collection of more than 10,000 royalty-free video clips at microstock prices.

“Fotolia has been, for years, one of the world’s most trusted sources for high-quality, low-priced, legal imagery and illustration,” explains Oleg Tscheltzoff, co-founder and president of Fotolia, LLC. “In January, we began accepting submissions for stock video clips because of an overwhelming demand from our customers, and the submissions we’ve seen in just a few short weeks – more than 10,000 accepted clips – have shown us that Fotolia is able to attract some of the best videographers from around the world to license their work through our agency.”

Fotolia’s video collection features a wide variety of content – from animation and stop motion to digital film and traditional video. Clips range in size and length from 320 X 240 to 1920 X 1080, 24 – 30 frames per second, and 5 – 60 seconds long. These clips – including HD video clips – prices are starting for as little as $10. Contributors can learn more about the offering and register to begin submitting clips by logging on to http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contents/Videos.

Since its launch in November, 2005, Fotolia has grown to offer one of the world’s largest libraries of legal, micro-priced images on the Web, offering professional and amateur photographers the ability to connect with more than 500,000 media buyers worldwide – from small businesses and design firms to some of the world’s most recognizable brands. With the launch of its stock video offering, Fotolia continues to expand its reach into new markets, satisfying the needs of videographers and video buyers worldwide by providing high-quality, low-cost alternatives to traditional stock video offerings.

About Fotolia

Fotolia, LLC, based in New York, with offices in 11 countries around the globe and offering Web sites in 10 languages, is one of the world's leading providers of micro-priced stock images. Launched in early November, 2005, Fotolia's image marketplace has acquired over five million images in its database and over one million international members. In December, 2007, Fotolia became the first independent microstock agency to enter the traditional stock marketplace, with the launch of Fotolia Infinite Collections. For more information about the company or to access the Fotolia Web site, visit www.fotolia.com.

Leading source for legal, low-cost imagery announces launch of microstock video collection

[imgl]4846139[/imgl] I was recently considering the idea of buying a new camera, and I literally thrown myself in the web looking for what i would love to buy and what i would more realistically buy .(why do we need money?:) So I started looking at Niko... by Driveyourkitty

[imgl]8977619[/imgl]So...a little new question, I am sure all of us on DT wondered what happened to the sold photos ,what did they make out of them, are they going around somewhere as catalogue's pics , are they on a website ,they became some kind of cool des... by Driveyourkitty

[imgl]8977524[/imgl] Well today is another beautiful day. Its sunny here in Sardinia. New pics are up on DT. Im still working at the Romania photos , planning to upload some of them here on DT and on my web site ( will i ever finish it? I can be so lazy somet... by Driveyourkitty

A post on the Microstockgroup got my gears turning about standards and rules when it comes to stock. The key quote I took away "I want to run my own restaurant, but no one will come in unless they know it's approved by the health inspector." i.e., there should be some kind of established standards in stock the way modern cities apply health code standards to restaurants.

I think the best Thai food I ever had was found after walking around Bangkok randomly, it was from an establishment built on an empty lot with an assemblage of random junk and some corrugated sheet metal as a 'roof'. When they laughed at me like an executioner being told to make it "very quick", for asking for it "very spicy", I knew I was on the right track.   

Would it pass a health inspectors check? Not a chance, without greased palms.. but it remains in my memory filed top under 'Thai food'.

Now, does this analogy contradict Zymmetrical's review agenda - sure. We are going for, to the best of our abilities, an efficient, sanitized norm. A seal of quality that reassures clients that every effort has been made to deliver a proper experience. The thing is is that sometimes you can find gold in unexpected places. The "long tail" is just as effective in stock photography as it is in general search engines for a phrase like "Madison Wisconsin Real Estate Broker" - for relatively little effort invested in promoting that specific search concept, you can reap a potentially large reward. Sometimes location is everything and relativistic standards are secondary.

It's a big problem that the Phd's at Google still struggle with daily: what content gets to the coveted first page positions and what remains as just an afterthought 9 pages later. If Twitter was judged at face value simply by how much money it generated for Google historically, it would be nowhere right now as it simply hasn't been a monetary concept (until recently). A -TREND- is a persistent anomaly and while it is useful to monitor trends, no one probably would have predicted 9 years ago before the advent of the blog, that a website that lets you type only 160 characters at once would become something like the next advancement after blogs.

For all the doubts and grey area that photography and illustration reviews can generate when performed by humans, we still come out on the winning side relying on our Review staff's  wit and know-how, due to the fact that there is no possible exact defined set of rules - the odds of creating a search engine (content selector) that delivers a "perfect" result every time are the exact odds that humans will always make the same choices in the same circumstances, over and over: extremely low. Buyers, just like sellers, take chances on brands, concepts, and even technical details ("hey, I can justify my time cloning out the unneeded parts of this photo because it's unique"). 

Now you've gotten this far in my ramblings, what is the payoff? In the very near future we will be launching ZyNet 1.0 to overthrow the humans and robotize creative imagery to absolute efficiency. Wait, no. Second try: in the very near future we will have an enormously useful tool to enable us to make the hard choices in quality vs quantity more efficiently. Will we achieve Stock Singularity? Not likely, as the science of capturing images of culture will always be more of an art. Will we be able to make the hard choices in a more fair and rewarding manner, definitely. Stay tuned.