Luminous Landscape Forum

The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: Isaac on August 13, 2013, 11:45:42 am

Title: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: Isaac on August 13, 2013, 11:45:42 am
How Jon Oringer became Silicon Alley's first billionaire (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23469410) BBC Business
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: Justan on August 13, 2013, 07:14:00 pm
Thanks for posting the link.
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on August 13, 2013, 08:25:47 pm
Who said there is no money to be made in micro-stock (looking at you, Rob!) ;)
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: louoates on August 13, 2013, 09:51:00 pm
And the great thing is that every year there are more success stories like this one.
The world of photography is changing so rapidly I can't even imagine what will be standard five years from now. Glassless lenses, raw mode with infinite focus range, 2-year battery service on a single charge, image memory chip with 5TB capacity, one-step internet image searches through photographers portfolios, software that will automatically composite image parts from many photographs, etc. Lots more millionaires to be born in this business.
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: Isaac on August 14, 2013, 01:05:25 am
You are a breath of fresh air.
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: Rob C on August 14, 2013, 03:53:11 am
Who said there is no money to be made in micro-stock (looking at you, Rob!) ;)


An interesting article, but little to do with being a photographer and everything to do with being a business person.

However much money an agency makes for itself has little to do with what the individual snapper has at the end of his career. It wasn't always so, but that's a story long told, as many of us know. Compare the figures of how many suppliers per agency then and now. You could hardly get into a good stock agency back in the day: they were very picky.

One of the leading Spanish agencies I tried (after leaving Tony Stone), gave me the best advice ever regarding contemporary practice: spend as little as you can and shoot the mundane. Don't think yourself an artist. Encouraging concept, that; makes one really desperate to roll up the sleeves and work.

And there the difference between art and commerce.

;-)

Rob C
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: EduPerez on August 14, 2013, 04:00:19 am
An interesting article, but little to do with being a photographer and everything to do with being a business person.
[...]

Rob C

Doesn't professional photographer have "little to do with being a photographer and everything to do with being a business person", too?
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: Rob C on August 14, 2013, 04:56:31 am
Doesn't professional photographer have "little to do with being a photographer and everything to do with being a business person", too?

In an ideal world, it would be a perfect combination of the two.

Unfortunately, it's been my experience that professional photographers fall roughly into one of two camps: businessman; artist. Seldom do they manage a marriage of the two. It's why the business is so precarious: the numbers in the poor businessman class have sabotaged it.

However, this takes us back to an earlier 'holier than thou' thread, where the amateur claimed to be the more true lover of the art because he refuses the thirty pieces of silver (a good deal in today's economy!), countered by the `pro view (only mine, I seem to remember) that dedicating your entire life to the art form is more telling than boasting occasional sex with it.

;-)

Rob C
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: Harald L on August 14, 2013, 06:09:03 am
And the great thing is that every year there are more success stories like this one.
The world of photography is changing so rapidly I can't even imagine what will be standard five years from now. Glassless lenses, raw mode with infinite focus range, 2-year battery service on a single charge, image memory chip with 5TB capacity, one-step internet image searches through photographers portfolios, software that will automatically composite image parts from many photographs, etc. Lots more millionaires to be born in this business.

And not to forget the millions of kids who will grow up with this stuff and won't understand why old grumpies stick to their old-fashioned gear and habits. :(
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: mezzoduomo on August 14, 2013, 08:49:38 am
And the great thing is that every year there are more success stories like this one.
The world of photography is changing so rapidly I can't even imagine what will be standard five years from now. Glassless lenses, raw mode with infinite focus range, 2-year battery service on a single charge, image memory chip with 5TB capacity, one-step internet image searches through photographers portfolios, software that will automatically composite image parts from many photographs, etc. Lots more millionaires to be born in this business.

Thx for publicly 'seeing the glass half-full'. 
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: Rob C on August 14, 2013, 09:26:08 am
Thx for publicly 'seeing the glass half-full'. 


There lies illusion and self-delusion: 50% is always 50%.

To be cruelly accurate, at the halfway mark, the glass is half full when you are filling it and half empty when you are emptying it. There is no confusion in the act, just in its presentation as flawed metaphor.

But that's language.

;-)

Rob C
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: Rob C on August 14, 2013, 09:29:53 am
And not to forget the millions of kids who will grow up with this stuff and won't understand why old grumpies stick to their old-fashioned gear and habits. :(


To help the youthful naïve understand: you don't know what you've got until you lose it. And if you never had it, you will never know.

Ignorance can really be bliss. Stay away from medics: you are never ill until they tell you so!

;-)

Rob C
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: mezzoduomo on August 14, 2013, 09:33:27 am

There lies illusion and self-delusion: 50% is always 50%.

To be cruelly accurate, at the halfway mark, the glass is half full when you are filling it and half empty when you are emptying it. There is no confusion in the act, just in its presentation as flawed metaphor.

But that's language.

;-)

Rob C

As noted, thx for SEEING....the glass as half-full. Flawed metaphor, maybe. But its often context and perspective, and seldom the 'cruelly accurate' facts or reality that makes the difference.
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: Rob C on August 14, 2013, 11:54:41 am
As noted, thx for SEEING....the glass as half-full. Flawed metaphor, maybe. But its often context and perspective, and seldom the 'cruelly accurate' facts or reality that makes the difference.


You never met my accountant; his glasses made everything too clear!

;-)

Rob C
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on August 14, 2013, 12:09:18 pm

...However much money an agency makes for itself has little to do with what the individual snapper has ...

Not unlike the Walmart concept: send your employees to collect food stamps while you become the richest family on Earth.
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: Isaac on August 14, 2013, 12:39:30 pm
And not to forget the millions of kids who will grow up with this stuff and won't understand why old grumpies stick to their old-fashioned gear and habits. :(

Don't worry; those kids will grow up and develop a sense of their own importance, that will in-turn be undermined as they become yesterdays men and women, replaced by a coming generation.
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: Rob C on August 14, 2013, 04:48:58 pm
Don't worry; those kids will grow up and develop a sense of their own importance, that will in-turn be undermined as they become yesterdays men and women, replaced by a coming generation.


A coming generation of what, though?

Thing is, I had imagined that evolution led upwards and onward to finer things. Seems to me that it's about to remove photography from the list of possible work options. Or maybe what it'll do is remove the lower and medium levels, leaving superstars and nothing else, the cancelled people being replaced by smarter computers or cellphones or whatever, in turn, replaces those technologies.

But I do think that some token top guys will remain: there's somethimng about the human that's cool. If you can afford it.

Rob C
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: Isaac on August 16, 2013, 03:57:55 pm
Thing is, I had imagined that evolution led upwards and onward to finer things.

That's a common misunderstanding. Evolution doesn't lead, evolution follows -- evolution is adaptation to the current circumstances (which may themselves have changed because of other evolutionary adaptations).


superstars and nothing else

Winner takes all does seem to have been a general trend in many fields.
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: Rob C on August 16, 2013, 05:05:09 pm
That's a common misunderstanding. Evolution doesn't lead, evolution follows -- evolution is adaptation to the current circumstances (which may themselves have changed because of other evolutionary adaptations).


Winner takes all does seem to have been a general trend in many fields.


Okay, scrub 'leads' and paste in 'is conduit to' finer things. However you choose to word it, I believed that the evolutionary trend was upwards towards better, in the sense that our lives might improve as direct consequence of those changes... In the case of photography and photographers, I belive it's gone backwards quite rapidly. The work available is vanishing; the standards are different but not, in my mind, better; personal skills are being inexorably replaced by the endless mechanical opportunities of the computer which provide for an infinity of attempts and failures (monkeys, typewriters and William S. come to mind). I thought myself a pretty hot printer in my day; now, I realise that what I did with my eye and moving fingers has been replaced by a mechanoical process with no soul or imagination, just the ability to go on endlesly until that moment of perfectly sterile perfection of not a lot. Hell, even the joy in the picture at the end is vanishing, lost to that sense of depleted personal input.

Actually, I think that the amateur is coming off worse than the professional. For the pro, the constraints of time and money make quicker options attractive propositions, but for his ‘personal’ work - and by extension that of all the true amateurs – the input is not now one just of personal skill and experience, but more of patience. The resulting sadness at the knowledge that pretty much anyone can do it if they keep the computer on for long enough, is surely a constant downer for anyone who knew the old crafts.

No, I seek neither argument nor several rounds of fisticuffs; just making a point that rankles me more than a little. Maybe that’s why I’ve lost so much enthusiasm: it doesn’t seem a worthwhile thing to do these days – you press a button, feed something in and play with some more buttons and a mouse, and there you are: your picture. What fun. Where the excitement and the waiting for that little yellow box? Or that wet roll to dry so you can contact it?

Instead, we have instant gratification married to the knowledge that over ninety per cent of what we shoot dies stillborn, victim to the cheap and easy ride.

Evolution? Suicide?

Rob C


Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: elliot_n on August 16, 2013, 05:30:35 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj84tfS7ag4
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: RSL on August 16, 2013, 05:35:54 pm
. . .personal skills are being inexorably replaced by the endless mechanical opportunities of the computer which provide for an infinity of attempts and failures (monkeys, typewriters and William S. come to mind). I thought myself a pretty hot printer in my day; now, I realise that what I did with my eye and moving fingers has been replaced by a mechanoical process with no soul or imagination, just the ability to go on endlesly until that moment of perfectly sterile perfection of not a lot. Hell, even the joy in the picture at the end is vanishing, lost to that sense of depleted personal input.

Rob, It sounds as if you're saying a good photograph can only come from hard work in the darkroom. To me, a photograph either succeeds or fails at the moment the shutter trips. Everything after that is grunt work, and the computer cuts down on both the difficulty and the tedium of the grunt work.

But I'll confess there was tactile satisfaction in working with wet paper in my hands and watching a print come up under gentle agitation. I think the loss of that satisfaction is mainly what people who are unsatisfied with computer processing are mourning. I miss it too, but I wouldn't go back to it on a bet.

I know that you and Walter both believe it's not possible to produce a print on a digital printer that's the equal of a good gelatin-silver print, but if both kinds of print are equally well done I just can't see any difference. In B&W I don't think a digital print can beat a gelatin-silver print, but I do think it can equal it. In color, to me at least, there's no comparison. Today's advanced printers and inks can beat gelatin-silver-dye color prints hands down, and of course their longevity is an order of magnitude greater.

I certainly agree that "perfectly sterile perfection of "not a lot" is overtaking every branch of art -- not just photography, but I don't blame digital techniques. I blame the people who are producing "not a lot." Were we still depending on gelatin-silver the same people who are using digital would be producing "not a lot." It's a problem with the culture, not the tools.
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: mezzoduomo on August 16, 2013, 06:41:53 pm

Okay, scrub 'leads' and paste in 'is conduit to' finer things. However you choose to word it, I believed that the evolutionary trend was upwards towards better, in the sense that our lives might improve as direct consequence of those changes... In the case of photography and photographers, I belive it's gone backwards quite rapidly. The work available is vanishing; the standards are different but not, in my mind, better; personal skills are being inexorably replaced by the endless mechanical opportunities of the computer which provide for an infinity of attempts and failures (monkeys, typewriters and William S. come to mind). I thought myself a pretty hot printer in my day; now, I realise that what I did with my eye and moving fingers has been replaced by a mechanoical process with no soul or imagination, just the ability to go on endlesly until that moment of perfectly sterile perfection of not a lot. Hell, even the joy in the picture at the end is vanishing, lost to that sense of depleted personal input.

Actually, I think that the amateur is coming off worse than the professional. For the pro, the constraints of time and money make quicker options attractive propositions, but for his ‘personal’ work - and by extension that of all the true amateurs – the input is not now one just of personal skill and experience, but more of patience. The resulting sadness at the knowledge that pretty much anyone can do it if they keep the computer on for long enough, is surely a constant downer for anyone who knew the old crafts.

No, I seek neither argument nor several rounds of fisticuffs; just making a point that rankles me more than a little. Maybe that’s why I’ve lost so much enthusiasm: it doesn’t seem a worthwhile thing to do these days – you press a button, feed something in and play with some more buttons and a mouse, and there you are: your picture. What fun. Where the excitement and the waiting for that little yellow box? Or that wet roll to dry so you can contact it?

Instead, we have instant gratification married to the knowledge that over ninety per cent of what we shoot dies stillborn, victim to the cheap and easy ride.

Evolution? Suicide?

Rob C




Strong support for the (understandably nostalgic) grumpy old man stereotype. Digital has obviously added so much to the art and science of photography that carping seems quaint and selfish and....narrow minded.
I'm not going to cry for the people who want to be pros (in a dead model) any more than I'd cry for the typewriter repairman or the post office or record store owner.  I recently saw Joe Walsh reduced to a whining mess, going on and on about the 'death of the music business'.  Tell that to my 18 year old son and his buddy who composed, recorded and distributed an album's worth of original music in a month's time using little more than a Mac Air and a $50 electric guitar.
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: Isaac on August 16, 2013, 08:11:32 pm
...now, I realise that what I did with my eye and moving fingers has been replaced by a mechanoical process with no soul or imagination...

After The Golden Age we do the best we can with what we have.
Title: Re: Shutterstock, Silicon Alley's first billionaire
Post by: Rob C on August 17, 2013, 03:47:34 am
After The Golden Age we do the best we can with what we have.



Mechanoical.... I like that; sounds almost perfectly, evolutionarily formed to function; must indulge in a few more neologisms in the future - thanks for bringing it to my attention - this creative stuff is becoming quite catchy.

Yes, you're right: post-GA it's all been downhill. Thank goodness more now realise the fact; could be the start of a beautiful revival! As with '59 Coupe de Villes, I'll hold my breath for more I can't afford to buy.

;-)

Rob C