Microstock falls into the UGC classification but when one tries to define UGC to someone who has never heard of it, you realize that the designation doesn’t totally apply to Dreamstime. A friend in the industry who works with professional advertising photographers on assignments asked me to explain UGC when she found out I had attended the UCGX in San Jose, CA earlier this week.

I said the users of the content also generated it. She replied, “You mean like art directors buy in-house photographer’s work?” No that’s not it and so the conversation went on. And in fact in many ways as micropayment stock photography matures, it seems that quite a lot of the users don’t generated content and a lot of the content makers have no need to buy it.

I was...

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If the U.S. economic stimulus legislation works according to plan, there will be demands for images that illustrate enormous expenditures on the country’s infrastructure over the next 18 months and for years to come. In addition to building roads and bridges, the bill also provides for funds for alternative energy.
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Many outside the U.S. blame America for the worldwide depression and perhaps rightly so as it started here. If the U.S. plan does work to get the economy working again, many countries will perhaps emulate the U.S. plan. Some countries already have stimulus plans with infrastructure funding.


It follows that images that illustrate these top-spending items will be in demand for articles, websites and blogs. After the major bridge collapse...

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It’s been two years and one month and well over a hundred blogs written since I joined Dreamstime. But now it is time to say goodbye as I move on to finish writing a book that continues the themes of my blogs to be published by an imprint of Random House and to concentrate more fully on my busy consulting business.


In the beginning I thought that all the learning would be one-way: me passing on all I had learned in 30 years in the traditional stock photo business to the Dreamstime team and photographers. In reality I learned a great deal more than I taught, I have no doubt.

I’m privileged to being one of the very few individuals whose experience spans all business models in the industry and I have Serban, Dragos, Jeff and the rest of the team to thank...

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