NY Times mention Fotolia and iStock as Corbis competitors

The New York Times wrote a large article about Bill Gate's Corbis Images. They mentioned microstock and its entrance as a challenge to the stock photography community. As Imagetrail will hopefully someday prove, the results of microstock photography are a little more than "amatuer or semi-professional". In my opinion much of what is found on microstock site is more professional. The interfaces are often harder to deal with, but they also are improving.

Time will tell whether microstock will conquer, or just co-exist. There will always be different needs and different markets in stock imagery.

"What Corbis did not foresee was the rise of so-called microstock agencies like Fotolia and iStockPhoto. These sites take advantage of the phenomenon known as crowdsourcing, or turning to the online masses for free or low-cost submissions. Thousands of amateur and semiprofessional photographers armed with high-quality digital cameras and a copy of Photoshop contribute photographs to microstock sites, which often charge $1 to $5 an image."

Read the article @ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/10corbis.html

The Truth About Keywords

When iStockPhoto first came up with its disambiguation concept I cried as a photographer. The idea was that each word in English (and any other language) has several meanings and therefore in order to return the best results for a given search, keywords aren't enough. Each keyword must by disambiguated by choosing a phrase with the correct meaning.

Coming Around

I am starting to come around with the concept as I put together this search engine. I like to look through the deep searches and see what cool images the DB has added each morning. Last night the robot looked for human brain, jewelry, and Boston. I found it interesting to look through the photos and sometimes say "Huh, what does this have to do with Boston?" I realized that although they are trully annoying photographers (to the point of many leaving) they are making the search more relavant for designers. Lucky for me, I'm not that popular, nor complex yet.

Boston Images

Many of the images do in fact make sense, but not directly. There are pictures of the famous buildings and parks, and then pictures of Boston terriers and finally there are a few image that although I understand the keyword, it is rather inappropriate. For example the single isolated maple leaf (which I am sure fell from a tree located in Boston). Or you may get a picture of a hand holding a newspaper (Maybe is ways the Boston Globe?).

Community Keyword Reporting

I think I will be implement a "community tool" to the site that allows people to report bad keyword matches. If you find something that you can't imagine relates to your keywords, you be able to vote against that match and with a couple votes the image will be removed. I am a little scared of things like this because people can cause more harm than good, but I'll continue to consider it.