Do Photoblogs Have a Place in the Stock Photography Market?

Dan Heller has an excellent post up that is pretty much spot on about the future of social sharing photography and the stock photography business.

From Dan Heller's Photography Business Blog:

In 2000, I wrote an article called, 'The Five Truisms of the Photography Business,' and Truism #1 is 'There are more people who have photography as a hobby than as a profession.'

While an obvious statement on its own, it has enormous weight when you consider how the internet has brought down the barriers that have kept consumers out of the photo business in the first place. Now that they're here, they have fundamentally altered the photo industry, whether intentional or not, and whether other photographers like it or not.

Many people think that the brilliant photography that is being produced and shared today by people on photoblogs and at places like Flickr and Zooomr has no potential in the traditional stock photography market. They think that at best this work represents potential images for the microstock market. I disagree entirely and agree with Dan that there is a market between traditional stock that you would find at Corbis, Getty (GYI) and Jupitermedia (JUPM) and the microstock sites. This is what we are working on building at Zoomr right now.

Dan's article is well worth a read.

Thanks, Joe!