Photoshelter Closes Stock Marketplace

 

Well if this isn’t another doomsday sign of the times for photography stock agencies I don’t know what is…Photoshelter announced minutes ago that they will be closing their Stock Photography Marketplace, which frankly was a bit of a surprise.

If you haven’t been following Photoshelter they originally started out offering archival services and online portfolios for photographers. Last year they began their march into the stock marketplace with some innovative and unique marketing strategies such as their Photoshelter Widget (which was really cool) and expanded their advertising into just about every corner of the photography world.

They looked like they were on their way to becoming a leader in this redefined age of stock photography and were straddling up next to the table with some of the bigger agencies. I for one was excited about their fresh design and easy to work with site.

But this may be just another sign of the times and the difficulties that stock agencies face in the digital age. The micro agencies seem to be reigning supreme and have forced agencies such as Getty, Corbis and a host of others to change their business models. However it will remain to be seen if these these new innovations and changes will enable the bigger agencies to survive the storm. 

In our current web environment, things are cheap, cheaper and free.  A lot of us are aware of this and ad agencies, designers, etc. are not excluded. 

It may be a pain to wade through a ton of bad photographs at a micro agency, but if you find a usable image for a few bucks vs. a few hundred your ad budget gets a whole lot more interesting. 

It will be interesting to see what happens in the future, but with this latest announcment from Photoshelter, it may be just another sign of the times. Either jump on the wagon or go by the wayside seems to be the theme…

Here’s a link to the official statement.