Portraits and travel photography
  • home
    • about
    • contact
    • blog
  • portraits
  • travel
  • food
  • interiors
  • Prints for sale

11/4/2016

The Demise of Demotix

0 Comments

Read Now
 
Coming back into work after taking time out to have children, one of the ways I got myself going was to submit images to Demotix, and on-line news agency. You would shoot, upload, and a couple of hours later the images would be available. Once you had done 10 stories you could upload and publish immediately, which obviously helped.  
The great advantage of this for me was that I could do shoots while the kids were in school. Sales were far from meteoric but I liked the fact that the images remained on-line for potential re-use and you could see how many views they had received. I shot some political launch events, art events, gallery openings, some demos. There was a massive gap in what sold: famous people sold, other things did not. 
Demotix was bought by Corbis a couple of years ago, which didn't worry me as I was already a Corbis contributor; it was one of the first contracts I signed when I left photography college 16 years ago. From each story of 20 to 25 images that I submitted to Demotix, Corbis would pick about 5 images to go on their website, and it was through this that most of my sales were achieved. 
Sadly, in January this year, Corbis was sold to Visual China Group who are merging them with Getty Images. The Demotix website was closed down with no notice, leaving many photographers distressed, confused and angry. Soon, on 2nd May 2016, the Corbis website will be closed down too and not all of the material will be available through Getty.
The stock industry has been getting harder and harder over the last 10 years. Fees have got lower and lower, companies turn to Flickr and Instagram to source photos from people who are flattered to get a credit rather than asking for fair payment. Picture libraries have reduced again and again the proportion of fees which go back to the photographers. Demotix seemed like a good antidote to this but evidently it was not sufficiently profitable to be kept going.
Any previous blog posts here which I have linked to Demotix no longer work, so all I have from that time is a couple of screen shots.  
RIP Demotix and good luck to photographers trying to still earn a living. 
Picture
Picture
Picture

Share

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

Details

    Author

    Anna Watson: photographer, parent, juggler

    Archives

    January 2019
    January 2018
    November 2016
    October 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    October 2015
    May 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014

    Categories

    All
    Activists
    Celebrity
    Christiana Wyly
    Clapham Film Unit
    Demotix
    Fashion
    Heritage Lottery Fund
    Model
    Motherhood
    Mums
    Old Age
    Peace
    Skin
    Skunk Anansie
    Suffragettes
    WILPF
    Women In Arts
    Working Mothers
    Working Mums
    World War I
    WWI
    Yvette Cooper

    RSS Feed

All photographs copyright Anna Watson, not to be reproduced without permission.  For all enquiries please contact anna@annawatson.com
  • home
    • about
    • contact
    • blog
  • portraits
  • travel
  • food
  • interiors
  • Prints for sale