Corepics celebrated its first anniversary a week ago. A lot has happened since we started out, and things are looking up. We’ve expanded our stock portfolio to roughly 2500 images, we’re continuously increasing our productivity, quality levels and efficiency, without abandoning the enjoyment we get out of our job. On top of that, we’re also announcing a new service soon, so stay tuned!

Generally speaking, we’re moving up a tier in the world of Photography. And with this higher tier, a more professional and slick website is compulsory.

So, we went out shopping for a while, and ended up with the boys of Graph Paper Press, and are currently constructing a new site around their fabulous “Modularity” theme. Thanks, guys! You’re doing an excellent job!

We’re proud to announce we’ve merged our portfolio with 36clicks. We will continue building the Corepics brand.  Together, we can offer a wider variety of images and themes, as well as double our portfolio size. Over the next few, we’ll transfer the images from the various accounts into one. We’ll also restructure our light boxes. This’ll also mean that 36clicks on stock will cease its activities, which are also to be continued here, on corepics.com

The trade name 36clicks will remain to be exclusively used by De Wolf Images, and will be no longer connected to Corepics VOF.

Merging the two portfolios will further increase our productivity, efficiency, and create a more transparent profile, in full compliance with our agents policies.

Stay tuned for more news.

We’ve just crossed the finish line of our Cliche shoot annex experiment. We’re proud to announce the winner of our competition. However, due to a rather busy time, a full report on our proceedings will have to wait…

Thanks for your patience!

Your option of choice. Vote Now!

With roughly 10 days into our cliché competition, its about time for a short update on how we’re doing.

The task we set ourselves:

Despite the general consensus that shooting cliches for microstock (more info after the read more link) isn’t the most sensible thing to do, we set ourselves the challenge to come up with some blatant clichés, and think of a novel way to shoot them. Our goal: to stimulate the creative processes and come up with something out of the ordinary.

The Challenge:

To spice up the challenge, we turned this minishoot into a small competition, to see which cliché would sell best. In addition to the buyers side, we also included a small poll for photographers, to complete the information – whether the photographer’s views match with customer’s demands. [read more here]

As we’ve only have 1/3rd of the time we set ourselves behind us, it’s still way premature to draw any conclusions, so I’ll refrain from commenting, and just state the intermediate results.

You can still cast your vote – we appreciate it! By entering a comment too, you are eligible for one of these 16 images in high res for FREE, if you leave the most valuable reaction!

Top three most sold images on shutterstock:

Currently most sold: “Blind Leap”	Current runner-up: “White Collar Criminal”	Currently third: “Climbing up”

Top three photographer’s choice images:

Leader Photographer’s choice: “White Collar Criminal”	Photographer’s runner-up: “Spicing-up a presentation”	Trailing in third place: “Telephone Power”

We’ll keep you posted on the outcome, as well as our conclusions!

Everybody seems to have an opinion about shooting clichés. Some see it as copying the ideas of others, others see it as an “off-limits” subject for relatively new contributors, like us. This is mainly because the subjects and concepts are already very well covered – in abundance – on the microstock sites. Various forums and forums have discussed this at length.

Mystockphoto

Microstock diaries

PicNiche

Mac World and Computerworld

Likewise, there are as many photographers as there are opinions on what to shoot, and in most cases, Clichés are not one of them…

Even on the buyer’s side, Clichés are taboo from a marketing point of view:

101 clichés

As mentioned before, this minishoot isn’t intended to make us rich. Its primarily intended to get the creative juices flowing – trying to grab an image concept that’s already abundant, and give it a novel swing. This line of thoughts actively helps us to maximise productivity of our regular shoots. On a different level, the information gathered throughout this process is also of significant importance: Is shooting  cliches really to be avoided? How well do we – photographers – understand the buyers demands? Is there still room left within the overflow in submitted images depicting archetypal concepts to achieve a return on investments for such a shoot?

Soon after our competition closes on 28 October 2009, we’ll share our findings. So please help us, and fill in the poll!

My Stock Photography currently features an article about Corepics, the way we work, and our current cliché challenge. With special thanks to Roberto for providing this opportunity! And what a great title! MicroRocks!

Read the full article on my stock photography here, and make sure to check out Roberto’s other articles, they’re great reading material, and a continuous source of news, trends and information

Also, don’t forget to vote for your favourite cliché!

iStockphoto recently changed its model release requirements, which will affect the work flow of any stock photographer, connected with iStock. The new guidelines, which go in effect on 1 September 2009, will also affect the models we’re using, as they will be required to fill in a new form for each and every shoot. This means a lot more paper work and hassle for everyone.

These changes are reflected in our new universal model release, which we will be using from now on.

• • Download the universal model release for adults 18+!
  • The property release form can be found here!
    

The main changes to the new iStock policy are:

• A new release signed and dated for every photo shoot.
• Model, witness and photographer have to sign the release in the presence of each other
• Filing birth dates are now compulsory for all model releases

These changes go in effect on 1 September 2009, and will apply for all shoots on and after that date. Images from shoots before 1 September can still use the existing model releases, so there is no need to update releases for models who attended shoots before coming Tuesday.

A few notes, more information and changes to the universal model release – click on the read more link

Notes on model releases:

• A model release is a legal document, and should be treated as such. It is strongly recommended to follow the new guidelines, despite how tedious and time consuming they may be.
• Pay attention that the model release form is filled out properly and completely. No abbreviations, full addresses (iStock now also accepts PO boxes, however, other sites don’t)
• Inform models about their rights, and explain the purpose of model releases. Also tell them, what it actually means: By signing a model release for a specific shoot, there is no control over who uses the images for what purpose. (with the exception of inflammatory, personification or illegal/racist/hatred inspiring context) in Royalty Free Photography.

More information:

• The full article on new iStock guidelines (page 1 | page 2)
• The iStock forum, discussing these changes
• The independant Microstock group forum

Notes on the universal model release:

• Version 2 of the universal model release for adults now also covers videogaphers, and not only photographers
• Fields for adding dates of birth are added to the model release form
• More specific instructions have been added
• This model release form should be accepted by all microstock agencies, but corepics does not take responsibility for rejected forms. If you use the text in our form, you do so at your own risk.

Restaurant Dijkers, where we staged our “wining and dining” shoot, will soon feature one of our photos, printed on canvas, on their wall at 100×150 cm, so go check it out!

Corepics proudly presents a full 360 degree glance into the realms of Societeit Phoenix, Delft. This panorama was composed of 175 individual images, resulting in a huge 6,9GB file and a 1.4 TeraPixel image. The details are truly incredible, even though this website only shows a reduced version.

Click on the read more link below, to access a fully interactive movie, and navigate your way through the building.

You can navigate around by dragging your mouse over the image. Use the shift key to zoom in, and ctrl to zoom out.

Our 275th accepted upload on Dreamstime in less than two months resulted in a second Editors’ Choice. This time, the image is quite different from what we normally aim to produce. It’s powerful, it’s fast, it’s dynamic. An illuminated taxi sign on top of the roof of a car, driving at speed through a tunnel, overtaking other cars at high pace.

© Photographer: Corepics | Dreamstime.com

Suction cup camera support

Some background information: During this shoot, all possible precautions were taken. We used a suction device on the roof to attach the camera to, used the camera strap to safe-guard it, and used a remote wire exposure to take this shot whilst sitting safely inside the vehicle. We even informed the police that we were driving around with a taxi sign and several cameras for this shoot, so we would not get falsely charged with “crawling”

Other images in this series can be found in our “big business” collection and in the “real jobs” collection

With the paint barely dry, and wilst Corepics is still a bit moist behind the ears, we’re quite pleased to announce that our first series, the Office, is performing better than expected. Dreamstime even promoted it with an Editor’s Choice.

© Photographer: Corepics | Dreamstime

The full series is also available on Dreamstime; if you rather source your images from a different agency, click one of the links on the left!