Marcelo Calbucci

Startup Score:

Successes: 0.1+0.5
Failures: 1
In progress: 1

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Are you a good "pro-amateur" photographer?

 

    Photography seems to be one of those hobbies the more you get to do it the more involved you get and the more people start to think your photos are pretty darn good and... "you should sell those". One might argue that most hobbies are like that.

 

    Until recently I always told friends to go to iStockPhoto, submit their pictures and see if they get any traction. After all, it takes a very short period of time to setup, upload and see what happens, no extra effort.

 

    Last year, a friend of mine (Kelly Smith) launched ImageKind, a place to frame and/or sell your pictures into framed art and/or buy framed art.

 

    Now I only recommend ImageKind.

 

    The reasons are very simple if you compare it to iStockPhoto. ImageKind is for consumers to buy pictures. iStockPhotos is for marketers, designers, PPT-makers to buy photos. ImageKind lets you decide what you want to sell. iStockPhotos decides what is a good picture and what is not.

 

    One of my friends submitted a beautiful artistic picture to iStockPhoto and it was rejected because just a small part of the picture was in focus, which was the whole point of that photo, but the iStockPhoto reviewer didn't get it.

 

    iStockPhoto revolutionized stock-photo transactions, making it simpler, faster and cheaper, but they are missing the whole "YOU" (user generated content) thing. They are an mediator where none is needed, just better algorithms to find what you are looking for.

 

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