The PhotoShelter Collection will discontinue stock photo licensing.

Sad to see but just saw this post at Photoshelter. It's never good to see a competitor in your industry close it's doors and there were many things to admire about Photoshelter. Paul Melcher once compared us in a pretty weird way to one another on his blog. I'm not sure they mentioned all the reasons for closing the licensing wing of their business but I wanted to add the update to our blog for anyone interested. I hope members of Cutcaster will relay their stories to members of PS about their experience so far at Cutcaster and that PS members will move their valuable images to Cutcaster for licensing and let us go to work for them. All we ask for is a chance to prove ourselves.

Why is the PhotoShelter Collection shutting down?

Despite our unique approach to the stock photo marketplace and progress by our sales team since launching last year, The PhotoShelter Collection was unable to change buyer behavior on a grand scale and generate revenues quickly enough to satisfy our goals for this product line. While image buyers worldwide appreciated our new approach, the size of our image selection and the incumbent player's entrenched subscription relationships were a persistent challenge. As a result, we saw few strategic options for the Collection that would allow us to stay true to our commitment to a better deal for photographers and our desire to change the industry. We have chosen to refocus heavily on enhancing our original product, The PhotoShelter Personal Archive, which several thousand photographers use for bulletproof storage and online image sales directly to their own clients.


This is a call to all Cutcaster members. If you know other Photographers who were using PS as a way to license their photos, I would love your help in asking them to join our mission at Cutcaster but only if you feel that they would benefit from using our site or have great content.

Our doors and arms are wide open and staying that way. We need to increase our collections and I know that many of the photographers on PS had great work that they were licensing. This will benefit everyone by bringing more buyers to the site while still letting photographers set their own price and retain more control.

Interview with Lane Hartwell

Q&A with Lane Hartwell in "Going to the mat for photo copyrights":

Shankland: What do you think of watermarking to address the issue?

Hartwell: A great idea. Sites like Flickr need to employ an automatic watermarking system. The site I am moving my work to, Photoshelter, allows me to set that all up in advance and I never have to deal with it again. It´s applied to every photo.

Shankland: How much did you bill the Richter Scales?

Hartwell: They haven´t received the invoice yet. I can tell you that I used Fotoquote and calculated the invoice based on usage, the market where the photograph is to be used and various other factors, which are the typical parameters photographers use when pricing an image.