Some things you just don’t see coming - and those really tend to sting the most - and leave a mark.

The PhotoShelter Collection will leave a mark - and in more ways than one.

This morning, I received a personal call from Grover Sanschagrin, a friend and colleague of mine who was one of the founders of PhotoShelter and it’s “Collection.”  He told me that the current market forces were forcing them to close down their ambitious “Collection” venture prematurely - while the parent company PhotoShelter and it’s Personal Archive is here to stay.  

For those of you who may be unaware of the PhotoShelter Collection, this venture was a breath of (needed) fresh air in our industry.    Their idea was to create one of the best high-quality photography collections out there - and to leverage new technologies in ways that would allow the photographers to keep a lion’s share of the profits from each sale (both commercial and editorial image sales.)  Unlike most of their competitors - where getting less than 50% of each sale, and in fact where 30% to less than 5% of the total sale ever finding it’s way back to the photographer is unfortunately not an uncommon result - PhotoShelter made a point of “putting the photographers first” and giving them 70% of each sale.   For those of you new to the business - that number is traditionally the amount that goes to the agency NOT the photographer - I just wanted to make that doubly clear.   (more…)