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ART DIRECTORS CAN DO IT IN THEIR SLEEP BY NOW: LOG ONTO THE INTERNET, HEAD FOR a stock agency's Web site, find an image, license and download it. Stock photography is now almost a billion-dollar business with an exclusively commercial client base, and agents expect technology to attract even more business customers and revenues.
But will the technology help open vast consumer markets as well? Will a couple pay a few dollars to license a wintry landscape for their personal home page and a small run of inkjet-printed Christmas cards, for instance? Will a family subscribe to an image collection so the kids can have pictures for school reports and Cub Scout newsletters?
Two image providers-Corbis and Index Stock-have bet that the answer is yes, and are marketing images directly to personal users. And at least two other agencies say they will look seriously at the direct-to-consumer market in the coming year. But other companies and some photographers remain skeptical. (More about them later.)
Faster modems, cheap-yet-powerful computers, inexpensive color printers and easy Internet navigation have brought the consumer market to "critical mass," asserts David Rheins, vice president of Corbis Productions, the consumer division of that company.
"There is a real, screaming demand for digital content that hasn't manifested itself [before]," Rheins continues. "There is an impetus for us to step up the level of activity."
Corbis (www.corbis.com) is reaching out to consumers in three ways. Their most recent product is the Corbis Picture Experience, an experiment with Alta Vista that so far allows users to search 500,000 Corbis Collection images and send free "Corbis Cards" over the Internet. Other Picture Experience projects designed to tap into consumer demand for pictures are in the works.
The company also operates the online Corbis Store, which sells prints and posters from a smaller image collection. The third product line comprises editorial Web pages such as Corbis Trip-a travel feature page; and a series of Hollywood retrospective pages, created in partnership with Hachette Filipacchi and Premiere Online.
Since its debut last February, sales at Corbis Store are "on track,' Rheins says. But the Corbis Card experiment is the real hit, achieved with minimal promotion: about 100,000 cards a month have been sent since late July.
Corbis hopes to...