Found­ed in 1997, Get­ty Images has made a busi­ness out of licens­ing stock pho­tog­ra­phy to web sites. But, in recent years, the com­pa­ny has strug­gled, fac­ing stiffer com­pe­ti­tion from oth­er com­pa­nies .… and from online pira­cy. Quot­ed in the British Jour­nal of Pho­tog­ra­phy, Craig Peters, a Senior VP at Get­ty Images, observes that Get­ty is “real­ly start­ing to see the extent of online infringe­ment. In essence, every­body today is a pub­lish­er thanks to social media and self-pub­lish­ing plat­forms. And it’s incred­i­bly easy to find con­tent online and sim­ply right-click to utilise it.” All of this becomes a prob­lem, for Get­ty, when cash-strapped “self pub­lish­ers, who typ­i­cal­ly don’t know any­thing about copy­right and licens­ing,” start right click­ing and using the com­pa­ny’s images with­out attri­bu­tion or pay­ment.

Fight­ing a los­ing bat­tle against infringers, Get­ty Images sur­prised con­sumers and com­peti­tors yes­ter­day when it announced that it would make 35 mil­lion images free for pub­lish­ers to use, with a few strings attached. Pub­lish­ers, broad­ly defined, are now allowed to add cer­tain Get­ty images to their sites, on the con­di­tion that they use embed code pro­vid­ed by the com­pa­ny.  That embed code (find instruc­tions here) will ensure that “there will be attri­bu­tion around that image,” that “images will link back to [Get­ty’s] site and direct­ly to the image’s details page,” and that Get­ty will receive infor­ma­tion on how the images are being used and viewed.

Not every Get­ty image can be embed­ded — only 35,000,000 of the 80,000,000 images in Get­ty’s archive. And, to be sure, many of those 35 mil­lion Get­ty images are stock pho­tos that will leave you unin­spired. But if you’re will­ing to sift patient­ly through the col­lec­tion, you can find some gems, like the shots fea­tured above of some great jazz leg­ends — Miles Davis, Bil­lie Hol­i­day and John Coltrane.

If you’re inter­est­ed in rum­mag­ing through free images from muse­ums and libraries, don’t miss our recent post: Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums, and Free Books from Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es.

via BJP

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

14,000 Free Images from the French Rev­o­lu­tion Now Avail­able Online

The Get­ty Puts 4600 Art Images Into the Pub­lic Domain (and There’s More to Come)

Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums, and Free Books from Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es

For sev­er­al decades of its his­to­ry, the Polaroid was called a “Land Cam­era” after the company’s founder Edwin Land, and the prod­uct line includ­ed not only con­sumer devices but also high-end machines like the SX-70, a fold­ing SLR cam­era intro­duced in 1972. The SX-70 boast­ed a host of impres­sive fea­tures that allowed pho­tog­ra­phers to achieve the effects of non-instant SLRs such as “changes in depth of field, dou­ble expo­sure, fixed-point focus­ing, and close­up pho­tog­ra­phy.” The SX-70 made a con­sid­er­able impres­sion on famed hus­band and wife design team Charles and Ray Eames, so much so that they pro­duced the 11-minute adver­tise­ment above describ­ing in detail the SX-70’s high­ly com­plex oper­a­tions. In his intro­duc­tion, Charles Eames tells us that no less an author­i­ty than Alfred Stieglitz “favored any means that might free the photographer’s whole ener­gies so that they could be chan­neled in the direc­tion of the deci­sion, the pic­ture itself.” Thus, Edwin Land’s inven­tions are giv­en the impri­matur of the father of fine art pho­tog­ra­phy him­self, and in 1972, the SX-70 was Land’s high­est achieve­ment to date.

The Polaroid instant cam­era seems to have come full cir­cle from con­sumer toy to util­i­tar­i­an snap­shot-mak­er to artists’ exper­i­men­tal tool to instru­ment of retro-hip­ster­ism to con­sumer toy again. But the phys­i­cal, real-world Polaroid aes­thet­ic almost met its end in 2008 when the com­pa­ny dis­con­tin­ued pro­duc­tion of its instant film, prompt­ing the cre­ators of the Impos­si­ble Project to “[save] ana­log instant pho­tog­ra­phy from extinc­tion by releas­ing var­i­ous, brand new and unique instant films.” VP Dave Bias demon­strates the project’s device, which allows smart­phone pho­togs to print images on Polaroid-style film. Respond­ing to the mas­sive demands of 21st cen­tu­ry détourned nos­tal­gia, Polaroid has intro­duced new lines of instant cam­eras, and Fuji is also bridg­ing the Instagram/Polaroid divide with a portable print­er this spring. But what the Impos­si­ble Project highlights—as the Eames did in ‘72—is just how much the Polaroid became a means of mak­ing fine art as well as kitsch, a too often unre­marked upon appli­ca­tion of the famous instant cam­era and the visu­al aes­thet­ics it bequeathed the dig­i­tal age.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Lau­rence Olivi­er, Liv Ull­mann and Christo­pher Plummer’s Clas­sic Polaroid Ads

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Ital­ian Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mau­r­izio Gal­im­ber­ti Cre­ates Cubist Polaroid Col­lages of Artists & Celebri­ties

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness