Welcome to picture buyers fair visitors

Here’s a quick welcome for those visiting the Picture Buyers Fair in London this week. First of all, if you have any questions following any of the two seminars that were moderated by Fast Media Magazine feel free to post them here. There is also a new group in the community where you can post questions and comments.

I hosted the first seminar entitled ‘what’s a picture worth’ on wednesday and we had a lot of questions following the presentations. In the seminar we explored the value of photography from four perspectives. Tim Harris, sales and marketing manager at Nature Picture Library has been responsible for the Bapla pricing trends survey. He kicked off with some of the main pricing trends and explained what has changed since the last survey in 2008. This was followed by a presentation from Andrew Mitchell at Fotolia who talked in particular about the role of free images in attracting new clients. Lewis Blackwell talked about the value of high-end, unique images and explained how he would pay more for great photography of good technical quality and complete metadata but finds this hard to find, leaving money on the table. Christina Vaughan addressed the issue of ubiquitous content and the need for creators to truly differentiate themselves in order to command higher prices. For those of you that want to know more about the speakers of the first day here are their bio’s

Christina Vaughan

Christina Vaughan is Image Source’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Christina sets the Vision and Leadership for Image Source, a company known for its high end production values and quality focus in the royalty free arena.

Christina has played an active role in leadership and direction on several industry trade bodies including PACA, ASPP and CEPIC. Christina is the current President of CEPIC, which represents over 1000 picture sources in Europe. Christina’s main focus today is driving forward Image Source’s Cross-Media product, the innovation collection of matched Stills and Motion imagery.

Christina is a graduate of the University of London with a BA Honours in European Studies. She speaks French and Spanish and lists her interests as Image Source first and foremost, followed by travel, good food and good friends. She enjoys Active Sports and the Outdoors and completed the London Triathlon in 2009.

“The pioneering spirit of Image Source is stronger today than ever – we are an ambitious company and are enjoying a new era of growth and innovation, particularly with Cross-Media and our desire to leverage the power of the web and the dynamic content space with high end imagery.”

•      2009 AWA Entrepreneur of the Year – Winner 
•      2008 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year – Semi-Finalist
•      2005 Everywoman Award, Athena Award – Finalist
•      2005 Lloyds TSB First Woman Award for Media – Finalist 

Christina is a Mentor for The Next Women, an Ambassador for Everywoman, President of CEPIC and Immediate Past Vice President of PACA. Image Source holds the Queen’s Award for International Enterprise.

Tim Harris

I managed the NHPA library for more than 20 years, and then worked for 3 years at Photoshot, managing their nature and garden collections and heading up the book sales team, before joining Nature Picture Library and Bluegreen Pictures as Sales and Marketing Manager in June of this year. I have chaired the BAPLA Rights Committee for the last 10 years and am a serving member of the BAPLA Executive.

Andrew Mitchell

Andrew Mitchell is Director of Business Development for Fotolia. With over 9 years of experience in the stock photography industry, Andrew’s previous experience includes postings at Corbis, Getty Images, and Digital Railroad. Andrew has established vast industry partnerships from the advertising and corporate markets, as well as magazine and book publishers.  He has seen the industry progress from sending out transparencies through to the digital age where Microstock has become a major influence on the business model.

Lewis Blackwell 

Lewis Blackwell is active on both sides of the picture business – as a picture buyer and creator; also as non-executive management and as a consultant for photo agencies.  In recent months he has created a bestselling illustrated book on trees, curated a photographic exhibition on Government, as well as producing Photowisdom, a detailed study of 50 of the world’s leading photographers. Among photographers he is working with currently are Albert Watson and Tim Flach. He is about to go to the French Tennis Open as a writer, and has several other publishing projects in development. For many years he was the worldwide creative head of Getty Images, working as one of the lead executives and being highly instrumental in creating many of its premium collections and building its worldwide brand. Previous work includes being Publisher/Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Creative Review.