Newer Photo Agencies Seek Edge With Digital Archives
MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY
By DARRELL SATZMAN
Staff Reporter
It wasn’t an assignment Scott Downey relished, but when a fashion designer client insisted that he rush to photograph Neil Young’s outfit during a charity event at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Downey hustled over.
When he got there, Downey, who has owned Beverly Hills-based Celebrity Photo Agency for the past 25 years, couldn’t get in the door.
“WireImage was promised an exclusive they did the event free for the charity,” said Downey, said referring to a year-old startup founded by a group of entertainment photographers. “Basically they said ‘Screw you, you’re out of here.’ I’ve been running into this for a year.”
It’s a new ballgame for the handful of established agencies, wire services and freelancers that trade in the international demand for celebrity images. Two new companies WireImage and ImageDirect are vying for a bigger slice of the celebrity photo pie by offering clients quick delivery of digital photos, along with a variety of archiving and syndication services.
But while celebrity photos are a steady and lucrative source of cash flow as well as of establishing a foothold in the business it’s the flexibility of shooting, storing and licensing digital images that firms are banking on for their survival.
The long-term value, said Kevin Fitzgerald, chief executive of ImageDirect, is in “working with (client) staffs to create a way to handle all workflow issues through to approval of images. Plus, there are all those drawers full of transparencies and prints that can be digitized.”
It’s a process that many publications will find easier to outsource, particularly in an era of cost cutting. “They are out there competing. We’re certainly seeing them at all the big events,” said Tom Stathis, the California photo editor for the AP.
New Players
Besides live event coverage and photo syndication, WireImage operates an online database with two million photographs of Hollywood events and personalities.
“As photographers, we realized there was definitely a change in the way business is being done,” said Lester Cohen, another WireImage co-founder and a music industry photographer whose work has appeared in Time, Newsweek and Rolling Stone. “We realized there was a great opportunity if we acted quickly.”
Backed by GeoCities founder David Bohnett and others, WireImage, which has offices in Los Angeles and New York, launched a year ago and has about 25 employees, including about a dozen staff photographers.
“I was interested in the platform. Editors are looking for easy access and easy distribution,” said Bohnett, adding that WireImage is on course to turn a profit in the first quarter of 2002. “The celebrity photo business and photo distribution is ideally suited to the Internet, which is really what I am interested in.”
ImageDirect, which also has offices in Los Angeles and New York, acted quicker. Founded in 1998, the company quickly merged with a digital imaging concern called JumpCut Inc. ImageDirect’s founders bought the company back earlier this year investing $1.5 million and JumpCut has since gone out of business.
Although ImageDirect’s core business is celebrity photography, Fitzgerald stressed that his company differs from WireImage and other agencies in its archival system, which, in addition to facilitating image transfers, enables studios and other media companies to convert historic photos to a digital format that can be marketed online.
“What the technology has done has created an equal ground for people to compete against the wire services,” Fitzgerald said. “Literally, all we need is a photographer with a couple of digital lenses, a laptop, a phone line and we are in business.”
Both WireImage and ImageDirect say the portion of the businesses that involve shooting celebrity images are profitable, but the companies as a whole are not. In part, Fitzgerald said, that’s because ImageDirect is still incurring costs from the buyback from JumpCut.
Both insist that their rosters of clients are growing and that prospects a good. People Magazine has been a frequent client of WireImage in recent months.
“Every morning we get an e-mail telling us where they’ve been and what they’ve shot. They know our deadlines and they know what works and that’s crucial,” said Michele Steuven, People’s deputy photo chief in Los Angeles. “They’ve really mushroomed. I’m impressed they’ve been able to do this.”
Photographer Downey, who acknowledged that WireImage has assembled an “A-Team” of photographers, was less convinced.
“It’s incredibly hard out there,” he said. “WireImage and ImageDirect have spearheaded an industry, but they are really nothing more than dot-coms in disguise and no one knows if they are going to last.”
