Stock Photography: A 50 Year Evolution. The stock photo industry has evolved in many interesting ways in the last 50 years. This story looks at the changes from mostly editorial rights-managed, to the 1976 copyright law change, to the print catalog era, to CD-rom delivered royalty-free, to the Internet and finally to microstock. We identify some of the key drivers of these changes and show how some unrelated developments made the changes inevitable.

The Future of Still Photography: Hobby or Career? Emily Chow, a photojournalism student at Northwestern University's Medill School, posted a story on Black Star Rising which basically takes the position that photography students should ignore what experienced professional photographers are telling them and forge ahead with determination to launch careers in photography. I had to respond. Be sure to read her story first.

Apple vs. European Publishers. Newspaper publishers, almost universally, believe the iPad and other tablet devices are possible saviors of the journalism business since they are a much more cost effective news delivery system than print and more than 50 million devices are expected to be in use before the end of 2011. However, given the way payment for content is structured European publishers are very concerned about loss of control of their businesses.

Tom Grill’s Daily Stock Shot Project. For over 30 years Tom Grill has been teaching photographers how to take marketable stock shots. In mid-November last year he decided to take at least one stock photo a day for a year and post them to this blog. These are not images from his normal, planned stock shoots. Rather they are grab shots from things he is exposed to daily. Some will be taken while he is on one of his normal shoots, but all the shots will only be happenstance, not anything planned in advance as part of his regular shoots. He is also supplying information about the techniques used to create some of the images.