There’s an interesting story on tonight’s News Hour with Jim Lehrer about the preservation of the Bettman Archive, now stored in an underground bunker facility in Pennsylvania. But the most interesting part is when they told the story of how Bettman is owned by Corbis… which in turn is owned by Bill Gates.
I’ve had to deal with Corbis many times as an art director and magazine producer, and while they are not as byzantine and annoying as Microsoft, they are even worse when it comes to monopolizing their industry. After the purchase of the Bettman Archive, Corbis began buying up stock photo collections everywhere. I used to receive stock photo catalogs in the mail from more than a dozen companies. These days, I receive one or two catalogs from merged companies… now all owned by Corbis. They operate under various names, but in the end they all belong to Corbis. And they price accordingly. It’s now often cheaper to set up and snap my own photo with a digital camera rather than pay Corbis $500 and up for an image.
Perhaps the worst thing is that feeling in my gut when I see an iconic photo: images from the moon, Marilyn Monroe holding down her dress, the Hindenburg, D-Day… they’re owned by Bill.
For those of you who are tired of forking over wodges of dosh to Bill Gates, there’s one place to turn for stock photos — mostly priced $3 and less. Check out iStockPhoto.com. I’ve used it three times for magazine covers, amazingly enough — I’ve spent $9 so far.
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