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Beginning with 1990s, multinational super-agencies dominated stock photography industry. Getty Images and Corbis are the leading corporations of the industry by bringing together new licensing models, digital media management tools and a comprehensive offering of creative and editorial imagery, microstock, footage and music. Therefore, it is more accurate to call it visual content industry instead of stock photography in the digital era. Both based in Seattle, Washington, Getty Images and Corbis distribute their products online and they have customers in more than 100 countries around the world; most of their sales come from outside the United States.

In order to have a better idea about the expansion of the industry, I will particularly examine the market leader Getty Images and its major acquisitions beginning with its foundation from 1995.

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Stock photography is a global industry, which manufactures, promotes and distributes photographic images for use in marketing, advertising, editorial purposes, and increasingly for multimedia products and digital platforms. Worth an estimated US$2 billion annually, the leading corporations of the stock photography are heavily involved in this complex media industry sector. Collectively, they own important historical photographic archives; manufacture and market stock film footage, and compete with traditional sources of photojournalism.

“With the introduction of digital technology, our sector, the markets we service, the rights we grant, and our workflow have dramatically changed.”

- BAPLA – British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies

I want to discuss about the dramatic change on this industry with the advent of digital technologies from 1990. The apparent two changes are the workflow and the product of stock photography.

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