Stock Agencies to Work With - Corbis - The Business of Photography by Brad Rickerby

Hailing a Cab, NYC

Corbis (www.corbisimages.com) is the second largest player in the stock photo marketplace. As noted in the last blog post, it has been reported that when combined, Corbis and Getty Images control upwards of 85% of stock photo sales. Every one else, goes industry wisdom, is just picking up the crumbs.

Corbis was founded by Bill Gates in 1989 and continues to be privately owned by him. Based in Seattle, Corbis markets a photographic library of around 10 million images.

Corbis Images markets both Royalty Free and Rights Managed stock photographs, illustrations and CD's. On the editorial side, they market documentary, fine art, archival, news, sports, entertainment and celebrity images. Corbis is know for handling many famous image collections, such as the Ansel Adams collections, and wide ranging vintage images. 

For quite some time, Corbis was not accepting new contributors. They now have a contributor application on their website (http://contributor.corbis.com/workwithus) so it seems that are taking new material.

Seattle Public Market Dusk

While I have worked with Getty, agefotostock and Alamy (the next two agencies I will be posting about) I have not worked with Corbis. As such I have no direct knowledge of their operations, company culture or of how they treat their image suppliers. I do know, however, that they have many, many excellent photographers who work with them and an excellent reputation for quality overall. 

I can only assume, given that excellent reputation, that Corbis is at least as difficult to get to work with as is Getty. You should, by all means, reach out to them. But you might want to have a back up plan as well.

As I mentioned previously, you may want to explore niche stock photo agencies too. These might just be a better fit for your images and quite a bit easier to get to work with than are Corbis or Getty. Just sayin ... 

I will get you information on niche agencies shortly.