Photojournalism is changing, and it needs a new kind of agency
Demotix is dead. This was the refrain two week ago, when news emerged that the photo agency of choice for many aspiring photojournalists and keen amateurs, had simply disappeared. It’s URL now points to the Corbis website, although it is very questionable how long Corbis will continue to exist.
While the photographic world debated and dissected the sale of Corbis and the demise of Demotix, we went to work.
Verifeye Media is a technology driven visual news agency for the smartphone age. We represent freelance journalists and accidental eyewitnesses.
Up to now we have been focused primarily on video. We have built a camera app that allows users to shoot and send video and photos directly from their iPhones. We have built a process that allows us to verify content at point of creation, massively increasing the speed and reducing the cost with which we can deliver verified videos and photos to our clients’ newsrooms.
But after Demotix disappeared we had many calls and emails from photographers who want to shoot photographs on their DSLRs rather than video on thier iPhones. For the past two weeks we have been building and testing a system that would allow them to do just this, while still maintaining our strict verification requirements.
We are delighted to say that we have done it. Our website now has a brand new upload feature that is available to use to all of our beta contributors, although you will still need our iPhone camera app to comply with our verification requirements.
To be clear, Verifeye Media is not a stock agency and it’s not aiming to be. We deal in visual stories, in video or photographs, and as such we will not be licensing individual images. Our clients are looking for stories, and we are looking for photographers who understand how to shoot a story.
It is also important to understand, Verifeye Media is not a cloud storage solution. We deal in breaking news, and only our clients have the ability to download photos or video, after they have licensed them.
We urge contributors to use a separate archiving solution to be sure of preserving content. We recommend Pixelrights, another London based agency, founded by press photographer Shaun Curry. Pixelrights has kindly offered a 25 percent discount on their subscription fee, for life. Code VER4355FYE (we are not making any money from this recommendation).
As all of us in the industry know, journalism needs to change. And we are not talking about a slight improvement, making some cutbacks, tightening our belts, and perhaps increasing productivity by 10 percent. It’s going to take a lot more than that.
At Verifeye Media our motto is simple; “We are changing journalism.” And we mean radical change.
We are not interested in improving by 10 percent. We want to be 10 times better than the legacy agencies. And that means throwing out the old system, and building something entirely new, from the ground up.
If you are a visual journalist and you would like to be a part of this change, apply now to join our beta programme at www.verifeyemedia.com
