My sole objectives with this open letter is to get a debate going across all the microstock blogs and forums and to help raise the profile of my new business, Pocketstock. 

I have no issue with any of the organizations I refer to indirectly, we all have our ways of doing business and making money, some just don’t necessarily help the overall development of an industry or sector.

Firstly, I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce Pocketstock and myself, Russell Glenister. I have been in the stock photography industry for over 25 years. I started out as a lead creative at Tony Stone Images. For those of you not old enough, Tony Stone Images (TSI) was purchased by Getty Images, the industry leader and very much led the gold rush which has culminated in the stock photography industry we see today. I have continued to work in this fine industry for all years since departing from TSI, working with all the major players along the way, usually as part of the supply chain.

Pocketstock is my new business, having sold my last one to the other major traditional stock agency, Corbis, a few years back. Pocketstock wants to take stock photography to a new level, open the market up to a new supply chain, through video education – The Pocketstock Academy, which is being launched as I write this letter. We are just about to start selling and marketing our content, in the process of taking in footage and music along with the images, illustrations and vectors we already have.

We are also well advanced, as part of our international development, in opening up in USA. Germany will follow. We hope to grow quickly – don’t we all!

Continued