Getty Images, the world’s leading creator and distributor of visual content and other digital media, and Flickr,
a division of Yahoo! Inc. and one of the world’s largest photo sharing
communities, recently announced a new collaboration that unites the
authenticity of images from the Flickr community with Getty Images’
image collections, photographic expertise and experience in licensing
digital media. The partnership allows Getty Images to invite Flickr
members to participate in a Flickr branded collection on
www.gettyimages.com that will be available for licensing to Getty
Images’ creative, commercial and editorial customers in the coming
months.

“Our customers will be able to select and use the best imagery
from a fresh collection of high-quality images chosen by us from
Flickr’s diverse and prolific community,” said Jonathan Klein,
co-founder and CEO of Getty Images. Whilst Kakul Srivastava, general
manager of Flickr remarked, “This partnership is testimony to the
Flickr community of photographers who have influenced the aesthetics of
photography with authentic, creative and cutting-edge images which will
now be available to Getty Images’ customers around the world.”

Getty Images and Flickr are working together to establish the first
commercial licensing opportunity for photo-enthusiasts in the Flickr
community. The Flickr collection will feature photography selected by
Getty Images editors based on their expertise in licensing digital
content and insights into customers’ needs. In the next several months,
Getty Images will begin inviting selected Flickr members who will have
the choice to participate in the collection. The two companies are
collaborating to build online tools to help editors contact Flickr
members, and to add images to the new collection. Over the next several
months, thousands of high-quality images will be available for
licensing on www.gettyimages.com with a goal of making many more
available over time.

“Through this partnership, we will be offering an
expanded choice of imagery with more regionally relevant content and a
wider range in the style of photography available,” said Andy Saunders,
vice president of creative imagery at Getty Images. “Flickr’s
philosophy of personal sharing and immediacy has already impacted
commercial photography. The new Flickr collection will expand the
definition of stock photography by making it even easier for our
customers to find and license imagery that works in the full range of
traditional and digital media.”

Flickr members will benefit from Getty Images’ global sales and
distribution teams helping to market their images and from Getty
Images’ expertise and experience in rights and clearances of visual
content. Getty Images’ customers will benefit from the fresh, unique
and individualistic perspectives of members within Flickr’s global
community.

This increased and customisable access to fresh content allows
marketers, advertising execs and creative’s alike, the potential to
implement more innovative campaigns that otherwise may have not been
possible using traditional search methods.

Earlier this year Getty Images launched Moodstream, a tool
which allows users to custom search Getty’s image and footage bank
using various emotive parameters, such as warm or cool, nostalgic or
contemporary, calm or lively, happy or sad, and humorous or serious.
The presets wheel function allows searchers to modify their results
according to how they feel about the generated content. This could
involve ‘simplifying’ the results to get rid of the clutter, or even
‘inspiring’ them to include more beautiful and surprising results,
connecting the searcher with the desired content further. For SME’s
this tool allows unlimited possibilities in sourcing images for mood
boards and also some much needed external creative input, whilst
agencies and larger companies may find moodstream exponential in
offering solutions to client briefs and differentiating themselves from
the competition.

A brief snippet of Moodstream in action can be found below.