The last day of August found Corbis CEO Steve Davis giving "A State of the Union" report about his company. Highlights were reported widely on the Net.

My take away from the Corbis report is that the stock photo industry is alive and strong. CEO Davis emphasized the solid growth that Corbis has enjoyed this year. Of particular interest to me was his criticism of Getty Images' new "Riser" Rights-Ready offering. Davis stated that Riser was "neither right nor ready." This viewpoint was echoed in the paid subscription service analysis offered by Jim Pickerell. Both Davis and Pickerell commented that Riser had a variety of problems including a reliance on "similars" (several images that look almost exactly the same). Ironically this is the criticism that Getty Images' CEO Jonathan Klein leveled at some of our (Jupitermedia) subscription services back in April 2005 when he used "crap" as his way of describing image services with "similars." Davis and Pickerell were kinder and gentler in their criticisms.

Another interesting point was Davis' belief that micropayment sites are "net additive" to the stock photo business -- a belief shared by many of us in the industry.

The micropayment model is here to stay but it is not going to destroy the "traditional" parts of the stock photo industry as many on Wall Street fear. It is true that micropayment sites will take some of the traditional royalty-free business, but at the same time this new model will attract millions of new image buyers in coming years who are charged with marketing and designing Web sites and can be pleased with low resolution and inexpensive images.