Brits bitten by travel bug?

One of the many travel-related images on Polylooks

Images of travel dominated the public’s online search for photos and illustrations during 2009 on the Polylooks.co.uk site, our research has found. Visitors to Polylooks were most likely to use “holiday”, “Europe”, “travel” and “vacation” as search words when looking to buy photos and illustrations on the site. Together, the number of word searches for “holiday” and “vacation” – more or less the same thing – amounted to more than four times the number of searches for “mountain”, the sixth most searched-for image on Polylooks.

Polylooks’ users in the main come from the creative industries – marketers, advertisers and publishers – hinting that “feel good” images were in demand during 2009, an otherwise bleak year for the UK economy, according to Polylooks’ Product Manager, Norbert Weber.

“The request for travel-related images is always high and customers want ‘fresh’ images. This could also be an indicator that confidence was returning to the travel industry during the year,” Weber said.

Other travel-related words featuring among the hundred most popular word searches entered by users on Polylooks during 2009 included “coast” (11^th), “waves” (16^th), “harbour” (26^th) and “palm trees” (83^rd). According to Google’s Insight tool, the four most popular destinations for online image searches in the UK over Google during 2009 were London, New York, Dubai and Blackpool.

Polylooks has close to half a million photos and illustrations in its library so the platform offers plenty of choice for image buyers to select from and you can also use our special filters to pick the right mood and colour scheme for your images.



UK Marketers Confess to Microstock Image Misuse

Microstock sites like Polylooks offer thousands of images for sale

This week, Polylooks unveiled findings of its study into the UK’s creative industry’s collective understanding of how they can use photos from the Web – and it makes worrying reading! We found that more than a third of UK creative professionals – publishers, PR people, marketers, etc – use Internet images without consent – and four in five (81 per cent) of those don’t feel guilty about doing so.

Digital rights are a really hot topic right now, and when a photographer or artist submits their work to a microstock site for people to use online they do so to either earn money, to showcase their work, or both. This is being undermined largely by a widespread misunderstanding over how and where images can – or can’t – be used. For example, only 21 per cent correctly identified the definition of ‘royalty free’, with nearly half (44 per cent) believing it meant they could use the image without paying for it. In fact, users must purchase the image and then are able to use it with certain restrictions. Additionally, only 16.5 per cent knew what ‘rights managed’ meant. The survey unveiled that these creative professionals have control over image-buying budgets, despite their lack of knowledge of how to legally use them.

Norbert Weber, Product Manager at Polylooks, said of the findings: “There is still a great deal of confusion when it comes to using photos or illustrations that photographers and artists have made available for sale online. Many people who should be paying for the right to use images are not doing so due to a lack of understanding on industry rules and terminologies. Some 85 per cent of creative professionals are not familiar with the term ‘microstock’, which presents stock image providers like Polylooks with a challenge. Is it time we redefined what we offer?”

Other key findings from the survey include:

·        81.4 per cent of creative professionals that have used an image without paying for it did not feel guilty

·        44 per cent legally download between one and five pictures each month, while seven per cent buy more than 11 stock images each month

·        Nearly half (48 per cent) do not have a microstock image budget but five per cent spend in excess of £100 each month on images

Do you use microstock sites? Do these findings surprise you? Get involved in the debate, we’d love to hear your views.

*Survey of 200+ UK-based marketing, PR and publishing professionals conducted online throughout November 2009

Paris in the Winter: Win a Trip for Two to Paris!

Parisian Walkways: A daytime shot of the Eiffel Tower

How would you like to win two return tickets on the Eurostar* between London and Paris? Well, if you work in the creative industries in the United Kingdom then Polylooks is offering that chance.

If you work in public relations, advertising, design, or online and offline publishing, you will most likely have used a stock image service to buy royalty free and rights managed photography or illustrations. But are you aware of how freely you can use those stock images once you have paid for them? We’d love to know your views, so please fill in our microstock survey, which shouldn’t take more than a minute, and leave your email to enter our prize draw for the chance to win two return Eurostar tickets to Paris.

While stock images are great to use, they do come with restrictions. Using Paris as an example, did you know that there are no restrictions on using photos of the Eiffel Tower by day but by night, when illuminated, the structure is subject to copyright laws? This is not uncommon among public buildings. Sites such as Polylooks have to check that their stock image contributors have the right to use images before they host them for sale online. This ensures that when you buy photos online you have every right to use them.

In fact, Polylooks has 810 stock photos of Paris available for sale, but if you win the competition you’ll be able to take plenty of your own! Good luck!

A final quick point: we’d love you to join our Facebook page and interact with you.

*dates and time of travel subject to availability