This year marks our first ever annual StudioNow Awards! Of the many brands that turned to StudioNow this year for photo or video production, we think these  briefs deserve some extra recognition.

1. Vivino

Vivino, the largest online wine marketplace, launched a new personalization feature this year, which gives a score from 0-100 based on how a wine will match the user’s taste. They launched a brief to get a video that would showcase the app’s new matchmaking abilities, and they searched for production companies on StudioNow and assigned Dream It Reel to the brief to create a fully edited video with some animation baked in.

2. Lyft

As the pandemic slowed and ridesharing popularity began increasing again this year, Lyft held a strong commitment to its brand identity known for representing joy, community, and optimism. Local scenery and experiences were essential in elevating that story, so they quickly hired StudioNow photographers across eight cities. While the individual shoots contained different surroundings and people, vibrant colors and a theme of spontaneous moments kept the brand consistent across locales. Rachel P. in Vancouver and Ashton H. in Minneapolis captured the below images.

3. Brooklyn Brewery

In celebration of its partnership with The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative, which supports organizations committed to fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, Laura Barisonzi captured lifestyle content highlighting the IPA at and near The Stonewall Inn in NYC. The delivered assets captured the authentic, vibrant look and feel that Brooklyn Brewery was aiming for.

4. Doordash

Doordash has added many grocery and convenience stores as partners, but they were struggling to make their customers aware of these options beyond meal delivery. While many online delivery companies and retailers have classic white- or colored-background studio shots of products, Doordash decided to put their own twist on the studio shots to capture people’s attention. They incorporated intentional dark shadows paired with bright backgrounds, making the products really pop. They hired 15+ creators on StudioNow to get a high volume of content quickly. The below images were captured by Deidre S. and Heidi P..

5. Mozilla

With a new Firefox browser launch, Mozilla wanted to focus on a new audience for the brand. To match the audience, they needed to produce photos that were adventurous, approachable, and edgy. They chose real users of their product and then worked with Jacki P. and Shameika E. on StudioNow to capture images of the moments where the users really into their crafts.

6. Splash Beverage Group

While Splash uses StudioNow to produce for multiple brands, one brief in particular stood out to us this year. They assigned Hannah H. to the brief to create beautiful social assets including feed posts, stories, and reels for their SALT tequila. With recipe videos, lifestyle photos, and more, the end result represented their distinct brand look and feel while providing enough variety to last them through the holiday season.

Ready to ramp up your 2022 production?

Sign up for free and start producing more efficiently. StudioNow has photographers, videographers, and production companies in over 2,000 cities worldwide eager to create custom content for brands like yours. Perhaps you’ll even be in the running for a StudioNow Award next year!

Last year, Carlsberg, Heineken, USPS, and Pernod-Ricard, among others, produced holiday content using StudioNow’s marketplace of creatives. Check out the results below:

Carlsberg

Last year, Carlsberg produced localized holiday imagery featuring their staple Kronenbourg 1664 beer. They wanted their images to focus on family, Christmas, and New Years festivities in an authentic way that resonated with their customers in each geographical region. With images of friends around the Christmas tree and scenes on the ski mountain, Carlsberg was able to accomplish all of their holiday content goals in a timely manner using StudioNow’s creators and powerful content production platform.

Because it’s easy to produce photos and videos in multiple locations at once on StudioNow, Carlsberg’s creative team was able to quickly capture content that resonated with their audiences in Toronto, Germany, and Austria. The images below were shot by photographers Richelle Hunter, Manuela Larissegger, Jenny Karakaya.

Heineken

E-commerce companies saw a huge spike in sales during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now two years after the beginning of Covid, buying products predominantly online is here to stay. Legacy beer brand Heineken was agile and ready for the change. For the 2020 holiday season, Heineken decided to double down on their ecomm presence hoping to reach their more modern audience. Their goal was to produce authentic holiday photos and GIFs by placing their products in relevant holiday scenes. They hired two photographers on StudioNow to get the job done quickly and to increase variety. The images below were shot by photographers Nathan Tescon and Arielle Ferraro in California and New York.

USPS

USPS plays a major role in many family and friends’ holiday seasons across the United States. Last year, USPS wanted to produce localized photos in multiple specific cities at once. With an emphasis on their involvement in holiday shipping, USPS chose to capture content in Oregon, New York, California, and Colorado featuring their boxes, trucks, and post office locations. The final photos were unique to each geographic location and the time of year. The images below were shot by photographers Jacob Boynton, Jinnifer Douglass, and Summer Luu.

Pernod-Ricard

Focusing on their brands Absolut and Kahlua, Pernod-Ricard opted to get images that would show off their alcohol products in a more intimate setting. They knew 2020’s holiday gatherings would be smaller due to the pandemic, so they focused on at-home scenes and added a localized feel by assigning different StudioNow creators to the same concept in four of their biggest markets: California, New York, Ohio, and Florida. What their creative team brought back were authentic and inspiring images, videos, and GIFs for the holiday season. The images below were shot by photographers Arielle Ferraro, Courtney Nielsen, and Amanda Julca.

Get started:

Sign up for free and start your first holiday photo or video shoot now with StudioNow to get content in time for the upcoming season. StudioNow has photographers, videographers, and production companies in over 2,000 cities worldwide eager to create custom content for brands like yours.

Stock photography is defined as an archive of images that can be licensed commercially. If you sell a product or service, you automatically have a commercialized need for stock photography in order to support any required marketing collateral. Because of that, you need to license the rights to use a photo for that commercial need. ‘Every day you see pictures in magazines, advertisements, posters, online and on TV. The reality is most of the images used were not created specifically for that product, concept, or promotion. The images those companies use are stock photographs. Stock photos are ready-made images that are licensable for use in your advertising or promotional materials. This ability to search for a specific image saves time and money. At the end of the day, that is what businesses want.’ (Cited material)

How does it work?

‘Most Royalty Free stock photography archives operate on a subscription or credit-based system. Credits allow you to purchase more credits at a discount over the basic credit rate. Usually, you will run into these two pricing models: downloads of single images purchased with credit packs, or monthly or annual subscriptions. Hands down if you are planning to download multiple images, a subscription would be a smart buy for an Image Buyer. If you really just need a single image, usually the single download prices are reflected next to the available resolutions of an image.’ (Cited material)

‘Stock Photography has two sides to it. The consumer and the photographer. As expected, consumers browse images from search results and download them. Photographers, on the other hand, can submit their photography and get paid a percentage if their image gets downloaded and legally licensed. If you are a photographer that is looking to make some extra money on the side, this option is always available.’ In the stock photo industry, you should have three things handy to succeed: time, patience, and a good camera. If you have a good eye, understand light as it relates to a subject, and have a fair amount of patience, stock photography is a true numbers game that brings success. The more you shoot, the better you will become, and the more photos you will be able to sell. (Cited material)

Even though photographers normally prefer assignment work as a main source of income, stock photography is one of the many other sources of monetization for a photographer. It’s a good idea to have an open mind about stock photography as it can contribute up to 30% of a photographer’s total annualized income.

Introduction to Photo Licensing

In our industry, we often hear about confusion regarding licensing of Premium (or traditional) Royalty-Free and Rights Managed Licensing. This section will provide information on the types of license rights available to image buyers, who they are, and fees collected on images. Always be sure to read and understand all of the license agreements from any stock agency archive before you submit to one as a photographer or buy from one as a photo buyer.

What is a Royalty Free Image? Royalty-Free Licenses (RF).

Every Royalty Free image license grants you basic royalty-free usage rights. For a one-time payment, a buyer (often referred to as an End User) may choose the photo size he or she may require and use the licensed photo over and over again for permitted uses defined in the licensing agreement such as advertising and promotional projects, websites, presentations, videos, commercials, catalogs, and broadcasting. Typically Royalty Free imagery provides 1–10 seat licenses for one End User. A seat license is defined by the number of individuals having the right to access and use the photo at one given time. An End User is defined as an entity or person(s) who can access the photo and use it for the permitted uses. Most agreements allow the image to be stored on a storage device.

What is a Rights-Managed Image? Managed Licenses (RM).

The term Rights Managed is used to describe the temporary use of an image. RM license fees are priced on a per-use basis and are often calculated on how many viewers will potentially see the image. The license price is calculated from the image display size, placement, geography, medium, and duration of use. Specifics matter on a license of a Rights Managed photo, and often after the rights expire, stock agencies use technology services like Image Protect or Pic Scout to scour the internet, looking for expired rights or infringement uses. The End User concept described earlier applies to all photo licensing.

Comping and Preview Policy for both (RF) and (RM) photos

Most stock agencies allow for the download of a photo with an applied watermark. Comping or Preview imagery is imagery that is available to potential image buyers to ‘try before the buy’. These images may only be used for preview purposes. Agencies permit an electronic version of its products to be used free of charge for a limited duration only if they are used for personal evaluation, and in any case, noncommercial use, and its grant of use is solely for test or sample purposes. Photographers who upload photos to stock agencies should feel comfortable with this business dynamic and use of their photos.

What about Attributions?

Regardless of if a photo is licensed under a Royalty-Free or Rights-Managed licensing model, we often get asked when and how a photographer’s name should be attributed next to the photo. While the exact location can vary, it’s typical to view attributions on an editorial use of a photo. Typically, the attribution will be positioned directly under the left-hand margin of a photo in a small font point size. Editorial use of photography is defined as such when a photo is used to illustrate a concept or story of a newsworthy event. An Editorial photo may be licensed as a Royalty Free and used in multiple publications or stories by one End-user; or as a Rights Managed license where usage would be limited to a single story or use.

Copyright Ownership of Photos

Albeit a camera on a mobile phone or the latest technical marvel released by Canon, it’s a fundamental fact that the person who captures an image using it is the rightful copyright owner of the said image. Because of that, photographers can profit from that by licensing the rights to use that image in a chosen licensing model (as described above), sell the use of the image for a period of time (often referred to as a ‘Buyout’), or sell the copyright to the image. Most brands today find that owning the rights to an image free’s them from the burden of their teams’ misuse of the image or re-licensing the rights to the image. As such, most brands are willing to pay extra to obtain those rights.

Below is a list of leading North American Stock Photo Archives that license RF & RM photos.

Royalty-Free Stock Agencies:

• Shutterstock (public) — includes Offset
• Depositphotos
• 123 RF
• iStock (owned by Getty Images)
• Adobe Stock Photo (previously Fotolia)
• Flickr (Creative Commons)
• StudioNow (our personal favorite, plus you can run briefs and assignments)

Rights-Managed & Royalty-Free Stock Agencies:

• Getty Images
• Alamy
• Media Bakery

The StudioNow approach:

We are a photographer-driven community founded on the principles of cooperative equality, respect, and fair distribution of profits. Our contributing photographers receive 50% of a photo purchased in our Marketplace and 90% of a photo purchased off an assignment. Brands can buy a Royalty-Free license to use the photos produced in an assignment or they can pay extra to obtain the copyright directly from the photographer.

The Origin of StudioNow:

We saw photographers shooting on Instagram only to receive likes & the occasional free products. These photographers are more talented than that. They should be getting paid for what they do, just as any other professional gets paid to do what he/she does best.

The StudioNow Story

The landscape is evolving where stock photo companies are taking every penny & marginalizing photographers while stomping on creativity. The other side is where creativity is being pushed forward but no one is earning any money. On StudioNow, we take the best of these worlds and provide a fun path for any aspiring photographer to become a professional. StudioNow’s photo contest (called Challenges) provides anyone a chance to feel like a pro when their photo is chosen for our stock photo library marketplace. If a photo is chosen the photographer not only has a chance to make money if a buyer licenses their photo they earn points. The more points one earns the more success they have through user levels traversed. Eventually, a photographer can earn the status of a “Pro Level” affording them a chance to participate in assignments.

StudioNow has an invite-only marketplace of visual creators for brands and businesses who need to create content at scale. If you achieve the Pro Level on StudioNow, you will be invited. Marketing teams (varies by title, and there’s a lot, but here’s a few: Growth Marketers, Brand Managers, Creative Managers) can sign up and use our network to source creators to produce videos, photos, TikToks, and TV spots they need because they need assets to tell their product story or document their product. We monetize by charging a transaction fee for any budget that moves through the platform. Brands also pay an annual fee to access gated features and secure additional rights to the content. However, any brand can sign-up and immediately gain value by running a project through the marketplace for free.

Whether you’re a photographer itching to earn some money doing what you love, or a business manager looking to purchase authentic marketing material that will actually sell your products, StudioNow has the tools you need.

Stock photography is defined as an archive of images that can be licensed commercially. If you sell a product or service, you automatically have a commercialized need for stock photography in order to support any required marketing collateral. Because of that, you need to license the rights to use a photo for that commercial need. ‘Every day you see pictures in magazines, advertisements, posters, online and on TV. The reality is most of the images used were not created specifically for that product, concept, or promotion. The images those companies use are stock photographs. Stock photos are ready-made images that are licensable for use in your advertising or promotional materials. This ability to search for a specific image saves time and money. At the end of the day, that is what businesses want.’ (Cited material)

How does it work?

‘Most Royalty Free stock photography archives operate on a subscription or credit-based system. Credits allow you to purchase more credits at a discount over the basic credit rate. Usually, you will run into these two pricing models: downloads of single images purchased with credit packs, or monthly or annual subscriptions. Hands down if you are planning to download multiple images, a subscription would be a smart buy for an Image Buyer. If you really just need a single image, usually the single download prices are reflected next to the available resolutions of an image.’ (Cited material)

‘Stock Photography has two sides to it. The consumer and the photographer. As expected, consumers browse images from search results and download them. Photographers, on the other hand, can submit their photography and get paid a percentage if their image gets downloaded and legally licensed. If you are a photographer that is looking to make some extra money on the side, this option is always available.’ In the stock photo industry, you should have three things handy to succeed: time, patience, and a good camera. If you have a good eye, understand light as it relates to a subject, and have a fair amount of patience, stock photography is a true numbers game that brings success. The more you shoot, the better you will become, and the more photos you will be able to sell. (Cited material)

Even though photographers normally prefer assignment work as a main source of income, stock photography is one of the many other sources of monetization for a photographer. It’s a good idea to have an open mind about stock photography as it can contribute up to 30% of a photographer’s total annualized income.

Introduction to Photo Licensing

In our industry, we often hear about confusion regarding licensing of Premium (or traditional) Royalty-Free and Rights Managed Licensing. This section will provide information on the types of license rights available to image buyers, who they are, and fees collected on images. Always be sure to read and understand all of the license agreements from any stock agency archive before you submit to one as a photographer or buy from one as a photo buyer.

What is a Royalty Free Image? Royalty-Free Licenses (RF).

Every Royalty Free image license grants you basic royalty-free usage rights. For a one-time payment, a buyer (often referred to as an End User) may choose the photo size he or she may require and use the licensed photo over and over again for permitted uses defined in the licensing agreement such as advertising and promotional projects, websites, presentations, videos, commercials, catalogs, and broadcasting. Typically Royalty Free imagery provides 1–10 seat licenses for one End User. A seat license is defined by the number of individuals having the right to access and use the photo at one given time. An End User is defined as an entity or person(s) who can access the photo and use it for the permitted uses. Most agreements allow the image to be stored on a storage device.

What is a Rights-Managed Image? Managed Licenses (RM).

The term Rights Managed is used to describe the temporary use of an image. RM license fees are priced on a per-use basis and are often calculated on how many viewers will potentially see the image. The license price is calculated from the image display size, placement, geography, medium, and duration of use. Specifics matter on a license of a Rights Managed photo, and often after the rights expire, stock agencies use technology services like Image Protect or Pic Scout to scour the internet, looking for expired rights or infringement uses. The End User concept described earlier applies to all photo licensing.

Comping and Preview Policy for both (RF) and (RM) photos

Most stock agencies allow for the download of a photo with an applied watermark. Comping or Preview imagery is imagery that is available to potential image buyers to ‘try before the buy’. These images may only be used for preview purposes. Agencies permit an electronic version of its products to be used free of charge for a limited duration only if they are used for personal evaluation, and in any case, noncommercial use, and its grant of use is solely for test or sample purposes. Photographers who upload photos to stock agencies should feel comfortable with this business dynamic and use of their photos.

What about Attributions?

Regardless of if a photo is licensed under a Royalty-Free or Rights-Managed licensing model, we often get asked when and how a photographer’s name should be attributed next to the photo. While the exact location can vary, it’s typical to view attributions on an editorial use of a photo. Typically, the attribution will be positioned directly under the left-hand margin of a photo in a small font point size. Editorial use of photography is defined as such when a photo is used to illustrate a concept or story of a newsworthy event. An Editorial photo may be licensed as a Royalty Free and used in multiple publications or stories by one End-user; or as a Rights Managed license where usage would be limited to a single story or use.

Copyright Ownership of Photos

Albeit a camera on a mobile phone or the latest technical marvel released by Canon, it’s a fundamental fact that the person who captures an image using it is the rightful copyright owner of the said image. Because of that, photographers can profit from that by licensing the rights to use that image in a chosen licensing model (as described above), sell the use of the image for a period of time (often referred to as a ‘Buyout’), or sell the copyright to the image. Most brands today find that owning the rights to an image free’s them from the burden of their teams’ misuse of the image or re-licensing the rights to the image. As such, most brands are willing to pay extra to obtain those rights.

Below is a list of leading North American Stock Photo Archives that license RF & RM photos.

Royalty-Free Stock Agencies:

• Shutterstock (public) — includes Offset
• Depositphotos
• 123 RF
• iStock (owned by Getty Images)
• Adobe Stock Photo (previously Fotolia)
• Flickr (Creative Commons)
• StudioNow (our personal favorite, plus you can run briefs and assignments)

Rights-Managed & Royalty-Free Stock Agencies:

• Getty Images
• Alamy
• Media Bakery

The StudioNow approach:

We are a photographer-driven community founded on the principles of cooperative equality, respect, and fair distribution of profits. Our contributing photographers receive 50% of a photo purchased in our Marketplace and 90% of a photo purchased off an assignment. Brands can buy a Royalty-Free license to use the photos produced in an assignment or they can pay extra to obtain the copyright directly from the photographer.

The Origin of StudioNow:

We saw photographers shooting on Instagram only to receive likes & the occasional free products. These photographers are more talented than that. They should be getting paid for what they do, just as any other professional gets paid to do what he/she does best.

The StudioNow Story

The landscape is evolving where stock photo companies are taking every penny & marginalizing photographers while stomping on creativity. The other side is where creativity is being pushed forward but no one is earning any money. On StudioNow, we take the best of these worlds and provide a fun path for any aspiring photographer to become a professional. StudioNow’s photo contest (called Challenges) provides anyone a chance to feel like a pro when their photo is chosen for our stock photo library marketplace. If a photo is chosen the photographer not only has a chance to make money if a buyer licenses their photo they earn points. The more points one earns the more success they have through user levels traversed. Eventually, a photographer can earn the status of a “Pro Level” affording them a chance to participate in assignments.

StudioNow has an invite-only marketplace of visual creators for brands and businesses who need to create content at scale. If you achieve the Pro Level on StudioNow, you will be invited. Marketing teams (varies by title, and there’s a lot, but here’s a few: Growth Marketers, Brand Managers, Creative Managers) can sign up and use our network to source creators to produce videos, photos, TikToks, and TV spots they need because they need assets to tell their product story or document their product. We monetize by charging a transaction fee for any budget that moves through the platform. Brands also pay an annual fee to access gated features and secure additional rights to the content. However, any brand can sign-up and immediately gain value by running a project through the marketplace for free.

Whether you’re a photographer itching to earn some money doing what you love, or a business manager looking to purchase authentic marketing material that will actually sell your products, StudioNow has the tools you need.

Full-Size Images in the Twitter Timeline

For single image tweets only, images will no longer be cropped when displayed in the timeline. What you see in the composer preview is what the tweet will look like in the timeline after it is published.

Now testing on Android and iOS: when you Tweet a single image, how the image appears in the Tweet composer is how it will look on the timeline –– bigger and better. pic.twitter.com/izI5S9VRdX

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) March 10, 2021

4k Image Support

Twitter has a test pool of users who can upload and view high-resolution, 4k images on Android and iOS. Support for high-quality photos is huge for artists, photographers, marketers, reporters, and anyone else who relies on visual media.

To see if you’re in the test group, head to the Data Usage section of your Twitter app:

Have a collection of higher res photos waiting to be shared? We’re testing ways for you to upload and view 4K images on Android and iOS.

If you’re in the test, update your high-quality image preferences in “Data usage” settings to get started. pic.twitter.com/EgW5fsb8Z8

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) March 10, 2021

Youtube Videos Embedded in the Twitter Timeline

Currently, when a user tweets a Youtube video, they have to leave the Twitter conversation to watch the video. Twitter is testing making those videos playable from the Home timeline without leaving the conversation.

This is significant because it allows Twitter users to bypass Twitter’s aggressive video compression by uploading to Youtube at a higher resolution than posting the Youtube link to their Twitter timeline.

Currently, Twitter is testing embedded Youtube links on iOS only.

Starting today on iOS, we’re testing a way to watch YouTube videos directly in your Home timeline, without leaving the conversation on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/V4qzMJMEBs

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) March 18, 2021

Other Features Coming

In addition to these image and video enhancements, the social network has Twitter Spaces, and the Super Follow feature coming soon.

Currently, there is no way to opt-in to be a tester for these features; they are rolling out for groups of new users in waves in the coming weeks.