As part of an aggressive growth strategy, OnRequest Images, a provider of custom imagery, recently opened new offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Dallas.

Cindy Lee, a creative services director with more than 20 years of experience, has been hired as the senior account executive for the San Francisco office. Michele Fleury, a producer and photographer with more than a decade of experience, will serve as the senior producer in the Los Angeles office. Steve Klekamp, who also has more than 20 years of creative and photography business..

San Francisco's nonprofit photo gallery, SF Camerawork, has expanded and moved to a new location at 657 Mission, in the Yerba Buena Arts District.

The new space will be inaugurated with the opening of "Ghosts in the Machine," which includes "Bells," a performance video installation by Ann Carlson and Mary Ellen Strom which considers the impact of industry on the human body.

Repeat camera buyers soon will play a much bigger role in the growth of the digital still camera market, according to industry analysts at InfoTrends, based in Weymouth, Mass. The report also says the demand for digital SLRs will continue to grow in North America and is expected to peak later this year.

Competition in the photo print market will remain intense, but InfoTrends foresees that the focus will shift from persuading digital camera owners to choose one printing method over another to simply providing customers with more reasons...

In the first half of this year, Corbis posted a 16 percent rise in revenues compared to the same period in 2005, but it is not expected to turn a profit this year, according to CEO Steve Davis.

The stock agency cited rising image prices as reasons for the revenue growth in the first six months of 2006, but also noted that it continues to lose money due to investments in technology and new content.

Corbis' rights-managed revenues were up 8 percent compared to the same period last year, despite the fact that...

This spring, WireImage began distributing selected pictures and photographs from the Conde Nast Archive, under the rights-managed category of WireImage Creative. The specially edited collection contains iconic images from the 1930s to the late 1970s, from publications such as Vogue, Glamour, Vanity Fair and House & Garden. The images, produced by such well known names as Tom Leonard, William Grigsby, Samuel Gottscho, Rico Pulmann, John Rawlings and Susan Wood, are available...

An Edward Steichen photograph, "The Pond, Moonlight," recently sold at Sotheby's New York for just over $2.9 million, easily setting a world record for the highest-priced photograph ever auctioned, according to the auction house.

The final bid on Steichen's "Pond," one of only three known prints of this image, was almost three times its high estimate of $1 million. The purchaser was Peter MacGill, of Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York city, on behalf of a private collector.

The February sale featured 113 photography lots from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, including works from...

BitShelter, a digital asset storage firm based in New York City, is helping Operation Photo Rescue (OPR) coordinate the restoration of thousands of photos that were damaged in Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters. The company has donated the use of its PhotoShelter program, providing OPR's photographers, restoration volunteers and editors with a free multi-user account.

Operation Photo Rescue, a not-for-profit organization, employs 725 volunteer image retouchers who restore...

To raise awareness about metadata and encourage its adoption, the Stock Artists Alliance has released its Metadata Manifesto, a list of guidelines for the creation, use and management of digital images.

SAA, an international organization of photographers who produce images for rights-protected licenses, warns that, as images are disseminated, their underlying information often is lost. The problem is becoming more acute, the group says, with the continuing fragmentation of the stock photography market and proposed...

Getty Images and Corbis have become charter sustaining members of the Picture Licensing Universal System Coalition, while Jupiterimages has committed to a second year of sustaining membership.

The participation of the three stock agencies is a measure of the industrywide commitment to create international licensing standards,including a universal licensing language that is easy to understand and use...

Two of the largest photography studios in Los Angeles, Smashbox and Quixote, have merged under the Smashbox name.
The new partnership will combine six Smashbox studios in Culver City and Santa Monica, Calif., with Quixote's four Hollywood studios, creating a total of 80,000 square feet of rental studio and office space. Quixote, for which photography constitutes about a quarter of its business, will provide management for both companies.

According to company co-founder Mikel Elliot, Quixote will continue its production operation under its own name and will dedicate one-third of its 15,000 square feet to the new partnership. The Smashbox segment, meanwhile...