Specialist Stock staff were treated to a boating trip last Thursday for their hard work over the years.  We are a tight team of eight (not all present in picture) including (left to right) Rob, Graham, Julie-anne, Tom, Ruth, Sol, Andrew.

CIWEM’s (The Chartered Institute Of Water And Environmental Management) Environmental Photographer of the Year honours amateur and professional photographers who use their ability to raise awareness of environmental and social issues. The competition encourages entries that are contemporary, creative, resonant, challenging, original and beautiful. But most of all, we want your pictures to inspire people around the world to start taking care of our environment.  Specialist Stock is their Media Consultant.

Entry details -Closes at 5pm on 31st July 2010 – here: EPOTY

UPDATE 23rd June: England boys found form at 11th hour!

One of Specialist Stock’s contributors, Majority World, has been working with local photographers with various backgrounds over the last year to gather photostories relating to football in South Africa.

The EPIC congress filled most of last week and spilled into the week-end with great feedback for the organisers and from our meetings. Our director Tom Walmsley had 30 meetings for 30 minutes each and caught up with colleagues at a couple of cracking parties. Distribution of our material was important but some of the most exciting meetings were about hosting environmental material, selected from other libraries, for our Green Collection. For the first time every meeting involved photo AND footage collections. Below are some shots of the CEPIC crowd and Tom talking (working) to the office back home.

“The oceans are essential to food security and the health and survival of all life, power our climate and are a critical part of the biosphere. The official designation of World Oceans Day is an opportunity to raise global awareness of the current challenges faced by the international community in connection with the oceans.”  UN Website

Saturday 5th June saw the first Sun newspaper edition completely in 3D – with free glasses!   Specialist Stock had a double page spread with a wildlife image of a diver swimming with wild crodiles  (below) from Waterframe in Germany.

Visitors to Tower Bridge will have the chance to travel the full 215 miles of the River Thames in just 200 feet when they visit the new photographic exhibition River Thames – Source to Sea this summer.   Ronnie Israel, a contributor to Specialist Stock,

BBC’s The One Show has a running theme on Endangered Species in the UK.   Tuesday night’s broadcast focused on harbour porpoises from the Hebrides and the work of the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust, which Specialist Stock supports.   The other whale and dolphin material was licensed directly to BBC Bristol for the show from Specialist Stock too.  Click on the frame swipe below to view the program – magazine piece mentioned above starts at 8′35″.

Over the course of this summer we will be heavily marketing our Green Collection.  We are currently uploading tight edits from vaiours, top quality collections such as Aurora, Nature PL, OSF and Ecoscene.  We are advertising in print media in June around the CEPIC conference – see below.

Just back from the Picture Buyers Fair.  The new venue at the Barbican in London was generally well received as it created a good atmosphere for business and socialising at the end of each day. The new style digital galleries looked striking and were centre stage as you entered the space, encouraging a mill of networking. The lattice work of traditional stands had a more cosy atmosphere and resulted in longer conversations as it was hard to find your way out. The first day of Picture Buyers fair was 25% up on attendance from 2010. Matt Zizmann from Google Images stood his ground at the podium for two talks while being harassed by the professional hecklers in our industry. He promised to prioritise preserving metadata, avoiding more orphaned images being created by their spider tool. The audience actually encouraged him to prioritise many other aspects but this was the only one where they started chanting “we want changes now!”.