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!”.

Specialist Stock will have two members of staff at Picture Buyers Fair – Tom Walmsley and Graham Everrit (Wednesday).

We will have our director Tom Walmsley at CEPIC in Dublin next month (Thursday to Saturday).

MERIT MOTION PICTURES has worked closely with Specialist Stock to sourcde a variety of material for the One Ocean series: an ambitious, provocative and stunning four-part documentary series that portrays the ocean more completely than ever before, revealing its awesome beauty and extraordinary power. The series explores how the planet*s ocean, which covers 70% of the planet, holds the very key to all life within its silent and shadowy depths.

“Thanks again for ALL of your assistance with our program.  I most definitely will keep you in mind for any future footage needs.  [Tom was a superb problem-solver/fixer/sourcer and fast became part of “Team Ocean” at our 11th hour!  We sang his praises loud and long at this end....]“

SANDRA, Merit Motion Pictures

To balance the dramatic but negative images of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico here are some stills and footage clips showing the equally dramatic variety of wildlife in the region.   They were  predominantly shot in that region before the spill and cover the species most at risk now.   We have more material off-line showing sperm whales and oil rigs in the same frame.

STILL IMAGES: -

VIDEO CLIPS: -

Many American mews sites including Now Public , Sify  News and The Wall Street Journal are covering the spill and producing heavy predictions on the loss of habitat and life in their local ecosystems.  Local organisations have started dealing with contaminated animals.   Meanwhile BP, the Home Guard and the Coastguard seem unable to predict where the oil will go and how to handle it in the ongoing weather conditions.

There are five species of sea turtles that live in this region of the Gulf of Mexico, including two endangered species and the Olive Ridley which nests in the area during April.

Numerous species of whales and dolphins, known as cetaceans, are found in the area with sightings near the spill in the last few days.  Cetaceans eat a lot of  fish, crabs and shellfish in their diet, which are now contaminated from the slick, and their blubber concentrates the toxins by storing it rather than processing it.

Nesting birds along the coast will be delivering contaminated fish to their young.  Spawning fish, such as tuna due to arrive in the region soon, will either avoid the area for uncharted waters or potentially spawn in an area too toxic for the young to survive.  The slick is spreading too widely for most species to avoid it.

NASA

Tuesday night at the London Lancaster hotel witnessed a grand ceremony for the FOCAL International Awards ceremony (not updated yet), on their 25th birthday.   Representatives from across the stock footage industry were present for the evening and Melvyn Bragg gave a classy speach.     The WINNER for the best use of Natural History stock went to NHNZ for their program Shark Nicole and the well known researcher, Lemuel Lyes.    Specialist Stock were present as we were one of the top three providers of stock for the program, from our marine collection Splashdown Direct.

NAPA hold an awards ceremony for best pictures over the last year judged by National Association of Press Agencies.  Specialist Stock was invited along as one of our photographers, Ashley Cooper, was nominated for a prize for his two front page shots in the national papers covering the major floods in Cumbria last year. Watch this space for pictures from FOCAL awards (and ensuing party) next week.

Michael Parkinson presents the awards

Here is the recent gathering of sales staff where we looked at the sales figures:  100% increase in gross income in 2009 and 25% increase in the first quarter of 2010.  This is a new meeting table in our office installed in time to work on these uplifting figures.