Boughn Leaves SuperStock . . .

Stock Asylum Staff Report
Dec. 12, 2006

Saying she will return to consulting with photographers and small image distributors, stock industry veteran Ellen Boughn has announced she is leaving her dual positions as SuperStock's vice president of content strategy and manager of the company's rights-managed stock photography collection.

"I feel really excited about being outside the corporate world again and working on my own," Boughn said when contacted on this date. "I don't think there is a clear course in some of these companies. I'm not saying that about SuperStock," she added.

Boughn said she already has fielded inquiries about her new consulting business from two photographers and one image distributor. Her employment at the SuperStock subsidiary of a21 ends Dec. 31, but her last day on the job was Dec. 4, she said.

A21 hired Boughn on March 1 of this year. At that time, the company was in midst of a management shake-up that has only recently settled down. Nearly every top-level position at the Florida company has been filled with new blood since October of 2005 when Candace Crough was hired as vice president of direct sales. Crough recently left a21 for a position at JupiterImages.

Before joining a21, Boughn was responsible for creating the high-end UpperCut rights-managed collection. She also has worked at Corbis, Artville and Tony Stone Images.

Boughn has been active in the stock photo industry for 25 years. She founded After-Image, a Los Angeles stock agency that was eventually sold to Tony Stone Images. Tony Stone was purchased by Getty Images in the mid-1990s.

Boughn said she remains upbeat about stock photography even though developments, including the growth of low-cost micropayment distributors, have begun to change the industry landscape.

She said recent changes will make it more difficult to function in some segments of the stock photography world.

There will always be a market for great photography, Boughn said. "But the middle of the market is nowhere to be these days. The world does not need another picture of a woman with a (cosmetic) mud mask and cucumber slices on her eyes."

"You look at royalty-free and, God, it all looks the same," she asserted.

Boughn said she believes stock photography will start improving when the industry again emphasizes the creative instincts of its photographers. "I really think we are going to get back to shooting creative photography again," she said.

Currently, she said, the industry is driven mostly by people who spend too much time studying market research. "It's the same people reading the same sources so we keep getting the same pictures," Boughn noted.

"The creative eye of the photographer is what is important," she contended. "I don't think you are going to get to the best images by following demographic trends."

Boughn said her understanding of creativity's role in stock photography and her stock industry experience will be of significant value to the clients of her consulting business.

"I tend to think outside the box and I like to innovate. I like to be a part of innovation," she asserted.

 

The a21 web site can be found at: http://www.a21group.com.