I do not know exactly why, but it seems to me that images do not belong to anybody but are instead there, at the disposal of all.
I opened up Shutterstock to the whole world. I created a contributor community that anyone could give stock photography a shot.
Stock photos are used everywhere on the Net. Chances are, the website you are on right now uses stock photos somewhere - maybe as the featured image of the blog post. This also means that there will always be a large market for stock photographers.
Anyone can contribute images, and we sell them to designers and agencies all over the world.
Each time I went to create my website, I needed imagery. It was complicated to get, the process was expensive, I had to negotiate rights. I knew there had to be a better way.
As I saw more and more people buying the images that were happy buyers, and people selling the images that were happy with how the market was pricing them, I started to get the sense this could be the go-to place for businesses to get the images they need.
Every time someone downloads a picture, the photographers get paid about 30% of what we charge.
I started Shutterstock out of my own need. I'd previously created a few software companies, and each time, I struggled to find affordable images to use on my websites.
No one ever questions where all these pictures in magazines and books come from.
The NCAA wants to control the images; they say they own your image forever. If you look through this façade, it's crazy.
