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.
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.
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.
The NCAA wants to control the images; they say they own your image forever. If you look through this façade, it's crazy.
No one ever questions where all these pictures in magazines and books come from.
