In April, Getty Images acquired Pixel Images Holdings Limited, the Irish parent company of Stockbyte and Stockdisc, for $135 million. Most of the content licensed under the Stockbyte and Stockdisc brands through a worldwide network of distributors is already available on www.gettyimages.com, with the remainder to be added by midyear.

Despite an aggressive acquisition strategy over the past 18 months, its holdings now include Photonica, Digital Vision, Medio Images and iStockphoto, the company recently lost standing...

Rick Sammon, a travel and nature photographer and author, has written a book outlining his advice for travelers who would like to make the most of their photographic opportunities. In "Travel and Nature Photography," Sammon guides the reader through dozens of different shooting situations, from aerials to zoos. The book is organized thematically, and the excursions described include Vietnam, Kampuchea, Guatemala, India, Alaska, Singapore, Maine, Texas, New York City, Las Vegas, Botswana, the Caribbean and the American Southwest.

In addition to his writing and photography work, Sammon has appeared as...

At its annual meeting in late April, Corbis released details of the privately held company's financial performance for 2005 and its goals for the remainder of 2006. The company reported a revenue increase of 34 percent over the previous year, for a total of $228 million. That figure, however, includes the acquisition of the European stock agency Zefa, which augmented revenues by approximately 30 percent.

In part due to the Zefa purchase, Corbis management announced that the company had failed to achieve the profitability projected at the 2005annual meeting. In order to attain its goals for this year, the company intends to expand...

Landscape photographer Elizabeth Carmel has released a collection of images, 'Brilliant Waters: Portraits of Lake Tahoe, Yosemite and the High Sierra.' The book combines Carmel's fine-art landscapes with a selection of poetry by noted writers. Robert Redford has contributed the book’s foreword.

The 104-page, 12 by 12-inch hardcover volume contains...

At its 12th Annual Summit, held earlier this year in Denver, the North American Nature Photography Association launched a community outreach event to bring together nature photographers and leaders in local conservation efforts.

As part of the proceedings, a special award was given to a current conservation project, the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative: Pyramid Peak Trail Stabilization Project. The partnership of nonprofit organizations, concerned individuals...

Congress is considering a bill that would affect the disposition of orphan works, those images whose copyright owners may be impossible to identify and locate. Early this year, the Copyright Office completed its study of problems related to these works and presented its findings to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The study was in response to concerns that uncertainty surrounding ownership might discourage subsequent creators and users from incorporating such works in new creative efforts, or from making such works available..

LumiQuest recently introduced the Soft Screen, a flash diffuser for use with digital and film SLR pop-up flashes. The Soft Screen was designed to be installed in seconds to the hot shoe on digital or film SLRs, with an open oval on the bottom front that fit over the name plate on the camera. Because several recent digital SLR cameras have smaller name plates, the Soft Screen might not attach as securely to those models. To accommodate these changes and to provide a more secure installation, LumiQuest is now providing optional Velcro strips with all Soft Screen products.

The Soft Screen retails for...

Frank Dabba Smith, a California-born rabbi currently living in England, recently released a history of the Leitz family, the German founders of Leica cameras. "The Greatest Invention of the Leitz Family: The Leica Freedom Train" is an account of the efforts of Ernst Leitz II, the family’s Protestant patriarch, to establish safe emigration routes for Jews to leave Germany in the guise of Leitz employees being assigned overseas.

Employees, retailers, family members and their friends were assigned to...

SanDisk Corp. has doubled the capacities of two of its SanDisk Ultra II line of flash memory cards with the addition of the 4GB Memory Stick PRO Duo card and the 2GB SD Plus, which also includes a USB connector for rapid transfer of photos or other data without a separate card reader.
Each SanDisk Ultra II card features a minimum write speed of 9MB per second and a minimum read speed of 10MB per second. The fast write speeds are designed to take advantage of advanced digital camera features such as rapid fire, continuous-shooting modes and video clips...

Lexar Media has doubled the speed rating of its Professional 8GB CompactFlash memory card to 90X. The new card is capable of a minimum sustained data write speed of 13.5MB per second.

Like all Lexar professional flash memory cards, the new 8GB CompactFlash includes Image Rescue 2, the company’s image recovery software; Paint Shop Pro 9, Corel’s image editing and management software program; and a trial version of Photo Mechanic image browsing software by Camera Bits.

The retail price for the 8GB card is $475.