ImageBrief attempts to lure buyers away from stock libraries with a new promotion for a chance to win a trip to the MONA Museum in Hobart

ImageBrief is a new, home-grown global internet start-up which aims to transform the way the creative industries buy images by offering a platform where buyers can create a brief and photographers submit images from their catalogues to meet that brief.

The latest fledgling in the local crowdsourcing nest has recently attracted funding from angel investors and is spruiking its offer at a time when debate about the impact of various crowdsourcing platforms on designers, photographers and other creatives is fizzing.  

“ImageBrief doesn’t ask for work on spec. It taps into the deep resource of shots photographers have already taken. The buyers get fresh, on-brief shots hand picked for them by the photographers and the photographers get to monetise their existing work. ”  

Moss says when he explains ImageBrief to image buyers he invariably gets a strong reaction: “The search engine model is broken. Buyers are sick of wading through poorly tagged, amateur, overused, cheesy shots. And sick of compromising their work because they haven’t got the budget to shoot.”   

Photographers are signing on at the rate of about 100 a week, growing the pool of available images by on average half a million a week globally, despite the lack of any promotion to date and a beta site Moss calls “the web equivalent of a mud hut”.

It’s not hard to see why, with photographers retaining 70% of their sale and the rights to their images, as opposed to the stock library model where they hand over rights and receive a maximum of 30% from a sale. This may be one crowdsourcing platform where everyone wins.   

So does it work like they say it does?  

“As long as the brief is specific and clear, it doesn’t matter how weird the content is, the submissions roll in”, says Moss. “And they’re not amateur – they’re good quality, rights managed shots that are fresh and tailored to the brief.”