Whether its online publishers, advertisers, marketers or anyone else, looking up stock images which cater to the local market has always been a hard task for Pakistanis. Well, at least until now.
Pakstockphoto launched on 23 March 2017. It claims to be Pakistan’s first stock image library. The library currently boasts a stockpile of 1,000 high quality images. You can access those images under different licensing options and pay depending on the image quality.
Saqib Riaz and Abid Azam are the founders of this startup which aims to cater to the local demand by allowing publishers and content generators to produce localized content by licensing the high quality images on Pakstockphoto.
Due to the absence of a local stock image library, producers and publishers were often found using stock images from India. The founders were aware of this as they witnessed similar issues. Advertisers often had to rely on Getty images or Image Bazaar. Both are big stock image platforms but lack cultural representation for Pakistan as they target other markets.
Pakstockphoto plans on filling this gap and making full use of the opportunity. Saqib Riaz said that his team is focused on creating a community of photographers who can help create a library of useful images. He added that once the community becomes self-driven and gains enough momentum, the company will move towards other avenues. Meanwhile, the photographers will be recognized for their work for Pakstockphoto.
Abid Azam added:
Our business model is built upon supporting photographers and giving them direct access to organizations and brands which they may not have been able to reach previously. Pakstockphoto will provide photographers with a platform to showcase their work and open doors to new opportunities for talented photographers.
According to the founders, the images on the platform will be related to Pakistani culture, nature, heritage, people, landscape, urban/rural areas, professionals, health, and other similar local themes.
How to Publish Images on Pakstockphoto?
The process to publish your own images for licensing is pretty standard. Any photographer can apply by sending sample images to Pakstockphoto and wait for approval. Once accepted, they are allowed to freely contribute to the platform.
Pakstockphoto can be accessed here.
This is such a well-thought out initiative. Given how my work involves making presentations, I end up picking random images from Google. This would help me obtain original, authentic images at a mouse-click!
Cheers to the team !
This means a lot to us and our team of artists. We really appreciate your interest and positive feedback.
Now photographers can sell their images. And media agencies can buy photos for cheap. No need to hire photographers.
We really appreciate your interest and positive feedback.
A really good initiative but requires serious work to develop a site from scratch to stay safe. This site has been built in WordPress and i was easily able to view the non-watermarked image of every selling image. For privacy, i am not sharing it here. The developer can contact me to know how i did it.
Thank you for your feedback! We are constantly working to improve the system. The featured images are of low resolution and even if a watermark is removed, a stolen image can not be used for printing purpose.
That’s not correct, sir. I am able to download all images in high resolution as well.
Also, you don’t have any image data store and you are storing all the images in wordpress which means they will reside on the host.
How are you going to scale it?
This is half baked product in my opinion.
It was so easy to get, FULL HD! Please improve security! Make use of Robots.txt, Google Image might show the images to the users, also get an SSL, if you cant afford, use Let’s Encrypt free SSL. Also use .htaccess to restrict the areas from where I got this image. Try to store your images on Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform for improved security.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d84c93cd458e606f946e8955c5d12e3c70095ab90ee985e6007ec6fc4ea3fae6.jpg
This website is not secure to use, please implement SSL to provide confidence to the users.
You can easily download the images without paying them.they have to restrict this.
Oh Fantastic! I love photography
Very nice initiative really like the idea, you guys have addressed a very good idea for photographers and media agencies . Best of Luck.
Good initiative, but site needs improvements.
According to this article, they claim to be the Pakistan’s first stock image library. I totally disagree this statement as http://www.talkingclicks.com is the Pakistan’s first and foremost stock photography library with the plethora of unique images. http://www.talkingclicks.com emerged and rose to prominence on 1st January 2017 while they claim to be born on 23rd March 2017.
Here I’m giving you some concrete evidence about it. Pakistan’s leading newspapers broke the news of http://www.talkingclicks.com when it was officially launched.
Below mentioned links will tell you the real story.
1. The News
Dated: 09 February 2017
Islamabad, Lahore & Karachi Edition.
Page No. 14 City News
https://www.facebook.com/talkingclicks/photos/a.381186652245503.1073741854.302407296790106/381186772245491/?type=3&theater
2. Daily Express
Dated: 09 February 2017
Islamabad Edition.
Page No. 3
https://www.express.com.pk/epaper/index.aspx?Issue=NP_ISB&Page=National_Page003&Date=20170209&Pageno=3&View=1
https://www.facebook.com/talkingclicks/photos/a.381278872236281.1073741856.302407296790106/381282288902606/?type=3&theater
Pakistan’s leading news agencies, APP and INP released this news.
http://www.inp.net.pk/detailNews.aspx?NewsID=32607
3. National Transparency
http://nationaltransparency.org/website-launched-to-promote-amateurs-photographers-in-pakistan/
And many other newspapers released this news. Evidence can be provided on demand.
Furthermore; http://www.talkingclicks.com has even announced the first international photography competitions prior to the establishment of pakstockphoto.com and their so-called claim to be the first ones in stock imagery in Pakistan.
Below mentioned link will tell you the truth.
1. The News
Dated: 18 March 2017
Islamabad Edition.
Page No. 14 City News
https://www.facebook.com/talkingclicks/photos/a.364723417225160.1073741846.302407296790106/400847963612705/?type=3&theater
You can clearly see that when they were nowhere, http://www.talkingclicks.com was everywhere. You’re requested to please correct the news in the light of this solid evidence. Besides; give http://www.talkingclicks.com a credit to be the first international stock photography website from Pakistani origin. And also published this news on your website.
Thanking you, in anticipation.
Regards
WTF they are so expensive Getty Images is way better then this CRAP