Advance Notes: Are you enjoying the leap? Web video in the last year has taken a tremendous leap forward on the Internet. The statistics show the rise of this innovation.

Web video is here to stay and broadband is the vehicle that is fueling the boom. Just about every size and shape of digital camera that is sold today includes capability to take motion pictures. Depending on the magnitude of the camera, you can record both audio and video, ranging from a four-minute segment to up to fifteen to twenty minutes (and more!).

And what can you do with these segments?

Advertise…on your own website, on a portal, on YouTube, Skidoo, My Space, and the many more spin-offs that are sure to come along.

THE PARADE EFFECT

Another feature: Self-promotion. Include a video of yourself, your surroundings; your opinions that you believe are relative to the stock photo industry and to your clients.

And why is this important? Everyone loves a parade. We enjoy watching snippets of a parade. They last only a few minutes, and then another section of the parade comes along. It goes along with human nature to be engrossed for a few minutes in people-watching.

If that person is you on a web video, you’ve discovered a new form of public relations with your client list. Put the two together and you have helped cement a good working relationship.

To give you an example of how this works, you can see a clip of how I placed a short (2 minute) clip on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqZceQi3iSU

Web video's rapid growth will continue. In our industry, video will be the most important form of media on the Internet.

MOVING FAST

You probably remember previous attempts of web video technology. They
were filled with static, flickers, and glitches. On regular phone lines, they were impossible to view. Now the technology is much better. There’s still some room for improvement, but the time has come for all of us to start doing our homework and get ahead of the curve.

Thanks to earlier TV innovations such as “ America’s Funniest Videos,” and “Candid Camera” – no one expects Hollywood style lighting and precision with your web videos. If the message is clear, perfection can take a back seat.

Since Internet-savvy photographers and photobuyers populate the stock photography marketplace, there has been an increasingly rapid adoption of broadband with us.

In the general population, over 65 million consumers signed up for broadband service in 2006, according to the technology research firm, In-Stat. They report that worldwide broadband subscriptions now number 285 million. That number is expected to double in the next four years.

This is not to say that text descriptions or articles (like the one you’re reading now) will disappear. But Web video will give an added new dimension to your stock photography business.

To learn more, check out “web video” on your favorite search engine and see how you can adapt this new idea to your marketing efforts.

Rohn Engh, veteran stock photographer and publisher of “PhotoRESEARCHER Newsletter,” has provided on-line targeted information for photobuyers, photo researchers and editors for two decades. No other newsletter brings photobuyers such up-to-the minute, practical intimately familiar with both sides of the stock photo desk. For more info: http://www.photosource.com/photobuyer/.