NEW AVENUES open up to stock photographers during times of recession. Some of the benefits of a stagnant economy: 1.) CUTTING COSTS. We are forced to examine and eliminate extra baggage without sacrificing product quality. 2.) PROMOTION. We find less expensive ways of contacting our clients. 3.) SAVING TIME. We search out new software, marketing methods and strategies that will make the administration of our business operation run much smoother. 4.) CUSTOMER SERVICE. We reintroduce ourselves to our loyal customers and develop new customers, and prove to them the economic benefits of dealing directly with individual stock photographers. We get to know our clients better, empathize with their concerns, and form an even stronger partnership with them. This allows us to survive in the hard times and thrive in the good times. 5.) ONWARD. Rather than choose to coast and wait for better times, we see a downturn as an open door -- one in which we have the time to look back at what we were doing right, and where we can take steps to move forward cost-effectively. By doing the above, we strengthen our own operation and the editorial stock photo industry as a whole. -RE

MARKETING RF (Royalty-Free photos) has usually been by CD or on-line. Here's a new variation available to photobuyers: It's the marketing strategy of PhotoZion. A buyer can sign up for a one-year "Gold Membership" and enjoy unlimited usage rights of their entire database of thousands of images. The photos may be used for any purpose, including editorial, educational, commercial or advertising use, in products from magazines to postcards, TV's to T-Shirts, to textbooks. Cover use, inside use, from quarter page to full page, with distributions of 1 to 1,000,000. The buyer may choose one image or a thousand, use them one week in one project, then use them again the next month for another. The cost is $200.00 per month for 12 months, or one annual payment of $1500.00. (PhotoZion, 8/3 Carlibach Street, Jerusalem 93386, Israel. Phone: 972-2-6716444. Fax: 972-2-6716444. jtheodor@photozion.com ; < www.photozion.com >.)

BACK TO THE FUTURE? Since photographers produced them, one can assume the winners of the European "Best of Digital Arts 2002" contest < http://www.eyelike.com/econtest/ > would be photographs. And since I saw a display of them in the September issue of Studio Photography & Design, I assumed they would be photographs. But there wasn't a photograph among them. They're all digitally constructed computer images. The displayed winners and honorable mentions were brilliant illustrations, the kind that airbrush artists and retouchers produced in the 70's and 80's. So are we going backwards with digital photography? Not at all, wonderful images can be produced by digital arts - but let's not call them photography. -RE