Press Release: UpperCut Images Offers Rights-Protected Images by A-List Photographers


UpperCut Images has entered the stock photography market armed with a not-so-secret weapon: great images by great photographers. With a masterful collection, an elite roster of photographers and advanced rights protection, UpperCut Images is awakening the design world with its artistic commercial offerings.

After carefully analyzing the market's demographic trends and needs, UpperCut Images recruited nearly 100 photographers - including industry heavyweights and promising newcomers - to contribute and shoot new images. The result: a talent pool that includes Sean Kennedy Santos, Darryl Estrine, Paul Aresu, David Maisel, Richard Radstone, and Chase Jarvis, to name just a few.

UpperCut Images is also setting itself apart by rights protecting its entire collection. Every image includes spot rights protection, which prevents use by direct competitors during the duration of each image's license. UpperCut Images also offers advanced licensing options, including media, industry and territory rights protection, allowing for flexible combinations to accommodate client needs and budget. Built-in spot protection, plus UpperCut's new-to-market images, are breakthrough offerings in the stock world.

UpperCut Images was founded by Miles Gerstein, also the founder and CEO of royalty-free stock photo agency PunchStock, which owns UpperCut Images. In addition to its Madison location, UpperCut Images also operates offices in Seattle, London and New York, where the company's considerable presence is attracting a significant amount of clients. An outside sales team covers the entire U.S, while the U.K. team is connecting with British clients.

Says Gerstein of this new venture: "Not only is the launch of UpperCut Images a shift in the way stock photography is licensed, but hopefully it will also mark a tremendous advance in how stock photography is perceived and valued. UpperCut Images was born not just of a desire to offer a more explicit range of rights protection but also because we kept seeing so much interesting photography in need of representation. That's what we're doing here: upping the artistic ante - which is why we reached out to so many esteemed photographers - to give creatives access to better imagery to visually represent their clients' brand identity. And of course, we're emphasizing the value of rights protection to safeguard that identity."

Elaborating on that protection, Vice President of UpperCut Images Ellen Boughn explains, "Advanced protection is what's really distinguishing us from our competition. All of UpperCut Images' advertising and design license agreements include free rights protection, which other agencies charge for. What a lot of art buyers don't always realize is that 'rights-managed' is simply a marketing term used to describe a method of pricing stock imagery. Unless you pay considerably more for added protection, that 'rights-managed' image is often still available to the competition. When our clients license images, we take reasonable efforts to ensure that that image isn't licensed to anyone else for the same use, within the same industry and geographic area, at the same time. We're the only agency to offer this combination of images based on market research and built-in protection."

UpperCut Images also shares its sister company PunchStock's revolutionary guided search, which drastically reduces time spent weeding through disorganized search results. Instead, UpperCut Images returns image search results into sorted, organized categories. The company will also add to its time-saving online features by adding a rights configurator to its Web site later this year. Currently UpperCut Images' research team quotes prices by phone.

The UpperCut Images collection currently consists of over 13,000 images and should exceed 20,000 by the end of 2005. Visit www.uppercutimages.com to view the unique collection and photo exhibits, see exclusive footage of UpperCut Images photos shoots and watch interviews with UpperCut's elite photographers.

About UpperCut Images
UpperCut Images is a premiere rights-protected stock photography agency specializing in providing high-end commercial stock photography to creative professionals around the world. UpperCut Images is owned by sister company PunchStock, a royalty-free stock photography agency with a collection of over 600,000 images. UpperCut Images markets imagery to art buyers, creative directors and designers and aids in the licensing, production and sales of the collection. For more information about UpperCut Images, please visit: www.uppercutimages.com

Posted: Thu - September 29, 2005 at 10:33 AM          

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