Who we are:

Blend Images is a photographer-owned and operated creative content development company specializing is multicultural stock images and video. With over 150 active image producers and the largest distribution channel of any commercial stock photography agency, Blend has emerged as one of the world’s most respected photo agencies by photographers and clients alike.

Founded in 2003 by a consortium of the some of the most notable and respected commercial photographers and managed by key industry veterans, Blend Images continues to thrive and provide a unique creative community for each of our contributing artists.

Blend’s library includes four major content collections. While all focus on ethnically diverse business and lifestyle imagery, by providing different licensing environments we are able to service the widest possible group of clients – from those requiring an image for a small business web-site, to those who require exclusive content for major national advertising.

Rights Managed (RM):

• Blend Images is unique in that our RM content is distributed by all major agencies, including Getty Images and Corbis. Our in-house rights management system, coupled with our best-of-class and highly in demand imagery has allowed us to offer the largest possible distribution platform for content accepted into our RM collection.


• Rights Managed content is designed for a wide variety of art buyers. But, in practice, our RM library is highly concept driven and visually sophisticated to attract clients who create unique advertising and use stock as a replacement for, or adjunct with, assignment photography.
• We have seen an increase in demand for RM imagery over the past several years and we expect continued strong growth for the foreseeable future.

Premium Royalty Free (RF):

• Our Premium RF collection is at the core of our library. With over 100,000 images, the breadth and depth of this offering is designed for buyers who need imagery on a regular basis, but don’t want to be tied to the repetitive and often uninspiring content found in microstock.
• Premium RF is the most widely distributed collection at Blend Images, with the content being available at over 100 distributors worldwide, including all major and mid-sized agents. This collection also has the longest sales history that allows us robust data-mining ability in order to direct photographers to generate content with the very best sales potential.
• Blend’s royalty rates are the best in the industry. With base RF rates over 20%, we provide a strong incentive to shoot – once 1000 images are accepted into our RF, RM or Motion collections in aggregate, royalty rates increase automatically to 50%

Value Priced RF – Boost (BT):

• For clients with lower budgets or very high frequency utilization of imagery, our value priced collection called “Boost” is a perfect fit. This content is an amalgam of two sources – imagery from our RF collection that has not been licensed at our higher price point in over 4 years, and non-exclusive microstock content submitted through our MicroMax program. Royalty rates for Boost are identical as those for Premium RF.
• This content is distributed worldwide to a select sub-set of our distribution channel that carries value priced imagery.

Blend Motion (RR / RF):

• Launched in 2010, the Blend Motion collection has come of the gate with very promising sales. This all high-definition video library provides valuable content options for broadcast commercial, in-house, and web-based motion projects.
• We distribute motion content in two licensing types – Rights Ready (a form of Rights Managed) and Royalty Free. We have over 13 resellers of our motion product and see this segment of our business as a high-growth opportunity.

Distribution Channel:

When looking for a photo agency to represent your work, do consider an agency’s ability to get your work in front of as many prospective art buyers as possible. By focusing on generating only highly in demand content, we have been able to put together an extremely comprehensive distribution network. Furthermore, we often receive higher search rankings that other content providers due to the quality of and the demand for the content we provide. Multicultural content, quite simply, is of the most underrepresented subjects in modern commercial libraries and the most in demand.

Unique Company Culture:

Blend Images is more than a picture agency. As we were founded by a group of very successful commercial stock photographers, their positive and negative agency experiences guided Blend’s operating principals. At Blend “for photographers, by photographers” is more than just a saying – it is our guiding ethos. Your success, ultimately, is our success. Frankly, we provide more creative support and guidance than any other modern commercial photo agency. And being part of the Blend community gives you direct access to not only our founding partners – several of whom are among the top grossing stock shooters in history – but also all of the other Blend photographers who are open and eager to share information and advice.

As a Blend Photographer you will receive:

• An assigned an editor with a minimum of a decade of editing experience
• Extensive bi-annual creative research reports, and access to back library of these reports
• Quarterly Skype calls to go over creative needs
• Annual face-to-face meetings – our famous Palm Springs event
• Group email amongst all Blend photographers and staff to share information and ideas

We only invite the best shooters to join our family, as our success relies on consistent excellence. Our sales partners expect only the finest monthly submissions. By keeping the level of our content very high, we can demand the very highest sales splits from our sales channel, and we can ensure the fastest time to market possible.

Our infrastructure focuses on having staff with diverse skills and years of experience and utilizing technology effectively to communicate and provide important data to our photographers to ensure the right content is being produced.

Our web-based photographer interface consists of three main applications:

• Blend Portal for submitting images for editing and high-res uploads
• Access to your royalties online 24/7 through our industry leading “Loupe” service that provides sales data, visual reference, multiple sort options, and download to Excel.
Blend Artists An ever growing archive of creative research reports, monthly needs lists, links to sites of interest, audio/visual presentations and user tutorials, and more. This communication tool will help you be a better stock photographer.

What We Expect From You:

We expect regular, consistent submissions on a monthly or bi-monthly basis which are based on our needs list and input from your editor.

What You Can Expect From Us:

• Productive shooters can expect a competitive return per image
• Regular communication
• Responsive assigned editor with years experience
• Timely edit of submissions
• 24 hour access to your royalty statements
• Monthly payments for all closed sales

Also important to note, we're nice folks. We love stock photography, and we love photographers, because we ARE photographers. We do understand what it takes to create the very best work. We've all been on shoots that have generated killer shots. And of course, the occasional production that just didn't fly. We know the kind of investment photographers make in their content, and we take our role seriously to generate the very best returns possible. We only hire staff who are helpful, committed, and most importantly, have enough experience under their belt to be able to provide truly useful input. We return phone calls. And if you ever want to talk to the CEO, his cell phone number is listed in the staff directory. In short, Blend is a unique community of photographers creating the world's best multicultural stock content backed by a staff of truly talented professionals.

Join Us.

Steps Involved For Signing a Contract with Blend:

Step 1: Receive an email with the contract and W-9 form.

Step 2: Submit between 10-15 high res digital sample images to our Seattle office to assure your files will generally pass quality control. The images don’t have to be images that will go into the Blend Images collection. They can be samples only. After the review is complete, we will send technical feedback via email.

Submissions can be sent via FTP. Send FTP information to qualitycontrol@blendimages.com. Please provide your own FTP information, use a large file delivery system like “you send it” or send a springloaded hotlink.

Minimum digital requirements to qualify for photographer representation:

• Blend Images requires 48-52MB (when open and uncompressed), 24-bit RGB (8 bits per channel), jpg files at 300ppi resolution.
• Files should be produced in a color-managed environment with Adobe RGB 1998 as the color profile.
• Images should be captured using professional level DSLRs, Pro Digital Backs or high-end scanners that can deliver the required quality.
• Images are to be fully retouched, color corrected, and free from dust, dirt, posterization, artifacting or other image flaws when viewed at 100% magnification.

Step 3: Once the files are approved, the contract is finalized. When you are ready to enter into an agreement— print, sign, and mail two copies of the agreement and the W-9 to:

Blend Images

Attn: Sarah Fix

3008 Sentney Ave.

Culver City, CA 90232