Stock photographs are now a product of the computer and they will rapidly loose value as a result.
Moore's Law refers to the graph Gordon Moore from Intel published years ago, which shows the power of computer chips has been doubling ever eighteen months for many years. The conclusion is you can buy twice the power for the same money or the same power for half the cost, every eighteen months.
What does that have to do with stock photography?
As I write this, Canon has announced they will begin selling a new 18 megapixel digital SLR camera at the end of March, 2010. They suggest you will be able to store about 40 images per gigabit. In other words cameras are really computers and thinking of them in that way reveals future trends. What does this mean to stock photography?
Every eighteen months to two years the image size for consumer level cameras is going to double. I currently have an eight migapixel Canon which has been fine for most things. However, we occasionally do have situation where I would like to crop a small area and print it larger. Various Photoshop plugins will help with this, but a larger original would be better.
It seems to me the lower resolution contents of stock photography archives will have less an less value. Every 18 months many of the photos in a stock photography collection will become worth less. Certainly not everyone needs an eighteen megapixel image, but starting with one certainly improves your opportunities to crop the image into exactly what you want while still retaining enough pixel density to maintain quality.
