What a Stock Agency Should Be

Thank you for considering Warmpicture Royalty Free for your image licensing and design needs.

My name is Dan Padavona. I founded Warmpicture in January of 2011 to give shelter to stock artists looking for an opportunity to directly offer their images to designers, editors, and writers like you.

You may be aware that prices for stock photos have been rising rapidly in the last two years. But what you may not know is that many agencies have been reducing the commissions given to artists at the same time, and keeping a larger and larger profit.

Why Warmpicture?

When you make a purchase from Warmpicture, you are directly supporting the artist community. Did you know that the world's largest stock agency pays its artists as little as a 15% commission for every image you purchase there, while keeping 85% for themselves?

Stock artists are being unfairly taken advantage of by many agencies. And so are you. The agencies are gaining an incredible amount of power in two ways:

• As smaller agencies are driven out of the market, the largest agencies are comfortable raising prices on you, because they know you have diminishing choices for where you purchase stock photos from.
• Artists selling stock are being put in a position where they must choose to either give up their income by refusing to accept horrible commissions, or continue to sell their images while giving the agency almost all of the sale.

Here at Warmpicture, we are not financed by a large corporation. The daily expense of running Warmpicture, hosting it, and advertising comes directly out of my personal bank account. And I wouldn't have it any other way. I love working with designers and bloggers, and providing you a product that I am proud of at a fair price. And I love giving fellow stock artists the ability to freely create, without the stress of worrying about how their agency will treat them.

At Warmpicture, the artists receive 50% of the commission on every image they license, and the other 50% goes into financing the future growth of Warmpicture.

As artists who have been selling stock photos and images for a long time, we are all committed to keeping prices under control for buyers. And I am personally committed to ensuring the sales are shared fairly with the artists who are responsible for the beautiful images you see here.

It's Your Choice!

Warmpicture is comprised of many of the best known stock artists and photographers working today. You can choose to buy their images at the large agencies, and pay a higher price for the same image. Or you can buy their images directly from the artists here at Warmpicture, and save money.

You can choose to purchase through a large agency, knowing they will be keeping most of the money. Or you can support the artist community here at Warmpicture.

Spread the Word

You can support the artist-run Warmpicture by helping us to get the word out. Remember that the more agencies you have to choose from, the lower the costs of images will be long term. If you enjoy the photography at Warmpicture, please link to us from your webpage or blog, and use your favorite social websites to share information with your friends and colleagues about Warmpicture.

Together we will grow Warmpicture and directly support the artist community.

Learn More

We invite you to learn more about Warmpicture, and to share our vision of what a stock agency should be, with your friends and colleagues. You can connect with us directly on Twitter and Facebook. If you have a question about Warmpicture, you can Contact Me any time. We also humbly ask that you help spread the word about Warmpicture to your friends and colleagues.