Transformation of stock photography in the context of culture industry: Microstock industry and content production in digital ERA

Having a limited working area before digital technology and nowadays called traditional stock photography has developed dramatically with the internet and digital photograph technology. In particular, with digital photograph technology leaving analogue technology behind, the notion of microstock photography has emerged since the beginning of 2000s. Technologic developments which cause transformation of stock photography and also a large increase of the number of those interested in photography, have affected the entire photography field. Today, microstock photography has almost become a global power responding to the needs of photography in every country and region that internet has reached. Hence, it has become one of the most important tools of culture industry. This thesis, in the field of photography, aims to determine the connection between the criteria that microstock customers has created due to their expectation of getting the most appropriate and stunning content of photograph for the best price and the acceptance criteria of photos that microstock agencies created in accordance to their economic expectation and to examine the relationship between this connection and the production of photo contents; and to identify the role of the economic cycle that this relationship revealed on the income of photographers. For this purpose, a questionnaire and in-depth interviews with microstock photographers has been made and the profile of the professionals and their opinions and reviews for the subject were investigated.