Today Digital Railroad announces the addition of several new Royalty-Free archives as members in the Digital Railroad community: Blue Jean Images, Design Pics, EyeCandy, Huntstock, I Love Images, Image Source and Stock Connection. These archives represent some of the most creative and relevant images available in the market today produced by some of the most prolific commercial photographers working today. Moreover these archives offer photo buyers a wide range of subjects and concepts to illustrate both print and online projects.

Since launching Digital Railroad we've included royalty-free as a licensing option that archive members may choose to offer their images. To date, more than 1/3 of the current DRR.net individual member archives have elected to offer some or all of their images under the royalty-free licensing model. Nearly 500,000 member images are available in Marketplace today and more are being added every day. Given this concentration of unique imagery, we're helping our members reach photo buyers who have a preference for royalty-free images by creating a specific destination within Marketplace for buyers to search, explore and discover exclusively royalty-free images.

Our stated mission at Digital Railroad is to empower the community of photographers, agencies and image buyers with trusted technology so they can focus on what they love—being creative. Providing our members with royalty-free licensing as an option under which they may license their work, helps to fulfill our mission and give our members access to a wider range of photo buyers than ever before.

Thank you for your support and please join us in welcoming our newest members to the DRR community.

© Novastock/Stock Connection/drr.net

© Lucidio Studio, Inc./Stock Connection/drr.net

Cheryl Frank, President of Stock Connection is a family-owned and operated stock agency, representing over 450 photographers worldwide. Though our strengths are business, lifestyles and travel imagery, our extensive library consists of images on almost every subject, including business and lifestyles, recreation and sports, transportation and industry, health and medicine, travel and scenics, and more.

Our goal is to offer our clients a well-edited collection of Rights Managed and Royalty Free imagery that highlights commonly requested themes in a variety of styles and perspectives. Instead of having just one or two editors who control the look and feel of the agency (and ultimately only offer what they think the clients need), we take a much more collaborative approach to editing. Certainly we edit every image for quality, but we feel it is more important to give our clients multiple choices, rather than the one choice that we've decided will work best."

Digital Railroad welcomes Stock Connection to our community of professional photographers, agencies and photo buyers.

A young native American Indian with long pigtails and two elderly men Pendleton Rodeo Oregon USA. 1971.
© Homer Sykes/drr.net

America, continent of idiosyncrasy, captured in the raw over a period of thirty years and photographed with refreshing candor and affectionate humor, by Digital Railroad member Homer Sykes in his book "On the Road Again."

This is a very personal picture, a unique glimpse of everyday ‘down home’ America without the cellophane wrapping. A journal in pictures and words of an America which seems scarcely to have changed as photographs flow seamlessly across the decades.

Homer Sykes has turned this immense country of vast spaces and ordinary people into an intimate album of everyday encounters. With a keenly tuned eye and a sense of the absurd, his art is to turn the mundane into the surreal, to infuse the normal with a sense of humor and elevate it to the extraordinary.

The photographs were taken in 1969, 1971, and then put away for 30 years. I returned and made the same mental road trip in 1999 and finally in 2001. On the last two trips I wrote a diary, which is published in the book. I traveled by Greyhound bus and occasionally hired a car. I had no agenda and just traveled wherever I fancied. I was determined not to think ‘illustrate’ after all I had spent those intervening years as a magazine reportage photographer working to deadlines and shooting to a script. All the images from all four trips were shot on a Leica M3 fitted with a 50mm lens.

Other images from On the Road Again are available in Marketplace.

© Marcela Egas

Fotosite is the annual photo conference in Sao Paolo, Brazil. The event gathers more than 2000 Photographers, Art Directors, Artists, Photo Editors, Students, Curators and Consumers that buy photography. Speakers include Lauren Greenfield, Bill Hunt, Rinko Kawauchi and many others.

Evan Nisselson, CEO and Founder of Digital Railroad will be delivering today's keynote address on how technology will shape the future creation, distribution and delivery of images to the global marketplace.

Hai Xia, 8, looks at Hai Liang, 12, at the Dalian Children's Village in Dalian, China, on Wednesday, May 9, 2007. Hai Liang was begging in the streets of Dalian after his father was sent to prison and her mother divorced his father and abandon him.
© Markel Redondo/drr.net

The Lost Children of China

The children of China's 1.56 million prisoners are often neglected, as the stigma many Chinese feel towards crime discourages families from taking in the abandoned kids. Digital Railroad member Markel Redondo has been documenting this story during the last year, producing moving images like this one of two boys living at the Dalian Children’s Village in Dalian, China.

According to Redondo, a freelance photographer based in China, the country lacks clear laws governing guardianship of these children, prompting a number of non-governmental organizations to step forward and provide homes for them. 


“I look for stories that tell the truth of issues that haven't been reported,” says Redondo. “I would say I look for a twist in life that discloses a human aspect sometimes with humor sometimes with sadness.”

In addition to the “Lost Children” story, Redondo has recently been working on a variety of projects including a look at the Chinese tourist boom within the country; and a story on Guiyu, a city that is thought to be the biggest e-waste dump in the world.

Our August newsletter is packed with the latest updates on Marketplace, Educational Seminars, Photo Submissions, Community Events and how to get the most from a Digital Railroad archive. Thousands of DRR Archive members receive a copy each month. Want yours? Register for your free trial archive membership or email us at membernews@digitalrailroad.net.

©Daniel Traub/drr.net

Daniel Traub, recently featured in PDN, has lived in China since 1999 where he has been working on long term projects including a large format urban landscape series and a body of work entitled Simplified Characters. His images have been
exhibited in Asia and the United States and have appeared in various
publications including The New York Times Magazine, Telegraph Magazine and Wallpaper*.

© Pierre Terdjman

Wig World is a photo essay about a a day in wig factory in Jerusalem. The facts of the wig-shunning are simple enough. Halacha, or Jewish religious law, considers a married woman's hair to constitute a beauty reserved for her own eyes and those of her husband, and so an assortment of head coverings - including wigs, made either of synthetic or human hair - are worn by observant married women.

©Leslie Lyons/drr.net

Photographer Leslie Lyons says her personal project “We, the People” is a photojournalistic account of who and where we are as Americans right now.

“This project seeks to document how life, an American life, and American places, are sustained in ways that illuminate both individuals and the relevance they seek. Therein the work seeks it’s own balance…. between what might describe a community of islands: proud, deluded, fractured, fragmented, those focused on redefining illusions and those consciously engaging the illusions. Rather than the measure of those falling through the cracks of society as in some subversive kind of work, the focus here is on those living beside the fault lines.”

Lyons’ photography has been published in Vibe, LIFE, Time, Rolling Stone and nerve. Her corporate clients include Columbia Records/SONY Music, Big Hassle and Diesel.

©Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos

Trolley, a Digitalrailroad.net member, has published Double Blind, a new book by noted Magnum photographer Paolo Pellegrin with a diary account by journalist Scott Anderson.

The book documents the conflict in Lebanon in July and August 2006 as Israeli forces launched 5000 air strikes seeking revenge from Hezbollah for the kidnapping of two members of the Israeli Defense Force. This assault resulted in the deaths of over 600 Lebanese civilians and almost completely destroyed the country’s infrastructure: schools, roads, hospitals, and homes. In retaliation, Hezbollah launched 2500 rockets into Israel, resulting in the deaths of 36 Israeli civilians and the wounding of hundreds more.

Pellegrin, who was in Lebanon on assignment for the New York Times and Newsweek, has since been awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal, the W. Eugene Smith Fund, and first prize in the General News category of World Press Photo for his work covering the conflict.

Trolley, a publisher of contemporary photography and art books, will exhibit images from the book at its London gallery from August 23rd to September 7th, 2007. To see more images from the book and a press release about the event, click here.

Click the image above to view the interactive story (Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Kurzen is a founding member of an emerging group of women photographers named EVE. She has covered news in the Middle East from Jerusalem to Charm El Sheick and from Beirut to Baghdad. Her work has been seen in Paris Match, Newsweek, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The Times of London, and Courrier International.

Delay is a seasoned war photographer who has covered conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Haiti, Kashmir and Afghanistan. He was in the Palestine Hotel when it was shelled by the Americans during the war in Iraq.

Delay has won numerous awards and his work has been published in Time, Newsweek, Paris Match, Stern, and daily newspapers throughout the world.

Click the image above to view the interactive story (Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Delay is a seasoned war photographer who's covered conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Haiti, Kashmir and Afghanistan. He was in the Palestine Hotel when it was shelled by the Americans during the war in Iraq.

Kurzen is a founding member of an emerging group of women photographers named EVE. She's covered news in the Middle East from Jerusalem to Charm El Sheick and from Beirut to Baghdad. Her work has been seen in Paris Match, Newsweek, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The Times of London, and Courrier International.

Delay has won numerous awards and his work has been published in Time, Newsweek, Paris Match, Stern, and daily newspapers throughout the world.

©Felix Hug/HF Photography Pte Ltd/drr.net
In Thailand’s Chiang Mai, one of the most sought after souvenirs is the traditional umbrella. A visitor to a factory gets a close-up view of umbrella making.

Travel and destination photographer Felix Hug believes that positive imagery and compassion will both inspire and change the way we look at things. In his photographs, he strives to capture diversity, beauty and humanity.

Hug is founder and photographer of HF Photography Pte Ltd, based in Singapore with an emphasis on working throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

©Nadav Neuhaus/drr.net
Researchers walking out of the FMARS (Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station) on Devon Island in Canada.

Digitalrailroad.net archive member Nadav Neuhaus has been to Mars………sort of. He recently documented a group of scientists and biologists as they conducted a simulated expedition to Mars in the high Canadian arctic. The seven-member crew wore space suits while outside and lived in isolation in the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station on Devon Island, home of the Haughton Crater, and the Earth’s closest match to the conditions and terrain of the Red Planet.

Neuhaus read about the project, funded by the Mars Society, and convinced them to allow him access. He photographed a training mission in the Utah desert last year and then spent eight days this summer photographing the crew as they conducted experiments in the freezing conditions of the arctic.

©Nadav Neuhaus/drr.net
Neuhaus tries on a space suit for a self-portrait.

©Mauro Bottaro/drr.net
Children playing at a check point in Rmaich, Lebanon.

Digitalrailroad.net archive member Mauro Bottaro has been selected to project his work documenting the aftermath of war in Lebanon, during an evening at the Visa Pour L’image 2007 International Photojournalism Festival. The annual gathering of thousands of photojournalists, photo editors and press agencies runs from September 1st through the 16th in Perpignan, France.

Come visit Digital Railroad during Visa Pour L’image at Table #1 at the International Press Center located at the Palais des Congrès.

©Dirck Halstead/drr.net
Richard Nixon waves to a crowd during the 1968 presidential campaign.

Veteran photojournalist and Digitalrailroad.net archive member
Dirck Halstead will be at Visa Pour L’image 2007 in Perpignan, France offering a retrospective of his career, from Vietnam to the White House.

At age 17, Dirck covered the Guatemalan civil war for LIFE Magazine. He worked for UPI for 15 years before accepting a contract with Time Magazine in 1972 and for the next 29 years, covered the White House for the weekly magazine. He is currently editor and publisher of The Digital Journalist and a professor of photojournalism at the University of Texas at Austin.

His recent book “Moments in Time” is a fascinating autobiography told through Dirck’s words and his camera lens.

Come visit Digital Railroad during Visa Pour L’image at Table #1 at the International Press Center located at the Palais des Congrès.