Today we proudly present the winner of our 3 000 000th image competition. The contributor who uploaded most images in the 3 million seconds after our image 3 million is Mrs. Ana Liza S. Steiert from Berlin with the impressive number of 3,719 images. With Ana we found a particularly typical Fotolian who perfectly reflects what Fotolia is about. She was born 1965 in the Philippines. Following a career in the hotel and catering sector she has lived and worked in Macau, New Delhi, Dubai, Cairo and Berlin. Ana’s husband Oliver is a famous chef granting her access to the knowledge and ingredients necessary for food photography. Most of her images are actual co-productions with Oliver. Ana sent us a very private and interesting letter describing her photographic career and illustrating her story with images from her private album. Ana writes:

In response to both customer and photographer demands Fotolia has released two new licenses. The first license is called the eXtra Small standard license corresponding with the XS abbreviation. The license is designed for blogs and web applications (thumbnails and small images on websites). The license will start at just 1 credit for a 300*400 pixel image.

At the opposite end of the license scale, Fotolia has introduced an XXXL standard license, offering extremely large images. This license is available starting at 7 credits for 4800*6400 pixel images (30.7 MP) perfect for large printing projects.

With the introduction of these two new licenses we adjusted our price structure. Here is a link to the new pricing structure

Three years ago Fotolia launched with nothing, zero images and no customers. Now we have over 3 million images online, each week 40,000 new images are added, and the new registrations keep coming.

All of this is thanks to you, our 80,000 contributors. In order to celebrate this milestone, we are organizing a special contest.

3,000 Credits will be awarded to the contributor with the largest number images submitted and accepted in the next 3,000,000 seconds. This means if you want to carry home those 3,000 Credits you have about 34 days to pump those images onto our servers.

The winner of the contest and the 3,000 Fotolia Credits will be announced on this blog.

Again we thank all of our contributors for their hard work and support.

Photo: Paul Buceta (one of our earliest contributors)

We just launched a new service for our contributors based on the new Fotolia API. MyFotolia allows you to create and display your own private gallery in your own unique way. You decide which images and galleries will be on your MyFotolia homepage. Say you have a lot of great images of automobiles, make sure the buyer sees not just a few but all of your cool shots by putting your “Cars” gallery on your new MyFotolia and simply send the client your MyFotolia URL address. To give it that personal touch, you control all aspects of how your site will look you can, for example, upload your best image and use it as your banner so the buyer can see the quality of your work right away. You are also free to choose and change your favourite colours to suit your personality or mood. Maybe best of all a new and exciting function of MyFotolia will give you the power to arrange and rearrange the order of the images in your gallery to better catch the buyers’ eye. If you know your automobile client is looking for “Hot Rods” make sure they are the first images he sees when he opens your “Cars” gallery. Remember your client will be happy to purchase your image when he can quickly and easily find it. Your MyFotolia account is your own private collection, so you eliminate any competition, as the buyer will not be distracted by other artists content and may even choose to use a whole series of your images in one project. No need to feel bad about leaving one of your friends out in the cold though, simply create a link in your MyFotolia account so your clients and any one else can visit your friends private galleries too. Now with the obvious greater exposure you will experience you may want to keep track of exactly who has visited your site what they viewed there how many visits they have made and of course your sales! Well with MyFotolia you can do it like the professionals do by creating an account on the Google Analytics Website just click on “My Settings” in your MyFotolia home page for more details. Your MyFotolia site is a direct link between you and the buyers so make them feel welcome while you optimise your visibility. You can look at the following example.

As you know here at Fotolia we are forever growing in fact we have just eclipsed the 500,000 member plateau!! We strive to guarantee that we are always improving our site and its functions and no matter how many members we have they all enjoy that same quick and easy service provided.
To that standard we are constantly upgrading our site and its functions and tonight we will be adding a new server to our database,in response to the growing number of members and traffic on the site.This will help to significantly reduce the time needed to find images as well as increase the accuracy of the searches. To perform this upgrade we will have to take all servers offline for a short period of time starting tonight December 5th at 9:00pm. So if you have some images to buy better plan ahead and do it today. Likewise if you have images you wish to upload today, mind the time.The blog will remain accessible through the night for those of you who need your fix. The site and all its functions old and new will be back online tomorrow morning the 6th of December at 8:00am.
We apologise for any inconvenience but growth means change and change requires time.

So your membership application has been thoroughly checked by our staff to make sure you have met all the requirements, don’t worry we are not the M.O.D. but we do take this very seriously. You have now received your validation e-mail, accepted your membership and you are ready for the good stuff, finding and purchasing your images. First things first, how do I find the perfect image? Here at Fotolia we have developed a quick and easy search function to make this process as painless as possible. It is comprised of four specially designed areas:
Search, Detail Search, Category Search, and Gallery Search.

Two months ago we released the Fotolia API. The API is a programming developer interface making it possible to create widgets, applications or websites in relation with the Fotolia website. A lot of developers and partners are developing new applications using the API. These applications will soon be released and we will keep you posted. Fotolia itself is using It’s own API to create new products (you will learn about it very very soon).

Hi Folks,
I have been taking lots of calls from people who are just discovering Fotolia and are eager to join the family. Seeing as I am new here also I have had the opportunity over the last few weeks to make my way through the process. So here it is Fotolia for Dummies, (or for those of you on the sensitive side Fotolia for beginners.

Dear Fotolia Contributors,

The upload option is now back on line! We apologize for all the confusion and any inconvenience caused by the upload server installation during last week. It was a hard time for all of us and we thank you very much for your patience and for your support.