Getty Images brings 360° imagery to the world with 360Cities partnership
Getty Images press release.
Getty Images, the world’s leader in visual communications has announced a distribution partnership with 360Cities.net, the preferred publishing platform for expert panorama photographers around the globe. The new partnership will enable Getty Images to bring 360° visual media to the world by hosting and distributing these stunning, interactive geo-located images.
As virtual reality technologies become more accessible to consumers, the world looks towards a more immersive and deeply engaging visual experience. The new partnership between Getty Images and 360Cities will allow customers’ access to 360° photography from over 10,000 of 360Cities’ producers, enabling the everyday media experience to become immersive.
The compelling collection includes thousands of spherical images, covering key events and locations around the world from iconic landmarks like the Great Wall of China, the surface of the moon, and underwater scenes, including the Atlantic Princess wreck in the Dominican Republic.
Hugh Pinney, Vice President, Editorial at Getty Images says: “This is an unprecedented partnership that will enable us to bring 360° imagery and immersive experiences to the mainstream. With Getty Images’ team of news, sport and entertainment photographers already capturing 360° content as part of our unrivalled coverage, the future of virtual reality is bright. We expect this to be a huge growth area for photography in the next five years as consumers start to expect immersive imagery and Getty Images will be at the forefront of this change – our partnership with 360Cities is testament to this.”
Bruce Pales, CEO, 360Cities adds: “We are thrilled to partner with Getty Images and believe their global footprint, alongside our renowned content, will bring high-quality panoramic photography into the very forefront of people’s media experience. Already we have seen a huge increase in the demand for our 360° imagery over the last couple of years, so this partnership will allow our members to reach a much wider customer base than ever before.”
The deal follows Getty Images’ partnership with Oculus in June last year, where it released a series of premium images available for the virtual reality platform. These images capture moments from the FIFA World Cup through to the red carpet at Cannes Film Festival. This content has to date proved hugely popular receiving millions of views, with an average dwell time of over two minutes for each image.
About Getty Images:
Getty Images is the most trusted and esteemed source of visual content in the world, with almost 200 million assets available through its industry-leading sites www.gettyimages.com andwww.istock.com. The Getty Images website serves creative, business and media customers in almost 200 countries and is the first place people turn to discover, purchase and share powerful content from the world’s best photographers and videographers. Getty Images works with over 200,000 contributors and hundreds of image partners to provide comprehensive coverage of more than 130,000 news, sport and entertainment events, impactful creative imagery to communicate any commercial concept and the world’s deepest digital archive of historic photography.
Visit Getty Images at www.gettyimages.com to learn more about how the company is advancing the unique role of still and moving imagery in communication and business, and enabling creative ideas to come to life. For company news and announcements, visit our Press Room, and for the stories and inspiration behind our content, visit Stories & Trends. Find Getty Images on Facebook,Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
About 360Cities:
360cities.net is the preferred publishing platform for thousands of the top panorama photographers from around the globe, who together have built an immersive panoramic world composed of hundreds of thousands of stunning, high-resolution, interactive panoramic photos. 360Cities offers panorama photographers a unique value proposition with easy publication tools, wide distribution across multiple platforms, and monetization potential. 360Cities’ unique system completely automates the process of publishing panoramas, processing them for tiled multi-resolution display, and properly geo-locating them on the map.
360Cities is a favourite destination of discerning armchair travellers, who love to travel the virtual world of stunning, immersive 360° imagery. Thanks to platform partnerships with Google and Oculus VR, hundreds of thousands of 360Cities panoramas can also be enjoyed on Google Earth and in the Oculus 360 Photos App.
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