Want to buy some pictures???

From the New York Times:

Getty Images Up for Sale, Could Fetch $1.5 Billion
Getty Images, the world�s biggest supplier of pictures and video to media and advertising companies, has put itself on the auction block and could fetch more than $1.5 billion, people briefed on the situation said Sunday.

The firm hired Goldman Sachs to advise it on a potential sale, these people said. The company has attracted interest from several buyers, mostly private equity firms, including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Bain Capital and others.

Final bids are due by the end of the month, but people briefed on the auction cautioned that it was unclear which firms would submit a final bid. A sale is not assured, because the tightening of the high-yield debt markets has cut off private equity firms from the lifeblood of their business, making it harder to finance deals.

Getty, founded in 1995 in Seattle, has grown through a series of acquisitions into a go-to source for visual media, claiming an average service of 3.2 billion images and 4 million unique visitors at its Web site each month. The company�s main selling point is the licensing of high-quality images from professional photographers around the world. Among its main clients are advertising agencies and media companies, including The New York Times. It also offers video footage for use in movies, television and the Internet.

And a bit more on why:

But the rise of digital photography and the Web created a host of competitors that charged as little as a dollar for an image. Recent events � from the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister, to the latest foibles of the entertainer Britney Spears � have led to a surging popularity of low-quality but on-the-scene photos, many taken by cellphone cameras.

What a legacy of images to be selling. And still, in spite of the cheap images being sold, there is always a call for the professional images. They haven't lost any value.