Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear => Topic started by: jmb on March 16, 2006, 01:14:50 pm
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Hi,
Sorry about being slightly off topic, but I couldn't find a better category for this posting...
I was wondering what you guys thought of Royalty Free [EDIT] Micropayment [/EDIT] Stock Photography. I have been doing a bit of research and was wondering if I should consider this...
Over 90% of my photos end up just sitting on my harddrive(s), only seeing the light of day when I show them to family and friends... Since I don't intend on really getting into stock photography (or making a living off of photography) or printing a bunch of stuff to sell, I was thinking that maybe RF stock photography might be a way to make a little bit of money off of this expensive hobby...
Advice on this topic might be hard to give without a little background about me and my current setup... I am a graduate student and have no aspirations on becoming a professional photographer (I pretty much take photos because I enjoy it, like travelling, and like (occasionally) printing out large panos). I currently own a Digital Rebel with the kit lens and a 50mm f1.8 (my most used lens), but it would be nice to be able to afford some more lenses in the near future (and a new body at some point...).
What are your thoughts? Are there certain things I should know about or be concerned with?
Thanks,
JMB
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You could for example submit a trial CD of about a dozen shots to Alamy (www.alamy.com), but you'll find there's two stiff hurdles to overcome.
Firstly their minimum requirement is a 48MB RGB TIFF, which is quickly becoming the industry standard. That means either a Canon 1Ds MkII, a medium format back like the Phase One P20, or rezzing up. They'll scrutinise your test images at 100% and will reject on the tiniest technical shortcoming.
Secondly someone's got to actually choose your images from the millions of alternatives that are just a mouse click away. That means as well as high technical standards you'll need shots with impact, originality, and most of all commercial relevance.
Many photographers fondly imagine turning an expensive hobby into a useful second income. The reality is that you'll need to invest a lot of effort in discovering an unfilled niche and then work very hard at delivering excellent quality work to meet that opportunity. It can be done, but it's unlikely with shots that just happen to be sitting around on your hardrive.
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Hi,
Sorry about being slightly off topic, but I couldn't find a better category for this posting...
I was wondering what you guys thought of Royalty Free [EDIT] Micropayment [/EDIT] Stock Photography. I have been doing a bit of research and was wondering if I should consider this...
JMB
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=60445\")
If you are asking specifically about micropayment royalty free, then the requirements, both technical and commercial, are somewhat different from those applicable to Alamy.
for example, micropayment sites generally forbid uprezzing, unlike Alamy. Their technical standards are high (which may surprise some), but artistically they are a little conventional.
I recommend you join the micropayment group on Yahoo, which is far and away the best independent discussion group on the subject. Plus the bosses and admins of several leading micropayment sites sometimes hang out there.
[a href=\"http://groups.yahoo.com/group/micropayment/]http://groups.yahoo.com/group/micropayment/[/url]
Quentin
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Hi Quentin and Gary,
Yes, I was referring to micropayment RF stock photography as I know I don't have equipment good enough for traditional stock photography or the desire to go all out to get stuff published there...
Thanks for the link to the Yahoo group; I'll check it out.
JMB
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And if you earn squillions be sure to let us know so we can come galloping after you!
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And if you earn squillions be sure to let us know so we can come galloping after you!
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=60521\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I am sure I won't. A hundred bucks here and there might be nice though...
JMB
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JMB,
All I can do is relate my experience. I am in a similar situation to yours in that I don't expect to make a living from photography but had accumulated a bunch of reasonable shots that I thought were worth something. During most of last year I was not working so I took the time to submit some pics to first one, then eventually 3 micro-payment sites and one not-so-micro site. I'll write about the micro experience. Most of the shots were taken with a 4mpix higher end digicam and the rest were from down-rezzed scanned slides. The reason for the downsizing of the slides is that I don't believe it makes any sense to sell high-rez versions of photos for such low dollars. Micro-sites target a specific category of buyer and I think it's best to aim at that.
At first I had a lot of rejections, until I bought NeatImage and also started to sharpen more aggresively. I found it odd that micro-sites to which I was submitting 4 mpix shots would be so picky but I guess they have to draw a line somewhere and they chose to evaluate pics at 100% screen magnification. This seems like overkill to me, given the likely size of final print, but it's their site and they have to set some standard, I suppose. So far as that goes, it's good practice to prepare photos for them.
I have about 200 pics at two micro sites, and 65 at a third. I have made (my cut) $60 in about half a year. I look at the statistics on the site and there are others who do much better. Since my shots are of things that I happen to come across and like, they don't necessarily match the demands of the clients of those sites. Hence, my low sales, relative to others. Spend time looking at what's offered for sale by contributors with high sales volumes. It's not pretty landscapes, in the main, not at the micro sites, I don't believe.
OTOH, my pics were just sitting on a hard drive so getting anything for them is a bonus. Also, the incremental cost of taking and submitting more pics to them is nearly zero, so I keep doing so. The inventory slowly increases, and it's a little like compound interest. You don't think about it, and then one day you're suddently rich. Sort of.
The amount of money I've made is laughable, of course. But then, the number of pictires I have for sale is small as well. But it's good practice. And it's not as if my other choice was selling framed prints for $400 apiece. It costs time to prep and submit the photos, not to mention the time it takes to shoot them, but part of that you would probably do anyway, and part of it is educational as well. You never know where it will lead.
RF micro sites generally get a lot of criticism on photo boards but they have their place. You are not likely to make a lot of money with them, although with enough effort you might, but you'll make something.
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Hi Robert,
Thank you very much for your detailed reply. It was exactly what I was looking for and I enjoyed hearing about your experiences.
JMB
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I have an account on shutterpoint which I am not sure exactly qualifies as "micropayment" but it has been fairly useless.
Basically there are tens of thousands of photographers, very few buyers, the buyers are incredibly cheap, and the photographers bend over backwards to provide photos to the buyers.
I pretty quickly realized it wasn't even close to worth my time to try and compete hard to get the pictures sold. Buyers were mostly listing budgets of $20.
Also the site is totally dependent on ratings and such from other members in order to get your pictures seen by customers. All it takes is someone who is clueless to come and rate your picture badly and no one will ever see it. (e.x. upload a picture that has not been heavily sharpened, or hasn't had the contrast maximized, so it still has room to be sharpened or printed differently based on the buyers preference, and someone will come along and say it's not sharp enough or high enough contrast.)
And if your work is landscape or nature stuff as you might expect since you posted here, you're in the worst scenario as those types of pictures are extremely common in internet stock photo agencies.
Basically you are going to use a lot of your time sitting on the site prepping and uploading pictures, and rating and viewing other people's photos to build a "reputation" to get your pictures seen. For the amount of time you're going to spend, you're basically losing money.
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Ben,
Thanks for the alternate viewpoint. I think I will give it a shot anyways, but I don't intend to sit around developing a reputation, etc. As for prepping the photos, that's already been done, so no additional time there...
Thanks again,
JMB
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This is the first I've heard about micro-payment, so I'm even more green than you are. However, you mention that you'd like to make some money from your expensive hobby.
This is not the answer you are looking for, but I make quite a bit of money from my photography without selling anything! When you scan the internet or craft fairs and look at the price people charge for framed photo in 13x19 or larger, you quickly realize that by taking your own photo, buying your framing material from a place like americanframes.com, and putting them on your wall, you are making a lot of money from your hobby. Two such pictures would cost you hundreds even thousands of dollars, yet I can put up two framed 13x19 photos for under $60, and I've paid for my equipment in what I've saved not buying someone elses photos. I've probably got 20 large framed photos that I'm extremely pleased with, and I would not have been able to afford all those pictures otherwise.
Then to top it off, when people come by my house or office, they like what they see and I occassionally sell a framed print or two. I also give gifts of large framed photos, and it turns out to be far cheaper than buying them something else, and they are always well received.
I guess it's a matter of how you do your accounting for your hobby.
JMHO,
Steve W
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I wasn't trying to totally be negative about it.
I just think if you were actually trying to turn a buck doing it you'd want to try and be flexible and actually shoot the stuff that there were current image requests for.
Unless you have a massive archive of stuff and you can just let it sit of course. (You also have to spend the time just to upload.)
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A few points.
Alamy doesnt require a canon 1d mark II or a digital back. They require their 12 MP images, but they allow you to upsize the images 200% to get there. The provide instructions on how to do it. They recommend that you have a camera with at least 6 mp, which includes then, the nikon d70 and the canon 10d
as for microstock. Yes i would highly recommend it. i submit to both microstock and macrostock, and find that the images i have on the micro's earn more than the ones on the macro sites.
Good ones to check out are
shutterstock, and istock, dreamstime, and fotolia.
Also, if you would like an online forum for discussion check out
Microstock Group (http://www.microstockgroup.com)
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Thanks everyone for the replies.
JMB
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I think someone commented that there are lots of landscape shots on stock photo agency websites. Whilst this is true, the majority of them do not meet the reqirements of clients (such as ourselves). As an example, we have been doing a lot of picture searching lately for metaphores to do with partnering, looking forward, taking steps into the future, and so on across all the major stock image agencies (including Getty, and other leading sites). You may be surprised to learn that our actual success rate in finding images has been abysmal - this is after a team of three people searching for five days. There is still a HUGE market for graphically strong images which can be used to illustrate a particular concept.
A second misconception is that clients require 48Mb TIFF files. This may apply to certain groups of people. But in my humble experience with the work we do most of our images are 1/4 or 1/8 page in size and we are quite happy with JPEG (provided there is no compression artifact). Most of this work is corporate internal and external communication (brochures, datasheets, proposals, etc...). There is always big demand for fresh good quality (from concept perspective) images in this area.
A final point I would add is, even if you are on a stock photo agency website such as Alamy, you still need to develop a client base for your images. I would suggest that you consider the stock agency website as purely a fulfilment mechanism - you will still need to drive sales and marketing of your images yourself in order to get your images noticed above the general masses. Also, if you can keep your images tight and focused around a theme or concept then it makes targetting your portfolio at specific groups of customers that little bit easier. You want regular clients that come back time and time again to you for a particular group / type of image.
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David
Without going into too much detail,what did you have in mind for illustrating the
themes you mentioned in your post- partnering,looking forward,taking steps to the future,etc?
I also don't think there is a misconception that clients require 48Mb files.
Agencies use that as a submission target to be able to service the minority of clients who
do need a file to those specs knowing full well that a vast majority of sales are in the
smaller sizes as you referenced.
Buyers are demanding and,increasingly,pressed for time and are not prepared to wait the
additional day or two that rescanning film or repurposing digital files would entail.
Rather that risking a sale,the highest common denominator for general enduse has become
the defacto standard.
Mark Tomalty
www.masterfile.com
www.marktomalty.com
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A recent news story in PDN Magazine announces the acquisition of iStock, a micropayment site by Getty Images. On the next page it announces the sell off by investors of Getty, because they missed their 2005 revenue forecast by 1/10th of a percent. Getty will continue to look for ways to cut their operating margins "which will most likely come at the expense of photographer's fees".
iStock sells it photos for $1 (low rez), $3 (mid-rez), and $5 for a high rez image!
I wish all of you could realize the bigger picture here. Royalty free and micro payments are forcing the market down. Are you really happy with yourselves for spending your summer vacation preparing your digital files to earn $50 bucks for the year? Please learn to value the work that you do. This is bad business.
Lonna Tucker
www.lonnatucker.com
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Lonna
The problem is that the 'genie is out of the bottle' on these issues and they ain't going back.
I've been earning my income exclusively from Rights-managed stock for close to 15 years
now and have seen my sales plummet in the hundreds of thousands of dollars over the
last 6-7 years.
In the last quarter of 2005 Royalty free sales globally accounted for over 50% of total
stock dollars spent and it is still gaining momentum.
If one is to survive in the stock photo industry one HAS to have some sort of Royalty free
presence even knowing that one is,at the same time,participating in its demise. Sad really
but it is reality.
The trick is to find the balance.
Mark
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The problem is that the 'genie is out of the bottle' on these issues and they ain't going back.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=61406\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Mark,
I am not in this mindset, and if I ever get to that point I think it's time to hang it up. Why let a big fat corporation make all the profit from your work?
As far as assignment rates, I'm not giving in there either. I discovered one of the best tools in the negotiation process is the ability to say "no". It is ok for me to walk away from a bad deal, I have no problem with that. In the end, we get a lot of the jobs anyway and clients show more respect.
Lonna
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Lonna
I'm a long way from 'hanging it up' but the reality of the stock photo business has
forced me to rethink my 'rights-managed' only strategy.
The rules have changed. Hell,the whole game has changed and photography,more so in stock
than in assignment,is simply regarded as a commodity by the marketplace with no more
prestige than a tube of toothpaste.
Moving forward an 'old school' career stock photographer such as myself has to come up with
a recipe to have both a right managed and royalty free revenue stream build into my business
to thrive.
The really crazy thing is that the cost to purchase an RF image is oftentimes more expensive
than buying an equivalent RM image from the same agency/portal. Todays buying culture
wants the simplicity and automation that the RF model provides.
MT
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Mark,
We all know (or should know) where this is heading. Today royalty free or giving in to micro-stock, tomorrow work-for-hire to produce "wholly owned content" (at dismal rates) for the stock industry.
The pressure will be on year after year to make photographers accept less and less. A downward spiral.
Meanwhile the cost of doing business is climbing. A new digital system every 2 years, new computers, upgrading software, not to mention the cost of insurance to keep your business protected.
Where does it all end?
Lonna
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I think I know how you must feel. I used to work for economists and they would call this state of affairs, "restructuring".
The competition, which you and others are experiencing, that of part-timers willing to sell their photos for low amounts, was always theoretically there. But access to easily digitized photos, either scanned or shot with digicams, and access to web selling sites makes it almost trivially easy for them (me?) to get access to image-buyers.
I am no expert, in fact, given my level of photographic expertise, you could say that, rounded down, I know nothing. But, using an example that I have used before, on a thread here I think, if a tourist pamphlet publisher needs a 1.5 inch square photo of a rustic barn to decorate a brochure they are printing, buying a high-rez, high-priced photo makes no sense. His nephew could take the picture he needs with a 2 mpix digicam. Or he could buy one from me for $1 on a micro-payment site. And he would not necessarily be giving anything up in terms of quality.
If established photographers used to get that business at $50 a photo (making that number up, btw) and now they don't get it anymore, that is not a different situation than in any other business. People used to make shirts in North America but now they buy them at discount stores for $5, because someone, somewhere in the world is willing to sow a shirt for pocket change.
I wrote software for a living for 25 years and spent the last 3 years unemployed. I am completely mysitifed by people who write software and give it away, as if they were on some kind of altruistic mission from god. Can you imagine machinists building cars for free? When is the last time your mechanic fixed your engine for the price of shareware? Yet, in software, it happens. I never thought of computers and programming as anything other than a professional service provided to others in exchange for money. But some people think it's religion. Go figure.
The upside is that most people are not nuts and will eventually stop doing things that do them no good. Low-rez micro-payment work is a volume business. You need lots of photos selling for low amounts to make real money. For some that model will work. It won't take away business from photographers doing custom work, although it might have the effect of decreasing the value of what they do. There are a lot of people in a lot of industries in that boat. We all expect to buy digicams, inkjets, computers at rock bottom prices from high-volume web-based superstores because we don't want to spend much. Everyone else feels the same and some of them feel the same about photographs.
If people start uploading 48 mpix photos to sites to sell for $5, royalty-free, then the sky might truly be falling. I can't imagine why anyone would do that. I don't mind selling low-rez shots for $1, but I would not submit anything of higher resolution than that to micro-payment sites because I think that's ridiculous. But I think it's nuts to spend hours writing and debugging software to then give away, but there are people who do that.
The other side of the coin is that what might happen to a lot of folks is that once they see that they CAN sell their 4 mpix photos for a $1, they will automatically start to think in terms of increasing their margins. That is a natural thing for sane humans to do. Then they end up having to buy better equipment, learn new techniques, look for different markets, in other words, build a business. At that point, priorities change.
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It's not easy, but I think it's still possible to be reasonably successful with stock photography. I don't have a huge amount of free time but I just about make my photography pay for itself,
It's not rocket science but there's a few guiding principles that can make a difference.
Firstly, you'll fare better if you stick to a subject where you have some expertise, and the more obscure the subject the better. If you happen to know something about say tyre retailing then you've an immediate advantage over me and 99.99% of other photographers. Presumably there's trade magazines, annual reports, and manufacturer's brochures all crying out for tyre retailing photography, but how often have you grabbed your Cannon and spent the afternoon at your local Kwik Fit? If I went I wouldn't know what's significant and what's not, but if you have that specialist knowledge then use it. I work in the movie industry and know a fair amount about the DVD business, on trips to China and Russia I've photographed the reality of DVD piracy in these countries. These shots have sold very well, and been used all around the world to illustrate news articles regarding copyright theft and intellectual property.
Secondly, topicality always sells. Scour the newspapers and think of ways you can illustrate building news stories. Ten years ago there was a huge demand for shots illustrating environmental issues but not many photographers were actively shooting to this brief. Over the last decade that demand has grown still further, but supply has absolutely mushroomed. So today it's extremely difficult to sell environmantal shots unless your work is eye-poppingly special, ten years ago even indifferent environmental photography could find a buyer. Comb the press though and you'll find lots of themes that are still growing in relevance. What about the impact of healthy eating on the fast food industry? Or road use congestion charging? Or stress in the workplace? Or the effects of an ageing population?
Thirdly, quality is important, and the more hopefulls there are offering average work at discount prices the more you have to excell. But quality doesn't have to be about pixels or even originality. I specialise in architectural photography. It's a bouyant market but an extremely competitive one. I think the reason my shots sell isn't because they're particularly brilliant. They're not, but I invest many hours in meticulous Photoshop work cleaning up the scaffolding, delivery vans, tourists, and street signs that clutter up all city centre scenes. I've developed a reasonable level of expertise in these techniques, and it's enough to distinguish my work from my competitors.
Fourthly, unless you've some kind of advantage (knowledge, access, expertise) then avoid areas where the competition's just too stiff. Unfortunately landscape photography (plus cute kittens, Scottish castles, and still life shots of anything and everything that's lying around in your home) are all done to death. It's an uncomfortable truth, but what sells may not be what you want to photograph. You may gain enormous personal satisfaction from a shot of a Grand Canyon sunset, but let that be its own reward. The steady money's in tyre retailing photography!
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I would re-enforce what Gary has just stated - getting the marketing right (target who you are going to sell, with what, and how you are going to get it to them) is as important as the actual process of taking pictures.
To go back to one of the earlier themes that there is a lot more competition now that digital has made it easier to take pictures. Yes, that is true, but only up to an extent. Where there is a great volume of pictures is around the 'average' and 'common' subjects. From a purchasing point of view we have looked at some of the 'low' cost sites but more often than not end up purchasing from Getty or other niche providers. Why? Because we are looking for distinctive, clear pictures that articulate a concept clearly. This has nothing to do with film or digital and everything to do with the quality of the photographer - i.e. Digital has brought nothing new to the party in terms of number of people producing high quality images, though it has increased market access for people pushing out dross.
Second issue is that usage habits have changed for images with the advent of digital reproduction (and particular Word and Powerpoint). The plus point from a photographers point of view is that there is an ever increasing demand for clip art and illustrative photography for powerpoint slides and word documents. The downside is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to manage (or restrict) distribution of licensed images. It is now far to easy for people to copy images from one document to another, and whilst we try to make people aware that this is 'theft' it still goes on. From a corporate compliance point of vew is it easier to use royalty free images rather than rights managed to mitigate some of this problem. Perhaps more people in the photographic community could come up with a licensing model which would enable a balance between payment per usage (fair to the photographer) and freedom to use (easier to manage).
To answer Mark Tomalty's question - it can vary widely, which is perhaps not much help, and quite often a case of you kow it when you see the picture. This really is why a good photographer with a well and tightly composed image will have the advantage. If you are asking what do you need to do to have a successful image then focus on clear simple composition, make sure that all distracting elements are cloned or cropped out, and make sure that it is technically perfect. There is no magic formula for defining these images, however, some people do seem to have the skill and others (the majority) don't.
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To answer Mark Tomalty's question - it can vary widely, which is perhaps not much help, and quite often a case of you kow it when you see the picture. If you are asking what do you need to do to have a successful image.........
David,
I wasn't asking about a recipe for creating a successfull stock image but rather I was
curious as to whether you had any preconceived ideas about what you were looking for
concerning the images you were searching for that you referenced in your earlier post.
As a career stock photographer it caught my attention because I couldn't immediately
think of an image that would fullfill your needs in an 'obvious' and effective fashion.
Were you searching visually through collections or using keywords?
Mark
www.marktomalty.com
www.masterfile.com
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David,
I wasn't asking about a recipe for creating a successfull stock image but rather I was
curious as to whether you had any preconceived ideas about what you were looking for
concerning the images you were searching for that you referenced in your earlier post.
As a career stock photographer it caught my attention because I couldn't immediately
think of an image that would fullfill your needs in an 'obvious' and effective fashion.
Were you searching visually through collections or using keywords?
Mark
www.marktomalty.com
www.masterfile.com
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=61665\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
We do both, as you are probably aware keywording can be a hit and miss afair depending upon (a) who does the keywording and ( who does the searching - can get you close but even the slightest misapplication of semantics can miss a whole bunch of images. This is Getty images great advantage as their search tool is one of the best around and why we often end up using their site and images over anyone elses.
Getting back to the specific requirements in hand, there are images out on the market place that do meet our requirements though it is often the case that they where not created with our specific purpose in mind. By and large, the images we tend to favour are not the typical stock photography (which tends to be a lot of staged tightly (ish) cropped shots in business settings). Ideally we prefer images set against a natural background with people undertaking action/sports/leisure pursuits demonstrating some elements of teamworking - good examples are walkers helping each other cross a river, climbers helping each other up a cliff, perhaps people working together to build a house. If it gives anyone inspiration then the idea is to get away from teamwork being demonstrated in a business context to teamwork being expressed in different environments. Photographic style would by sharp natural colours with good compositional styling - either tight cropped on the action or with a good background and the 'teamwork' set within it.
For those who believe that stock image market is too competitive and everything has been done before I can state that there is plenty of scope to innovate and produce fresh and creative images.