Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Medium Format / Film / Digital Backs – and Large Sensor Photography => Topic started by: lisa_r on March 29, 2010, 07:20:56 pm
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...about our industry.
"In 2005, Getty Images licensed 1.4 million preshot commercial photos. Last year, it licensed 22 million — and “all of the growth was through our user-generated business,” Mr. Klein said. That is because amateurs are largely happy to be paid anything for their photos. “People that don’t have to make a living from photography and do it as a hobby don’t feel the need to charge a reasonable rate,” Mr. Eich said."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/business...wanted=1&hp (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/business/media/30photogs.html?pagewanted=1&hp)
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...about our industry.
Someone sent me that article today, but I didn't post it here, because I didn't want to be Debbie Downer. But yes, it makes you wonder. The message I take from it: Keep making the work stronger and more unique. So that they can't source it from every Tom Dick and Harry.
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The message I take from it: Keep making the work stronger and more unique. So that they can't source it from every Tom Dick and Harry.
Yes, no doubt.
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(Sorry, New in this forum with bad english)
"Microstock photography" it's just a small part of our industry, a small part that 10 or 5 years ago nobody would've been able to take care. 10 years ago or even today nobody would take a half spread editorial job for a LOCAL magazine (Let say a photography for an article about "Family") for $50 bucks, today with the internet an microstock I can "virtually" take 1,000 jobs like this WITH THE SAME IMAGE and with the proper distribution channel... and now those $50 became $5,000... and its a win win situation for the low budget local magazine and the photographer... and suddendly this market doen't seem small after all. In 2008 istockphoto's CEO mentioned that the company was paying out ‘almost’ $1.1 million dollars per week in royalty payments to contributors, and that was 2 years ago!
I don't want to enter in the fine art vs commercial photography, amateur vs profesional or prostitution vs freedom debate ... I just want to say that there's an oportunity for everybody out there... for some of us is in the wedding, fine art or editorial category and for some of us is in the commercial stock category... and believe me, there's a lot o photographers that have a hard time accepting that the only “true” photography is that of fine art or journalism .
It's not news that user-generated websites are the future of internet (call it facebook, youtube, flickr, wikipedia). But those are only tools, we are the ones that make the content... well I can say on my experience in stock photography that the microstock and macrostock industries are converging and soon will blend and find the sweet spot. istockphoto.com has a collection called vetta that has more unique and creative photographs... but I can tell you that there's something that stock photography won't ever do, and that's personalization.
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and its a win win situation for the low budget local magazine and the photographer... and suddendly this market doen't seem small after all. In 2008 istockphoto's CEO mentioned that the company was paying out ‘almost’ $1.1 million dollars per week in royalty payments to contributors, and that was 2 years ago!
Now it's $1.6m per week, but that's among over 6.5 million members. That's a whopping 25 cents a week per member, on average. Are you kidding me?
Without microstock, those same jobs would have paid closer to $500 million per week.
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Keep making the work stronger and more unique. So that they can't source it from every Tom Dick and Harry.
Absolutely right, though you'd be amazed at the quality of some of the work some people are dumping in iStock. They must be desperate.
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Now it's $1.6m per week, but that's among over 6.5 million members. That's a whopping 25 cents a week per member, on average. Are you kidding me?
Without microstock, those same jobs would have paid closer to $500 million per week.
Actually theres 29,000 contributors of those 6.5 million members... thats a market of 6.4 million potential buyers. Of those 29,000 most of them are amateurs, but not all of them, I can tell you that there's a lot of full time photographers in istock (including me). Most of the sales profits are going to 200-500 photographers that are really profesional, that would be $3,200-$8,000 per week (again, including me).
Those $500 million per week jobs that you are saying wouldn't have done at all... because most of the buyers at istock are from low profile companies (local churches, school designing a poster for their fundraising, etc etc etc). Most of these jobs (not the high profile projects) let say a local school triying to redesign their brochure, have a budget of $450-$600 (and less in places outside USA) they can't pay $500 to hire a photographer and keep $100 for all the work designing it, and believe me, there are millions of jobs like this.
High profile companies doesn't buy in microstock, they can't afford to see ther image beeing used by somebody else. But unfortunately there's a lot of high profile companies that have a good budget and still buy stock in microstock companies.. and I think that's the problem . It's just another type of business. I agree that theres a lot of "snapshot like" photos, from the 6.5 million files they have, probably 70% are duplicates or with no creative thinking, thats why istockphoto launched vetta (http://www.istockphoto.com/vetta.php).
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Sorry, you are right about the number of contributors. I misinterpreted 'members'. It seems there are around 30,000 contributors now.
High profile companies doesn't buy in microstock, they can't afford to see ther image beeing used by somebody else.
Perhaps where you are. Here even the top 10 largest companies in this country use stock for many things.
The fact remains that 80% of the billings stays with iStock rather than photographers (or 60% for the few exclusive members), and people are not using 50 times as many photos now just because they are 1/50th of the commission price. I'd believe double but not much more than that. Overall the photographers are making around 1% of what they would if they were all commissioned jobs. It's all water under the bridge now. Fewer photographers can make a living and the ones that survive need to find new ways to attract commissions.
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Overall the photographers are making around 1% of what they would if they were all commissioned jobs.
That's an entirely false premise: if microstock prices went up to commission-work levels, it wouldn't magically flood the market with money. Photography buyers have their budgets which would change little, if any.
Photo buyers have needs varying from paying 1 EUR for a stock photo of a happy couple for a local website, to commissioning a five-figure shoot for an international ad campaign, and everything in between. Before microstock the cheapest segment of the market did not exist. Therefore microstock has created jobs and work, and increased demand for paid photography - and as much is apparent in the vastly increased volume of licensed photos in the linked article.
Whether the new microstock jobs are done or even desired by those who were pros before microstock is another matter. But it is clear that the number of pros in the past could not possibly support the huge volume explosion in the past five years. I'm sure there is overlap between amateurs and pros shooting for the same market, but much of the previous pro work is still done by pros, while much of the generic work has moved down the value curve (ie. has become cheaper).
It would be interesting to see how much global licensed photo revenues have increased overall. I'm sure it's nowhere as much as volumes have increased, as you also speculate.
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Photography buyers have their budgets which would change little, if any.
Well I can't agree. If stock photography disappeared then the budgets would simply be higher, or distributed differently. Very few companies would drop their print or web advertising just because a photo costs $500 instead of $10.
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... If stock photography disappeared then the budgets would simply be higher, or distributed differently. Very few companies would drop their print or web advertising just because a photo costs $500 instead of $10.
That would be what I call a Disneyland world: a world where all our dreams come true, the world bends to our desires and demands, and fits our understanding of how things work. Another technical term would be: wishful thinking.
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Funny it seems Microstockers are coached to all say the same thing defending microstock until the day
where they see that the money they are making is just not enough , and they then fade away.
Makes me think of a Pyramid scheme.
And yes they would find the money if that is what they had to pay.
Regards
Terence
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Microstock, good or bad? Who knows?
I know of photographers making money from stock and those that curse it.
Me, I could never shoot images without knowing what they will be used for and by whom; just hoping enough will be bought to make it. That is why I go after cliental that cant use stock photos, like architects, interior designers, hotels and B&Bs, etc. And when reading through this post and looking at the fees offered I was offended by how low the payments are, but then I thought "didn't I just put together a pricing scheme for Facebook ads from $0.11 to $0.15 per click" (plus a base rate too of course, but nothing too high).
Just to say, not sure if $0.11 to $0.15 is an appropriate amount to charge, but I have to test that with time.
Also, I feel like so many photographers get so angry with the change going on instead of adapting to it, is it not better to get in front of the 8 ball than behind it? Threes years ago when I started, things like twitter, facebook, and linkedin did not even exist and never considered making anything like them part of my marketing. Now it seems like they will overtake my marketing and when talking to my clients, I strongly advise them to incorporate them in their marketing plan.
And I am sure things like the iPad will completely change things even more; I am already thinking about how to utilize that tool. Not just to use in my business, but to create a pricing scheme specifically for my images to be used in media on it.
$0.15 sound low, but if 100,000 people click on it, that's $15,000 (what to population of the world?). Not so bad after all; create 10 images a year with that potential and you'll be doing pretty good.
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Speaking of ways in which photographers are being screwed...
"The UK Government wants to introduce a law to allow anyone to use your photographs commercially, or in ways you might not like, without asking you first."
Read more here: http://www.stop43.org.uk/pages/read_more.html (http://www.stop43.org.uk/pages/read_more.html)
.. and contact the UK government if you are a resident! There are just days left.
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Absolutely right, though you'd be amazed at the quality of some of the work some people are dumping in iStock. They must be desperate.
The dont "dump" their photos on iStock nor are they "desperate". Plenty of photographers have decided to sell their work though iStock and other microstock sites as part of a deliberate business strategy to make money. They do it because it works. Surely we have moved beyond the usual mindeless nonesense written about microsock sites by now?
Quentin
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Stetching the imagination by a huge amonut - let's say about 0.005% - you could say that the advent of microstock has simply fuelled the conception of photography as disposable garbage.
Why be surprised if any government views it in like manner?
Rob C
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The dont "dump" their photos on iStock nor are they "desperate".
Hi Quentin, here is an example of what I am talking about, although I don't like this particular photo much. It was just the first I found in 20 seconds which involved some real production.
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-109...up-portrait.php (http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-10991050-showgirls-group-portrait.php)
Getting the set together, the girls, the clothes, hair and make-up, the shoot and the retouching, the paperwork and submission to iStock, and the total hours probably look like this:
10 hrs photographer (managing project, shoot, retouching, etc)
5x 5 hours per model
10 hrs hair and make up and fashion styling
8 hours assistant (setting up lights and set, working on shoot, packing up, etc)
Total: 53 man hours
As you can see, there have been 9 downloads in 5 months. Let's assume the photographer makes $5 per download, that's $45 since it's been uploaded 5 months ago. If you pay everyone on the shoot, that's still less than one dollar per hour per person, and I haven't even added in transport costs, equipment costs, insurance, studio rental, phone bill, etc.
Am I missing something? Is 70 cents per hour now considered a viable business proposition?
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Hi Quentin, here is an example of what I am talking about, although I don't like this particular photo much. It was just the first I found in 20 seconds which involved some real production.
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-109...up-portrait.php (http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-10991050-showgirls-group-portrait.php)
Getting the set together, the girls, the clothes, hair and make-up, the shoot and the retouching, the paperwork and submission to iStock, and the total hours probably look like this:
10 hrs photographer (managing project, shoot, retouching, etc)
5x 5 hours per model
10 hrs hair and make up and fashion styling
8 hours assistant (setting up lights and set, working on shoot, packing up, etc)
Total: 53 man hours
As you can see, there have been 9 downloads in 5 months. Let's assume the photographer makes $5 per download, that's $45 since it's been uploaded 5 months ago. If you pay everyone on the shoot, that's still less than one dollar per hour per person, and I haven't even added in transport costs, studio rental, phone bill, etc.
Am I missing something? Is 70 cents per hour now considered a viable business proposition?
The photographer probably took hundreds of photos during the shoot, group photos, individuals, portraits, details of bracelets, shoes, hair shots, makeup shots, etc. If he's smart he'd be selling tens of photos from that same shoot since he clearly got the releases. This can quickly add up to a real income source - rain drops turning into rivers and all that. So while that particular photo might not appear profitable, it might very well be part of a very profitable business.
The other option is that the photographer is an amateur who shot this to build his portfolio, or the models paid him to shoot for theirs, or someone gathered couple of her friends for dress-up - and decided to put it up on iStock after getting proper releases. Not a viable short-term business proposition, but might very well be part of a budding photographer.
Even Avedon had to start from somewhere.
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I'm with Graham on this one, defending microstock from a professional photographer's perspective is total bs.
My only hope is that there will be a backlash and future generations of creatives and decision makers start appreciating quality and craftsmanship again, because quite frankly the cheap throwaway culture we live in today is getting tiresome.
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Hi Quentin, here is an example of what I am talking about, although I don't like this particular photo much. It was just the first I found in 20 seconds which involved some real production.
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-109...up-portrait.php (http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-10991050-showgirls-group-portrait.php)
Getting the set together, the girls, the clothes, hair and make-up, the shoot and the retouching, the paperwork and submission to iStock, and the total hours probably look like this:
10 hrs photographer (managing project, shoot, retouching, etc)
5x 5 hours per model
10 hrs hair and make up and fashion styling
8 hours assistant (setting up lights and set, working on shoot, packing up, etc)
Total: 53 man hours
As you can see, there have been 9 downloads in 5 months. Let's assume the photographer makes $5 per download, that's $45 since it's been uploaded 5 months ago. If you pay everyone on the shoot, that's still less than one dollar per hour per person, and I haven't even added in transport costs, equipment costs, insurance, studio rental, phone bill, etc.
Am I missing something? Is 70 cents per hour now considered a viable business proposition?
Graham,
As mentioned by feppe, this would be one of a much larger number of shots. Also, is it impossible to tell which shot of a group will be popular with buyers. You can have two near identical shots, one of which sells madly, the other hardly at all. It has happened to me.
Whether you sell rights managed, traditional royalty free, or microstock, the only figure that ultimately matters is average earnings per image over time and the evidence is that on that basis of calculation, microstock generates income as good as or better than average sales though a traditional agency - 100 sales for $1 earn you as much as 1 sale for$100. I do, of course, exclude the ultra-high end and refer to average stock earnings.
What hurts and offends people about microstock is the perceived devaluation of their work. That is understandable, but most stock photographs are not "art" but products. Most of the cost of producing typical stock photographs has been driven out - no film / processing costs, cheap broadband, affordable high quality cameras, easy mutiple uploads to a range of stock outlets. Microstock was and is a business model created by this perfect storm; a brilliant idea whose time came in 2003 when Bruce Livingstone launched iStock, now Getty's mnost successful operating division. Many of the features of microstock libraries have since been copied by traditional large libraries like Alamy.
I have seperate portfilios on the micros and on traditional libraries and this bifurcation of effort and art works for me. Full disclosure - I have, of course, also written a book about the micros (see my sig line) and will shortly begin work on a second edition
Quentin
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What hurts and offends people about microstock is the perceived devaluation of their work.
The race to the bottom continues today:
http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2010/03/31/mar...mon-man-prices/ (http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2010/03/31/mariano-pastor-madison-ave-photoraphy-at-common-man-prices/)
This is NOT what MediumFormat manufacturers want to read. (Or maybe it would be a good wake-up call for them).
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The race to the bottom continues today:
http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2010/03/31/mar...mon-man-prices/ (http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2010/03/31/mariano-pastor-madison-ave-photoraphy-at-common-man-prices/)
This is NOT what MediumFormat manufacturers want to read. (Or maybe it would be a good wake-up call for them).
I believe Hassy are pretty much in cahoots with the top mictostock photographers. My understanding is that they supply equipment free to at least one of the most successful.
If anyone does not like the micros my message is - get over it, they are the future of royalty free stock whether you like it or not. And how much, exactly, did you pay, per song, for your last itunes download?
Quentin
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I'm with Graham on this one, defending microstock from a professional photographer's perspective is total bs.
My only hope is that there will be a backlash and future generations of creatives and decision makers start appreciating quality and craftsmanship again, because quite frankly the cheap throwaway culture we live in today is getting tiresome.
My thoughts exactly.
I do think that much of Microstock isn't a threat to shooters that produce compelling images. I mean compelling in the sense of the content of the shot, not the production hours. If you shoot sunsets with a P65 and an ALPA, you may be replaced by Jack or Jill 7D and his/her 24-105 zoom who also shoots sunsets. If you shoot over retouched fashion images with a Aptus 75s/AFi, there is surely a dude on model mayhem doing te same crap, but with a cheaper camera. The content is identical, and no one really cares about the images. Its just an after thought. Those people weren't going to pay to commission a shoot anyway, and if they were, they were trolling craigslist, looking for some kid who needs to fill his book who'll shoot some images for $500 and a full rights buyout.
The real damage wrought by microstock is two fold: it destroyed the higher end market for stock, and it did, as someone posted above, reinforce the idea that digital images are fungable, commodity products to be bought, sold, devalued, etc.
So when the revolution comes, iStock will be made accountable, right after The Corcoiran Group and the other real estate brokers in the City.
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I'm with Graham on this one, defending microstock from a professional photographer's perspective is total bs.
I am against gravity and defending it is total bs... who is with me?
My only hope is that there will be a backlash and future generations of creatives and decision makers start appreciating quality and craftsmanship again, because quite frankly the cheap throwaway culture we live in today is getting tiresome.
I hope too. Someone, somehow will see his hopes turning into reality someday... that is, after all, what hopes are for: dreaming.
But what that has to do with microstock? Absolutely nothing. You do not have to wait for "future generations"... even today, as in the past, there are market segments (i.e., clients) willing to pay millions of dollars for a single photograph (e.g., Andreas Gursky) ... and market segments willing to pay millions of dollars for a single photographer (e.g. Anne Leibowitz, over lifetime)... or in a single year (e.g. Tom Mangelson). Microstock is just a low-end market segment, and wishing that a low-end market segment turns into a high-end one is... well, like wishing Walmarts disappear and everything is Saks Fifth Avenue.
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Hey Quentin, if the future of royalty free stock is so fucking rosy then perhaps you should consider giving up your day job as a lawyer?
Thats what I like about these microstock threads - they never fail to bring out the best in intelligent, well reasoned debate
Quentin
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Thats what I like about these microstock threads - they never fail to bring out the best in intelligent, well reasoned debate
Quentin
Quentin! You sound just like a politician: never answer the asked question. Or did you pick up that little trick when you were reading Law?
Rob C
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The race to the bottom continues today:
http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2010/03/31/mar...mon-man-prices/ (http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2010/03/31/mariano-pastor-madison-ave-photoraphy-at-common-man-prices/)
This is NOT what MediumFormat manufacturers want to read. (Or maybe it would be a good wake-up call for them).
Been reading this thread with interest and I am not surprised anymore. I felt the snapshot time in photography did not help. With the march of digital now everyone can take a photo in focus & correctly exposed, but put them in a studio with lights & then lets see what they can do? I really hope craft & ideas will prevail. Also photographers have to be aware of retouching houses doing CGI & in house photography competing with those very photographers who use there services ( I know of one in Sydney ).
Cheers Denis
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most stock photographs are not "art" but products
Quentin
I can agree more. I can't see why people can't accept that you can sell a photograph for a $1 to 1,000 local magazines with a print run of 1,000 or sell it for $1,000 dollars to a magazine with a print run of 1,000,000... so what's the difference? I know one is "high" end and the others "local" but if I made that decision before taking the photograph with carefully "commercial thinking" not "artistical thinking" why not?
Let be real, most of the photographers in this forum would never take a job for a local magazine with a budget of $75 for a photo shoot... In the real world the editor of that local magazine probably would ask their cousing to take the photo with their rebel or whatever or paid a photography student. Now with internet they have the oportunity to license an nice image (I'm not saying the best image in the world) from microstock and have a completely different look in their magazine. The problem is when a high end magazine with a budget of $2,000 buy an istockphoto image instead of hiring a profesional photographer that would do a great job... but that ain't the photographer decision... is it? Its the editor decision! So instead of being angy with the photographers of microstock you should get angry with the editor that thinks that an image of istock that has been sold 1,000 times is equal to a personalized and unique image made by an "international known photographer".
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IMO the worst things about microstock are not the prices, but royalty that goes to the photographer. And it's around 20%. 20% doesn't sound like a fair deal.
And another thing, which is even worse, is that all contributors' statistics are shared with everybody. How much each image makes, best sellers, number of downloads etc.
Thus, if a contributor manages to produce a best seller, a number of copies can be expected to appear very soon.
It's good for the microstock companies, they have a flood of new contributors who don't have to learn and figure out what to produce. They can just copy the material and bring them money, diluting per-contributor income at the same time.
I wish there were regulations for those companies, which they would have to comply with.
With Getty buying out everything around it's all slowly turning into one big fraud scheme that takes advantage of photographers.
I'd be happy to know if anybody else thinks likewise.
Alex
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Quentin! You sound just like a politician: never answer the asked question. Or did you pick up that little trick when you were reading Law?
Rob C
Well, there is an election coming up here in the UK : you never know
But more seriously, I wasn't being asked a serious question, it was just another "shoot the messsenger" post I was responding to, complete with gratuitous bad language.
I think its incredibly difficult to make a living from any type of stock photography. Some do, however, and all credit to them. Its not going to get any easier either.
Quentin
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IMO the worst things about microstock are not the prices, but royalty that goes to the photographer. And it's around 20%. 20% doesn't sound like a fair deal.
Fairness has very little to do with business. To abuse the analogy used earlier, was it fair that Henry Ford made hundreds of buggy-whip producers obsolete? Was it fair that incandescent light bulbs made lanter-makers jobless?
As for the 20% itself, it's what the market has set. It (apparently) is profitable, and enough for the contributing photographers to make it worth their while. If somebody could make a profitable business offering 50% or even 30% to the photographers, I'm sure it would be around already.
And another thing, which is even worse, is that all contributors' statistics are shared with everybody. How much each image makes, best sellers, number of downloads etc.
Thus, if a contributor manages to produce a best seller, a number of copies can be expected to appear very soon.
It's good for the microstock companies, they have a flood of new contributors who don't have to learn and figure out what to produce. They can just copy the material and bring them money, diluting per-contributor income at the same time.
It's also good for the customers: if all of a sudden everybody wanted photos of dachshunds catching ice-cubes in mid-air, it's better to have many suppliers and variety of approaches, instead of just one. Customers are the ones that pay the bills.
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IMO the worst things about microstock are not the prices, but royalty that goes to the photographer. And it's around 20%. 20% doesn't sound like a fair deal.
Alex
I can't agree with you more.
I became an istockphoto.com "exclusive contributor" (25% royalty) 3 months after my first upload. And after 1 year (not as a full time stock photographer) I became a "diamond" contributor (40% royalty) so it depends, at least in istockphoto.com
And another thing, which is even worse, is that all contributors' statistics are shared with everybody. How much each image makes, best sellers, number of downloads etc.
Thus, if a contributor manages to produce a best seller, a number of copies can be expected to appear very soon.
Alex
That's true, at least on istockphoto.com. They tried to do something rounding the downloads numbers, but it haven't solve this particular problem. I hope they could remove all stadistics soon.
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The base problem across the industry is photographers - and other artists - who have no clue about their true costs, no understanding of business, and who are giving their work away.
Everyone says "well of course they have no talent", but that is not true in many cases. I have a friend who is a very good graphic artist. But he did one job where he drove 1 hour each way to meet the client, then drove 1 hour each way another day to shoot, then shot for 3 hours, then spent 2 hours compositing in Photoshop. All for $50!
Then the client slow pays him ..... I told him to go get a job at McDonalds.
Of course there were all kinds of promises along tge way - they would hire him to maintain the web for he company, etc.
And their are a ton more like him waiting in line, when he (inevitably) goes bancrupt and gets a job at a call center.
So it is stupid idiots like that who have no conception of their CODB, amortization of equipment, understanding why they need insurance, etc. who are particulary irritating. Of course in law you have requirements to pass a bar exam, etc., which keeps out the know-nothings who would offer to represent you in court for $5 an hour, draw up a will, etc. In retail you have laws against selling for less than the cost of goods sold, like milk at $0.25 per gallon.
There are three primary effects of these folks, in stick or any other niche:
1) it makes it impossible for young professionals to earn enough to support themselves while they build a business,
2) it takes away the bread-and-butter, day to day jobs that help local photographers survive between more creative, lucrative paying work, and
3) it conditions clients who would have the funds to pay realistic rates for what they are reqesting to have no clue as to what decent photography should cost. They waste a lot of our time, and it is too late to educate them about realstc rates. Like I am going to haul $15k worth of equipment and put in an 8 hour day for a job that won't even pay to cover equipment wear and tear?
I would get job offers for $150 for a day when my Canon 1DsII was renting for $250 per day! I found it more profitable to just rent out the equipment and stay home.
So the irritation isn't with the "laws of the economy", or gravity, or whatever. It is with idiots who don't have a clue babbling about their "profession" in photography. I don't mean to imply that any of tge folks here are like that. But there are certainly enough of those folks in most niches now - sports photography, senior portraits, stock, etc. that the economics really don't make any sense at all as a "profession."
And when I can make an average of $50 to $100 per hour - since 1995 at least - with some variation of my photography/Photoshop/digital imaging/computer skill set, I don't even self identify as being in that business, because I don't want to waste time talking to clients who want something for $25 to $100. I'd have to bill them more than that to cone out ahead answering their e-mails and endless phone calls.
As a "profession", photography is a mess right now.
Michael
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The base problem across the industry is photographers - and other artists - who have no clue about their true costs, no understanding of business, and who are giving their work away.
Couldn't agree more. But the market has changed irrevocably, so if your only expertise is easily reproducible generic stock, you need to do massive volume and/or really know your target market to be able to compete.
But it's not only that. When pros have to compete against those stay-at-home moms taking what amount to nothing more than snapshots as stock, it is clear that something or somebody has to change. I guarantee that will not be the demand for cheap photography, or the amateur who gets paid to take her family out every once in a while.
And finally, what consistenly surprises me here is that how poorly many photographers grasp basic business tenets, and act like a kid when you take away their lollipop whenever the world serves them a perceived injustice.
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You guys are so focused on stock you are forgetting the thousands of business that sell things. They need images and you can't get those images from stock. Anyone selling products needs images of those products and that is and will always be true.
Worrying about the dumb-ass with a new camera is a waste of time. Deal with what is real and what works and let the rats eat the leftovers.
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Products is or soon will be all cgi. Products isn't even a market anymore.
You guys are so focused on stock you are forgetting the thousands of business that sell things. They need images and you can't get those images from stock. Anyone selling products needs images of those products and that is and will always be true.
Worrying about the dumb-ass with a new camera is a waste of time. Deal with what is real and what works and let the rats eat the leftovers.
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Products is or soon will be all cgi. Products isn't even a market anymore.
Exactly. Don't think the guy APE is on about hasn't known that for a while.
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...what consistenly surprises me here is that how poorly many photographers grasp basic business tenets...
Indeed. And yet the most constant complaint coming from professional photographers is that the industry is ruined by amateurs who have "no clue about business".
However, both claims stand: today's amateurs indeed have no clue (nor they care) of yesterday's business models of the pros, and pros have no clue of today's business models (other than hating it), desperately clinging to the models of yesteryear.
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Indeed. And yet the most constant complaint coming from professional photographers is that the industry is ruined by amateurs who have "no clue about business".
However, both claims stand: today's amateurs indeed have no clue (nor they care) of yesterday's business models of the pros, and pros have no clue of today's business models (other than hating it), desperately clinging to the models of yesteryear.
Slobodan, you are, unfortunately, absolutely right on both counts.
Further, mention has been made of the guy whose only (only?) talent is generic images. Well, I remember from the good old days of Stone-pre-Getty that generic material was exactly what stock was about: you were asked to work towards the idea of concepts that fitted standard market image needs: honesty; love; romance; business; youth; sports; medical; health; calendar girls; beauty etc. etc. The pictures were required to fit standard emotional triggers - it was the art of the business. And there were some damn good shooters doing it very well. And the money matched the effort during those years, and cheaper sales were frowned upon. And 50% commission was the norm. Eat your effing hearts out, micro slaves. And eat them out because you helped ruin your own industry. Those 'cheaper' sales were frowned upon by the snappers but not by the agencies. You must never forget that the agencies, ALL of them, are in business to make money for the agency above all, the photographers being but necessary evils encountered en route.
That the amateur is or isn't a good photographer hasn't much to do with it: some, exactly like the pros, are good and others useless. The huge difference is that the pro has to live from his work whilst the amateur is on an ego trip. Customers will always pay the least they need to and will attempt to extract the utmost mileage from any assignment - that's business. To imagine that the pro photographer should charge less because then he will enable a poor client to use photography is bullshit. Why the hell should the photographer be concerned with that? His concern is making a living in a real market from equally real clients; there are enough wannabe photographers and none of us needs wannabe clients to cloud the issue even further!
Rob C
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The interesting thing, of course, if that the visual arts have been through this massive upheaval before.
In the 1890's, when common people could suddenly afford to get portraits taken photographically. The wonderful new technology of photography meant that you could get a portrait done for pennies, rather than having to pay a portrait artist for hours and hours of work in front of the easel.
Before the advent of low-cost photography, only the rich and noble had portraits painted. Afterwards, anyone on a middling wage could have portraits photographed. Why do you think old fashioned studio portraits always show people in their very formal Sunday best clothes? Because getting your portrait done was a proper occasion, it was as if you were suddenly promoted to the ranks of nobility, doing something that would have been totally out of your league just a few years before. No wonder they wanted to dress up. (And of course the existing style was for dressing up, because all the nobles had wanted to for their portraits, too).
I'm sure that the professional portrait painters railed and cursed at the erosion of their craft, as the photographers piled them high and pushed them through. Portrait painting survived, although I'm sure it was a rough time to live through as a portrait painter and I wouldn't minimize the misery it must have caused. Some portrait painters turned their hands to the new medium and because great portrait photographers, of course. (Many of the early photographic artists had a fine arts background, although many of the most commercially successful early photographers had completely different trade backgrounds).
What's happening today parallels this. Some photographers will move with the times and shoot microstock that sells. Most of the market need for stock imagery might well be supplied by part-timers (not really amateurs if they are making even beer money from selling their images). Personally, shooting stuff for stock doesn't appeal to me all that much, but if it did, I guess I'd probably shoot it for microstock as it seems to be the wave of the future.
It doesn't necessarily mean the end of the high-end photographic market, although I think there's clearly a huge upheaval and contraction taking place. The flipside of the microstock shooting style is that just finding that one emotional high-impact gallery-worthy image in the millions and millions of slightly anodyne slightly generic but technically fine morass will be a challenge. Print costs aren't going to come down because they have a physical component, so anyone wanting a picture for their wall is still going to have to pay a premium. People with a unique vision will still be able to make a living at it, if enough people like their work and are willing to pay for it.
I'm as worried about this as the next man, even producing images for sale by subscription on the web relies upon people not uploading our stuff to sharing websites (and indeed I have to pay people to hunt that sort of egregious copyright violation down). But unfortunately I don't see any way in which one can resist the movement of the market, except to hope that you are doing good enough work that people will still want to buy it.
An even more worrying question is whether still photography is going to retain its lure for very long, with magazines possibly heading for extinction and being replaced by online sites (like LL... like it or not, we're participating in the destruction by having these conversations here rather than in the pages of a photo magazine. And we don't pay a subscription to be here, either.) I'm sure that the very best stills photographers will continue to thrive, but for a lot of people lower down the food chain, you'd better get tooled up for video, and quickly, because I think more and more paying jobs are going to require a mix of stills and videos.
As the curse has it... "May you live in interesting times". I think we do.
Cheers, Hywel
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Hywel
The problem, of course, is that unlike the old painting/photography revolution, we are still talking about a single medium: photography. It has nothing to do with displacing one medium with another; it has all to do with ruining the financial structure of the same medium. Not similar at all.
I believe that had professionals not panicked and joined in the wholesale destruction of their own lives, had had the courage of leaving the micro world to the amateur, then it would have been a different story. Do any of you remember the wars some couple of years ago within Getty? As I seem to remember of the time, that had zich to do with amateurs, it was all about business structure and who comes out on top and by how much.
I believe much of it has been assisted suicide.
Rob C
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Wingeing aside (like it's going to make any difference), what is to be done for the future? Where should the stock photographer who believes his business ruined then go? What is the next 'thing' for the pro photographer? Is that question not more important and crucial? What are people doing instead, what is the next big thing? Is it video stock? Is it something else?
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Wingeing aside (like it's going to make any difference), what is to be done for the future? Where should the stock photographer who believes his business ruined then go? What is the next 'thing' for the pro photographer? Is that question not more important and crucial? What are people doing instead, what is the next big thing? Is it video stock? Is it something else?
One word: Motion.
I don't think there is room for full time professional stock shooters. That market died with the D70.
There are always seminars, workshops, etc.
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Spot on.
Why would a reputable company... (http://fairtradephotographer.blogspot.com/2010/03/microstock-why-would-reputable-company.html)
Wow that should be a required link for any photo buyer...
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Hywel
The problem, of course, is that unlike the old painting/photography revolution, we are still talking about a single medium: photography. It has nothing to do with displacing one medium with another; it has all to do with ruining the financial structure of the same medium. Not similar at all.
I don't agree with that. The product then was portraits of people, only the means of production and delivery changed.
A few years after the portrait painters got shafted by the photographers, the professional portrait photographers got shafted by cheap film cameras so family portraits could be done the family themselves. Then the makers of cheap film cameras and film itself got shafted by the move to digital.
The changes we are seeing are the result of a change in medium: from film to digital. The differing cost of pixels on a hard drive vs. silver halide crystals in film means more photographs, same as the differing cost of photograph vs. a painting meant more portraits.
This is exacerbated by the allied move from physical delivery (prints, slides, advertising boards, magazines...) to digital delivery, which reduces the cost of making additional perfect copies by such a large factor as to make it almost free.
That's the reason why there ARE microstocks- because for the first time, it has become possible to make perfect reproductions for almost zero cost. And if the cost of the physical item becomes essentially zero, it seems inevitable that the cost of the product as a whole is at risk. It only takes a few people to figure out that they can sell 10,000 copies of a photo for $1 each rather than one photo for $10,000 each before market forces start to take over, and as others have said there's now a huge excess in the supply of "just about good enough" photos from the microstocks and the demand from high end consumers like magazines is falling. That makes for a painful squeeze on the people in the middle of the market. It's just mass production in action.
Surviving will be a matter of adapting one's business model as best as one can. For the moment, we're sticking with the "high quality, regular updates" model... but I figured out that my website has around 50,000 images all visible to someone for a $30 monthly fee. That's 0.06 cents per image... not counting the hours of video. (That's 6 hundreths of a cent, not six cents!)
That's a number that would horrify even the microstocks. Granted, that's for viewing/downloading rights only, not the right to use the image yourself for anything other than personal viewing pleasure. But still, I guess that means I'm making a living selling digital downloads of my photos for 0.06 cents each... and I consider myself to be at the upper end of the quality vs. quantity curve for erotica sold electronically! There are sites offering access to 250,000 images for the same price... 0.012 cents per image.
It is possible to survive in such a climate, but it requires a different business model from the one that pertained when (for example) erotica was primarily published in magazines, or when a customer wanting "a photograph" wanted a 6x7 transparency for a magazine cover, not an 800x600 graphic for a website.
Cheers, Hywel.
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Products is or soon will be all cgi. Products isn't even a market anymore.
SOME products...others I don't think so much. It really depends on the product and the customer.
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...I believe that had professionals not panicked and joined in the wholesale destruction of their own lives...
In defense of poor professionals, it shall be noted that they are not unique in their (human) weaknesses. Most (if not all) humans, when faced with what is known in game theory as "prisoner's dilemma", would do the same, i.e., choose the best strategy for themselves (individually), whereas the outcome for all participants (collectively) is worse off. For those who prefer blockbusters to books, some of this can be found in "A Beautiful Mind", starring Russell Crowe as John Forbes Nash, a Nobel Prize in Economics.
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http://www.pdnpulse.com/2010/03/istock-try...eat-it-too.html (http://www.pdnpulse.com/2010/03/istock-trying-to-have-its-cake-and-eat-it-too.html)
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Thompson should have referred him to the world's leading authority, Douglas Freebies (http://qdfb.smugmug.com/)
I feel your pain...
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A story on the partial life of one particular photograph, in all the many ways it was used.
http://fairtradephotographer.blogspot.com/...le-company.html (http://fairtradephotographer.blogspot.com/2010/03/microstock-why-would-reputable-company.html)
It feels like a photograph that would be one one of those websites that they license as a placeholder, where they're trying to get someone else to buy the domain from them.
I wonder what this guy made, (after expenses of the shoot), from this one image.
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This is from 2004. It was adressed to the "pros" at the time, but it seems to me it applies 100 fold to those lured in by the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow peddeled by the microstock companies. Distribution is the golden egg. Content providers? Those are the pigeons:
http://www.editorialphoto.com/outreachep/wap2.asp (http://www.editorialphoto.com/outreachep/wap2.asp)
You guys in this business are viewed by the clients, by reps, by the stock agencies, by the lawyers who work for your clients - as naive, passive to a fault as "artistes" in the most pejorative sense. That you lack business acumen, that you never read anything - and I know from personal experience and Erica can tell you from personal experience, we know that half of you don't read the letters that we send you, even though you're paying us. We know they're not read. They perceive you as being unable to write English sentences. They perceive you as being unable to put a paragraph together. They perceive you as being easily fooled and very desperate.
This is the way that they talk about you behind your back. They don't tell you that when their having drinks after a shoot and they don't volunteer this information, but it's what they tell us when we have them under oath. It's what they tell us when their in negotiations. These are people who can, and will, tap you on the back with one hand and pick your pocket with the other. And it can happen to you.
This is an environment where perception becomes realty. All of you are dealing in the visual arts and this really should hit home. You should understand this in your gut. The scent of desperation by and amongst photographers is about as subtle as a dead skunk in the middle of the road and if the person you are negotiating with - who you guys like to call your ‘negotiating partner' - senses that desperation, you are likely then to become another piece of road kill.
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This is from 2004. It was adressed to the "pros" at the time, but it seems to me it applies 100 fold to those lured in by the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow peddeled by the microstock companies. Distribution is the golden egg. Content providers? Those are the pigeons:
http://www.editorialphoto.com/outreachep/wap2.asp (http://www.editorialphoto.com/outreachep/wap2.asp)
You guys in this business are viewed by the clients, by reps, by the stock agencies, by the lawyers who work for your clients - as naive, passive to a fault as "artistes" in the most pejorative sense. That you lack business acumen, that you never read anything - and I know from personal experience and Erica can tell you from personal experience, we know that half of you don't read the letters that we send you, even though you're paying us. We know they're not read. They perceive you as being unable to write English sentences. They perceive you as being unable to put a paragraph together. They perceive you as being easily fooled and very desperate.
This is the way that they talk about you behind your back. They don't tell you that when their having drinks after a shoot and they don't volunteer this information, but it's what they tell us when we have them under oath. It's what they tell us when their in negotiations. These are people who can, and will, tap you on the back with one hand and pick your pocket with the other. And it can happen to you.
This is an environment where perception becomes realty. All of you are dealing in the visual arts and this really should hit home. You should understand this in your gut. The scent of desperation by and amongst photographers is about as subtle as a dead skunk in the middle of the road and if the person you are negotiating with - who you guys like to call your ‘negotiating partner' - senses that desperation, you are likely then to become another piece of road kill.
Its just another predictiable rant at the dying of the light. Cheap music downloads have morphed in to cheap picture downloads, video clips, vector graphics, and most other digital information available on the internet.
Most news channels offer their content to the public for free. News organsiations have a hard time working out how to make money from an an online world used to getting their inforamtion for free. Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that relies on the provision of free content from the public.
In my practice as a lawyer, I and my collegaues are expected to provide an increasing amount of information and advice for free, and (in the UK) we soon face the advent of so called "tesco law" as many legal services are deregulated. A threat or an opportunity? Its all a question of attitude.
What on earth makes stock photographers think that they should be treated as a special case? Who said photographers should be insulated from the forces of modern business models that have grown out of the internet and digital technology / media?
Generic photography is worth the price people are prepared to pay for it - which is not very much, as iStock and their contemporaries understand all too well. The local community magazine or website that was not prepared to pay $150 for an overpriced image from Getty is happy to pay a few dollars for an image from Shuttersotck, Fotolia, iStock etc. A high end will survive but you had better be really good to be part of it.
Roadkill? You just didn't move fast enough.
Quentin
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Roadkill? You just didn't move fast enough.
You completely misread the article.
He is an attorney who works for photographers. He is talking about how stock agencies view the sophistication and business acumen of their content providers - the photographers. And this was in the era prior to microstocks.
He is talking about the importance of photographers not overselling rights,, not believing the client when they say "we don't have any money for trhis project", etc.
The majority of people doing business with the microstock companies already **are** roadkill.
They are equivalent to folks who show up at a club cycling race, hosted by a semi-professional team, dressed in cloth shorts, black socks, and sandals with their legs unshaven, on an old upright 3 speed Schwinn.
If it is someone young and talented and polite and eager to learn, like Greg Lemond at 15, the more experienced riders are likely to take him under their wing and teach them the art and discipline of the sport. After all, in most fields, it takes 5-10 years to acquire the knowledge necessary to rise through the "professional ranks."
If it is some 47 year old computer analyst, acting arrogant and bragging about having ridden 27 miles the previous week, you let him lead for as long as he is able, them you dust him off in a paceline at 30mph.
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You completely misread the article.
I understood the article. The point I am making stands. That great icon of stock photography, Getty, is in the process of becoming iStock because that is where the industry is going. That is not an opinion, its a fact, much as many might resent it. If you stand in the way of the truck you'll get hit by it. If you get onboard the truck, you are not roadkill, but you are in the perfect position to witness those who, sadly, are.
Quentin
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I understood the article. The point I am making stands. That great icon of stock photography, Getty, is in the process of becoming
Actually the Great Icon of commercial stock photography was not Getty.
The Great Icon of commercial stock photography was the Image Bank that had the unwritten motto of you only buy stock for two reasons.
1. You can't do the photograph again.
2. You don't have the time to do the photograph again.
Both of which were not the stock agency's fault and thus they charged accordingly.
Getty acquired Image Bank, and dozens of other agencies and we all know the results.
Every challenge to their industry they have met with this mindset . . . lowered production, lowered fees/percentages to the talent, lowered prices, more quantity.
Personally, I could care less about dollar stock, microstock, or any of that. Some works, I'm sure some can be profitable, I guess some might even be considered good photography but overall it's just usually like that example of the photo of the business people staring into camera . . . a mistake to think it can uniquely brand any product or service or do anything more than use up white space.
With that in mind, I think it's quite fine if anyone wants to shoot it or if anyone believes it's going to enhance their careers or their bank account. It's a free world (or should be), so keep it up. God shoot 22 million more images, because at this stage that will make finding a decent, usable and unique photograph from 44 million images impossible.
There is a famous tale from the Legendary Art Director of Harper's Bazaar, Alexey Brodovitch, http://www.harpersbazaar.com/magazine/140-...bazaar-140-0607 (http://www.harpersbazaar.com/magazine/140-years/bazaar-140-0607), when handed a over thought and complicated layout from a junior assistant.
Alexey tore off a piece of white layout paper, handed it to the junior A.D. and asked him what he saw.
The J.A.D. said a blank piece of paper.
Brodovitch (and I might be quoting this slightly wrong said), NO, what you see is an elegant use of white space. If you can't do any better than that, leave it alone.
BC
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Indeed, Cooter is on the money. I'm surprised that anyone writing books on stock should seem to know so little of its history. There was Image Bank and also, in terms of fine work, FPG. Getty came along relatively recently as a financial afterthought, simply another business 'opportunity' seen from the perspective of huge financial resources looking for alternative places to lie and grow; cancer-like, some might think. Ditto Corbis.
In Britain, the big player was Tony Stone, who started as a photographer but soon realised that getting 50% from several photographers was a better deal than getting 100% from his own photography. Consider the micro situation of today and ask yourself one simple question: if 50% of somebody else's work is good, how much better is over 90% of somebody else's work - for the agency?
As for Quentin's "overpriced image from Getty" I believe that reveals a shocking lack of understanding about the real expense of producing good stock material. I spent many years with Stone-prior-Getty and I can tell him that my own speciality of model work cost so much to produce that only by using the extras from assigned commissions was I able to provide any such stock. I once decided to risk my own capital and I floated a trip specifically for stock. How did it fare? It took me around three years to get my invested capital back, and I would never have managed that within the viable life of such images had Stone not managed to bring me two sales from a single image that returned over fifteen hundred pounds on one occassion and over seven hundred on the other. Those were my 50% earnings on each sale. Other sales were down in mainly double figures with the now-and-again rise into triple. There was nothing "overpriced" about it. Why does anyone think that shooting stock is any cheaper for a photographer than shooting the same shot on commission? The only difference is the snapper's fee: on commission he gets one; on self-assignmenet he may or may not. BUT, the cost of production is exactly the same. The difference in cost between using digital and film, in such work, is neither here nor there; if those are your worries, you are in a very strange market segment.
I suppose that unless you (in the sense of one) put all your money where your mouth is, you will never know what the business really is.
Rob C
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The difference in cost between using digital and film, in such work, is neither here nor there; if those are your worries, you are in a very strange market segment.
I suppose that unless you (in the sense of one) put all your money where your mouth is, you will never know what the business really is.
Hi Rob,
Whilst I wouldn't disagree with most of the good points you make, I'd just like to add that the people who DO have the worries about the cost difference between using digital and film are the microstock libraries, and they are in a very strange market segment. A market segment where an individual photograph is more or less costless to sell. They have fixed overheads by the bucketload (servers, web designers, etc. ) but the marginal cost of one more sale of an image is essentially zero for them. And since they aren't paying the costs of the shoot either, the marginal cost of one more image being added to the catalogue is ALSO zero. In exchange for this, they pay a pittance of a commission, which maintains this "no marginal cost" business model.
In the pre-electronic days this just wasn't possible: for a client in New York to buy your image from an agency in London, somehow the image had to get from the library in London to the client's desk. That cost has simply disappeared from the equation, and I still believe that it is fundamentally that change to instant online free perusal and distribution which has facilitated the rise of the microstocks.
I must admit the thing which surprises me about all this is that market forces haven't driven the commission percentages up. I'm wondering if there isn't a market opening for "high end" photographers' collective microstock with a better payout to attract photographers, run as a relatively non-profit organisation for the benefits of the photographer members. I'm sure that model has been tried; I wonder why it isn't the one that's really caught on?
Cheers, Hywel.
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As for Quentin's "overpriced image from Getty" I believe that reveals a shocking lack of understanding about the real expense of producing good stock material.
Rob C
You have to define what "good" stock material is, Rob. A lot of good stock material is most assuredly *not* expensive to shoot. When it is, it's destined for a different outlet.
You are completely missing the point here, Rob, which Hywell, on the other hand, does seem to appreciate. The traditional libraries were just not nimble enough to react to a market in which much of the cost of producing stock photography had been driven out of the system. This happened at the precisely the same time as demand for inexpensive stock for use in e-newletters, websites, etc, skyrocketed. The micros were a reaction to these changes. Most traditional librarties stood by and watched...
and as Hywel said
I must admit the thing which surprises me about all this is that market forces haven't driven the commission percentages up. I'm wondering if there isn't a market opening for "high end" photographers' collective microstock with a better payout to attract photographers, run as a relatively non-profit organisation for the benefits of the photographer members. I'm sure that model has been tried; I wonder why it isn't the one that's really caught on
Everyone knows about iStocks 20% commission for non-exclusive photographers, which I agree is too low, but other micros offer better pecentages, ofter more than 50%. iStock have pushed their prices up in the last few years.
I don't represent the micros, nor do they need me to defend them. Their astonishing success speaks for itself. A debate about whether they are good or bad ultimately misses the point, which is how individual photographers deal with the phenomenon. In making that decision, you need to stand back and look at how the market in all digital data is evolving. My reaction has been to split my stock submissions between traditional RM libraries and the micros. Different work for different markets. The micros are the future for all RF, but there will remain a healthy demand for rights managed work of high quality and a much higher price, as my own experience in continuing to sell work though RM channels proves.
Quentin
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By all means get on the truck, just don't be surprised when you're taken for a ride.
Completely agree. I want to start an entire thread that is only analogies and metaphors (like above) that people have been ponying up.
I pray for the day when the law industry does not require a license, and every housewife and construction worker can moonlight on weekends. No office needed; no staff needed; no pension needed; no overhead whatsoever -- just offer up law advice, (that can actually be used in court), for free, or for a dollar.
We'll see if it's a different song then.
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Here is where one guy, Yuri Arcurs, is now at. He owes his career to microstock.
http://bit.ly/VXm8O (http://bit.ly/VXm8O)
Quentin
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Here is where one guy, Yuri Arcurs, is now at. He owes his career to microstock.
http://bit.ly/VXm8O (http://bit.ly/VXm8O)
Quentin
Well, he is supposedly the most successful in the world. It's a bit like saying "actors are doing ok - just look at Tom Cruise!" Not exactly representative.
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Here is where one guy, Yuri Arcurs, is now at. He owes his career to microstock.
http://bit.ly/VXm8O (http://bit.ly/VXm8O)
Quentin
Just watching that is soul-crushing. I'm glad as an amateur I can shoot whatever I want.
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Well, he is supposedly the most successful in the world. It's a bit like saying "actors are doing ok - just look at Tom Cruise!" Not exactly representative.
True, but the difference is that Yuri and others like him would not have a career in stock but for the micros which have been an entry point for a whole generation of photographers.
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What on earth makes stock photographers think that they should be treated as a special case? Who said photographers should be insulated from the forces of modern business models that have grown out of the internet and digital technology / media?
Roadkill? You just didn't move fast enough.
Quentin
Perhaps, somewhat intentionally, you just 'don't get it' either.
The reason professional photographers of all types get pissed off at the shamateur, as distinct from the amateur with whom I see no fight, is this: the professional learns his trade and through choice of career pays his dues to himself, family, clients, fellow photographers and even to the Inland Revenue. On the other hand, the shamateur pays no dues to anyone and is nothing more than a parasite living off the body photographic, which body he is slowly killing.
You may not like it, may refuse to accept it, but that is the reality.
Rob C
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Somewhat ironic to note:
aPhotoEditor.com had a recent April Fools post about the NYT going all stock all the time (http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2010/04/01/ny-times-pronounces-professional-photography-dead-and-switches-to-stock/) (obviously in light of the article which started this thread.)
But here's Adobe publishing a YouTube video highlighting a new CS5 feature, Puppet Warp (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nAklIkMy4g). Be sure to check the photo credit on the bottom right....
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Perhaps, somewhat intentionally, you just 'don't get it' either.
The reason professional photographers of all types get pissed off at the shamateur, as distinct from the amateur with whom I see no fight, is this: the professional learns his trade and through choice of career pays his dues to himself, family, clients, fellow photographers and even to the Inland Revenue. On the other hand, the shamateur pays no dues to anyone and is nothing more than a parasite living off the body photographic, which body he is slowly killing.
You may not like it, may refuse to accept it, but that is the reality.
Rob C
I totally agree with your underlying point and it explains some of the frankly pathetic bleating about the micros we see each time the subject is raised in certain circles. That's because Photography requires no formal training or qualifications. Ask any wedding pro under pressure from mom and pop outfits. But then many pioneers of photography were amateurs. The boundarys are flexible. Our friend Yuri Arcurs started out as an amateur, and now works full time as a pro photographer. If you are unwilling to accept the competition, then you should have chosen an different profession, because 'twas always thus.
Quentin
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True, but the difference is that Yuri and others like him would not have a career in stock but for the micros which have been an entry point for a whole generation of photographers.
Quentin,
I think your on to something. Team up with Yuri and write another book on motion footage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SItFvB0Upb8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SItFvB0Upb8)
BC
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Quentin,
I think your on to something. Team up with Yuri and write another book on motion footage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SItFvB0Upb8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SItFvB0Upb8)
BC
Brilliant
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B Roll - Im gonna be doing it
It will be an addition to the (rights managed) image library i built
beachfeature (http://www.beachfeature.com)
I already populated that library with grabbing shots on my travels - just need to roll the 5d2 too
S
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If you are unwilling to accept the competition, then you should have chosen an different profession, because 'twas always thus.
Quentin
You see, Quentin? You really, really do not get it: it was not always thus. I have been in that world since 1960 and have seen a lot of it.
I had to spend the best part of six years working in professional photography before it was possible to become a self-employed professional myself and run a business. Amateur competition wasn't even thought about, and there were always great amateurs around, as you rightly pointed out. The two worlds were totally apart.
Reference is made to wedding photographers. With respect, and at the risk of causing unintentional pain, I do not consider that a branch of professional photography in the sense of skill beyond the amateur; there, an amateur can often match the 'pro' sector. Yes, it churns money so has to be deemed professional, in that sense, but that is another matter. It is a very different sector with far fewer knowingly educated critical clients than photography intended for commercial markets, which stock is. The problem is that in the commercial (business) sector, the availability of cheap material, in a graphics world now run by accountants and lawyers rather than by creative minds, it becomes a requirement to use that material. When the man at the top only understands numbers, there is little alternative for the lowly art department but to follow budgetary dictates.
Of course, it is also a matter of wider education. The attitude that governments display towards such matters as copyright, 'orphan' works, registration/qualifications before practice is permitted, all those sorts of things, just perpetuates a situation where the arts are considered a pastime, a hobby, not to be taken seriously. Neither can it have helped that so many within the art world appear to walk with a heavy, anti-business tilt towards the left.
But I ain't gonna be able to fix it! That's for a younger generation to fight.
Rob C
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Just watching that is soul-crushing. I'm glad as an amateur I can shoot whatever I want.
Yeh, that's one thing I agree about. All power to Yuri's elbow, but I would find shooting what he shoots absolutely soul destroying. Demonstrably he is an absolute master of calculatedly just-plain-enough shot, the shot which will appeal to lots of different customers. To my personal eye they are bland and absolutely soul-less. I'm sure he does not see them in that way, which is why he's making a great career out of shooting them and I'm not.
He has a nice studio- its contents is remarkably similar to my previous studio, except that I had more bondage steel collars, whips and chains than he has I wish I'd had the vertical height to do the over-the-top shots, but I chose to leave mine on two levels and double the floor space to have double the number of different sets.
So he's obviously doing just great shooting his thing and selling them by microstock; I'm getting by shooting my thing and selling them by a subscription website. Whatever works for you. I won't be competing with Yuri because I couldn't bring myself to get out of bed in the morning to shoot another set of photos of smily fake call centre workers in their deliciously anodyne slightly grey fake office with their fake headsets on their heads and their fake smiles on their faces!
The first rule of all, I think, is that you gotta shoot what you love. Then you gotta market it. And if you are good enough at both those things, and enough other people like what you do, you can make a living out of it. Simple as that.
Cheers, Hywel.
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... in a graphics world now run by accountants and lawyers rather than by creative minds... When the man at the top only understands numbers, there is little alternative for the lowly art department but to follow budgetary dictates...
The ONLY time accountants and lawyers run a company is when the company is already run into the ground by the "creative" minds. "The man at the top" has ALWAYS understood only numbers... when "creative" minds produce big numbers, Da Man does not mind giving them big budgets (e.g. Annie Leibowitz-size budgets, or SI swimsuit-issue budgets). When "creative" minds screw up, Da Man calls in accountants and lawyers.
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The first rule of all, I think, is that you gotta shoot what you love. Then you gotta market it. And if you are good enough at both those things, and enough other people like what you do, you can make a living out of it. Simple as that.
Cheers, Hywel.
Hywel, you've hit the nail on the head there.....
For me photography has never been about just making money, if I wanted to do that I would have gone into big city banking. That's why I refuse to get into MicroStock. I've never done Royalty free either. My stock sales have remained constant over the years, indeed they are now increasing as I put more images into the agencies. But I only do stuff that I enjoy doing, and I ain't going to sell my soul to a model with a fake smile, no way.
The thing that Getty did to revolutionize the stock industry was to take it into the digital age and put it online. They did this by buying all the biggest agencies with a pot of cash, and now they've started on FlickR.
The MicroStock guys can chase their pieces of silver too, they're welcome to it. Enjoy it while it lasts......
Pete
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The MicroStock guys can chase their pieces of silver too, they're welcome to it. Enjoy it while it lasts......
I'd love to get a glimpse at that Yuri guy's P&L statements for the last five to seven years, as the prices have plummeted towards a Dollar. I'd like to see the graph of his Net Profits over the years. So what does he do then, once the bottom drops out of his world, in which he had a hand in his own undoing? At what point can you simply not shoot enough Dollar images in a day to maintain a large studio and staff, as you race toward the bottom?
And my personal feeling is: You could say that he's only operating in one isolated level in the marketplace, but my feeling is that business models like this, sooner or later have a ripple factor into other layers of the entire photo industry. It's just a matter of time.
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... business models like this, sooner or later have a ripple factor into other layers of the entire photo industry. It's just a matter of time.
Indeed... and any business model will ultimately meet its demise, microstock included (just how soon is a different matter, of course). The only permanent business model seems to be bottling of carbonated sugared water, as witnessed by the most successful company in the human history (o.k., arguably).
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And my personal feeling is: You could say that he's only operating in one isolated level in the marketplace, but my feeling is that business models like this, sooner or later have a ripple factor into other layers of the entire photo industry. It's just a matter of time.
And my personal feelings are: keep your overhead as low as you can, don't lust after new gear, do your homework, spend money on your book and travel to new places in which to improve it and not on the latest camera. That way you'll be able to survive this silliness of MicroStock, Getty World Rule etc..
My opinion anyway.
Also I just couldn't bear the thought of shooting the same picture or variations thereof, day after day after day. Knowing that next week I'll only get a dollar for each one, next year maybe fifty cents, and the year after that only maybe ten cents. Just simply crazy.....
Pete
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You could say that he's only operating in one isolated level in the marketplace, but my feeling is that business models like this, sooner or later have a ripple factor into other layers of the entire photo industry. It's just a matter of time.
But that is the nature of our times, as long as destruction does not occur in your short 70 years then to heck with everyone else. The political climate is much the same with those in power being so selfish.
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I'd love to get a glimpse at that Yuri guy's P&L statements for the last five to seven years, as the prices have plummeted towards a Dollar. I'd like to see the graph of his Net Profits over the years. So what does he do then, once the bottom drops out of his world, in which he had a hand in his own undoing? At what point can you simply not shoot enough Dollar images in a day to maintain a large studio and staff, as you race toward the bottom?
Prices (at the micros) have gone up over the last few years, not down, but the competition and quality has increased.
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Spot on.
Why would a reputable company... (http://fairtradephotographer.blogspot.com/2010/03/microstock-why-would-reputable-company.html)
To put this into perspective (haven't verified the figures):
"Well, since the photographer is exclusive to istock, and that image has had 6700 downloads, she's made something like $25,000 from that one picture alone. In trying to lambast microstock Chris Barton actually makes a good case for photographers doing it. Lise Gagné could have placed that image with Photographers Direct, and after a few years she'd have earned 80% of, well, probably nothing. Besides, doesn't everyone know that crass advertising actually works?"
from TOP (http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/04/the-problem-of-microstock-in-a-nutshell.html#comments)
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On the micros stock thing one point has not been made
One trouble with 'conventional' stock is that the client has to understand the license and particularly for time managed images have some digital asset management system in place and some sort of diary event to know when to pull the images
they then have to know how to pull the images which may involve paying their web designer
I have found (after much heart rending and internal debate) that selling a 'blanket license' which enables a customer to use an image for 'a long time' (five years) and allowing a specific set of uses say..
-own website
-own printed material
-regional advertising
Is easing my sales of stock (particulaly second use of editorial material - I shoot a lot of advertorial for business and then sell to that business after publication by the mag)
I dont charge microstock prices for these licenses but typically the editorial fee (ie a second sale doubles my money)
I feel that expurging the client of the need for internal workflow has provided a far greater incentive to buy than cutting the cost
of course I have a few caveats in my T+C to renage the license when the local coffee dealer gets bought up by nestle
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I was also introduced to a concept (by a recent graduate) of images (for business) kind of naturally timing themselves out - ie with constant rebranding, changes in fashion, changes in the appearance of any technology in images etc that most images are just not used after a couple of years
Another concept I struggle with is that if I sell 100 images then 1 may be heaviliy used by a client leading me to feel that I undercharged - the concept is to consider that the 99 other images may be underused compared to the fee and am I happy with the total revenue from the 100
Could I use the wide use of that 1 image to drive my own self promotion too ?
S
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This isn't intended as a direct response any particular post, so please don't take it as such.
I was sitting having lunch the other day when a chap I know asked if he could join me. During the conversation we got on to the topic of sales strategies - he was a professional salesman back in Britain - and out of interest, I asked him about methods of moving merchandise in quantity, my mind on stock pix. It was illuminating to hear how simply these things get done in supplier/supermarket land. Since the numbers are probably kind of similar, I suppose that parallels might be drawn, but the principal thing I came to understand was this: a total lack of interest in the nature of the product you are offering is taken for granted. In other words, you simply don't get involved in tryig to claim you have a superior product: you just make quantity/convenience offers that the store can't refuse, and you offer promotional backup via advertising on TV or wherever local it matters. The retailer cares as little about it, in the intrinsic sense, as you should: it IS just an item that needs shifting.
Maybe if all we photographers looked at it that way, as some seem able to do, we might be happier people.
So just disown your children; life will then sparkle.
Rob C
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Instant classic! I wish every designer or editor on the planet could see this article, but It's stock fault or designer/editor of that ad?
It's obvious that the #1 disadvantage of using microstock is the lack of exclusiveness on the image, but designers and editors keep forgetting. Microstock it's a great tool, but not for everyone or every job and blaming microstock for this it's like blaming the hammer for hitting your own hand...
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No, basically one blames it for cutting off what used to be the imaginary pension fund for the snapper's old age.
There is nothing good that can be said of it for the pro; that some are reputed to make a living from it doesn't alter the greater reality that it has put many more right out of business.
Rob C
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Hi Keith
Thought you were back in Greece - maybe you were just working!
Thanks for the link - it's what I always imagined was going to happen one day, but probably too late for me. Even in the 'real' days of Getty is wasn't all roses: whilst some of my work sold (for no apparent reason I could see) in the thousand + quid (to me) area, the majority of it that sold at all breaststroked along at around fifty to a hundred. As you know, I once floated a model trip as an exercise in finding out how the economics worked without the safety net of commissioned work as source material. It took me over two years of stock (RM) to get my money back. No profit, just getting the outlay back. There never was profit from that shoot, ever. Of course, should my website now create a sale to every LuLa faithful, then I might be in a position to replace the Escort after twelve years of ownership, even float another shoot... so you see, dreams never die, they just dissolve a bit around the edges.
;-)
Rob C
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Hi Rob
I know there are those who invested serious money in producing stock and those who did well in doing so, but it was always a risk. I spent very little on the small amount of dedicated RM stock I produced, hence the risk was minimal, but I do appreciate that this approach wasn't possible for all.
May RF and micro-stock burn in hell.
If it's not sacrilege: Amen to that!
Rob C
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Yet again, more royalty free woes.
http://www.jeremynicholl.com/blog/2010/09/13/istockphotos-unsustainable-business-model-from-crowd-sourcing-to-crowd-shafting-2/ (http://www.jeremynicholl.com/blog/2010/09/13/istockphotos-unsustainable-business-model-from-crowd-sourcing-to-crowd-shafting-2/)
That was a great article, thanks! That quote from a "traditional" pro photographer is priceless. A bit light on the unsustainability claims, but the details are understandably not disclosed by iStock. I wonder how much of iStock's income comes from part-time amateurs; I assume it's the ones who are semi-pro or pro iStockers are the ones who are livid, while the rest don't care or even know (see below). If pros are only a minor portion, the traditional pro is probably right: iStock contributors just have to suck it up or pack their bags.
But what most shocked me is that the new royalty scheme was announced only on iStock forums, and contributors were not asked to sign a new contract or even informed of the changes directly! IANAL and I haven't read iStock's contract, but "meeting of minds" and actually accepting (signing) changes in a contract are some of the most basic tenets of contract law.
Oh, and from the forum quotes: “You can’t survive on 60-80% of the profits from a product that you have 0% ownership in? Sad. Pathetic.” ;D