Topic: Response to Essay on Micro Payment Stock Photos (Read 54848 times)

John Camp · « **Reply #40 on:** July 12, 2006, 10:00:34 pm »

The argument that photographers should somehow earn protection by being "good" or by owning expensive equipment really doesn't hold water, thank god. Think about the craft of book writing, either fiction or non-fiction. The author buys a computer and printer and software, does all the research, then spends hundreds of hours writing the book, and most of the time, especially for beginners, has no guarantee at all that he'll ever be published. In fiction writing, most first timers are not published...and some people write a dozen books and never get published. There was something of a scandal in 2004 when none of the books of the five finalists for The National Book Award in fiction had sold more than 3,000 copies, and one had only sold 150...a 3,000 copy sale of a typically priced hardcover book would earn the author around $10,000.

Nobody gives that system a second thought, but if you think about it, you realize that there is in place a system which has literally hundreds of thousands of workers devoting a large part of their time to doing work of potential commercial value, but only a few will be chosen for publication and even fewer will be well-rewarded for their work. Sound familiar? Would we prefer a system in which, say, a government commission chose the books to be published? Or we have a commission that sets up standards which say you must have graduated from a recognized creative writing program before you could be published? Or that you have to sstart with small magazines, and go to middle magasine, and then to big magazines, before you can write a book? Bull----. Better to have a system in which anybody can play.

I say, if you're 17 years old and shooting a Canon G1 Point-and-Shoot and the stock companies are listing and selling your photos, god bless you and keep it up.

I said earlier in this discussion that it's really mid-level pros who get squeezed, and I continue to think that, despite the arrguments. The top pros do good work and have a name that's salable. The bottom-enders are doing work that the stock agencies can't touch. But the middle guys are getting squeezed -- and man, that's just life in the big city, 2006.

JC

alainbriot · « **Reply #41 on:** July 12, 2006, 11:07:29 pm »

"Just as most of us can afford high-end cameras and digital darkrooms to make professional grade images, the market seems to be disappearing before our very own eyes."
Svein Frode

I stongly disagree. In my case I have seen a market open right in front of my eyes. I wouldn't be where I am if it wasn't for digital photography, be it stock, fine art or other. I am also seeing a radical increase in my business this year, essentially because the very fact that many people can afford high-end cameras, shows individual abilities better than ever. It is no longer possible to say "I don't have good equipment". The difference in output is therefore more than ever due to the abilities of the photographer, and more and more people are becoming aware of this and in turn doing business with people who not only have the equipment, but are able to create top quality work with it.

Anon E. Mouse · « **Reply #42 on:** July 12, 2006, 11:45:01 pm »

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Do you really need to pay somebody $50,000 to take a picture of a Buick?

I don't think you understand pricing very well. $50,000 is not a lot of money for a company that is going to make millions from a national advertising campaign. Also, when you are dealing with such numbers, why take a chance on a cheap photographer rather than one you know will be able to get the picture?

Gregory · « **Reply #43 on:** July 13, 2006, 12:40:37 am »

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I am doing good with stock sales but rf is down and rm is way up .

excuse me, but I've seen the terms a few times and don't understand them. what do rf and rm mean?

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People who are selling images there are losing any value the image may have and are turning them into a image that will only earn a few bucks a sale and can't really be sold on a conventional agency ever again .

couldn't you sell low-rez images through the micros and hi-rez images through the traditional agencies? after all, aren't the micro agencies targeting web sites and low cost outlets?

alainbriot · « **Reply #44 on:** July 13, 2006, 01:45:48 am »

"Do you really need to pay somebody $50,000 to take a picture of a Buick?"

It all depends how many Buicks that one photo sells ;-)

jbarkway · « **Reply #45 on:** July 13, 2006, 03:18:32 am »

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couldn't you sell low-rez images through the micros and hi-rez images through the traditional agencies? after all, aren't the micro agencies targeting web sites and low cost outlets?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=70537\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

There is no reason at all why you shouldn't do this - providing you aren't supplying the same image to both models. After all, if somebody has paid $100 for an image, ignorant of the fact that this same image is available for $1 elsewhere, and with a little upressing and general massaging could also fill the requirement, he or she will not be very pleased if he/she were to find out and might decide never to do business with you again.

svein-frode · « **Reply #46 on:** July 13, 2006, 03:30:04 am »

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"Just as most of us can afford high-end cameras and digital darkrooms to make professional grade images, the market seems to be disappearing before our very own eyes."
Svein Frode

I stongly disagree. In my case I have seen a market open right in front of my eyes. I wouldn't be where I am if it wasn't for digital photography, be it stock, fine art or other. I am also seeing a radical increase in my business this year, essentially because the very fact that many people can afford high-end cameras, shows individual abilities better than ever. It is no longer possible to say "I don't have good equipment". The difference in output is therefore more than ever due to the abilities of the photographer, and more and more people are becoming aware of this and in turn doing business with people who not only have the equipment, but are able to create top quality work with it.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=70531\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

You have a good point Alain! My comment was a bit tongue in cheek though. There is no doubt that the realtive low cost of photography today has given mediocre pros a lot more competition from amateurs. I just hope I can be as optimistic as you when it comes to the Market's ability to identify and pay for quality. Also I think there is a big difference between Europe and the US here. In Europe there isn't much of a fine art market for photography as it has never really caught on. Photography has always been the ugly duckling of Art over here and seen as inferior to painting and sculpturing.

To me this boils down to values, and selling images for a few cents a pop just isn't right, unless we're talking about pure trash.

dlashier · « **Reply #47 on:** July 13, 2006, 04:04:57 am »

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excuse me, but I've seen the terms a few times and don't understand them. what do rf and rm mean?[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=70537\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

rf = royalty free
rm = rights managed

- DL

ericevans · « **Reply #48 on:** July 13, 2006, 05:23:04 am »

"Well, a new poster popped up, a member of our Pro Association (AIPP) and revealed that he had many thousands of images with IStock et al and made over AUD30,000 last year."

I think that person is the exception to the rule there . I think there are a few people there making money but most I believe get the table scraps .

Nick Rains · « **Reply #49 on:** July 13, 2006, 05:39:00 am »

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"Well, a new poster popped up, a member of our Pro Association (AIPP) and revealed that he had many thousands of images with IStock et al and made over AUD30,000 last year."

I think that person is the exception to the rule there . I think there are a few people there making money but most I believe get the table scraps .
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=70546\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

To which 'rule' do you refer?

If someone is able to do well out of a particular market then I say 'well done'. If other people are less successful then I say 'that's life'.

The primary reason some people end up with table scraps is that they didn't cook a proper meal for themselves. So many photographers treat all forms of stock as a place to ditch old and second rate work. This simply does not work - regardless of whether they are aimed at rm, rf or micro markets.

The truly successful operators treat stock like a proper assignment and shoot professional quality images which are carefully aimed at their market. Topics like 'Lifestyles' and 'Leisure' shot with professional models will outsell any number of scenic or travel image by a factor of hundreds. These topics are hard to shoot well and expensive to produce, but hey, if it was easy everyone would be doing it!

Lepanto · « **Reply #50 on:** July 13, 2006, 06:21:33 am »

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You can download a top artist's music for a few cents a track, so why not the same for images?

Quentin
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=70477\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Aren't you a lawyer? There is a difference between a commercial license and a license for private consumption. You can of course NOT use 'top artist's music for a few cents a track' for commercial purposes without a dedicated (and usually very expensive) license agreement.

Lepanto · « **Reply #51 on:** July 13, 2006, 06:28:58 am »

What is killing the market for stock photography (as we know it today) is not microstock but the missing economical link between agencies/ portals and photographers in general. The Getty shooter has exactly the same problems as the microstocker albeit on a much higher level.

In the past both photographers and agencies shared the desire for maximising the price per single license because they had a similar cost structure. The shooter had to pay for all direct costs of getting the picture and the agency also had a lot of direct costs for making the deal (sales personnel, archiving, billing...).

Today the photographer sits on the same costs (probably even higher costs as he is doing a lot of photoshop work that was formerly done by pre press people) but the cost structure of agencies has changed dramatically. Direct costs have been replaced by huge investments in IT. Automated sales procedures make agencies tick completely different than in the past.

Today it makes not much of a difference if agencies have 500,000 or 5,000,000 pictures in their archives or if they work with 500 or 5,000 contributors. Also it makes no longer any difference for the bottom line if they sell 100,000 pictures for 10$ or 1,000 pictures for 1,000$. The high costs for their IT architecture will be there anyhow.

In a 'normal' industry suppliers would realize that this model can not work to their benefit and would either negotiate a minimum fee covering their costs, build up their own sales channels or simply leave the market.

The remaining question is: How 'normal' are photographers?

svein-frode · « **Reply #52 on:** July 13, 2006, 07:06:07 am »

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Aren't you a lawyer? There is a difference between a commercial license and a license for private consumption. You can of course NOT use 'top artist's music for a few cents a track' for commercial purposes without a dedicated (and usually very expensive) license agreement.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=70552\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Besides, where can you download tracks legally for just a few cents? Last I checked iTunes they charged way too much for each track and album. The file format sucks and the quality of the sampling is abysmal, too low to listen on a real stereo, so I will stick to CDs for now - I can get them much cheaper as "nice price" CDs. iTunes of today is like a stock agency selling images in GIF format only!

Quentin · « **Reply #53 on:** July 13, 2006, 08:13:53 am »

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The remaining question is: How 'normal' are photographers?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=70553\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

You'd better ask the 30,000 photographers contributing work to Shutterstock, or the 100,000 members of Fotolia, etc

Quentin

Lepanto · « **Reply #54 on:** July 13, 2006, 08:51:11 am »

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You'd better ask the 30,000 photographers contributing work to Shutterstock, or the 100,000 members of Fotolia, etc

Quentin
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=70558\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Why not ask all 200,000,000 eBay members or 1,300,000,000 chinese. This would give an even larger sample…

TheLastMan · « **Reply #55 on:** July 13, 2006, 09:10:43 am »

The inference in the original article is that a photograph will somehow sell the same number of copies if you offer it for $2 as if you offer it for $200, and therefore it would be impossible to recoup your costs.

It also infers that buyer will be unable to differentiate between the pro and the amateur which will put the pro out of business.

Both points are clearly nonsense.

The point about the micro-payment agencies is that they dramatically increase the market, making it possible for everyone to put relevent photos with high production values onto their websites and small scale publications.

This vast new market will make its own mind up about what is a good photograph and what is not. The good photographs will get thousands of sales and the bad ones a few tens if they are lucky. Just because a photograph sells 1000 copies at $2 does not make it worse than a photograph that sells 10 copies at $200.

A good analogy is the calendar market. In the UK there is a concession that opens up in empty retail units in Malls around Christmas and the New Year called Calendar shop. The calendars basically fall into two categories, pictures sold on their subject matter (classic cars, cute pets, glamour models) and those sold on their artistic merit – usually by artist. These include fine art calendars (Picasso, Monet etc) and photo art (Cartier Bresson, Ansell Adams etc).

Are the Ansell Adams photographs fine art prints sold at thousands of dollars each? No, they are high quality magazine style reproductions on heavy guage paper. Do they sell lots of copies? You betcha. They are usually the first line to sell out. A pity the man himself could not have benefitted from this while he was alive.

Are there any calendars produced showing a random selection of pictures by Bert Figgins, accountant and occassional amateur photographer with his brand new Canon Rebel? No. Why? Because no-one would buy it.

Good, professional, photographers have nothing to fear from the micro-payment agencies. If their work really does have merit then it will sell by the bucket load. Not only will this bring more money to the photographer but it will make their work more widely known and appreciated. I have faith in the artistic sensitivities of the ordinary man. I believe that most people instinctively know the difference between a good and a bad photo, even if they cannot articulate it or understand the process.

Making good photographs more widely available and appreciated is an unalloyed “good thing” and should be encouraged.

One final point. As others have said here, you do not have to make your 50mb tif available for $2, most people will be happy with a 1280 x 1024 jpg. Most only want them for web sites or the parish magazine or whatever.

Lepanto · « **Reply #56 on:** July 13, 2006, 09:41:54 am »

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The point about the micro-payment agencies is that they dramatically increase the market, making it possible for everyone to put relevent photos with high production values onto their websites and small scale publications.

This is not a fact but your very personal prognosis. For example the Getty CEO does not agree and talks about Microstock already cannibalizing other markets.

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Good, professional, photographers have nothing to fear from the micro-payment agencies…I believe that most people instinctively know the difference between a good and a bad photo, even if they cannot articulate it or understand the process.

Aesthetically I agree with you, but not commercially. A lot of art buyers have a 'good enough' mentality, driven by cost cuttings and the increasing power of accountants.

They often are forced to choose a 'somewhat usable' image for 5$ over an excellent image for 200$ or more.

Quentin · « **Reply #57 on:** July 13, 2006, 10:13:06 am »

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Why not ask all 200,000,000 eBay members or 1,300,000,000 chinese. This would give an even larger sample…
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=70563\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Because they are not, for the most part, photographers submitting work to stock libraries.

TheLastMan · « **Reply #58 on:** July 13, 2006, 10:42:32 am »

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They often are forced to choose a 'somewhat usable' image for 5$ over an excellent image for 200$ or more.

What is to stop the excellent image being marketed for $5 too? If the excellent image is put side by side with the 'somewhat useable' image and they are the same price, who is going to buy the 'somewhat useable' one in preference? The end result is that the excellent one will sell more copies. Hence it will valued more highly not on the basis of the price of an individual copy but on the number of copies sold.

This puts it on a par with the sale of book. A paperback by Bert Figgins, accountant and part time author may well have the same cover price as a book by Philip Roth, but who will sell the most copies, be reviewed in Time Magazine and get a slot on the talk shows? Not Bert Figgins I suspect.

Inevitably there will be some 'canibalisation' of the Getty images market. But why should Getty images have a monopoly?

Lepanto · « **Reply #59 on:** July 13, 2006, 11:08:36 am »

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What is to stop the excellent image being marketed for $5 too?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=70574\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Maybe there are some photographers left who know how to use a calculator? Personally I will start contributing when Porsche will launch a micro car line in the 50$ range.

BTW I have portfolios with some microstock agencies. Not because I believe in making money with them but to understand the business.

Author Topic: Response to Essay on Micro Payment Stock Photos (Read 54848 times)

ericevans