Once photography became a commodity then stock was doomed and it ain't my fault that it happened that way.
I wonder Rob if you can cast your mind ten years or so and recall the arguments raging on various fora about the merits of the digital onslaught. I distinctly remember the advocates telling us how we were all going to make so much more money without the expense of film, processing etc and how the interweb thingy would make distribution so much more efficient! What they didn't foresee was that because creating digital pictures that were at least in focus and reasonably exposed was a lot easier than good old analogue everybody would be doing it, which is where we are now and why stock agencies are virtually giving images away.
In this brave new world we need to carry a sense of realism, I no longer sell myself purely as a photographer but as a creator of magazine articles that includes a good standard of photography, the craft is now just part of the package and while I greatly admire the excellent photographers that do make a living from the art (many on here) I also realise that photography alone does not command the respect it once did, hence my frustration when confronted by an institution that doesn't appear to have moved with the times as the rest of us have had to.
If anybody feels differently then I invite them to offer their photos to enthusiast magazines over here at $150 a pop.
Thing is, you have no idea how many images they shift at 150 bucks a pop; that figure may represent their low side, and since we appear here to be speaking of rare images of old stuff, then price is still governed by rarity. Just because you or your outlet can't/won't pay doesn't mean that others don't or won't. Realities are different for different people.
I do remember a lot of noise at the onset of digital, and I don't think I was any sort of advocate for it; my life then and in the past had been very nice thank you with Kodachrome and the occasional roll of 120 Ektachrome; I needed no upsets to my market stall! Actually, rather than digital cameras being the real problem, which left to their own devices they would not have been, quite the opposite, it was when stock libraries and/or their offshoots began to offer CDs full of royalty-free images that the turd hit the turbine. That devalued the price of photography, not the value, but the price one could sell work at in almost all markets. Had it been the value of photography that has fallen, we wouldn't see so much of it everywhere.
The next big failure that photographers allowed themselves was the matter of pre-press work. I recall the wails about hours at a computer, how to charge for it, and whether just to include it as part of the 'package' etc. and not itemise it separately. Instead, had we all had the sense to see the damned event as the threat that it was, processing would have remained in the hands of the people next down the pecking order exactly as was scanning - probably the best-suited home for it - and our work would have carried on as usual. But we stumbled and fell into the trap, thinking it meant more 'control' - control of what, for God's sake; the only control we needed was handing over the edited film and the invoice and moving on to the next job!
As with many of my own defeats, I believe the rest of the business brought it firmly upon itself by lacking the necessary balls when they were required. Frankly, I see professional photography today as anything but an attractive medium; it was always tough, but there was room at many levels; today, I think not so: I think you either make out very well or you starve. That's too extreme for any realistic way of life, and certainly no way I'd like to live and try to bring up/keep together a family in any comfort or style.
Rob C
