Guest post by photographer and SAA President, Shannon Fagan
Everyone is familiar with GPS personal navigators sitting atop dashboards in rental cars. It seems that you can’t step into a Hertz or Avis office without being hawked one at an extra $11.95/day. Even New York cabbies use GPSs regularly despite the NY City grid system of streets that makes it difficult to get lost. Does the value of the stock of the world’s leading GPS personal navigation device manufactured by Garmin (GRMN) perhaps provide a clue to the future of stock photo licensing?
You’ve got to hand it to Jim Cramer from CNBC’s Mad Money. Streaming in on CNBC each afternoon at 5 o’clock, he challenges the established guard in a fun loving way. I took great interest in Cramer’s recent rant on Garmin. “Garmin’s been a polarizing stock…but there’s a consensus that the personal navigation device market is definitely in decline, and that’s courtesy of increased competition from smart phone apps.” Wow. That sounds familiar. What’s the stock ticker for my Uncle Charlie with a camera? BLRY? Or so-called intellectual property borrowers/“right clickers” on the Internet? STLN? How about user-generated content? MICR?
A leading creative director at a familiar multinational company spoke to me last week. He related that when photography became cheaper, his company’s art department didn’t slash their image budgets. Naw. They started using more photography. Budget intact, they now buy each image at a lower price and use more of them. With so many images to choose from…why not? (Hey don’t hate the messenger here, hate the message.)
He asked, “How, Shannon, are professional photographers going to make a go of it? I mean, it’s not possible right?” It’s time to look at NASDAQ bad boy Garmin. Garmin had impressive growth in the years between 2005 and 2007, some 52% to 64% annually. Interestingly this boom coincided with the breathtakingly fast expansion of Royalty Free imagery in the marketplace. My personal gross income in stock grew in much the same trajectory. Cramer takes a stab, “Do you want to know the future of (GPS) personal navigation? Let’s do an analogy…the history of the PDA.”
©Shannon Fagan/Cultura
Personal digital assistants, like the Palm Pilot, were overtaken by the smart phone. Cramer argues “why pay for, carry around, a phone, and a second separate device to handle your calendar, directions and your contacts, when a smart phone now does all three and more?” And now I’ll argue, why purchase exclusive RM rights for your client, when the licensing crowd at large is perfectly fine with RF non-exclusivity? Why license premium royalty free when your client can obtain it for low cost or no cost in micro payment? Ask yourself these questions. Your stock agencies are.
Cramer: “It is true that PDA’s stuck around for a while, and their prices bottomed…not to zero, but eventually they hit their bitter end, and have now been almost completely cannibalized by smart phones…Garmin’s GPS devices will follow a similar trajectory…” GPS became utilitarian and quoting Cramer “it’s gone from proprietary technology to being a commodity. You can get it anywhere.”
When temperatures warm up this spring, and our recession hopefully thaws, will stock photography be an investment portfolio worth hanging on to? I invite agency owners to listen to the advice of Jim Cramer, “how do you make people pay for something that they can get somewhere else for less? You don’t.” Perhaps this is why experienced professional photographers are making an exodus from stock photography and why agencies would be well positioned to listen to Cramer’s analogy.
As experienced photographers cash out their stock image portfolios and ride out what’s left of their royalties, what do agencies plan to do to fulfill the needs of an evolving market? How will they refresh their collections when talented professionals stop shooting because the results of their time and talent has been made nearly worthless by the sheer market force of supply and demand? What plan do agencies have for surviving in a market where their product has been marginalized?
Want to know where you can buy a Palm Pilot this spring? I’ll save you some time. Try Ebay before you pull into Best Buy’s next sale. And, looking forward, what will you discover when you look for an experienced stock photographer in 2012?–©2010 Shannon Fagan
Tell Shannon and myself how you feel about what he has said. What do you think about the future of your personal stock business?
great questions here. supply and demand favors users not creatos. time for photographers to consider stock income as supplemental rather than primary. don’t leave that day job. agencies more than ever need to be supporting photographers. but they’re not. except for a few. tough road ahead for stock shooters. sadly, the exodus will continue while we all look for answers.
I agree with Jack. Photographers should consider stock income as supplemental rather than primary. However, it is unrealistic to expect agencies to support photographers. Agencies have their own problems. They may be able to hang on for a little longer than photographers because they don’t have to absorb production costs, but long range they may have a harder time finding a new business model. Professional photographers can move to some type of assignment work and do without agencies. It is not clear that agencies can eventually survive if the only people supplying them with images are amateurs with no desire to profit from their efforts.
Best of class imagery will continue to have value as the market appreciates and often demands top quality. That said, I agree that the continued downward pricing spiral will continue to be problematic for serious stock photographers and will indeed limit the volume of beautiful, jaw-dropping imagery that many clients demand. Blue chip clients will always demand best of class imagery. It’s the nature of the beast. They will either find the images or make them. Just like the old days.
You wrote: They will either find the images or make them.
Right, they first search and if unlucky produce, but this is exactly the important point. This tells us professional photographers, that every (stock)published image is one production shoot killed. Just don’t sell good pro content on stock and everybody will have plenty of work for good money.
I very much agree with you Patrick. Crowd sourcing will not be the death of stock photography. However, it will be the death of all the stock photographers / agencies that have gotten away shooting generic imagery for far too long.
I say Hurrah to that.
Good content has value and clients will always appreciate that. Look at the news media as an example. Newspapers such as WSJ and The Economist charge for their content online (as will the NY Times in 2011). And guess what, people pay for this content despite the proliferation of citizen journalists and bloggers. Why? Because their content is of a higher caliber and therefore worth paying a premium for.
So, rather than lament the downfall of the stock photo industry I think it would behoove all of us to challenge ourselves and offer something that those microstock contributors cannot – unique, relevant, beautiful imagery. Otherwise, you will be cut out of a market that no longer tolerates middle of the road stock photography.
That’s Darwinism at it’s finest, gentlemen.
Samantha is correct. The traditional stock photo industry is contracting as I believe, as she does, that it should. Too many shooters chasing the same sales. Too many agencies pushing the photographers to shoot the same images. Too many of the same images. I make the case that microstock was partially born out of image sameness. It got so that all the companies had all the same images. No where to go for fresh images than to someone in Argentina or Romania that hadn’t had the scales put over their eyes by ‘creative research’. Although now that the micro guys are all chasing/copying the best sellers there, I suspect much of the same effect will be seen. Is that why microstock revenues have fallen by 30% for the top photographers over the last year?
[For those who don't know me, I've been a photo editor, art director and creative manager in the stock photo business for about 20 years.] Yes, the analogy is apt, except for the quality issue, as others have already pointed out. GPS is GPS and as long as it works, its price has declined – to the point where it is not even a separate product. Generic stock photography is a similar commodity, and less and less of it sells as individual images and more on subscription. I’m actually not sure who can afford to shoot generic stock photography now. Getty itself is not shooting now and every good photographer I talk to who ever made decent money shooting stock part-time has _already_ abandoned shooting stock altogether. Why bother investing time/money/energy in stock productions if your bread and butter is in assignments and you could get more of those if you devoted whatever time you spent on stock to building your assignment work? So what remains is the crowdsourcing – generic stock will come from user-generated sources like the way iStockphoto originally worked (a place for people who work in the industry, but aren’t necessarily f/t photographers, to put the outtakes of their generic projects), and more unique, quirky and “real” imagery (though generally not slick or produced) will be found in collections like Flickr-at-Getty. I’m not really sure where the competent but not very original photographer (hundreds of whom made a great deal of money in the 90s and early 00’s) fits into this stock paradigm, even as a supplemental part of their business.
Some of those shooters actually can shift gears and shoot beautiful, original, produced images and these people might do better to bring their imagery to market _not_ with the big agencies, because the necessary ROI may be impossible when earning only 20 to 30 percent of the royalties. Big agencies treat all imagery, regardless of quality or production value, more or less the same, and there are rumors that RM is going to be all but abandoned by them, as well, because it’s too labor-intensive for a high-overhead corporation. So who is going to sell the better quality imagery that was expensive to produce and therefore must be sold at a higher price-point or else no one will shoot it? Big agencies have tried to differentiate content into niche collections and raise price-points, but art buyers generally don’t care about that branding, and agencies know this and end up pricing images in bulk deals, mixing up imagery from all their collections. If the buyers do care about quality, then they probably will want exclusivity, and then it doesn’t matter what collection the image was in originally – all that matters is finding the right image. The way the big agencies have been working, it seems like these kinds of sales are of less and less interest to them – it is a niche market – probably still profitable but not enough to justify the diversion of resources from their core, volume-based business. Buyers are searching away from big agencies to find the “gem” images. Very good photographers could now sell their more original work only directly, on their own e-commerce enabled web-sites. Some shooters may be working this way already. In an advanced form of this paradigm, art buyers could only go to big agencies if they know they want generic microstock or otherwise crowdsourced imagery and, if they want much better quality (however defined) or something more visionary, they’ll browse on search engines optimized for commercially viable images, sites that connect to individual photographers’ sites for a very small percentage of the sale – the way that kayak.com or vayama.com and others work in the travel industry. This model will work for photographers who can figure out how to shoot for stock, on a budget, and retain their individuality and high quality, and park those images on a self-running website while they pursue assignment work 90 percent of their time. It will not work for people shooting work that doesn’t stand out. Big agencies, with their big overheads, must take 70 to 80 percent of the royalties to stay in business/keep their owners happy. Photographers who invest a lot in their shoots and make very original content will only do stock if there’s a substantial ROI there somewhere – and 20 to 30 percent royalties is just not going to get you there if the average sale is as low as the big agencies have ushered in. But imagine if there was a way to keep 90 or 95 percent of the sale, and the price-point can be held higher because of truly higher quality – maybe there’s an ROI to be had for individual photographers. This would mean a new paradigm of sourcing imagery, not through the big agencies, but on your own site, assisted by a search engine that only requires a very small percentage of your sale.
Today’s web/TV formats will be completely obsolete in five years. 2D still digital images do not contain the information that will drive the market in 2020 – combinations of videoclip, 3D, VR, walkthru and orbital with zoomable resolution.
Using the Garmin analogy, tomorrow’s Garmin satnav not only shows you a virtual map but lets you walk through the door of a restaurant, see the decor and read today’s menu – all before you have confirmed your destination as the car park, where you can view the available spaces in real time. And it will let you pay for the parking space and book the table, and tell the restaurant your time of arrival.
What you see now in the most advanced 3D game, you will see in ten years on web pages or your satnav. Stock images will move with this. Today, HD video clips. 2011, 3D still and HD video stock shots/clips. As you don’t even have the equipment to shoot it all yet, let alone the sites to sell it, if you want to succeed get out there and invent it.
David
David: did you read the rumors in the past couple of weeks about Google Street View possibly going inside businesses so that what you say about walking through the door of the restaurant from a navigation device may be much sooner than you think. I can’t find the post…it caught my eye because I believe the headline was “Is this the end of photography” or something like that.
You are right. There is not going to be much royalties from stock to share anymore. It might come to a standard 20% rate and a few bucks for a photo everywhere. With thousands of photographers and hundreds of millions of pictures what income can we talk about?
Not only would stock income retreat to be a supplementary income… many professional photographers would have to do other jobs to pay their bills.
Over here in Beijing, Singapore and Hong Kong, I see many photographers who used to rely 100% on photography alone now starting to do other work on a part-time basis. Photography may now only contribute 60-80% of their income. “Other work” may be related to photography – such as webdesign & graphic design.
Interestingly, previously, we see graphic designers who started shooting microstock. Now i see photographers going into doing freelance graphic work. Sweet revenge? Naw, it’s just how the market works, you need to be multi-talented to survive nowadays.
At least once a week, I will have discourse with a photographer regarding the state of stock – some baffled, some angry, some delighted(yes, delighted) with acceptance rate of images, commission checks, communication, etc. I hear lingering doubts, lack of trust and insecurity along with optimism.
Scanning the above responses to Shannon’s questions, I tend to agree with Jack and Patrick. Compelling content that effectively delivers a message will always have a market. However for those who create, why would you, in the current climate(lets hope the Spring brings a thaw – we are seeing more of a double dip down Cali way) limit your avenues for potential income? Diversity in distribution, potential customers and business models bring about more opportunity and more creativity. If a photographer has only one client and that client is stock, well… BUT if photographer shoots stock, explores business models, markets for the commercial and (albeit shrinking)editorial market, he/she is not only busier than ever, but also keeps the creative heart pumping. Fashion informs the documentaryworld inspires advertising and sends art directors searching for stock. The work I do as a producer certainly reinforces this – I am better and better at supporting a photographer in stock coming off of a fashion campaign.
A well known and brilliant Creative Director who created most of the award winning film campaigns up until a short time ago taught me to seek out and work with photographers who grasped not only the technical, creative and marketing facets of photography, but also those who actively pursued complex and diverse interpretations, visually and in business.
There are voices of optimism about the business…not as it is but as it will be. I have written about and quoted a few here in the first few weeks of this blog. Revisit http://bit.ly/bqgu9x or http://bit.ly/cqopWd for the beginnings of the dialogs. Much more to come. If you will be in Dublin for CEPIC in June, start a day early at the Cepic sponsored New Media Conference and join the discussion during my panel called “The Future”.
Hi all — great discussion and pertinent. But, bath of cold water, you’re all wrong…at least to the extent that you’re not hearing what Shannon is saying.
The game has changed, forever. In fact, the game is change, and has been, forever. The whole idea of “photography,” not to mention “stock photography,” has been a moving target since any of us took our first breath on the planet. If you know the history then you know that the word itself wasn’t even coined until well into the first generation of photographic picture-making, and it’s been contested territory with each succeeding generation since then.
This is totally relevant to what we’re all dealing with now. Our business is a business, and like all businesses in a more-or-less market driven environment, the key is what the clients need.
If the question is, will we (in the West) continue to use pictures to sell each other stuff? The answer is probably “yes.”
But that is pointedly not the question. Shannon is asking what _kind_ of pictures we will need. If you answer “good, striking, beautiful, purposeful” — I say, really? You’re not paying attention. Not to be mean, but c’mon. Let’s all get off our respective ego horses and admit that this biz was never about art or adventure — unless we count the only big elephant in the room that we always seem to NOT want to talk about: that is, the idea that drives us is client service.
You know it: the only thing the vast majority of our clients cared about — ever — was “Will that picture help me sell what I’m selling?” And a lot of us made a lot of money putting the right answer in front of their faces. And it was fun! Really fun! Though it wasn’t ever about reinventing the wheel.
But that’s not a reason to feel down about it, because it continues to be fun! Although, the fun is shifting gears, as we all know.
Going forward, the new pictures that answer our clients’ question are no longer going to be the flat dumb pictures of our yesteryears. You see it coming and everyone is talking about it, but most of the photographers I talk with are having fits getting their heads wrapped around what it means for their own ways of working.
Basically, the way I see it is: it’s all about _smart_ now. Smart interactive pictures that look back at you, that record what you click on, that move, that freeze, that move again. And that change, i.e., swap themselves in and out.
Let Uncle BLRY and his micro friends have the flat dumb pictures.
This is the most exciting time to do what we do in the history of this little game of ours. What are we waiting for? Not since Talbot and Daguerre blasted the world into a whole new orbit has a generation of picture-makers been at the forefront of new ways of thinking and picturing. Let’s stop moaning about why no one will pay us to make flat dumb pictures anymore and get together in new collaborations that harness the power of the new and emerging media at our fingertips. It might be uncomfortable at first, and demand an expanded skill set, but all that is in the best tradition of what used to be called “photography”…. And it’s definitely within our reach.
Excellent analysis, Sean. It never was about art or creativity. Stock was always about the best picture to SELL something. Most of the big bucks I made at Tony Stone (later Getty) were for mundane generic medical images that were certainly not art and rarely even creative. Now, with the amazing creativity of iphone imagery, visual demands are changing rapidly. Electronic media – still + video – small screen presentation and instant image content recognition have all been honed by hours of internet use by millions of viewers. As people actually read less, pictures take on more importance to convey thought and idea. Photographers must recognize these changes and adapt – quickly.
This is a great thread, but I have a few issues with the general sentiment.
I am actually very optimistic for the market as a whole because I think we’re going to find new ways to license images and new sources of imagery. For the stock shooter used to the heights of the RM/RF era though, adjustment will be painful. Some have done it – Cathy at Monkey Business for example – but the world does look different.
New devices, new media consumption models, more tracking are coming into play. Imagine if you shoot an image that you can demonstrate increases click through on an ad on Yahoo’s homepage by 25%. This isn’t science fiction – we can do it today by ad. Why can’t we do it by image in a given ad? (Jim, I know you talk a lot about this – I think you’re right. We’re going to see an integrated licensing model evolve. Imagine a popular image being locked up for 3 months with a bidding model of people who wanted to use it next behind them. We should not lock ourselves into a box defined by licensing as we know it today.)
I’m not sure I buy the fresh argument in micro at the moment. After an image starts to sell, it typically continues to sell. The buyers in micro as so fragmented that the issue of over-exposure doesn’t come up. This may change in the future, but it will take time. Right now, they just want something that does the job that social proof (other people’s downloads) has validated.
Another point, is that when you find the right image, you license it. The extreme price sensitivity isn’t where the bulk of the dollars are. If you can create interesting imagery (and market it) you’ll be sought out.
There is pain in the stock photography market, but there is opportunity too. The market shifts and you can either adapt or find another market. I can say whole-heartedly that things will not be the same, but just as a few people reaped huge benefits in RM/RF, a few will reap massive benefits in micro and others will reap massive benefits in direct licensing. I can guarantee though that that vast majority of those who license their own images will see close to zero in the form of buyer traffic.
The key, in my opinion, is flexibility, a willingness to embrace change and the understanding that you need to market yourself and build your brand. This is true whether you are at Getty, on iStock or selling via Photoshelter or Imagespan. When everything is going great, then it’s easy to make money. This market will test us all, but as Jack said on his blog – this might be the recession that makes us great
I’m excited about that possibility.
As far as GPS, the real disruptive move was Google’s decision to open up turn by turn data. This creates a new innovation layer and those who had gated this data are seeing their margins destroyed (Navteq, TeleAtlas). Also, from Garmin’s 10K, 70% of their revenues are from automotive/portable devices. Other big chunks are aircraft and marine. Still, I don’t think the money was ever in the hardware. In fact, Apple is probably the only company that has pulled that off.
(http://abovethecrowd.com/2009/10/29/google-redefines-disruption-the-“less-than-free”-business-model/)
Ellen – sorry for this enormous essay. Next time, I’ll blog & link
What terrific comments. Yes, Sean, the future is still about visual stories but even more on the telling of stories in rich media. There is still income in stunning original stock photos…but remember as wonderful as they are, they have rarely been the money makers. I also agree that the flat stocky stock photos belong in micro and that’s not bad. After all they are the images that most of us made our income from for years. You give the market what it wants. Some of the most original material I find these days is on Flickr and now with creative commons plus, some of these images will be entering the licensing market for existing images as well. Keep the comments coming. They are articulate and very interesting. Thanks all for posting.
I will bring some numbers to the table. Lookstat. It’s not just as simple as adapting to new waters.
I still shot, but it is not a good market situation we are in. RPI for microstock non-exclusive has dropped from 9.8USD per image per month two years back to 4.5USD per image per month today. I am expecting it to drop to less than 3 USD per image per month this year, at which point it does not make much sense to be producing. I could produce and make money at this RPI, but that would be at a stabile RPI of 3USD per month, not if it keeps going down. Right now I have to produce 11000 images per year to “maintain” my income.
My production is very streamlined and probably uses every technology known to man on how to produce great stock images. We go a long way to optimize for 5% more/better output. That’s 5%, not 50% and still we can’t really make sensible money from it in one-two years from now. It’s not about adapting and changing, it’s about accepting that what we could once make a living from, will be a hobby for the crowd. A crowd that does not care about RPI’s, model fees, overheads….it’s their hobby.
Thanks for sharing those numbers, Yuri. Your point about the crowd/hobby is well made. It does seem to me that there’s a tier of images that the crowd just can’t create. Still, if it becomes unprofitable for pros to produce them, it’ll be interesting to see what fills the demand.
Being in the picture industry now for 25 years as managing picture editor and Marketing Director, spending my work now for CEPIC as Vice President, I was in the middle of all these changes of our industry. I have been travelling around for years, meeting photographers in the US, Canada, France, Germany, collecting photos from their productions, so I know about the differences compared to today. There are some subjects that are worthwhile to discuss: A lot of people in the business, especially people I now over here in Germany, still are not willing to see what Microstock is all about, what poer it has and how much it is used. Millions of pictures you can see on all the MS websites are as fine as RM now. That`s a fact. This quality is growing fast. You can see on the websites from traditional RM agencies that their pictures are of less quality. That`s why RM agency owners and photographers should open their eyes: What they need now is a better quality than ever. Different subjects, better shots, new ideas. That is not so easy to do, of course. I agree to Ellen: I have seen much better photos on Flickr than on other well known RM agencies sites.
On the other hand there are the Publishing houses that have to save money because they are loosing readers. Over here Gruner & Jahr, the largest European Publishing House, has talked to the Major agencies to give them picturs for less. They have signed contracts already, others like Bauer Verlag have done this before. I don`t know if this happend in the US too. And iPad has arrived-what will happen with the use of pictures on this tablet? Photographers and agencies will loose income, I am sure.
As all these things happen very fast now, I see much less agencies on the market in 2012.
I was running three photo magazines in the early 1990s. We were not high payers, but on one of the magazines, the amount paid to contributors in the year exceeded my own earnings. Overall, I paid about twice the amount to freelances that I made personally, and these were low circulation specialist professional titles.
By the mid-1990s, picture use had increased to double or treble that of 1989 when I started. In place of 50/50 colour/mono, we had 100% colour. EMAP (titles now owned by Bauer) struck a deal with Tony Stone for £25 per picture no matter what size – even DPS or cover – provided the magazine subgroup involved spent £2500 per issue (100 pictures). At one stroke, loose freelance contributions and fees disappeared from those magazines to be replaced by cheap stock sourced from TS.
Simultaneously, Reed (IPC) and EMAP engaged in an advertising price war which reduced the cost of full pages to as low as £50 for dealers like Jessop (buying 16 page sections). Magazine printers got into the same position, with the price for full colour printing falling to less than mono used to cost.
All this combined between 1995 and now to drive prices and budgets down. I spend about 1/5th on outside contributions and fees, per page of magazine produced, compared to 1995 (and that is not corrected for inflation – I mean 1/5th of actual £s). I do not use microstock.
There’s no going back. If there was, I would like to have my 1990 advertising and sales revenue, and my 2010 expenses and print costs please! Then I would be a millionaire within one year.
I would also like to have my 1990 picture use fees – my typical one sale through Alamy each week would then amount to earning a living, not buying a few beers.
David
Great group of comments!
Stock images can provide end users with a timely and economical way to solve their visual problems…and will therefore always be relevant. It is too soon in the transition phase of the industry to know what will work best for the individual photographer. To try and position myself for whatever may come I am working on diversifying, diversifying my agencies, the types of images I create, and diversifying the type of licensing model. I believe that at some point it will become extremely advantageous to have robust traffic to one’s site…either to increase the visibility of the images handled by agencies or for direct licensing. That process takes an immense amount of time and work so the time to get cranking on that effort is now! Too, if I have to begin to rely on income sources outside stock photography, having good SEO and web traffic will also be important!
Thanks for the article Shannon and the blog Ellen!
John
Sean: It is obvious that we all have to focus on the new technology out there. But, let’s not fool ourselves that simply changing media will protect us from the crowd sourcing steamroller that exists in our digital world. It may protect us for a while – but in a few years everyone will bemoan the microstock 3D animators that are undercutting every “professionals” 3D imaging sales.
As I said in my previous post, it is a glut of mediocrity that is ruining sales. And that will continue to be the case no matter what technology we use to communicate ideas. I am aware of several amazing photographers who continue to do well in stock photography. Why? Because their imagery is heads above the rest in a creative and commercially relevant way (yes, as you said, it’s about what the client needs)! Not to mention, their content is unique and therefore does not have as much competition (as say the old school stock photographer who shoots the same thing over and over again in hopes that past success will dictate future sales).
So, of course, at the very least we all need to adapt to the new communication landscape that lies ahead. But, that is simply not enough. We must do what most others cannot and that is to create unique, relevant, and intelligent content that speaks to consumers. After all, while Talbot and Daguerre invented the photographic process – they are not Strand, they are not Riis. They are not the early adopters of that technology that we remember as powerful visual communicators.
So, adapt to the times – but do not forget that it is talent, not technology, that separates the good from the mediocre. And if your stock sales are severely suffering now then new technology will not save you in the long run – only becoming a better image maker will.
what a thread…just what I needed..
I am currently teaching a stock 101 class at a private photography school.
Students ask me: “is stock dead?” I answer ‘No it it’s not”.
Totally in agreement with John, there will always be a demand for stock images in order to full-fill image needs in a timely and cost-effective manner. And quality, as always is key. I am on board with Samantha and Patrick here…but..trying to get photographers to supply unique, relevant and beautiful images, is what we (agency people and art directors) have always asked them to do. Upping the ante in order to drive sales. It worked as long as you could through money at it and create images with high production value and revenues warranted the investment.
To create great images takes: talent, time and money…all in short supply…
How do you create unique, relevant beautiful images for $3.00 per image in revenue?
How do you compete with the talented hobbyist who does not care about revenue and just sells images for fun? If it stops making business sense only people who do not run a stock photography business can afford to supply great stock.
There is so much mediocrity out there..so true…hopefully there will always be clients able to tell the difference between top quality and mediocrity… I often wonder, looking at the often mediocre top sellers. Surviving as a full time photographer has a lot to do with talent but even more to do with good entrepreneurship. There are a lot of mediocre photographers out there making a decent living…because they know how to market themselves and how to create business.
Interestingly enough…when I went to photography school way back when…in the mid 80ties…not one student in my class wanted to be a fine art photographer. The class I teach has 20% of students with this goal. Photography…despite or maybe because of all the abundant mediocrity out there, is enjoying a better market as fine art at present. This gives hope.
What do I tell students in a nutshell:
do not count on living exclusively from photo stock earnings, what will suffice today will not be there tomorrow.
Use it to supplement your income
Diversify, contribute to more then one agency and licensing model if you can
be flexible and adapt to changes FAST!
stay on top of technology
keep your overhead low…on everything…
do not invest a lot of money into a stock shoot
have the stock be a spin off from other assignment work / travel
look at top sellers but do not copy them…use them as inspiration to a different take on it
find your niche and get really good at it
embrace change..the only thing that is for certain.
Ira…you are doing your students right. I’m on the advisory board of an Art School’s photography program and think about the wisdom of a photographic education all the time. But if schools keep abreast of the changes in available media for visual story telling and hire instructors of a like mind to yours, the prospects for the students looks possibly, pretty interesting.
In Econ 101, they teach the principle of “Supply & Demand”. Turns out that this is a natural law that affects everything in life, as well as in business.
There have been decades of growing supply of photos in a market with flat demand or falling budgets. Just a decade ago, real talent was required to create, market and distribute “commercially acceptable” images. Today, literally billions of “acceptable” images are put online every month that are taken for free or at low-cost. And, each legitimate license exposes that image to multiple unauthorized uses, which expand infringements exponentially.
Most licensors of stock photography accelerated this imbalance. Since the 1990’s, web use has been treated as a cheap “add on” with artificially low prices to a bigger print sale.
The good news is that over supply of average and barely acceptable images should increase the value of rare, top-quality images. In this harsh stock market, there is always room at the top for the best images. Truly creative photographers who rise above the masses will always survive, as well as the very prolific shooters who adapt well to commoditized markets.
For the masses, solutions will launch in 2010, including fresh business models for monetizing Internet use that are linked to copyright registries (that know who owns what). While prices are declining, the quantity of images “consumed” digitally is growing dramatically. It’s possible that the eminent passage of England’s Digital Economy Bill could encourage photographers and photo agencies to embrace emerging, positive solutions. 2010 will be a critical year that decides the viability of common image licensing for web use in the future.
Randy Taylor
http://www.RandyTaylor.com
The Copyright Registry at C-Registry.us
Taylor Davidson has been watching the evolution of the stock photography business for several years, approaching it from more of an outsider position than most commenting here. His view is not informed by years of slogging through fields in the stock photo wars and thus offers a unique and valuable view. See here: http://bit.ly/agwJa
Great discussion. From where I’m sitting Sean Justice is spot on. When I started my adventure into stock a few years ago (late on coming from a background of editorial/advertising) I wasn’t thinking about the end user either. Only my own desire to sell my “art” to the world. Once I realised the error of my ways and started applying the same business principles to my stock as I do to commissioned work my sales started coming.
My RM Macro sales are as high as they’e ever been in the last 6 years. This February shaping up to be 120% more than Feb 09 for my editorial sales. Editorial and educational uses are every bit as much in demand today as they have always been. We just need to respond to the market and give the people what they want. To illustrate their articles, sell their products and services but make sure they get quality, fresh ideas and new angles. The illustration of ideas may date i.e. cheesy business shots but the concepts behind those images will remain constant.
On the ad front, yes the larger RM sales are few and far between but I’m still seeing a healthy appetite for well executed Macro RF too. Buyers are still there.
The death of the stock photographer has been predicted for years. In 2004 just as I was dipping my toe in for the first time people were saying “don’t do it”. In 2006/7 Micro was going to kill off all forms of Macro stock known to man.
In 2010 I hear video will kill the radio star… perhaps in some sectors… only time will tell.
J
It’s difficult to contribute anything new after so many insightful posts. But let’s try. It’s always difficult to predict the future, here are my two cents.
As far as photographers are concerned, and I am speaking here of professional photographers who want to make a living out of their shots, I do think that the future is bleak. Thanks to technology, the threshold to make good photos has become lower and lower. The result is that some amateurs make outstanding photos while some professional provide only mediocre stuff. This makes Microstock and Crowdsourcing as serious competitors to traditional Stock Photography possible. I know some good amateurs who are proud of having sold a picture through Flickr for two Euros – but unfortunately I also know a few professionals who after a disastrous 2009 are now quitting the business, doing video, providing story + pictures, or simply taking another part-time job with a social security number.
The question is though how long amateur photographers will be OK to have their work exploited for money while they only get peanuts or/and glory for the publication. There might be a backlash in a couple of yeras, once the economy recovers. Not sure … Will see … Also, if you want to see this in a positive light, the fact that some professional photographers leave the market to pursue other activities (if there are any) is good news for the remaining photographers. Hopefully, they can concentrate on their core activity, forget about economic pressure, just provide top quality Photography …
As far as picture agencies are concerned, as I see it, picture agencies are only “business models” i.e different ways to bring the medium to the market. Driven by technology, one business model chases the other. When I started in the picture business in 1995, clueless but also without any prejudices, RF was the big issue of the day, the Devil Painted On The Wall. In the meantime, most RM agencies offer RF as well and in fact, prices for RF are usually higher than RM … Now, Stock is shrinking – but Microstock is doing very well, thank you.
In the long term, however, it seems to me that Microstock may be faced to serious problems if they do not handle the rights in a proper way – and they will want to do so increasingly as they enter the professional market (where you make the most money too …). The first appearance of a Microstock company at CEPIC, Fotolia, was 2006 (Biarritz). They sent one person and, according to his own recollection, nobody wanted to talk to him in Biarritz. Last year in Dresden, Fotolia sent 7 people — yes, yes, they want to get distributed and they find distributors too. In the meantime, traditional agencies are suffering … This is tough in business and also in human terms … It is a tough business but not an hopeless business.
In the future, everything will cost a dollar or less, and will be sold on the web. Well, maybe not cars, but certainly any intellectual property that can be digitized. A flood of images, depressed pricing, and micro agencies are here to stay, I’m afraid. When the dust settles, there will likely continue to be a need for ‘best of class’ imagery as Patrick D. calls it, but it will be a significantly smaller pool of both producers and users. Perhaps it can be a sustainable income for a few, and I’m sure many of us would like to be one of those ‘last people standing’.
There are many factors contributing to the decline in volume & price of RM, but one worth mentioning is connected to less tangible criteria, and that is the continued degradation of imagery standards. As time goes on, more designers, art buyers/directors use this cheaper, ‘common’ content, that work gets approved and used by the clients, then consumers see it. Then photographers make more of it. Before long we are all used to a lowered standard. Sure there is plenty of quality, low priced imagery out there, but this decline didn’t begin with microstock or even RF, it (forgive me) can be traced to the advent of stock usage itself(!). A popular example is the continued decline of the classic editorial/photojournalistic story. Nowadays important news/events/stories can be told using local amateur content, just to get the job done, and the world at large is getting used to it, sadly.
I liken the change in our business to that of the music industry. Both industries did very well when there was a ‘captive audience’ and a limited supply of product; for the music industry it was records and (for a short time) CD’s, and for stock it was catalogs.The mp3 format came along, then Napster, and the record industry (and many artists) were not prepared, and never fully adjusted. For our industry it was the .jpg, the web, and microstock. Our agencies (and us) were not well prepared for the transition either. Then some nimble and youthful entrepreneurs found ways to start sopping up the low-priced content sales. For music, you could call it iTunes. For stock, it was iStockphoto. There once was a few thousand photographers making several thousand dollars, now there are several thousand photographers making a few hundred!
I personally do not lament the inevitable change in the business models, but I do regret the McDonaldization of our visual culture! I’m not entirely pessimistic; there are still plenty of wonderful artists, savvy creatives, and a few encouraging business models out there. They are just no longer in the same place, and they are doing things very differently, some by necessity and some by choice. Heck, I’m going to take David K’s advice and sell my camera and buy a 3D VR HD content spewing Ray-Gun. Make that 4D – I wanna be way ahead of the curve!
3D, fortunately, does not require a special camera but I wish I had the Nimslo baseplate we used in 1980 – up to eleven shots in sequence, move the camera between stops to get the spacing. 3D only requires a minimum of two shots at 65mm spacing, but shooting five/seven/nine increases potential uses.
It also offers a unique stock sale model in which an 2D image only is thumbnail/previewed. The only way the client gets the full image set (or a simple two-shot stereo pair) is by licensing the image.
But there are other stock models out there which no-one has exploited yet. RF and RM are still stuck with outdated licence concepts.
David
This string has such a great wealth of insight and information from key industry people. (Thank you Ellen and Shannon for raising the topic). Is there a way to call the attention of educators to this? Anyone have any emails of VIPs in education to whom one could send this link?
Randy,
My blog is circulated by a faculty member at the Northwest College of Art.
Well, there could be Prof. Dr. Glueckler of the University of Heidelberg … OK, not US, but one of the rare specialists of the picture industry market, at least in Europe. His field is “Economic geography” and he has initiated or sponsored a number of surveys or studies on our industry. He loves our industry : he says that it has so many different business models and such a microcosm. It ’s a delight for a professor of Economics, you know ! He is the author of the CEPIC Industry Survey “The Market for Image Suppliers in Europe”(presented at the Malta Congress in 2008). I just had him off the phone when I received your post. He has accepted to facilitate the Industry Round Table on Saturday 12 June in Dublin.He’d enjoy this thread (and my post
). I can send him the link.
I have been a full-time stock shooter since 1993. But all indications are that the cheese has moved. If you haven’t read the small book, “Who Moved My Cheese”, please do yourself a favor and get it. Don’t Hem and Haw!
gary
http://www.amazon.com/Who-Moved-My-Cheese-Amazing/dp/0399144463/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267114946&sr=8-1
My take on Shannon’s interesting blog post is that there is no point churning out more of the same. Either be better, or if you can’t be better, at least be different. Anybody being lured into microstock does not get told that. They get told what to produce, how to produce it, what the best sellers are, what buyers want etc. It is all about second hand experience and following the herd. This is just what the owners of microstock sites want – a kind of ‘creative-lite’ image of mass appeal. The opposite of what Shannon is discussing. It is the whole essence of volume. It is also a blind alley in terms of creativity and independent thinking. What concerns me is that we now have a new type of entrepreneur targeting the hobbyist and encouraging them, really against their own best interest, to enter the micro world. I mean those people who run pro-micro blogs, give workshops, sell books. I have no wish to be personally rude to anybody but this kind of spin-off seems parasitic to me and nothing to do with supporting a creative stock photography industry. It’s about finding positions from which to benefit from crowd sourcing whilst knowing full well the damage that it does both to new entrants and those already within the industry. No wonder these people love change, exaggerate it, and want to encourage it. All change no matter what bad weather it brings has a silver lining. They have a a vested interest in change and the new lucrative market of photographers willing to pay for an illusory step up. A year ago a post by Yuri would be all over the micro blogs and forums. Above his experience is now less than enthusiastic. As many said it is turning out to be unsustainable. Now Yuri himself is saying so. Notice how little that will be discussed on the micro forums and blogs. They only want good news not real news.
I don’t think things are much different from when I started out in the 1970s. I subscribed to market newsletters, and so did nearly 10,000 other amateurs to one such (BFP) in the UK alone – we all got the same tips and library lists and requests on the same day! All my college/photo club friends who have any ability were submitting prints to magazines, and my diaries show that I was sending out an envelope every day – and I was delighted when I got my 55 pence (1 dollar) fee for a single use in Photo News Weekly, or a massive £15 for Modern Photography – not to mention 75p a pic from county magazines, £10 fees from The Observer and so on.
That’s not so VERY different from microstock, except now millions of media pages use pictures, and the both the information channels and the submission channels are worldwide, and instant. We had to wait three months for a reply, watch the news-stands, or (as the late 70s and early 80s saw libraries boom) wait a year to see how well submissions to libraries would do. Microstock shooters can at least start counting their downloads hours after a pic goes live.
I spent 20 years and more writing books and articles about how to do editorial/contest/stock photography, aimed at amateurs. If I was doing that today (I don’t, I mainly write for the pro market) it would have to include today’s ‘outlets’.
David
Thanks for inviting me to comment, Shannon. While the analogy to Garmin and GPS technology is interesting, a direct correlation is a bit hard to fathom. The driving force in the GPS/smart phone arena is not so much price as technology: when the Palm Pilot came along it was the coolest toy around. PDA’s were the king of the hill…for a while. But, as has been the pattern, whatever the hot technology is today, it is inevitable that it will be replaced by something better…something smaller, with more features & memory, and far greater capabilities (think “apps”). Price really only enters into it in the sense that you get more bang (in this case, a GPS app) for your buck with each advance in technology. RM and “premium” RF stock photography sales haven’t been roiled by something better (micro) or that exhibits any great leap forward, just something that’s cheaper. As in any other business, you can only compete for so long based solely on price. At some point, cheap alone isn’t enough…you have to offer more, which then usually becomes a quality issue. So, the smart people in stock will be the ones who either have a subject niche that they dominate; or a quality level that differentiates them from the masses of other images available, and preferably BOTH! Any shooter who doesn’t have at least one of those two factors going for him/her is going to be in a world of pain.
Thanks Shannon – and what a great thread indeed. I think that supply and demand are 90% of the story here.
There are just so many images, so many good images, that it is a buyer’s market and prices will continue to disintegrate. The stock photography industry was built on scarcity, since good images were once hard to come by. Now they are no longer scarce; a photo buyer can have an excellent selection on their desktop in minutes. People just won’t pay (much) for what is in abundant supply.
But that doesn’t mean a complete end to the stock photo industry. People might not pay for the transitory use of photos but they will pay for something they cannot get elsewhere – additional value. This can be legal protection (indemnification, releases), timeliness (images not available anywhere else at that moment), unique access (images not available anywhere else at all), expert photo-research or other ancillary services.
Where that leaves the industry, who can tell? Certainly a severe contraction is underway.
The key for the stock photo industry, I think, is to focus on what the users really need, if not just images then a fuller range of services.
For photographers there are more options than stock, as Ellen and I discussed in the last blog post http://j.mp/bFoIaz
David, I understamd what you mean about images being everywhere and the technology that facilitates easy access. But I don’t quite understand how your supply and demand explanation works. Images aren’t identical, every one is different. There has nearly always been a much greater supply than there is demand. The fee paid has traditionally been dependent on use as opposed to how many simiar images there are in existence. In the old days a magazine editor would phone a few agencies and get a selection of slides sent over. They only want one image for the magazine but have possibly several hundred to choose from. Or they might be more specific and ask the agency to only send a small number from what they have on file. I don’t see how the fee paid is effected by the number of possibly usable images. The next day they might be looking for another image and there are thousands available, or only relatively few. The fee is the same. There have almost always been more images available than the demand.
What has happened is that the traditional model of pricing related to usage has been undercut by RF and then by micro RF. It isn’t the huge growth in number of available images that has reduced fees. It’s the fact that many are willing to accept much lower fees. Newbies have been almost brainwashed to think that this is inevitable and even a natural economic condition. Of course, this is to the benefit of those telling them how inevitable and normal this is – these days micro agency owners and others flogging the micro model are those who benefit at the expense of the supplier.
@Ian – There are indeed many more quality images immediately available to a photo buyer, and they can be delivered with almost no built-in transaction costs once the online systems have been created. Yes it is price competition in a saturated market that has driven prices down, but photographers are not a cartel like OPEC which can maintain artificially high prices. In niche markets where there is additional value or service provided then there can be a premium.
@Macrosaur – Falling micro sales aren’t because prices are too low. Prices are in fact rising in some areas. It is because the micro market too is becoming saturated with too many images.
One way of looking at it is that there is only so much attention to go around, so only so many images likely to be licensed. You can slice the usage into smaller sizes or durations, but there are only so many eyeballs.
David,
It isn’t artificially high prices that are the problem, it’s artificially low prices that are below the economic cost of production. For these images to be distributed there needs to be a distribution system created and administered. The mess we are in is largely because those owning the distribution systems keep 80% commission from the supplier, and also because the supplier often has another income and has been encouraged to produce images for ‘fun’. The owners of these micro distribution systems have shown little or no interest in the wider stock industry and do not think much beyond their own profit margin. Good business for them you might say, and indeed it is. To me, this doesn’t mean that such an unfair, exploitative model of supply should be simply accepted as an inevitable part of ‘change’. Change itself is subject to change. Change can be directed, adapted, guided, shaped. Positive changes nurtured and encouraged, negative changes challenged and resisted.
Greetings to you all. This has been a great read, full of insight from so many colleagues from my SAA days!
After a year working as Director of Education at PPA (Professional Photographers of America), I have an enlarged and enriched perspective on the business models available to photographers. The issues that have impacted stock have similarly impacted consumer models like consumer portraiture and weddings.
Those who can successfully make a living from any one photographic business model these days are a fortunate minority. They succeed by doing it better than anyone else.
As for the rest (and there’s no shame in it), the far healthier strategy is diversification or considering a change of course. Over the past 20 years, my husband/partner and I have moved from advertising into motion, then heavily into stock, later adding editorial, and now portraits. The goal is to keep doing what we do well and enjoy, and to keep make a living from it. Each of those business models has changed radically and we were forced to react, adapt, and evolve.
Is there any other industry where a small business owner can expect to keep doing the same thing the same way forever and keep reaping the same rewards? Let me know!
Well said, Betsy. Thanks so much to you and everyone else for all the insightful and positive comments. On Monday I’ll post a follow up from Shannon and myself entitled “It’s Not All About the Money.”
Just a persistent newbie here, but I must say I am learning a lot from this post/comments, thank you Ellen!
Blaming [other] photographers and agencies for the profound changes in the industry is not helpful and it is profoundly inaccurate I believe.
The source of the upheaval in photography is technology, the advent of digital media with immediate, frictionless worldwide reproduction of images. It is the same process that is transforming all media, newspapers, film, music, broadcast. It is changing how society communicates.
As old business models are dying new ones will gradually emerge to take their place, but it will likely take decades.
It is worth reading some of the contemporary commentary on the digital media transformation from Clay Shirky, Umair Haque and others.
Clay Shirky http://j.mp/8fkdK
Umair Haque / Bubblegeneration http://j.mp/tPMyg
and as others have suggested, adapt, adjust, anticipate….
This discussion is one of the most interesting i’ve ever read.
Falling sales in microstock is something we should celebrate
as it clearly shows the race to the bottom started
years ago with RF is finally reaching its peak.
It’s nice to read that the self-appointed “microstock king”
admits his business model is flawed and unsustainable in the long
run.
For years we heard stories about microstock killing RM
sales, now many of the micro top-sellers are looking
for greener pastures trying in vain to recoup their
profits selling RM.
As many others pointed out, artists will never starve
selling stock, only the ones lacking creativity and
talent will.
You certainly are “macro sauer” if you get my German. Since we are sharing the same forum here, please refrain from insulting remarks. You would not believe now much of that I have to listen to from traditional shooters. It would be great to have a good forum where I can talk honestly to macro shooters without the fuss and old angry tales.
Sorry Yuri, i didn’t want to sound snobbish or pathetic, all we
RM shooters are interested for is to know a bit more about
your RM sales.
You wrote you’re selling on Getty for instance, how’s it going ?
And what about Alamy ? There are rumours you’re the top seller
there, is that true ?
p.s.
macrosaur == macrostock dinosaur
macrosaur: I don’t think it’s appropriate to ask someone to discuss their income on a public venue…in fact I’d be offended if someone asked me how much I make to my face! That question falls into the “None of your business” catagory. However, I understand your curiosity as you try to understand the changing world of stock photography but no matter what he makes, it is you that will determine your revenue and profit by the quality of your work and the amount of time and money you invest in it. Thanks for commenting.
Dear Ellen, i know it’s very rude to ask such questions but
he’s the one endlessly blogging and videoing about his
microstock earnings, drawing detailed sales graphs, and
sticking the slogan “Home of the world’s top selling
microstock photographer” in the title of his blog (www.arcurs.com).
He’s also the one coming here and talking openly about his
RPI and that’s also why i read this article and the many
comments.
No one here has anything against Yuri, we are just curious
about where the RM and RF markets are heading, no more no less.
I apologize if my questions were a bit off the rails.
Thank you Macrosaur. (You should change your name, in German and Scandinavia it means macro angry, but it is a funny name however – good analogy
)
I am still in the process of working out the alamy algorithm and so far the findings are that it is extremely conservative (gives good rank to older files/collections) making it almost impossible compete against going in from ground floor. I don’t think they intended it to be like that when they made “alamy rank”, but it nevertheless is the result.
Anyway. I do not believe I am the top seller at Alamy. Alan and i had a meeting in Oxford half a year ago about working together on some other things. Great guy. He said I was doing good, but did not say anything about me being their “top” seller.
RM sales. I have like 40 files in RM and they don’t sell a whole lot. I am an RF guy, both in macro and in micro.
Update. Just checked my alamy sales and I am doing quite good I can see. I have not checked them for like 4 months. I can see I am generating about 800 USD per month or so on 1500 files. (RF – my new account) I don’t know if this is normal.
Thanks for the post Shannon and Ellen.
It looks like that after a period of denial and some blame the industry is moving forward and is now accepting that: Change has arrived, it’s here to stay and the pace of it will increase. This is a great startingpoint for the next stage, which is looking for opportunities. This is not easy, as change is apparent on all levels, from simple supply and demand to technology, changing media, and new devices to changes in attitudes to copyright and the rise of a new generation of media users and buyers.
Now we can learn from some of the failures of other media industries, engage with the photography buyer and find out what they want and need. Do they share the industries idea of ‘quality’ vs commodity, what do they consider reasonable pricing, how many steps are they prepared to take to purchase an image (Here’s my personal answer: one, maybe two), what are their values regarding copyright, how do they get inspired.
Whilst the stock photography industry and everyone in it has centuries of experience this may not be enough to come up with the solutions. It’s the users and buyers that will find their own path ever quicker, and this may not be the same path the industry is preparing for.The question is how an industry can better engage with these users and avoid alienating them by throwing up barriers, giving up or reacting to slowly.
We know there is a problem, now I’d be very interested in a conversation that throws out the rulebook and reinvents the business model for the new media world. With so many opinion makers involved in the debate here and a number of industry events on the horizon 2010 could be a good year to shift the conversation from WHY? to HOW
Spot on! So glad you will be at the New Media Conference to join in the discussion of “The Future” Send me any ideas or questions that you might want the panel to address prior to the event.
I am really looking forward seeing you at the New Media Conference in Dublin. I am very curious about the upcoming discussions. I agree to your opinion about the changes in the industry that will arrive now very fast. And it is time now to find new business models for the future. HOW is the right direction!
I do have a model which re-invents the stock photography market; I’ve worked it out, I’ve registered a key domain name, and I have put a proposal to the organisation which could create it (not an existing portal/library). It solves nearly all of the problems inherent in micro vs macro, while bypassing the micro aspect entirely, and it solves the problem of oversupply; it would be ideal for Yuri.
But I can’t reveal any details or outline it to anyone except a potential investor with the knowledge and funds to create the back end. I am not a database programmer or web expert, and to do this in a small way would simply let the concept out into the world to be copied. This would benefit photographers enormously, permanently, and fix the damage done in a matter of months – but I’d like the actually make something from it!
David
I don’t like to use terms like microstock or macrostock. It’s a moot point that distracts us from the fact that each individual image has it’s true market value. That is probably not $1.00 or $400. I’ve seen iStock’s incredible growth over the last 9 years as they continue to *approach* true market value of each individual image. So a stock photo of a tree in a park may be worth $0.25, and a stock photo of a small community in India is may be worth $1000’s.
When people complained about iStockphoto undercutting ‘traditional’ stock photogs, I just felt sorry for them and their lack of foresight. Personally, I’d hate to be called a ‘traditional’ photog.
It seems that most stock photogs are be struggling as they watch the market value of their images shifting in a downward direction. That in addition to globalization, and the availability of incredible technology, makes for a pretty bleak outlook.
If you share that outlook, then I wish you the best of luck. If not, keep shinin’! We’re photographers, so if we should be happy if we can pay our bills, and be fulfilled with our passion and mission in life rather then money.
[...] rock star Yuri Acurs, an incredibly talented lifestyle shooter, admits recently in this post that his income per image has been cut in half due to market conditions, alluding to the fact that [...]
Financially comfortable full-time RM shooters will not disappear:
Those who are not addicted to having a staff of helpers.
Those who are not addicted to buying every new technological trinket.
Those who know managing overhead is a way to increase income.
Those who know they are not out of some loop because they don’t pay peers for professional development seminars.
“Update. Just checked my alamy sales and I am doing quite good I can see. I have not checked them for like 4 months. I can see I am generating about 800 USD per month or so on 1500 files. (RF – my new account) I don’t know if this is normal.” — Yuri
Yikes, Yuri! You must have had a busy couple of days. Alamy displays 22,461 RF files under your name.
I enjoyed the past, and I’m looking forward to whatever the future will be. But let’s remember–the time is always now.
As we all agree change is inevitable and change has had a tremendous effect on the industry, for good or bad depending on your position, but change is the future as it has been the past.
Many things have become simpler, for buyers, over the past decade. My own belief is that change must come to the RM pricing methodology as its extremely complex and daunting for new buyers and it has in fact been THE driver in the industry experimenting with and the market aligning to other models. It has other inherent complications for both the photographer, the sales agent and the buyer and abuse of the model is rife and usage tracking is getting more and more complex in these days of globalization. How can one know if a food packager printed 100 cans or 100,000,000 cans with your image on the label.
Whilst I sit comfortably with my pipe in my own RM slippers, I know that a large segment of the new and potential market simply walks away from my RM price calculator because the RM concept does not fit in with their current day precepts of purchasing.
RM has caused new marketing techniques to flourish, so maybe its time to take a new look at the “traditional” model again, and simplify it for buyers and producers alike.
I completely concur. I recently tried to license an RM image from Getty for an e-book and a blog post and could make no sense of it. Specifically, the time limit issue sank me. My blog would live forever ideally. Does that mean I have to take down the image after my 3 month license?
Anyway, my own frustrations aside, I do think that licensing innovation is going to unlock a number of interesting ways of using and compensating creators for imagery.
“May you live in interesting times” – it’s a curse and a blessing
ah, the RM model, one of my favourite bugbears (honestly). I agree with Rahul and Wisit: The model is too complicated. So in the light of starting to work toward solutions I published a post with a model that I had on the shelf for a long time. http://www.fastmediamagazine.com/?p=4546 (apologies if this comes across as a bit self promotional, I am linking as it’s particularly relevant) Basically the model takes usages from the RM model and mixes this up with file sizes from the RM and RF model = 2 steps to calculate a price.
I am simply throwing this out there as an idea and prices in it are somewhat arbitrary. I’ve had the first ‘bullshit’ as a comment so at least it’s evoking a response:-)
Jim Pickerell has also done a lot of work on a simplified RM model (His MRR concept)so there are now a number of alternatives brewing. I think the best way to approach this is in an open source fashion: Anyone can input (in particular clients) and that way the model will develop over time.
Onwards and upwards
Plenty of buyers have no problem with relicensing annually.
Some full time stock shooters offer no alternative.
Re-licensing accounts for a huge percentage of use fees in RM stock but it also drives buyers with ‘evergreen’ uses away to RF or micro where they need not be concerned with license expirations as Rahul mentioned below.
Use in a motion picture is an early example of how traditional pricing models didn’t meet the needs of the photo buyer. What? The producer was supposed to cut the scene or the title sequences after three or five years? My company, being based in LA, worked out a price for perpetuity to cover such usages. Time for RM companies to create catagories for everygreen uses…but then I suspect the prices would be very high and frankly, microstock is a better alternative from a licensing point of view. I suspect that the producers and one-sheet art directors are using micro. In fact a background image for the one sheet for Iron Man used a creative commons image for free.
This is the best post/comments I’ve ever read about the stock market crisis.
And I read a lot of them.
Here’s what I believe:
RPI will continue to drop.
RM will slowly die.
All RF will become micro.
But good producers will always find a way to make a living creating relevant imagery.
Producers will survive in stock. But artist and small prod photographers will have to stop shooting.
As Yuri says, at 3$ RPI in micro, macro (and even RM!), you wont find many people doing it for the money.
Anyway, stock is still not dead!
Enjoy as long as it works because its the best life I know!
[...] vote is in. Based on the many comments on Shannon Fagan’s guest post made by stock industry leaders and photographers, the majority do not believe that the [...]
Microstock & RF is not an alternative when RM shooters offer needed images that cannot be found elsewhere & there are an infinite number of salable subjects not yet covered by Microstock & RF. And when Microstock & RF finally cover half of that, 1/2 of infinity is still infinity not covered.
Tell me this is semantics & I’ll tell you to get ready to close the US Patent Office.
I come down on the side of Patrick and Samantha. While I have no illusions that we will ever get back to the past where the pricing of fine imagery reflected its high value to the buyer, I still believe, as I always have, that really excellent, unique and beautiful photography is still a premium to the “right” buyers. As is true in all fine arts, you can get bargains on the street corner or you can pay a premium for quality and for unique art. The reality is while we can moan and groan; each of the new innovations starting with RF to Microstock cannot and will not change the tastes of those who believe that photography is a valuable art form with great commercial value in any kind of venue where it is sold or licensed. Photography has not fallen off the cliff. Many times the more you dilute a product, the more that you have those who reach out even more for the best quality, those who still want only the best and there are still plenty out there. Why are we who represent photographers who really love photography and enjoy working with our photographers kicking ourselves in the butt all the time? We do what we do because we love what we do and of course we want our business to be successful as well. Compromises are made by buyers often, perhaps royalty free, even microstock, most in the name of budget concerns to the buyer and quick returns to the seller. But if we really believe that great photography has no legs, no place in stock, or anywhere we should find something else to do.
Wow man keep it up
Salamande
http://www.kickspro.com/