A better question might be, “What’s NOT up with stock photography?”  Answer? Royalties, number of paid productions, royalty free and rights managed revenues and photographer satisfaction.

A few points on the graph are on the upswing: number of people submitting photos, number of photos being used, number of photos submitted, growth of the microstock agencies’ revenue and the quality of images available to buyers from microstock.

The scales are overloaded with bad news for professional photographers that have depended on stock sales as their major source of revenue over the past few decades. Hand wringing, doomsday predictions and misplaced insults only create the illusion that one is doing something about the situation.

It's not the end of the world, photographers! © Liliya Abdullina | Dreamstime.com

The industry has radically changed.  It is not likely to ever return to its glory days. What to do about the current state of affairs?

1.   If stock makes up your sole income and your work is so specialized that only a few could fill your niche; congratulations, you are safe for now.

2.   If not, develop alternative income and soon.  What can you do with your skill set outside of stock? The hard fact is that some of you will choose to leave the industry. You will trade places with the amateurs that left their day jobs to become serious about stock.  Those of you who make that decision are not failing but growing.

3.   Create innovative images that will satisfy the most discriminating art buyer and place them in rights managed collections. (The revenues may be in decline but millions are still generated with these licenses)

The recession has contributed something to the decline in stock photo reviews.© Stephen Vanhorn | Dreamstime.com

4.   Shrink your overheads to match your declining stock revenues. You can do it; most of America has figured out how in the last two years. Start with reviewing renegotiating charges for insurance, products and services.

5.   Develop as many revenue streams as possible. That will include participating in microstock for some.

6.   Revitalize your assignment business. Only a few have the talent, equipment, business skills and eye to consistently bring back the money shot. Make certain that that person is you by constantly improving and updating your skills and business sense.  You may be an artist but you must be a savvy business person to succeed.

Part II What’s up with microstock?  To follow

This post first appeared in slightly different form on the ASMP Strictly Business Blog

In Chapter Five of Microstock Money Shots-Popular Themes Without People, I devote a few pages to the art of photographing food. I mention tips for creating images of appetizing plates of food if a stylist isn’t in your budget because even the most delicious tasting items often look unappetizing and utterly disgusting through the lens without the skills that a  food stylist brings to the table.

Although images with complex prop styling remaining popular, less emphasis on the props is a more contemporary look. © Jiri Bursik | Dreamstime.com

Not all culinary shoots can bear the cost of a stylist so build a few of their tricks into your skill set. There have been a spat of articles by food prop stylists as well as about food photography in the past months. (A prop stylist is the one responsible for the non food items in a shoot such as the type of flatware, centerpieces and other extraneous materials to add to a themed photo)  A food stylist may double as the prop stylist as well as preparing food for the camera.

The summer 2010 issue of the pricey and erudite magazine, Gastromonica, has an intriguing article about the evolution of prop styling for food photography. The author, Francine Matalon-degni, presents a lengthy review of how food photography has evolved from the flowery, heavily propped shots from the early 1990′s to the redesigned Bon Appetit and Martha Stewart minimalist images a few years into the 2000′s and on such as…”full-page bleeds of creamy sauces, landscapes of scalloped potatoes and enormous blocks of beef”. She discusses how a photo of a perfectly plated piece of pie went from being the norm to some of today’s images showing forks and  crumbs left on the plate as if the photographer has caught the eater just leaving the table.  Along the way in this lengthy piece, she equates food prop styling to changes in the American politcal scene…a reach but then we ARE what we eat.

Some food editors have gone to the extreme of showing no props and only crumbs of the food. ©Olivierl/Dreamstime.com

Cautionary note: I was reviewing a group of images shot in a kitchen with a model supposedly preparing a meal. What I saw was the work of an overly enthusiastic stylist: every vegetable for a soup was lined up in perfect rows and neatly sliced. Fruit in a bowl on the counter looked like a display at an eleborate buffet in a hotel’s breakfast room. The pans on the stove came straight from the store and had nothing in them. Lesson? Add a little reality to your cooking shots by actually having something in the pot on the stove. Make the kitchen appear as natural as possible and that means a tiny bit of a mess.

Secrets to great photos of salad? One tip: spray with water instead of salad oil for longer lasting, fresh look. © Attila Kadar | Dreamstime.com

The New York Times often features articles directed at photographers with instructions on the technical tips to use in food photography from the “Diner’s Journal columns. The latest, by Andrew Scrivani, is called “How to plan a food shoot” and an earlier piece concerned Four manual settings you need to know when shooting food.

Food stylist and author Denise Vivaldo gives some good tips for styling salads and preparing chicken in two separate videos. Want the lettuce in the salad to remain perky? Pack the bowl with wet paper towels before adding ingredients and plop some mashed potatoes under the lettuce. Stand a few leaves upright in the potatos. Catch the video here. Or to get a jump on prepping a lucious looking (but nearly raw chicken or turkey) for holiday shoots watch this. (Cover your ears after the first several “You Guys”.)

NPR’s All Things Considered offers help in building towering sandwiches…gaffer’s tape anyone? In an interview with food stylist Delores Custer, it’s suggested that mortican’s wax is a perfect adhesive to keep cutlery in place…remember just because it’s pretty doesn’t mean you should eat the stuff once the shoot is a wrap!

A photographer whose still life images are brilliant is Mitchell Feinberg. Check him out in this  Photography Post.

(Back to Chapter Five of Microstock Money Shots. It is about much more than shooting food. The photographers whose work  appears in the chapter are below:)

Chapter Opener: Carnival ride- Racheal Grazias

Dove in flight-Christopher Ewing

House of Parliment, London-Maksym Gorpenyuk

BBQ doesn't always mean beef! ©Armonn/Dreamstime.com

African with face paint-Lucian Coman

Colorful guitars-Ilya D. Gridnev

Shark from below-Joshua Haviv

Owl in flight-Brian Hansen Stock Photography

Wolf spider captures a blowfly-Cathy Keifer

Snow Monkeys-F. Mann

Peaceful landscape-Piotr Skubisz

Close-up of a leaf-Coolr

Coyote crossing the road-Nelson Hale

Lightning and small boat in storm at sea-Russ Allen

Toronto Caribbean Day parade-A.C. Gobin

Asian statues against red-Juha Sompkinmaki

Beach with palms and blue water-Petra Silhava

China’s Bird Nest Stadium-Orpheus

House of Parliment, London-Maksym Gorpenyuk

Shots against white are popular for menu boards © Juliengrondin | Dreamstime.com

African with face paint-Lucian Coman

Colorful guitars-Ilya D. Gridnev

Shark from below-Joshua Haviv

Owl in flight-Brian Hansen Stock Photography

Wolf spider captures a blowfly-Cathy Keifer

Snow Monkeys-F. Mann

Peaceful landscape-Piotr Skubisz

Close-up of a leaf-Coolr

Field of lettuce-Laurent Renault

An image of a key ingredient can be very simple and yet still effective ©Yekophotostudio/Dreamstime

Variety of deserts-Regien Paassen (Also on the cover)

Salad-Rohit Seth

Holiday turkey-Olga Lyubkina

Hamburger-Sergey Peterman

Casual Friday concept-Eutock

Big dog and little dog-Eric Isselee (Also on the back cover)

Inside the curl of a giant wave-Mana Photo

Snarling dog-ZelenenkyyYuriy

Close-up of bees in hive-Florin Tirlea

Dining room-Chad McDermott

Home exterior-Ken Hurst

Fireworks-Galyna Andrushko

©Szefei/dreamstime.com

My birthday is this week, making it a good time to look both backward and forward. I thought I’d share some of the mistakes that I’ve seen photographers make over the years in the hope that my readers won’t make them.

A big mistake that a photographer made that almost cost me my reputation in photography before I had hardly started.

Before I started a photo agency, I decided to become a  rep for assignment work. My first photographer was recommend by several of my photographer friends. He had been in Europe for a while and had experienced a lot of success in advertising jobs according to him and to the tearsheets that he showed in his portfolio. I worked with him for a couple of days, getting ready to take the book out when I happened by the international newsstand on Las Palmas in Hollywood. As I browsed the European magazines, the guy’s work popped up everywhere. But in Europe, in those days anyway, ads carried photo credits AND my guy’s portfolio had been shot by at least five other people.

Instead of investing years of work overseas to build up an international portfolio, he had stopped by the magazine stand at Heathrow on his way back to L.A. and bought the magazines with the ads that he most would have liked to have shot. That was the end of my repping career, thankfully before I had called on any art directors/art buyers.

Here are some mistakes not to make, in no particular order:

1. Spending money as soon as you earn it but before you have it, even if you know you’ll get it soon.

2. Waiting until after the shoot to hand out model releases.

3. Not putting a value on your own time when figuring ROI (return on investment) per shoot.

4. Staying with the same vendors (insurance, bank, credit card, phone, etc) year after year without annually doing comparison shopping

5. Buying the most expensive equipment unless you absolutely need it. And buying is cheaper than regular renting.

6. Never registering copyright

7. Bad mouthing your competition

Cheaters almost always get caught! If not at the newsstand, online! ©Ariturk/dreamstime.com

8. Spending more than an hour a day on social media

9. Writing a blog that only other photographers read (unless you are Chase Jarvis.)

10. Not keeping excellent records in regard to deductible expenses.

11. Not having an annual budget

12. Not understanding a financial statement coupled with not having one.

13. Not reading distributor contracts, purchase orders and other legal docs or not getting help when you don’t understand them.

14. Cheating, lying and stealing (just for good measure). And that includes faking model releases, exaggerating expenses on productions, directly copying other’s work and violating the items listed in item 13.

Happy Birthday to me.

Who is the first brave soul to add to the above list based on a mistake they made?

Some advice bears repeating: The following was written as part of the ‘Inspiration” section of the Agency Access site and posted 3/16/2010. Slightly changed here.

The 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 stock business is dead, perhaps sleeping but far from a vegetative state.  Millions of dollars are still being generated by the photography licensing business in all models even though to the individuals whose income has decreased by up to 50% it doesn’t seem so. The best time to review the tried and true is when you are searching for the new. Here’s a quick recap of some best practices in stock photography.

©billyphoto/Dreamstime.com

• Become known for a specialized style or subject.  Gain access to a unique location or group that is unattainable for others.  Work and work until your images are at the top of the list for your niche in technical quality, originality and marketability.

• Photography may seem to some to be a passive activity; photographers survive by being observers from behind the lens.  To succeed in today’s marketplace you must get out from behind the camera to build a following:

• Explore all the social networking opportunities available. Follow people outside of photography. Professional photography is about filling a need. Follow the Facebook and Tweets of those who might need you in addition to those photographers who are generous with their knowledge such as Chase Jarvis or Yuri Arcurs. (See more about the social web below)

• Get physically in front of your clients and potential clients. Step up your go-sees. As more and more people depend on electronic connections, those who take the time to visit their clients have a better chance of getting in to see the decision makers. This applies to those with specialty stock collections not only assignment photographers.
  

  Going it alone deprives you of connections, information and the opportunity to teach. ©Billyfoto@dreamstime.com

• Don’t depend exclusively upon a stock agency to distribute your work especially if you have a strong niche. Consider licensing your niche stock photography direct to buyers.

Fortunately now there are tools to enable photographers to build a unique stock photo collection and to license it directly.

• Explore services like PhotoShelter and License Stream to ease the responsibilities of building an independent stock site.

• Expand your marketing to cover every possible user of the photos within your niche.  Agency Access slices and dices stock buyers into lists of those with every imaginable subject/business need. Join the trade associations of your major client base not just photographer industry groups.

• Some say that direct mail for photographers is dead. Not according to art buyers that I’ve heard from.  Remember you are there to provide an answer to a visual question. Those who need your specialization want to hear from you if you can help them look better in their job.  Use the most creative designer you can afford to ensure that your DM pieces stand out.

Classic OPTE Project Map of the Internet 2005/©©(some rights reserved)attribution:www.opte.org/maps/

• Connect electronically.  Make your email blasts informative…. provide data, antidotes, statistics that will help your users in their work. Don’t simply sell yourself. That’s spam.

• Accept that twitter isn’t simply silly, that Facebook doesn’t just work for grandparents and that a blog is gossip or a place to vent. All these are communication tools. You are a communicator. Use them. And if you still haven’t. START NOW. You’ll be surprised how much you’ll learn and who you will connect with…(and how much time you’ll waste unless you set limits.)

• Know your audience. Who are the people most likely to license your work? What are their job challenges? You can’t provide answers unless you know the questions. Follow the activities online of the companies that are likely to use your type of photos. Pick up on what they are using and where.

Be wary of following the urge to SHOOT only what sells.  Part of what has harmed the stock photo business over the last few years is in an overabundance of photos all of the same subjects/styles. Originality has diminished and frustration has grown.  As one photographer recently asked me, “How many pictures does the world need of happy people jumping on a trampoline?”

Most photographers began their career with a love both of photography and a certain subject. As their careers develop, many chase the market and lose sight of what gave them creative kicks in the first place. This is especially true for those that put their hat into the stock photography ring and followed the demands of stock companies requests to the exclusion of the vision that brought them to photography. Regain it.

David Sanger-Travel (and more) photographer

It is too limiting a characterization to call David Sanger simply a travel photographer. Yes, he travels a great deal and the majority of his photos fall into that genre. Even though travel photography can be one of the most conservative genres within stock, his work often displays unique points of view and his ideas about the future are positive and innovative. Even in a brief conversation with David, it is clear that his creativity isn’t limited to photography. He expresses wide-ranging and imaginative ideas in response to questions about the changing stock photo marketplace, copyright issues and the future of the business.

He has said, “Old markets are drying up but new opportunities are emerging, communicating with communities of consumers, photo aficionados, travel readers, citizens. The economics are completely different, but the possibilities tremendous. The key is providing something of value”.

David recognizes that stock photography ‘doesn’t say anything’ in the same way that photojournalism or editorial photos do. He speaks of disintermediation (elimination of the stock distribution company) as a road to more personal communication between photographers and the audience for the work:

“When images are distributed via middlemen, it is usually someone else’s message that is communicated. Disintermediation opens up the possibility, the responsibility, for a more personal communication. The focus then shifts to the personality, trustworthiness, authority, point of view and voice of the photographer, whether fine artist or journalist. …Those who are successful will be those who are the most compelling, engaging or insightful.”

Statue of Maitreya Buddha, Bingling si Grottoes, Gansu Province, China/©David Sanger

Surprisingly, Sanger hasn’t found that eliminating the middleman from his own licensing model to be as successful as he first expected three or four years ago. In addition to his primary outlet at Getty Images, he licenses his images direct to buyers using the PhotoShelter platform. For now, though, Sanger suggests that the major buyers of rights managed still rely mainly on account people at the large stock agencies to provide images to them. Of course, buyers come directly to David Sanger because they like to work with him … and they do … or for unique destinations and images.

He has used the experience gained from direct licensing and his past life in corporate computer systems to analyze user behavior on his personal stock site. He found over 10,000 (mainly blogger) domains linking to his photos. These users weren’t likely to pay for Sanger’s rights managed images. In light of the fact that copyright is not reasonably enforceable against a blogger, Sanger takes the high road, “It is not how to stop them but how to turn them into revenue paying customers.  There is a huge appetite for images. Providing people with what they want has to be a good thing … but we have to find how to monetize it.”

“The Internet of people, social media, is a natural outlet for images. The sheer energy of Flickr conversations, the abundance of images that decorate MySpace and Tumblr pages, reveal people’s fascination with and devotion to images. Rather than fight the people who are interested in their images, photographers would do well to embrace them, engage them and discover how to transform that interest into viable economic support.”

Tajik shepherd and sheep by lakeside in Pamirs, China/©David Sanger

While the industry attempts to solve the revenue conundrum, David, is bullish about photographers creating value by ‘saying something.’ “Stock photography itself doesn’t really say anything on its own. We provide images to serve someone else’s message. No one is interested in my message [when I’m shooting stock].” Sanger suggests that photographers enter the creative conversation on a more personal level. “Find your voice,” is his closing advice.

A secret to David Sanger's travel photography is that he watches for the unexpected like this photo of woman off stage in variety show during Octoberfest in Munich/©David Sanger

About David Sanger: Sanger has traveled to over 100 countries. In addition to the travel work he shoots for corporate, shipping and non-profit clients including Bank of America, Exxon, the National Park Service, Clorox and Interorient. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Stock Artists Alliance and a former president of the organization. “I’m fascinated by technology, web design, data, communications and social media, especially how these offer photographers’ new opportunities for expression and for business”.

More about David and some of the best advice I’ve seen for travel photographers can be found at Photomedia Online.

David’s blog and website are at www.davidsanger.com

For the last 40 years, the majority of stock photographers were in the middle : middle income/middling talent.  Most stock photos could be categorized as predictable but very salable in rights managed and royalty free markets.  Enter microstock and a new class was created from the millions of camera owners across the world. Demand for average photos of predictable subjects licensed from traditional rights managed and royalty free distributors tanked.

Stock photographers began wringing their hands and demanding that users PAY MORE! They were rightfully ignored and began to disappear as their incomes declined.

How can you navigate around the large black hole into which hundreds of stock photographers are falling, never to be seen again?

You can take the high road or the low. Depending on your work, I suggest traveling both.

Stellar work will always find a home. It will fulfill the following requirements. It will be:

• Unique to you
• Expensive to license
• Fresh and unusual
• The best of its kind
• Limited sources for the work either in style or subject

These images won’t license often. There are currently two major places to distribute in the monetized world of stock photography: Getty/Corbis. You may find that if the subject is very unique and/or you have an unusual point of view or access, you will find more buyers by licensing the work directly from your own site. Tools to help: license stream or PhotoShelter and Agency Access.  Cautionary note: look to the world of Hollywood to get an idea of moving into this neighborhood: only a tiny percent of actors living in NYC or LA make more than $12,000  a year at their craft

The low road is more like the highway to the stars. It paves the pocketbook to pay for the stellar stuff. To carry the metaphor to it’s death: think of the revenue from this class of images as pennies from heaven. This work:

• Is generic in subject
• Inexpensive to license
• Fresh
• Best of its kind…the best damn handshake photo out there or close
• Widely distributed by as many microstock companies you can tolerate…see lookstat and isyndica for help
• Not exclusive unless you are one of the top top earners at istock.

More on my ideas on microstock from a November presentation at UGCX:

The Business of Microstock The presentation concludes with some terrific photos from creative commons.

Old timer and Comstock (sold to Jupiter/Getty) founder with Tom Grill, Henry Scanlon once quoted  his grandfather’s advice for a successful business career: “Serve the masses; dine with the classes. Serve the classes; dine with the masses.” (Also attributed to Ray Kroc the founder of McDonalds. Joan Rivers and someone in Imperial Russia.)

(Portions of this article first appeared in the July, 2009 issue of The Picture Professional – the Quarterly Magazine of  the American Society of Picture Professionals) Fair warning: The following is rather technical and long!

Those who own or license the copyright associated with commercial images need qualified appraisals for legal, insurance and tax matters.  It is the job of an appraiser to determine the value of future licensing income or what an appropriate licensing fee should have been in the case of  litigation.

Commercial photography collections or individual images may have little or no value as fine art but the copyrights associated with the images can be worth a great deal indeed. Although copyright is classified as an  ‘intangible personal property’, the type of appraisal required is generally considered a business valuation, as it is the past or potential licensing revenue that is valued. If the work is collectible in addition to having licensing value, a personal property valuation is also required as part of an overall appraisal.

The value of reproduction rights can be important in litigation. A photographer may believe that a publisher reproduced an image in a manner that exceeded the original license. An appraiser could be hired to give an opinion of what the licensing fee should have been at the time of the alleged infringement. Original film or image files that are lost by an ad agency or design firm were valued at a ‘standard’ $1500/image in the past. Today the court has dismissed that standard in several cases and appraisers acting as expert witnesses are being asked to determine a more verifiable value. It is the business of a qualified appraiser to determine the future revenue of the images and thus the value of the loss. Generally income figures for similar work, especially by the photographer whose work is under review, can be used to estimate the value of lost future income over the remaining useful lifetime of the work and is called a revenue-based appraisal.  The best appraisals will state the revenue and also provide a detailed analysis of the income.

In other cases, the court may ask that an opinion be given as to the ‘fair market value’ for the licensing of an image or group of images. Fair market value is defined as the amount that a willing seller and a willing buyer would agree upon, neither one of who is under pressure to complete a transaction and when both are aware of all the circumstances around the transaction. When an opinion of fair market value has a specific licensing date, the value will be ascertained using historical price guides or from interviews with individuals involved in setting licensing prices for similar work.

Cost basis is seldom used in photographic matters, as exact replacement of a set of images is often not possible.

What are the factors that an appraiser looks at when valuing a collection? First the scope of the appraisal has to be determined. Will the appraisal involve a certain cut off date such as the date of separation of the parties in the matter of a divorce? Or perhaps the figure needed is the estimated useful lifetime value of the images for inheritance purposes. Once the scope and purpose of the appraisal has been determined, the appraiser ascertains the following among other facts:

1. Are there records showing the income produced by the work or by similar work from the same photographer on a similar subject?
2. Does the photographer or agency own the copyright or have the legal right to license the work?
3. Are there contracts or licensing agreements that involve the work?
4. What is the format? If film is involved, what will be the cost of scanning?
5. Are there model releases? Are they valid?
6. How accessible is the metadata.
7. If digital, have the images been previously keyworded or otherwise documented?
8. Will the material become dated quickly and thus have a rapidly diminishing revenue stream? Or is the work of an ‘evergreen’ sort such as images of botanical species?

Using the above information, the following can be assumed:

1. If the format is film and the images will have to be scanned in order to create revenue, the cost of scanning must be deducted from the final value.
2. If the images contain people and the best and highest use of the images is for advertising or promotion and there are no releases, the images have little or no value.
3. If the images are of an editorial nature and don’t require releases the value of the images are increased if the date such as genus/species of plants and animals or specific details about the images are associated with the image adds to the value or if the image(s) are rare and not easily replacable such as images of a riot or disaster.
4. If the useful life of the images isn’t impacted by time, the value of the revenue stream will diminish slower than for photographs that are of a trendy nature.
5. If the images or the photographer have no prior record of income from photography, the images cannot be appraised using the fair market value approach…they have no value in the strictest sense of the appraiser’s world. (of course there could be exceptions…say the only photo of an important event was uncovered that had been taken by an amateur that had no previous income from photography). Nevertheless the photo(s) could have a great deal of value in future licensing revenue. It is the job of the appraiser in such circumstances to use similar situations to determine fair market value.
6. Does the photographer’s reputation add value to any of the work under review?
7. If the photographer is seeking an appraisal of her own work for the purpose of donating the work to a museum and obtaining a tax deduction for the value of the work, the only figures that the appraiser can utilize is the actual cost of the work. Whether the photographer’s work is collected as fine art or licensed for large figures, the donation for tax purposes can only be for the cost of the work, excluding travel, cameras and other costs that have most likely been previously deducted as business expenses. And even if not, the only value is that of the cost.

I prepared an appraisal for an amateur photographer who was donating his photos to a university library as research materials. The work had been produced over a period of 35 years. After an exhaustive study to determine film/processing costs over those years, the work was valued at just around $50,000. So even though the man had made no money as a photographer, he was able to deduct cost from his taxes.

8. Occasionally a photographer or a publisher will use the future value of the licensing rights to a group of images as collateral for a loan. Again in those cases, a consistent and verifiable income must be presented in the appraisal for the bank.

Who is qualified to be an appraiser? Although it is certainly not necessary for a prospective appraiser to be a member of one of the professional appraisal organizations, membership will ensure that they have taken an ethics test and passed a qualifying course and examination called the USPAP (Universal Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice.) It covers conduct, management, confidentiality, and record keeping standards. The USPAP is governed by the Appraisal Foundation and partially funded by the U.S. Congress. The three major appraisal organizations that are most likely to have members qualified to assess the value of photo collections are the American Society of Appraisers, Appraisers Association of America and the International Society of Appraisers. They each have somewhat differing membership requirements and specialties. Each offers referrals on their websites and conduct classes and courses.  Business experience and education can contribute to the worthiness of an appraiser.

The IRS has specific rules and regulations that cover tax related appraisals. In 2006 the Pension Protection Act was passed that amended the IRS code to include penalties for those that aid taxpayers in under valuing for inheritance reasons or inflating the value of charitable deductions of personal property. They also strengthen the definitions of ‘qualified appraisal’ and ‘qualified appraiser’. An appraiser is obligated to sign a portion of the tax return when it involves appraisals for estate or inheritance issues above a certain amount and must include a statement in the appraisal that indicates that the appraiser is aware of the penalties imposed for false appraisals.

The most interesting appraisal that I have been asked to do was to determine the value of three rolls of film taken by a 16 year old at an event where a very important political figure was assassinated. The boy claimed that he was the only person taking photos in the moment that it happened. His film was confiscated at the time of the celebrity’s death and he was told that the court ordered that his film be held for twenty years after the case went to court.  (As an interesting aside: the film taken by the working press after they arrived at the scene was returned the next day but the boy’s photos were not.)

Twenty years to the day later, the boy now a man and a working photographer, went to the police to demand the return of his images. He was told that the film was stored in the state archives. He wrote to the state archivist and was told that they had no record of his film. Because the event had great political consequences and was extremely newsworthy, the photographer initiated a lawsuit against the police department. Eventually the police produced a document that stated that his film had been burned in the incinerator of the county hospital in weeks before the trial of the man accused of the crime.

The case dragged on for years. Just prior to the date for opening arguments in the jury trial,  the state archivist informed the photographer that they had located his film but that they had proof that he had only taken one roll of film and that it wasn’t in the room where the murder took place. A contact sheet was produced proving that the film had been developed while in the hands of the police but there appeared to be irregularities on the contact sheet. The attorney and I asked that the state provide us with the actual negatives so that we could see if the contact sheet had been made up of photos from more than one roll of film. A bonded messenger working for the police flew the images to the city where the case was being tried. Strangely, he stated that he had a flat tire on the way from the airport and his briefcase with the film was stolen from the car while he walked around to check all his tires or some version of that unlikely story.

Thus I was asked to testify to the value of the photographs with no proof that the key images ever existed beyond the photographer’s own testimony. I needed to ascertain that the kid had the talent to take images during a frantic and frightening event as it takes practice and skill to successfully photograph rapidly unfolding events.

Fortunately the young man had worked as the photographer for his high school newspaper and had kept a file of the photos of sporting and other newsworthy events that he had taken for the paper. Among those images were some very good ‘decisive moment’ captures of key plays in various games and most telling, photos of a fight that took place during a protest outside the school. In each case the boy had the presence of mind, eye and skill to get the image. I showed these images to the jury to justify my belief that the young man could stay calm and collected enough to take photos while chaos reigned around him.

I based my appraisal of the licensing value of the key photos on the assumed skill of the photographer and the licensing revenue of similar types of images based on historical data and research.  I felt that the story had value as a future book if the images could be found and researched the possible income from such a book. All together I was able to demonstrate a value to the court of well over a million dollars. The jury agreed and awarded the full amount to the photographer although the police department appealed and the photographer settled to avoid going to court again.