The Stock Photo Guy - John Lund Stock Photographer

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Jim Pickerell Interviewed: The End of Stock Photography As A Career....

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:07:00 +0000

A tidal wave of change is overtaking the photography world, both assignment and stock photography.
Jim Pickerell has done it all in Photography, from war correspondent, to stock agency owner to industry analyst and publisher of the highly regarded stock industry newsletter Selling Stock. Jim gives us a thorough rundown on his view of the future of stock and suggestions on how to adapt to the changing industry.

Jim, can you share with us your journey into and through photography, into stock, and finally, establishing yourself as the premier industry analyst and commentator?

In high school I worked in a camera store, sold cameras and photo supplies, and processed customer film using the “dip and dunk” method. I attended Ohio University for two years where I majored in photography. At that point I felt I needed more time to practice what I had learned before I finished my degree. I also knew that I had a selective service military obligation after college, so I joined the Navy as a photographer. After Navy photo school was assigned to the Navy photo lab in Yokuska, Japan. Later, I became a Tokyo based staff photographer for Pacific Stars & Stripes, a military newspaper circulated to all military instillations in the Asia/Pacific region, and traveled all over the area on assignments.

After four years in the Navy, I went to UCLA and three years later received a degree in Political Science. During this period I did lab work for UPI and one summer I served as a National Geographic Magazine intern. The day my UCLA class graduated I was on a plane to Tokyo to begin a career as a freelance editorial photographer.

After a summer in Tokyo where I worked hard, but generated almost no income, I got a one-month temporary assignment from UPI to go to Vietnam and cover for them until they could send a staffer out from New York. When my month was up I decided to stay in Vietnam because living was cheap and it seemed to offer more photographic opportunities than anywhere else in Asia at the time, but even that wasn’t much. This was 1963. There were about 15,000 U.S. advisors in country, no U.S. combat units and for the most part it was pretty quiet. I was the only non-Vietnamese freelance photographer based in Saigon at the time. The other two Western photographers were Horst Fass of AP and the New York photographer who replaced me at UPI. A few other Westerners came in an out from time to time, but no one stayed long.

Three weeks later the Vietnamese military overthrew their president, Ngo Dinh Diem. I was the only photographer in Saigon shooting color that day. Earlier that year Life Magazine had decided that they wanted to try to use a color shot from the major news story in the world each week. I came way from that event with my first pictures in any national magazine and a Life cover.

I covered the war in Vietnam for three-and-a-half years with occasional forays into other parts of Asia. During that period I wrote and illustrated a book called Vietnam In The Mud, which sold out its first printing. In 1968 I returned to New York, still with the vision of a career as an editorial photographer. After 8 or 9 months my wife and I moved to Washington, DC.

In Saigon I was in demand as a war photographer, but New York and Washington had plenty of experienced photographers covering business and politics. I was a nobody I began looking for more commercial work. Short of funds, and with a new daughter, in 1969 I took a staff position with Aviation Week & Space Technology. This was the worst year of my photography career. I liked photographing airplanes and manufacturing, but the magazine didn’t have a travel budget for a photographer and I spent a lot of time sitting around. After a year I went back to freelancing with more of a focus on government and commercial assignment work.

All this time I had been submitting outtakes from assignment shoots to several stock agencies. In fact, the Life cover (November 15, 1963 - http://www.oldlifemagazines.com/mag.php?d=111563) was a stock photo as I was shooting on speculation for Black Star that day. Stock sales became a small, but growing part of my overall income. The 1976 copyright act changed things for stock photographers who now owned their production rather than it being owned by the client who assigned the work. More photographers began to produce stock and customer interest began to grow. I began to spend more time in between commercial and some annual report assignments shooting stock. Stock sales became a steadily growing share of my total photography income.

In the early 1980’s I helped establish the mid-Atlantic chapter of ASMP, served two years as Vice President, two as program chairman, two as President and a member of the National Board. One of the issues that arose while I was a national board member was whether ASMP would publish a new edition of their Stock Photography Handbook and pricing guide. The board decided not to do it, but I felt such a book was needed and decided to publish one independently.

The first edition of Negotiating Stock Photo Prices, which featured charts with recommended prices for all types of rights-managed stock photo uses, was published in 1989. I continued to update the book through the 1990’s and the fifth edition was published in 2001.

In 1990 I began publishing Selling Stock, a subscription based newsletter printed six times a year that dealt with all aspects of the stock photography industry. In 1995 we began delivering the articles online as well as in the printed version and steadily increased the frequency to the point that Julia Dudnik Stern and myself average three stories a day five days a week. At the end of 2006 we gave up the printed edition entirely and went exclusively to online delivery.

In 1993 my daughter and I started a Stock Connection, a general interest rights managed stock agency that gave photographers a 75% share of sales. This was the highest royalty share available at that time. Later we found it necessary to reduce the royalty to 65%, but are still operating on that basis. Today we also represent some royalty-free, but the concentration is still in rights-managed sales. We represent a collection of more than 200,000 images from over 400 photographers.

We are on the verge of launching a new online information service – PhotoLicensingOptions – that will expand beyond stock photography and deal with the business side of photography and every possible way that photographers can earn money from the pictures they produce.

One of the hallmarks of my career is that it has been one of continuous re-invention.

Let’s get down to it; can people still make a living at stock?

NO -- with a few exceptions. (1) It may be possible if the photographer lives in Eastern Europe, various parts of Asia or other places where the cost of living is low. (2) If the photographer has very low expectations in terms of living standard. (3) If the photographer already has a large collection of imagery in distribution channels he can probably “make a living” for a while provided he cuts his costs and transitions into some other type of photography that guarantees a fixed fee for work produced. Gross stock revenue will decline. (4) And finally, many photographers will be able to supplement another income source with what they can earn from stock licensing, but they will not be able to support themselves on the income from stock licensing alone.

For photographers living and working in the U.S., I think it will be almost impossible to realize a profit from images produced now and going forward. The demand, even for microstock is leveling out or declining, and there is way too much over supply of every subject matter. The supply of good quality imagery will continue to grow at a much faster rate than it has. Prices will continue to fall. As a result no one will ever be able to earn as much as they earned in the past from stock photographs.

Stock can be a supplement to other sources of income, but not a living.

There is a lot of speculation about “tablets” like the Kindle and the iPad possibly leading the way for more image use and therefore a possible boon to stock photo licensing. Do you have any thoughts on that?

The iPad, in particular, has the potential to become a widely used tool in the field of education. Currently, I believe worldwide licensing of stock photography for educational purposes totals something in the range of $350 million a year, but that figure is more likely to decline than grow as a result of the introduction of the iPad.

A lot of images will be used on iPads, but that doesn’t mean professional photographers will be earning more from licensing rights to still images. For the past five years, at least, book publishers have added something like the following to their requests for rights to use a picture in a printed book.

The requests have included, “the right to publish the picture in an unlimited numbers of electronic uses on the Internet, or in any other electronic product now in existence or yet to be invented, for 10 years from the date of invoice.”

Most image sellers have been agreeing to these terms for little or no additional money. Consequently, the rights for most of those iPad educational uses in the next decade have already been given away. Getty Images has been a leader in this giveaway. Find a rights-managed image on their site and you may reproduce it inside a printed book in any size from postage stamp to double page spread and print an unlimited number of copies, for 7 years for $267. If you also want electronic rights for the same book and time period it is available for an additional $120. If you only want to use the image in an electronic book the price is $92 for 10 years. And because publishers tend to be large users of images Getty offers them much more favorable bulk deals.

The theory that there could be a “boom in stock photo licensing” assumes that publishers will continue to print all the books they are currently printing, plus the electronic versions for the iPad and Kindle.. However, I expect the use of printed books to decline rapidly as school systems switch from printed books to electronic. It is likely that professional photographers will lose many more sales than they gain.

For an analogy think of how the demand for right-managed and traditional royalty-free images has declined as microstock and the demand for it has grown. There are a lot more image users now, but the overall revenue from licensing rights to stock images has declined in the last few years. So in one sense there may be a “boom” in that more imagery will be used, but the implication of the question is “will there be a growth in revenue generated” and to that question the answer seems likely to be NO. In addition, the revenue that is generated will be spread among a much larger group of photographers with much more of it going to part timers and amateurs.

Interactive Electronic Whiteboards

The buzz word in delivering educational information today is “Interactive Electronic Whiteboards”. These systems normally include a computer with an Internet hookup, a video projector and a large white board on which the image on the computer screen is projected. The computer can be operated by touching the image on the whiteboard with either one’s finger or sometimes an infrared stylist. The user can write on the board with a colored stylist or fingertip and the information can be easily stored. In some applications students, each with their own personal computer, sit in a classroom, view the professor and the whiteboard at the front of the class, but also have all the information that appears on the whiteboard on their computers in front of them and can interact with each other and make and store their separate notes.

A basic system can be had for about $3,000, and of course that price will drop soon. It is easy to see how the iPad will become the student’s, or the teacher’s, portable computer within this system.

Such systems are not just being used in universities but also installed in K-12 classrooms across the country. In October 2009 the Detroit public school system inked a $40 million, multi-year contract with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to install its “Learning Village” electronic system throughout Detroit schools. When HMH gets around to licensing rights for use of images in the Learning Village program, and on iPads, I am sure they will argue that the image is not worth anywhere near as much as it was worth in a printed book and therefore want to pay a lot less than $92 for such usages.

These electronic systems will enable school systems and teachers to exercise a lot more control over their lesson plans. School systems will be less dependent on publishers than they have been in the past and will customize their curriculum and lesson plans to a greater extent. They will use the Internet as a resource. When they want photos they will go to Google, Flickr and microstock sites first. People who want to sell to the education market will have to find a way to sell quality work to individual teachers and school systems at very low prices and hope that volume will make up the difference.

The iPad and Interactive Educational Whiteboards are video friendly mediums. I believe there will be a lot more demand for short videos and a lot less demand for still imagery.
Think about science classes. Can magnetism be explained better with a still picture or a short video? What about dissecting a frog? I looked up “dissecting a frog” on YouTube and found 459 videos. Most were not very good and could have benefited from professional lighting, professional camerawork and good sound and narration, but where do you think teachers will go to find visuals that will inspire their students?

Summary

The iPad will be a boom to the education industry, not professional photographers. Elementary students will no longer have to carry heavy book bags, just a simple iPad. They will learn using the tools of their future careers, not outdated 20th Century ways of learning. Tests and additional resources will be available to students wherever they are. Teachers will be able to test and grade online. School systems will save huge amounts of money compared to what they previously spent on books. No longer will university students have to pay $1,000 for the books they need for a semester’s study. They will upload all the educational materials they need onto their iPad for a fraction of that cost.

The need for tons of paper to print test books will be reduced. Trees will be saved. Trucks to carry books to market will no longer be needed. There will be less need for book distribution outlets, or at the very least the need will be for a very different type of distribution outlet. There will be less need for complete packages called books. Experts on various issues currently found within books will discuss their research and findings in shorter articles and teachers will compile a series of such articles into course curriculums.

The world is changing, but not necessarily for the better for those photographers who want to continue to operate based on 20th Century rules.

Comparison shopping tools, such as Spiderpic, are starting to spring up. Do you think those tools will have any real impact on the industry?

Spiderpic will have a major impact on the microstock and subscription segments of the market because it is so easy to compare prices when the price is based on file size. It will be much harder to effectively compare prices on the rights-managed side of the business because there are so many other variables.

Microstock sellers will be pressured to go exclusive and not put their images on multiple sites so some companies can maintain higher prices. When the distributor licenses images as either single images, or part of a subscription the company competes against itself. We also know that those who market the same images through multiple sites always make more money than those represented exclusively by one company.

Dan Heller and Jim Erickson are at opposite ends of the photography spectrum, and yet each appears to be making direct sales work. What can we learn from their success? Does their success bode well for the rest of us?

I don’t know enough about Dan Heller’s business or what he earns from direct sales to speak intelligently about his business model. I have done an extensive story on Jim Erickson and believe there are a few keys to his success. First he is a very good photographer and there will always be a few who are the exception to the rule.

One of the important elements of his success in stock is his strong assignment business. His assignment customers are regular users of his stock. Working closely with art directors on assignments also helps him understand what is needed in stock and I’m sure aids him in developing concept ideas. He also generates enough revenue that he can justify building a very effective site and publishing regular catalogs of just his work. In addition, he had the advantage of building his career when the business was much more viable – on both the stock and assignment sides - than it is today.

Given how the business has changed I do not believe that someone with the same degree of talent and drive could ever achieve what Erickson has achieved as a still photographer.
Timing is important and the heyday of stock photography has passed.

Getty has just added social network licenses to their pricing for RM images. Included are commercial and non-commercial categories. Do you think that the problems of image theft, and the attitude that theft is OK, can be overcome enabling the use of photos on personal blogs and social networks to be monetized?

Unfortunately, I don’t think in today’s society the problem of image theft can be overcome. There is a general attitude in our society that individuals are “entitled” to all kinds of things for which they shouldn’t have to pay. Information on the Internet is just one of those things.

That said, the fact that so many microstock images are being purchased for small uses on the Internet is evidence that a significant number of people are willing to pay something for images. This may not be because buyers recognize that images have any value, but rather because images have been organized in a manner that makes it easy for buyers to quickly find something that works for their projects and thus saves them time. It should be recognized that buyers might not feel any responsibility to pay creators for their efforts; they’re just paying for convenience. The same thing can be said of iTunes.

On the other hand, the creator is getting something rather than nothing for his efforts. The big question is whether that something will be enough to justify continued production on the part of the creator. In the long run, I doubt it will.

Which pundits do you think we should be paying attention to (beside Selling Stock)?

It is natural for people to want a short list of experts to follow. It’s helpful if those experts agree with what the reader wants to hear. But with the technological changes taking place in the photography industry, I’m not sure that any of the pundits (me included) have many of the answers. One of the things that makes prognostication difficult in the photography industry is that there is almost no good, solid public data upon which to base decisions or opinions. Very few individuals or companies make data related to their business operations public.

That said, I think photographers should be listening to everyone who speaks at the annual PhotoEast conference. They should be listening to the leaders of the trade associations and everyone who has written a book about the photography business. To make matters more difficult there are many different aspects to the business of photography, stock photography being only one of them. Part of what each individual must do is figure out whether it is advisable to focus on just one aspect of the business or to work in several different areas. The answer may differ for each individual.

One of the things I’m trying to do with my new site www.photolicensingoptions.com is bring together, in one place, information from experienced experts who work in all the various ways that it is possible to earn money (and hopefully in many cases earn a living) from taking pictures. I want to offer a variety of differing opinions in each subject area from individuals who have enough experience, or have done enough research to justify their point of view.

I want to make useful information easy to find. At that point it will be up to the reader to determine which part of that information will help him or her increase earning from the images produced. Some of this information will also be available in other places on the Internet. But, it is often hard to find. I’ve found that when doing an Internet search it is often necessary to wade through a huge amount of dross in order to find a few useful gems. Photolicensingoptions will deal with a narrow focused issue – the business of photography – and find the gems for readers to consider.

Can you give us a quick rundown of which agencies you think are currently doing the best job for photographers?

Best is a relative term. The stock photo industry is in such a state of crisis that it is hard to say what the best course for any photographer might be. Photographers need to recognize that while agencies are “empowered to act on behalf of the photographer” they are not necessarily acting in the photographer’s best interest. Most agencies are seeing a decline in sales. The goal of most agencies is to maximize profits and that is not necessarily in the best interest of photographers. Most agencies are cutting costs and trying to honestly and fairly service the photographers who have been with them for many years. It is not a good time to jump into the business either as a photographer or agency/distributor.

I favor agencies that try to give photographers a larger share of the revenue collected. I favor agencies that make an attempt to price based on usage rather than file size, but I must acknowledge that the concept of pricing based on usage is waning and pricing by file size is growing more and more popular.

The agencies that focus on selling at low prices, direct to consumers, (microstock) are experiencing the most growth, but the prices are so low that the vast majority of photographers will not benefit.

Consumers do not want to search through hundreds or thousands of sites, each using different search methods, in order to find an image they can use. Consequently, they tend to go to sites where they can find a wide range of imagery of a broad cross section of the photographic community. Thus, photographers need a central place where consumers can go to find their work. But, for the most part these sites make little effort to set prices at levels that are favorable to photographers and they take an unreasonable share or the fees they do collect.

Many agencies make very few direct sales, but instead serve as consolidators of images that are then shipped to a wide range of distributors in order to reach a larger customer base. This may be a necessary service, but a further cut is involved, often leaving the image creator with a very small percentage of the unreasonably low fee that was paid in the first place.

Photographers should make every effort to put the exact same images with as many agencies as possible on a non-exclusive basis. Different agency editors will select different images for often, unfathomable reasons – and that’s OK. In some cases several agencies will select the same image and that’s also OK. Each agency will have some customers that the others will not reach and you want your images to have a chance to be seen by everyone. Some photographers will do well with one agency and other with a different agency. It is usually difficult to predict which agency will be most successful at selling a given photographer’s images. Be suspicious of any agency that wants to be the exclusive representative of your images and make sure they are offering you a significantly better deal than if you place your images with several agencies non-exclusively.
If you were shooting stock (hey, maybe you are…), would you be shooting for RM, RF or Micro…or some combination?

I think rights-managed (RM) is on the way out. It would be nice if customers were willing to pay to use an image based on the value they receive from using it, or to some degree the cost of production. But, that day seems to be passing. No matter what the subject matter there are too many good alternative choices available at much lower prices. Why should customers pay more? Part of the theory behind RM is that customers need exclusive rights to certain images. Some do, but there are way too many similar images competing for those occasional exclusive sales.

Exclusive sales make sense if the photographer is producing something that fulfills a specific need for the customer, and a fee has been negotiated upfront before the work is done (an assignment). But they make no sense when the photographer is shooting on speculation and trying to produce what some unknown customer will want sometime in the future and when the photographer has no idea how many other photographers are simultaneously producing something similar.

Thus, RM images must also be licensed for non-exclusive use and because the price is negotiable agencies often license RM images for prices far below non-exclusive royalty free images. The other problem with RM is that because the photographer and agency must make sure they can track all image use so they can license exclusives when requested, it becomes much more difficult to broadly market the image through multiple distributors.

Royalty-free (RF) has a market advantage over RM because it is non-exclusive. Thus, it is much easier to offer it for licensing through multiple-distributors. However, it is much harder for the average photographer to effectively participate in the RF market. Selling RF through one distributor only (many photographers do this on Alamy) is not a very satisfactory solution because the photographer fails to reach out to all the customers who deal with other distributors. Most RF production companies want to work with a few very experienced photographers who are prepared to produce high-volume. Consequently, most photographers find it very difficult to effectively participate in the traditional RM market.

The other problem with traditional royalty-free is that microstock will eventually cannibalize it because microstock offers the same unlimited use and is cheaper.

I have a problem with both royalty-free and microstock because they price based on file size rather than how the image is to be used. File size has very little to do with the value the customer receives when using an image.

The use of microstock will continue to grow while the use of images priced using the rights-managed and traditional royalty-free models will decline. However, microstock prices are so low, and the share of the fees paid the photographer so small, that it is hard to see how a photographer can earn a reasonable amount of money for his efforts. In addition, the volume of images being added to the collections is growing at such a rapid pace that most photographers will never earn enough to justify the effort they put into producing the images and preparing them for market.

Microstock is trying to find ways to raise its prices without losing its base. It has defined different bodies of work as being of higher quality and priced these images at a higher level. The problem with this strategy is that the higher priced images will never be used by the customers with limited budgets. Thus, those who only license their images at the “higher prices” lose potential sales. The system works for distributors because they don’t care which images sell as long as every customer goes away with something, but on average it doesn’t work to the advantage of photographers.

Microstock has defined a few types of uses as requiring “extended licenses” which in some cases may be negotiated. More use types should fall into the extended license category. Even as it is now the microstock pricing system has grown into something much more complex than the pricing system for traditional royalty-free and it promises to get more complex.

I believe we need a pricing system that makes every image available at all price points rather that arbitrarily assigning each image to a particular category of use based primarily on price. Above a certain base level, I don’t believe it is possible to define certain image groups as being of “higher quality” quality is in the eye of the beholder. Often very basic images are used in ways that justify a high price and the supposed “high quality” images are just what people with small budgets need. We should forget about licensing rights to stock images for exclusive use. When someone needs exclusive rights let them hire a photographer to produce an image on an assignment.

I favor a system that licenses images based on how they will initially be used, but also offers unlimited future use. Customers demand this kind of flexibility because they are unwilling to accurately predict or track future uses. Such a system is not perfect, but it is better than the alternatives we have today. It would be open to some misuse, but no more than the today’s misuses. It is not fair and reasonable to charge businesses the same to use an image as someone whose use is for a personal blog or a school project.

I want to believe that most customers will be honest in disclosing, to the best of their knowledge, how they intend to use the images they license. However, I also recognize that this may no longer be the way most people operate in today’s society. PicScout provides a service to search the Internet for images represented by certain agencies. They find that 85% of the uses they identify are unauthorized or used beyond the original license. It has also come to the attention of many in the industry that for more than a decade major book publishers have been printing many more copies of books than they licensed rights to print. Given these examples maybe there is no way for photographers to get reasonable compensation for their efforts. Maybe the whole idea of licensing stock images as a business is no longer practical for a photographer.

When I first got into stock photography in the 1960s the idea was that stock images were outtakes from assignments, or occasionally something you shot when you had nothing better to do than sit around drinking a beer. There was no great expectation of earning money from such images, but if you did it was a windfall and not something on which you should base a business. Most stock photographers need to return to this way of thinking. If you have the images and you don’t mind the extra administrative work necessary to make the images available for marketing than put them into the market and see what happens. (The administrative work wasn’t as big a problem in the 1960s as it is today because all you had to do was ship the raw film to your agency and you received 50% of any sale made.) But don’t expect any return and look at what you get as a windfall. If your goal is to earn a living taking pictures then focus on projects that provide a guaranteed return when the images are delivered.

I have been predicting that eventually RM, RF and Micro would all be sold on the same sites…and yet Corbis and Veer have just gone in exactly the opposite direction. Veer is no longer selling RM as Corbis attempts to more clearly differentiate its brands. Is this the way the industry is headed?

I think Corbis and Veer are struggling to find a model that works, but I don’t think this new strategy will be successful. I agree that all sites should eventually have images available at all price points.

For such a system to work I believe all the images will have to be priced either on the basis of file size, or of use. As we look to the future I don’t believe a mixture of both will work for very long. I favor a use-based system, but there must be a wide range of defined uses -- some very small uses where the fee is only $1.00 and moving steadily up the scale until we come to certain advertising uses that command thousands of dollars. There must be a system that allows the best images to be used for personal as well as commercial purposes.

There needs to be a system that stops trying to define what is best and price it differently. Every customer’s idea of best differs from that of every other customers depending on particular need at a particular time. Editing often rejects more images that would sell in the right market than it keeps. Let the customer see it all, decide what is best and be charged a price that has some relation to the value he will receive depending on how the customer intends to use the image.

Where are the “Rays of hope” for stock photographers?

I think we should remove the word “stock” from this question. It should be “Where are the ‘Rays of hope’ for photographers?” Photographers have developed skills at seeing and in taking pictures. Shooting stock is not the only way to earn money in photography.

Photographers must recognize that dramatic changes are taking place in the business and it is time to adapt. At one point all professional photographs were produced on glass plates and tintypes. Next they had to be shot on 8x10 of 4x5 sheet film. After that came the 35mm single lens reflex and color. Then we entered the generation of digital with sharper images and more control. Also note that the effective lifespan of each of these methods of producing images became shorter and shorter.

The next stage of communicating with images may be moving more toward video and away from stills. My advice to photographers coming out of school is to throw away the still camera and focus on video.

But the ray of hope is that many of the photographic and business skills already learned can be re-applied in new ways in the visual communication business. It is time for everyone to be considering reinvention. A few may find it unnecessary, but no one should be confident that they will be doing the same kind of work three to five years from now that they are doing today.

Many of your customers will be trying to make old strategies work. Do what they ask, but look for new customers who are on the cutting edge of new ideas. The ray of hope is that those customers are out there.

You have a new project…PhotoLicensingOptions.com. Can you tell us about that project?

I have been writing about the stock photograph business in _Selling Stock for 20 years and involved in stock photography for over 45 years. I am absolutely convinced that it is time for everyone in the stock photography business to start thinking about re-invention and transitioning to some other line of business. There are many other ways photographers can use their skills to earn money.

We hope to publish articles in PhotoLicensingOption.com that will explore all the various ways photographers can earn money from the images they produce. We will examine new developments and trends in each aspect of the business. In this way we hope to help photographers identify and transition into more lucrative and satisfying aspects of the photography business. We plan to provide our readers with a continuing steady stream of quality information from experts in the various photographic disciplines. Initially there is a focus on what is happening in stock, but that will change quickly so check back frequently or sign up for our regular weekly email that summarizes the new stories available.

Readers pay a small fee to read stories of interest. There is no charge unless the reader actually intends to read a particular story. The goal is to bring all the best information on the business of photography together in one place.

Selling-Stock.com has operated on a subscription basis with readers paying $195 a year for a daily service. PhotoLicensingOptions is designed to provide the same quality of information, but at a price of $1.00 or $2.00 when the reader finds something of particular interest. In this way anyone can easily determine, without making a huge initial investment, if any of the information offered is worth the price.

As an agency owner and industry analyst, what are you doing to prepare for the future?

We are looking for ways to maximize the return for our photographers as long as possible. We are also trying to be frank and open with them and help them understand that they need to be thinking about re-invention and transitioning to some other line of work. None of the photographers we represent are totally dependent on us for their livelihood.

We also anticipate that there will come a point where it may be necessary to close the physical agency operation, but given the way we have structured the business that can be accomplished and still keep revenue flowing to our photographers as long as anyone is interested in using their images.

What is the one piece of advice you can offer us veterans who can’t be dissuaded from pursuing stock photograph?

Expect your annual revenue to continue to decline. If you are under 55 the stock photography business will be dead as a way of earning a living long before you are ready to quite working. Plan ahead. Recognize that I am not saying the photography business will be dead, just the stock part of it.

Do you have any advice for newcomers to the field of stock photography?

If you are taking pictures just to have fun, enjoy yourself. If the money you earn from taking pictures is an important part of your support, then look for customers who will give you an assignment to shoot pictures for which they have a specific need and for which they will pay you immediately after you have completed the job. Make sure the pay is sufficient to justify doing the work. If you can’t be happy shooting that kind of pictures then look for another way to earn a living.

Instead of just thinking about how to take a pretty picture of a happy couple that fits some ethnic stereotype learn more about how that picture is to be used. What is the picture supposed to communicate and how do consumers react to such communications? Expand your knowledge beyond just photographic techniques and learn about other ways of communicating information. I recognize that this is easy to say, but hard to do because everyone has a limited amount of time, but those who can do it will be the ones who succeed.

Many of your clients will be trying to make old strategies work. Do what they ask, but look for new clients who are on the cutting edge of new ideas.

And finally, are there any last thoughts you’d like to leave us with?

My career in photography has gone through many stages of reinvention. For me photography has always been about a way to earn a living that was exciting, interesting, challenging and ever changing. I have never been concerned about creating art. I’ve always been more interested in finding clients who would pay me a decent wage and delivering to them the best I knew how to do and more than they expected. None of my images will be remembered as great, or fine art, but I’ve mostly enjoyed the work and I’ve had a lot of satisfied customers. Often when it came time to make a career change I would agonize over it and think things would never be a good as they had been. Almost without exception the work ended up being more enjoyable and satisfying than what I had been doing previously. Aim for enjoying what you do and giving your customers the best you can do. The rest will take care of itself.

Funny Animal Pictures and Lessons Learned

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:38:00 +0000

This funny picture of a cat with a canary feather in its mouth started a huge additional source of revenue for me.

Funny Animal Pictures: A Cat and a Canary Feather
My Animal Antics series of funny animal pictures began with my image of a cat with one yellow canary feather protruding from his smiling face (click here to see a sampling of the Animal Antics series of images). I originally created the image as a stock photo, but before I submitted it I was invited to exhibit at the Sausalito Art Festival (way back when it was unusual to be using Photoshop). Someone had advised me to bring some un-matted 8x10 prints in addition to the larger matted and framed fine art prints. The first day of the festival I sold all 8 of the Cat & Canary prints. I went home that night and printed up a dozen more…and the next day I sold all of them.

Greeting Cards and Anthropomorphic Pets
I realized at that point that I had an image that really clicked with the public. As I thought about it, it occurred to me that perhaps the image should be a greeting card. I made an appointment with one of the art directors, Collette Kulak, at Portal Publications. I showed her a few of my anthropomorphic animal images, including, or course, the cat and the canary. I then suggested that perhaps, with Portal’s help, I could be the animal equivalent of Anne Geddes, who was enormously popular with her images of babies in flowers, pea pods and so forth. Kind of a bold statement in retrospect!

Exclusivity and Higher Royalty Rates
Collette, to my everlasting amazement, agreed with me! We started off with four images and added a few more each quarter. After about two years I was beginning to wonder if all the work I was putting into those images was worth it. Then suddenly one quarter I got a royalty check of about $6,000.00. After that things just took off. The cards became so popular that Portal offered me a higher royalty to be exclusive with them, and soon I was Portal’s best selling card artist. I held that position until Portal was purchased by a venture capital company and slowly carved up until nothing was left.

Funny Cats, Camaraderie, and Gratifying Work
I am now in the process of reviving the line with new distributors. The cards are doing well and I am excited to see a comeback taking shape. I thoroughly enjoy working with the pets and the process of creating funny cat photos and humorous dog images. I also enjoy the camaraderie of working with a team, something that rarely happens in my stock photography. One other aspect of this undertaking that is gratifying: I receive a ton of e-mail from people who just plain get a kick out of the cards.

Coffee Mugs, T-shirts and…Barbecue Aprons!
In addition, I am making these images available at CafePress for a variety of imprinted products including coffee mugs, mouse pads, T-shirts (for both people and pets), water bottles, and yes, barbecue aprons! If you check out the site you can see all the various items. This is all part of my process of diversification, of seeking out ways to reach as wide an audience as possible for existing images, images that I think of as income-producing assets.

Gift Books, Christmas Ornaments, and Lessons Learned
To date the Animal Antics pictures have been used (exclusive of CafePress) for figurines, picture frames, Christmas Ornaments, Gift books (printed in seven languages), checks, Purses and Tote Bags, Vet reminder cards, calendars, and, well, I can’t even remember all the products! The gift books had a good run (Andrews McMeel published three of them), the greeting cards still sell like gangbusters, and everything else kind of fizzled after varying degrees of modest success. In all of these efforts I have learned a few things.

Get An Advance
I have learned that you should always get an advance (so when, if for whatever reason you don’t get paid, at least you have something). An advance isn’t just money in your pocket, it is an indication of the faith, and effort, that a publisher/distributor has in the product. Not only that, but at least you have something if the client ends up running into their own financial problems…a lesson I learned all to well when I provided the images for a Calendar without requiring and advance. The calendars were printed and sold, the company changed hands, sold off its calendar division and disappeared. I pursued the matter briefly but realized it was going to probably require more legal fees and time than was worth the effort.

Take The Royalty
If you believe in your images and the product, and are offered a choice of royalties or a flat fee, take the royalties. If that original cat and canary image had been licensed through a stock agency as a greeting card I would have received several hundred dollars. With royalties I have earned over $6,000.00.

Be Stingy With Your Rights
I have learned that you should make sure that whoever is distributing the products has a good record for that kind of product. A company that is great at distributing greeting cards may be terrible at selling calendars. Do your research before giving up rights.

Explore Your Options
In the environment we photographers currently find ourselves in it is important to take the same kind of advice any good investment counselor would make: diversify. There are many ways to diversify and some of them might just end up being your main gig! Explore your options. Start looking around you at all the ways photography is used. In what ways are images like the ones you make being used? Diversify, make good business decisions, and your images can work for you for in a lot of ways and for a long, long time.

Information overload...I Think My Head is About to Explode!

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:31:00 +0000

Information overload...I think my head is going to explode!

Facebook, Linked-In, and Google Analytics
I haven’t figured out Facebook yet. I twitter, sort of, I blog, a lot, and spend countless hours entering metadata, reading blogs, trying to understand what the heck is going on in this crazy business, uploading images, consulting with my webmaster on our ongoing SEO efforts, and occasionally taking a look at linked-in. I just learned how to view alt text with my Firefox browser, and to check my Google page ranking. I do keyword research; check my smarterstats reports and Google analytics.

Final Cut Pro, File Maker Pro, and Fetch
I have learned some Final Cut Pro, am struggling with File Maker Pro, need to download numerous firmware updates, can’t ever finish downloading any software updates and can’t get my licensing straight with Fetch. One of my computers is slower than molasses and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. The battery on my UPS needs replacing and beeps at me every fifteen minutes, and costs about the same as replacing the whole unit. Not cheap. Somehow I only have one card reader, which is always plugged into the wrong machine with a card in it that I don’t remember if I have downloaded.

Monitor Calibration, Microsoft Office, and Bridge
I have two one terabyte RAIDs online, both filled to the brim…and about five one terabyte drives with stuff haphazardly copied onto them…and not much room left to do anything with. I haven’t calibrated any of my six monitors in, well, years! I have three laptops and one works…though the battery last approximately twelve minutes. I can only use Microsoft office on one machine at a time, and, naturally, it never seems to be working on the machine I need it on. On one machine bridge refuses to see all the images on one of the RAIDs, but works fine on everything else. I have no idea what “permissions” are.

Inaccurate Restrictions, Captions and a Human Answering the Phone
I realized the other day that Getty has inaccurate restrictions on at least some of my images, but do I really have time to check on all six thousand? I noticed yesterday that one of my captions at Blend Images refers to a man as a woman. Is that important? Well, at least if I call Blend a human will answer the phone!

Video, Metadata, and Modelreleases
I have two videos waiting to be sent to Getty, but can’t face doing the metadata. My first Canon 5D video is sitting on a couple of cards waiting for me to figure out the Final Cut Pro thing again. The stills from that shoot are on a couple of more cards…I know they are around here somewhere! For that matter, I bet the model release are too…I never through any of that stuff away! That reminds me, my printer is out of ink….

Battery Life, The Genius Bar, and Google Buzz
Should I worry about my battery life when I only pick up my camera once a month? Should I keep them on the charger…or is that for the ProFoto 7b batteries? Why can’t I get my e-mail on my iPhone…I used to be able to! For that matter, how come the guy at the Genius bar couldn’t figure out what the problem was? Some photographers are creating apps for their promo efforts. What! Am I supposed to create phone apps now? And what is this I hear about Google Buzz?

I think my head is going to explode!

A Revolution In The Professional Photography World

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:49:00 +0000

The photo world is in a revolution, and no one knows where we are going to end up. How do we keep on the road to success?

Shannon Fagan, Ellen Boughn and Yuri Arcurs

In a guest post by Shannon Fagan on Ellen Boughn’s blog , Yuri Arcurs (hey, to start off a sentence with those three names in the first fifteen words---pretty impressive), comments that his rpi has dropped from over $9.00 per image per month two years ago, to half that now, and is possibly on it’s way to $3.00 per image per month, below which he will not longer be able to produce and still earn a profit. That is, to me, a pretty stunning comment…and not a very uplifting one either. Here is a photographer who is generally acknowledged as the premier microstock shooter in the world, and in my opinion is one of the world’s premier stock shooters of any business model, and he is anticipating his profit dipping to a point where it isn’t worth his time to produce! Yikes!

A Blog Post Worth Reading

BTW, this is a blog post worth reading. Lots of interesting stuff. David Sanger offers some extra-curricular reading that is also fascinating. I am terrible at reporting on what others say…but check out Ellen’s blog its makes for a fascinating and informative read.

We Are In A Revolution

I will say that after reading the material David suggested, it really hit home to me that we are in a revolution where the old ways are dying and the replacement ways aren’t known yet. I suspect that this revolution will continue past my age of productivity, or even my lifetime. What we “professional” photographers are faced with is a career-threatening change that is accelerating rapidly and for which there are no certain answers. On the bright side there is an accelerating need for images. On the downside, image theft is rampant, image supply is infinite, and old distribution models are crumbling.

The Low End and The High End

Popular theory has it that you can thrive both by supplying the low-end of the market, and/or by supplying the high-end. Here we have the premier low-end supplier, Yuri, indicating that he has to make 11,000 images a year to maintain his income, and that soon it might not be worth his time continuing to produce. Oops…there goes half of popular theory. At least if you are supplying the high-end you don’t have to produce 11,000 images a year! Heck, after twenty years of producing stock imagery I have personally produced somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 images. I can’t compete with Yuri (but then it sounds like Yuri might not be able to compete with Yuri…).

Where to Turn For Hope

Where do I turn to for hope? Well, a couple of areas. I have doubled the number of images I have with Getty in the last two years…and my income is only down 30%. So, if I keep producing at my newer high levels, and the market quits dropping…at least I am still earning enough to live decently. So that’s at least not the end of the world with those afore mentioned caveats. My Blend Images sales are also came down, but not quite as much, and they actually seem to be going up again…so that is hopeful. I am not giving up on agencies yet. I am still making very good money with them. It may just be that today’s agencies will become the filters that will be required in the coming years in order to deal with and find the images a buyer needs with a reasonable amount of time and effort. I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone else does either.

Images That Stand Out

For me the biggest hope is that I can produce images that stand out enough that there will still be people and companies that are willing to pay a reasonable amount for them…whether they find them through an agency or with internet searches, or through some yet-to-be-determined vehicle. Of course, the challenge of getting buyers to find your images is an immense one, one that I believe (though I may be wrong), can be done through SEO, patience, perseverance, and perspiration (earlier blog post). If you agree you better start implementing that right now, because I suspect it will take years of dedicated work.

The Key: Quality Photos

The key to almost everything for photographers is creating quality photos. Algorithms that reward those with the best-selling work are popping up at agencies everywhere. Quality content is a key to building traffic and attracting buyers for direct sales. And in an Internet world where comparing prices has become so easy, well, you are going to have to have the best looking work in any given price range to make the sale. Quality photography and diversity are our best options for surviving, and even thriving, in this revolution.

Stampeding Elephant Newsweek Cover Photo

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:42:00 +0000

Newsweek used one of my stock photos of elephants for its March 1st Issue cover.

Newsweek Elephant Stampede Cover Photo
Just found out that one of my Getty Images, a herd of stampeding elephants, is on the March 1st Cover of Newsweek. Fame for a week! What is really amazing to me, and what continues to amaze me, is how easily the market can accommodate multiple uses of an image. Had it not been for Charlie Holland, and a couple of others who pointed it out to me, I would never have known the image was a Newsweek cover.

Stampeding Long Horn Cattle and a Need To Get Out More
I have images that have been used hundreds and hundreds of times and have never seen them in use! A couple of months ago Time used one of my elephant images in a spread…never did see a copy of that! Another “stampede” image, a herd of stampeding longhorn cattle, has been licensed more times than I can count; yet I have never actually seen it used. Amazingly, it is very rare that I ever see any of my photos in use. It has only been about a half-dozen times over twenty plus years that I have actually just “happened” on one of my stock photos being used. Maybe I need to get out more!

The Devil, The National Enquirer and Maxim
A photo of me as the devil was used in the National Inquirer…and no I didn’t see it while standing in line at the grocery store…someone else did and alerted me to it. The same image was once also used by Maxim magazine. I set a pretty high standard with my self-portrait! In another case in which someone else alerted me to the use of one of my images, a shot of a fisherman on Inle Lake, in Myanmar, was used on the paperback copy of Amy Tan’s Saving Fish From Drowning. The publisher used an image shot by my friend and colleague Nevada Wier (great blog by the way), for the hardcover version. Oh well….

A New York Street Artist
I do remember one time when I personally saw one of my photos being used. I was perusing a sidewalk gallery in New York where street artists were selling their wares. One of them was selling photo prints, including one of my silly animal images. Close inspection revealed it to be a rather poor color copy of one of the greeting cards. I chose not to pursue the matter.

A Lighthouse In A Storm and Success
Another time I was photographing an executive for an annual report. He wasn’t being exactly cooperative, until I pointed out that the poster on his wall, a shot of a lighthouse in a storm in a "Success" poster, was one of my photographs. He must have really liked that poster because his whole attitude changed and suddenly he couldn’t have been any more cooperative!

Image Over Use and Micro Stock
It is with the above in mind that I rarely, make that never, worry about an image being over-used. Of course, over-used is better than over-emulated (using a “nice” word there). One thing that would make me crazy if I were in micro stock would be the option people have of seeing which images are best sellers. I don’t think that is good for the company, for stock shooters, or for clients. It has to have some limiting factor on the diversity of a collection. But I digress. I think I will go back to enjoy my brief pleasure at seeing one of my photos on the cover of Newsweek!

Oh, one more thing, here is my Public Service Announcement of the week (and one I heartedly endorse):

Involved in stock photography?
Please take the 2010 SAA stock survey at

http://j.mp/SAA2010survey

results will be collated and published

Cute, Funny Animal Pictures and Plan "B"

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 05:25:00 +0000

Funny animal pictures are part of my Plan "B" to diversify and increase my security and earning potential.

Cute, Funny Animal Pictures
More than once I have been introduced as the “the guy who creates the cute, funny animal pictures”. I have to admit, it is with mixed emotions that I hear that. As a photographer my ego can’t help but want to be known for “serious” work. However, I really don’t do much “serious” work. Further, after a career of some thirty years as a professional photographer, I have never received as much genuine thanks for creating images as I do for the funny human-like animal pictures. A week after 9/11 a United Flight Attendant sent me an e-mail telling me that one of my humorous cat pics brought the first smile to her face in a week. A week doesn’t go by without my getting at least one random phone call or e-mail from someone who is thanking me for creating those photos and bringing a smile to their face.
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Millions of Pet Owners and Photo Creations
Now, with the stock photo business going through such transitional pains, I have a renewed appreciation for those anthropomorphic photo creations. I can’t help but believe that the market for products with photos imprinted on them, now made accessible by the Internet, represents a truly enormous opportunity. There are over 37 million cat owners in the U.S., and over 43 million dog owners. All I want is about ten cents apiece!

Funny Animal Pictures and Anthropomorphic Offerings
According to Wordtracker there were over 23 million searches for “funny animal pictures”. Hey, if one percent of them bought an animal print from me, and I made a mere $5.00 per print, lets see…I would make (my math is always suspect here) oh, about $1,150,000.00. If it were only so easy! But there isn’t anything easy about it. Shooting animals is certainly challenging. The stripping out of hair and fur necessary for compositing my anthropomorphic offerings sure isn’t easy. Perhaps hardest of all is attracting traffic to my site in sufficient quantities to actually provide a significant amount of revenue. But then, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

Diversification and Different Revenue Sources
For us photographers, stock or assignment, now is an important time to diversify. By having this “funny animal” sub-specialty I am tapping into a much different revenue source than the standard stock photo licensees. By selling photos as products, i.e. coffee mugs, T-shirts, tote bags, mouse pads and more through CafePress, I am reaching a different clientele. Photographic prints represents yet another diverse source of income that ought to be accessible to any photographer. Just like in the investment world, diversification provides an increase in security, and who knows, you just might end up liking the “plan B” more than your “day gig”!

Plan “B” and Creating Effective Stock Photos
Having a “plan B” helps me relax a bit and I think actually makes me better at my primary task of creating effective stock photos. I try and work on each aspect of my business each day, and changing tasks, such as taking a break from compositing to work on key wording, or switching from uploading images online to writing a blog entry or article, helps keep me invigorated and enthusiastic. For example, the first thing I did this morning was create a composite stock photo for Blend, followed by working on SEO strategy, then entering sales reports into my database, and finally, working on a stock photo for Getty. Now I am at home writing this blog on my laptop, and in just a few minutes it will be time to veg for a bit and watch the Olympics. Actually, that is going to happen right now…later!

Teamwork, Challenge and a Dramatic Stock Photo

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:26:00 +0000

Quad Sculling, four people rowing a boat, demonstrates teamwork, adversity, challenge and risk in this "impossible" stock photo.
Timeless Photos and Long Term Success
This image of Quad Sculling (in sculling a light boat is powered by people using two oars each…quad sculling refers to such a boat with four people) is exactly the kind of image I most enjoy creating. It has a strong, but flexible, message or concept. It has drama and interest and even humor (as in “Yeah, right”). The photograph is on the ragged edge of believability…is it real or not? And finally, the photo is timeless, something I think is tremendously important for long-term success in the stock imagery business.

Teamwork, Challenge and the Impossible
Sculling has always been a strong metaphor for teamwork, and as such has been used countless times as a stock image. This version still speaks of teamwork, but takes it a couple of steps further. This is teamwork in the face of risk, challenge, adversity and perhaps even the impossible. I can’t help but think that an appropriate headline might be “Sometimes even teamwork isn’t enough”. Come to think of it, this image might be hitting a little close to home for us photographers!

Old Concepts, Shot In New and Different Ways
As I have mentioned before, old concepts, illustrated in new and different ways, with a strong message pertinent to the marketplace, tend to do well. This image represents any efforts being attempted by a team, but with huge challenges and an uncertain outcome at best. It could be the government attempting to deal with the recession, or a sales team overmatched by competition, or any number of other situations in which an entity, be it corporation, government or organization, is faced with huge obstacles. For example, I could see this being an editorial image about the government attempting health care reform!

Extra Ideas
This image is also a great example of how I work these days. I come up with an idea that I want to illustrate, and then build a more comprehensive shoot around that first idea. In this case I knew I needed four models (to replace the people I had originally photographed in the boat, two of whom were just kids). Then I went over my comprehensive list of ideas to see which other ones were waiting for me to shoot models in-studio in order to finish. I came up with 17 ideas. I knew that I would not be able to complete the photography for that many, but I wanted to make sure that I had extra ideas in case one or more of my planned ones just weren’t working out. As it turned out, I managed to get the raw materials shot for about eleven of the ideas.

Four Models, A Boat, and Three Waves
In my studio I set up the lighting to match that from the original sculling shoot. Since I had shot the boat from a bridge I stood on a ladder to get the correct perspective. I printed out an 11x17 print of the boat and kept it with me on the ladder. I then shot each model and compared the LCD image with the print to make sure I cam at least reasonably close to the poses that would work. Before letting the models go I also did a quick cut and paste in Photoshop just to make sure things lined up right.
I put this image together using four model shots, the boat, and three shots of waves taken from atop a bluff in the Marin Headlands on a day with particularly large swells. I crafted it in such a way that it can easily crop as a horizontal for, say, magazine spreads, or vertically for a magazine cover. There is also plenty of room for headlines and body copy, though the texture of the water might be a bit busy for that. Total Photoshop time was about six hours.

A Rights Managed Image
While the concept of teamwork is one that is always in hot demand, as are such themes as risk, challenge, and adversity, having the rather negative probable outcome as part of the image makes me think that the audience for this photograph will be on the small side. Combine that with the greater-than-ordinary amount of work that goes into such an picture, and I think it would be best served as a Rights Managed image, so that is how I am submitting it. And now I have ten more images to get back to working on!

Patience, Perseverance, and Perspiration:A Stock Photo Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:46:00 +0000

A businessman pushing an elephant out of the room was created for the stock licensing market.

This funny animal photo was create with the consumer market in mind.

Google Searches, Consumers and Stock Agencies
I believe are many more potential purchasers of photography doing Google searches (what I will call the “consumer” market) than those searching stock agencies. This “consumer” market includes everyone looking for fine art prints and bathroom wall décor to photo-imprinted coffee mugs, tote bags, T-Shirts, greeting cards and, yes, licensing stock photos (though they might not know that they are seeking to license a stock image).

Stock Agencies, Publishers and More Money
I also know that it is a heck of a lot easier for me to make money by licensing stock through the traditional agencies than it is for me to license images directly or to penetrate that consumer market. As I have said before, if I want to earn more money as quickly as possible then I should be shooting as many pictures (intelligently) as possible and getting them into Blend, Corbis, Getty, Kimball and SuperStock (my agencies in alphabetical order) as quickly as I can. Similarly, I can earn significant money by getting more greeting cards of my silly animal pictures into the market through brick and mortar publishers.

A Ton of Work and Slow Progress
After over a year of pushing SEO, upload and key wording images, blogging, writing articles, and putting images up on Imagekind and CafePress, I have learned a couple of things. Firstly, it is a TON of work! Secondly, there is progress but it is agonizingly slow. I have gone from an average of one unique visitor per week to my website, to an average of almost 500 a day. I have gone from about 1 sale on CafePress every couple of weeks to pretty much an average of one sale a day. And don’t forget all the click-through ad revenue…about $5.00 a day.

Pumping Out More Images
Given all of the downward price pressure from low price stock and an oversupply of images the idea of trying to pump out more and more images, and adding to that oversupply, just doesn’t make a whole lot of long-term sense to me. I still very much believe in stock photography, and frankly, particularly looking at my Blend sales, I’d have to say there is still a lot of life left in the old girl yet. But it ain’t like it used to be. Not in RF or RM. But creating more new quality content can still work for both the short and long term.

Changes In the Photo Market, Bad Business Decisions, and the Recession
I used to make a killing in greeting cards as well, and I am down about 70% on those (I am only down about 30% on stock photos but still earn enough to make me feel a little guilty). Given that the greeting card company that used to publish my cards made some seriously questionable business moves (like firing their entire sales staff), it is unclear how much of that drop is due to the changes in the photo market and how much due to bad business decisions and the recession.

Shipping Product, Generating Traffic and Income Streams
This brings to the point where I am now, trying to continually adjust my time and efforts to provide for the maximum return. I have to look at both the short and long term. For me, the short term is creating images and getting them to the stock agencies, what Seth Godwin would term “shipping product”. The long term, for me, means tapping into the vast powers of the internet and continuing to build traffic to generate income from that “consumer” market as well as guide more users of stock photography to my images at the various agencies that handle them. The seemingly slow nature of that process is secondary to the evidence that it does work. Ultimately, they all work together. Creating more images for agencies, which I can then put up as additional content on my site, will both generate that short-term income (hopefully middle-term and long-term revenue as well), and will generate more traffic that I can channel into various income streams.

Creating Compelling Stock Photos As Quality Content
My tasks, then, are to create compelling stock photos, market-needed images, get them onto my site, and continue my SEO through key wording, blogging, article writing and link-building. In short, creating quality content for the agencies and my site. I guess it boils down to patience, perseverance and perspiration…all with a sense of urgency.

Nurturing Relationships and Your Photography Success

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 06:57:00 +0000

Cultivating relationships (even with elephants) is good for your life and your business.

Regrets, Advertising Assignments, and Relationships
I don’t have a lot of regrets at this point, but I do have a few. And one of those regrets is not keeping up friendships. Due to a variety of factors, divorces (eeks…plural), being a workaholic and so forth, I have lost touch with many of my friends both in business and in my personal life. If I had it to do over again, I would have retained more friendships. One piece of advice I was given as a young photographer, just entering the world of advertising assignments, was not to look a job as a $3,000 dollar day (back then day rates were in…I chose $3,000.00 because that was what I was asking at that time), but rather as a $100,000.00 relationship.

Relationships and People You Genuinely Like
Obviously it is important to keep relationships healthy and alive for one’s personal life, but it could be useful to take a look at the role relationships play in our photography business and careers. These relationships range from bankers and accountants to models and fellow photographers to art directors, designers and, yes, even your non-photographer friends. It is important to realize that in a good, healthy relationship you will not be taking advantage of people. I think it is important to cultivate relationships with people you genuinely like and respect…there are plenty of them out there!

Art Directors, Communication Friends and Fun
Of course, it is obvious why you would want to cultivate relationships with Art directors and other clients. It is more fun to work with friends, it fosters better communication and teamwork with a trusted friend can result in better work. But good things can come from unexpected places, and the chances of those good things coming increase with the number of close and positive relationships you have.

Exotic Video Cameras, Helicopters and Blend Images
A close relationship with my primary computer vendor has resulted in the opportunity to shoot with exotic video cameras, and to play with cutting-edge storage systems. A relationship with my knee surgeon resulted in one of my best paying stock shoots ever, using his facilities as a location basically for free. A relationship with a helicopter pilot led to countless opportunities for aerial shooting…and a heck of a lot of fun! And relationships with a couple of my peers resulted in my becoming one of the founders of the stock agency Blend Images (that was a big one…). I have many such stories, but have let many more get away by failing to nurture and maintain relationships that had the potential, but that I neglected to death.

Who You Know, and Things We Can’t Imagine
It is sometimes said that it isn’t what you know, but whom you know. I think what you know is vitally important, but it often is whom you know that allows you to put what you know into practice. The people you know can provide you with opportunities from locations, to models, to inspiration to guidance to things we can’t even imagine.

Nurturing Relationships
How do you nurture those relationships? You give of yourself. You give your time, your enthusiasm and your heart. You do your best to see the world through their eyes. You give them honesty, an ear, and respect. If you do that with no expectation of getting something in return… you will be amazed at what does come back.

Design Your Photography Career Around Your Life

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 02:33:00 +0000

Plan your career around the life you want to have.

Helping others is an important part of a rich and rewarding life.

Super Models, Celebrities, and Priorities
When planning your photography career, and make no mistake, it is important to really PLAN your career, be sure you have your priorities worked out first. Is your priority to live a satisfying and meaningful life, to make lots of money, to become famous, to hobnob with super models and celebrities ( I once turned down a job to shoot the Rolling Stones because the shoot had to start after 1:00A.M. and I am NOT a night person)? Whatever you want your life to be, you are much more likely to achieve it if you plan for it. A plan does not mean a ball and chain either. You can change your plan whenever you like! But the point I really want to emphasize here, is that clarity in what you really want is essential.

Happiness and Money
The older I get the more I realize that my happiness isn’t totally tied to how much money I earn. Of course there is a monetary threshold that really does contribute to my happiness, but once I reach that amount there are so many other things that are more important. I won’t go into them all here…they actually sound a bit trite when I write them down.

Stock Photos, Profit, and Service
I made the choice many years ago to pursue stock photography and to let the assignment world go. I didn’t like the pressure…and I didn’t like shooting what I didn’t want to shoot. It has worked out well for me so far, though you never know and I might have to dip that toe back into the assignment world. But with my stock photo career I am able to use my photography to enhance my life. I figure out fun things to do and shoot, and then figure out a way to make those fun things turn a profit via stock photography. Lately, though, that hasn’t felt like enough. I am now adding a new element: service. I want to help others with and through my photography.

Stock Photos and Contribution
The Compassionate Eye is a organization founded by photographer Robert Kent in which photographers contribute via their stock photos. Robert has set it up so that Getty takes the images and gives the photographer’s share of the royalties to The Compassionate Eye. The Compassionate Eye has an interesting tactic of having everyone devote a Summer Solstice shoot to the cause. It is great fun for a good cause. They in turn use the stock revenue to build schools for 3rd world kids. They work with the parents to build the schools, as it has been determined that the greater the community involvement, the more long-term success is realized. It has been, and will continue to be, a great experience. The next step for me is to make service even more personal, a personal project that improves the lives of others. I am working on a solution for that…stay tuned!

A Career, and a Worthwhile Life
Getting back to my point, as you plan your career be sure and pay close attention to what makes life worthwhile for you, and how your career can work towards that, towards a truly satisfying, rich and meaningful life. Things to consider are where you really want to live, what do you really enjoy shooting, what kind of community you want to be part of, and how you can make room for both a photo career and the friends and family that grow increasingly important as we grow older. Don’t get me wrong, money is important. I do not miss those days of trying to decide which bills I could pay and which I would have to put off. And I cherish the ability to decide on the spur of the moment to take a trip, and not have such decisions weigh on me financially. What I want to remind you here is, just don’t forget the really important things!

Handshakes, Challenges, and Success As A Stock Photographer

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 02:38:00 +0000

As stock photographers, as well as artists, we must take old concepts, like the dreaded business handshake, and bring them to life in new and exciting ways.

Blend Images, A Recession, And Opportunity
The negative news in the photography world is rampant, and it would be foolish not to pay attention…and not to be concerned. But I can’t help but believe that with the tremendous demand for images there isn’t also a lot of opportunity. I will come out and say it: There is a lot of opportunity! Blend Images, of which I am a part of, has just licensed more images than ever...even in a recession year. And they weren’t doing it by discounting. As a matter of fact, one of my associates had one sale in Blend’s just introduced Rights Managed collection for over $9,000.00. Don’t forget, despite the doom and gloom there are hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on stock images.

Our Challenge As Stock Photographers
There are opportunities…but how do we take advantage of them? One way is to shoot the old tried-and-true concepts, but to shoot them in a new and different way. Let’s take the example of a handshake. Kind of makes you cringe, right? I mean if anything has been done to death, overused, and driven into the ground it is the business handshake. And yet, what better symbol is there for such important and necessary concepts as sealing the deal, agreement, success and teamwork? Handshakes are a quick read and we all get the point. Handshakes really are a necessary image in the business world. As creative photographers, as artists if you will, and certainly as stock shooters, it is our challenge to take such mundane concepts and take them to a new level.

Photos That Stand Out From The Crowd, And Success
Our continued success certainly depends on our ability to do so. I don’t really know if the crushing glut of images will spell doom for the careers of most stock shooters, but I do believe that there will always be success and good rewards for those who can create photos that stand out from the crowd. One problem, though, is getting paid adequately for creating such photos. It could be that if you create exceptional pictures and put them into micro you might have a volume of sales that justifies the blood, sweat and money that goes into such images. Of course, one danger with that is that you might have every Tom, Dick and Jane copying your better selling images.

No Guarantees, Negotiation and Possibilities
I believe it is a better strategy to put such images into Rights Managed collections. There is no guarantee that whoever is negotiating the fee for the images will do them justice, but there is at least the possibility! Too, if the demand for great images does result in higher fees then Rights Managed can easily step up to that task. Once you release an image into micro, or even RF…well, what’s done is done.

Diversification And Knowledge
That being said, I am putting images in both RM and RF. I am staying diversified in as many ways as I think prudent (micro not being one of them…yet*) in order to both minimize the impact of changes in the market, and to have the first hand information of what is selling and for how much. As they say, knowledge is power…sort of. Whether I put images into RF or RM, I want them, ideally, to be fresh, and filling a definite need in the marketplace. I am positive that if you can create exciting and compelling photography that fills the needs for business, there are ample opportunities for success and for making a very good living. Call me an optimist!

*A word about micro. I don’t mean to bash micro. I don’t begrudge the participants of micro. I just don’t believe that it is the right business model for me. Micro opened up the stock photo door to everyone and, in a sense, leveled the playing field. It has forever changed the landscape. It isn’t good, or bad, it just is. Heck, some photographers are amazingly successful with that model, and maybe someday it will be more attractive to me, but right now I believe I can earn more through the traditional outlets.

Cloud Computing: Anatomy of a Stock Photo

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 06:41:00 +0000

"Cloud Computing" is an example of a newly popularized phrase; new phrases and buzzwords can signal opportunities and generate ideas."

Popular Vernacular, Stock Photos And Cloud Computing
One of the biggest challenges for stock photographers is to come up, time after time, with good ideas. Ideas can come from anywhere, but a very good place to get them from is popular vernacular. When a new word or phrase becomes popular it means there is something important going on that is being talked about. That something needs images to describe it for advertising, for promotion, and for editorial coverage. And because it is new, there probably aren't a lot of appropriate images already in place for those purposes. So when I hear a new buzzword (or phrase) I haven't heard before, I listen to it with an ear for opportunity. Cloud computing is one of those phrases. Sometimes these things just slip by your radar. In this case, I kept getting spam talking about cloud computing. Like advertisements I managed ignore a goodly number of the unwanted emails until, in mid delete, I had one of those aha! moments. If it is worth spamming about, maybe an image is called for!

Cloud Computing, Ones and Zeros, and A Difficult Concept
Cloud Computing refers to the use of computer programs and applications that are based on a remote server and accessed via the Internet. Cloud computing is also a difficult concept to portray in a stock photograph, and a concept with very few images existing that specifically illustrate it. This is one of those concepts, that at least to me, the illustration for which seems almost too obvious. Data is represented by ones and zeros, so a parade of ones and zeros, composed of clouds, streaming through the sky can perfectly represent cloud computing and even more related themes. Such an image can also represent networking, communications, and information flow.

Cloudscapes and Perspective
The only catch here is that the image is a difficult one to execute, at least for me. I used Photoshop to take cloud images from various photographs and then, using the liquefy filter and the warp tool, and a lot of layers and layer masks, create a series of ones and zeros. After creating a library of "information", I selected an appropriate cloudscape and then copied and pasted in the "data". It is important when creating the ones and zeros to give them at least a semblance of the correct perspective and fine-tuning was definitely necessary when arranging the images. I used Transform>perspective and Transform>distort to do the perspective fine-tuning. Blending the clouds in is also somewhat of a tricky task. In some cases setting the layer mode to "lighten only" does the trick; in other cases it is more a case of painstaking work "painting" the clouds in and out with a layer mask. The entire process took me a little over two days to do.

Rights Managed or Royalty Free

Once the image is complete then a decision has to be made on distribution. The decision needs to be made as to whether to distribute the stock photo as a Rights Managed image or a Royalty Free image. There are a number of factors that have to be considered to make that decision. If the image is one that will be licensed frequently then RF might be the way to go. If the image is harder to find a use for, then a higher payment per use is necessary (especially for an image that takes several days to create). That would indicate a RM classification for the stock photo. Of course, these days, with the deep discounting that is going on such as Getty's Premium Access program, it is hard to argue that RM is necessarily going to fetch a higher licensing fee. One other factor that needs to be taken into account is the photographer's share of revenue. With RF images the photographer generally gets 20% of the licensing fee, and with RM images, at least in the photographer's home territory, the photographer's share is 40%, double what one gets with RF. As of yet I still have not made a final decision with this "cloud computing" image, maybe I'll flip a coin!

Leaping Dancers and Stock Photo Collaborations

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:52:00 +0000

Alien abduction or Spiritual Ascension?

Love, Joy...and Valentine's Day!

Dancers, Photoshop and Collaboration
Recently a friend and fellow stock photographer, Tanya Constantine, asked me if I would like to collaborate on some work together. Tanya had completed a series of photos of dancers and thought that perhaps, with my Photoshop experience, I could create some good stock images by compositing the dancers into new backgrounds. She sent me some jpegs that were indeed pretty cool photos.

Egos, Gang Shoots, And Fond Memories

I do occasionally collaborate with other photographers in various ways. I have participated in quite a few “gang” shoots with two to as many as a dozen other photographers. In a few cases, as in this suggestion by Tanya, I have used the work of other photographers in composite images. I have to admit that this sort of work is not necessarily easy for me to jump into…primarily for ego reasons. I like to be totally responsible for the images I create, from the photography to the digital work. It is always a challenge for me to put my ego aside and work with other photographers to create “joint” images. Gang shoots are easier for me because each photographer still ends up with separate credit for his or her work and there is a shared enthusiasm and energy that comes with the territory. I have some truly fond memories of shared shoots, particularly ones that I have done in places like Bangkok, Mexico, India and Argentina.

Logistics And Decisions

In cases where I am just manipulating and compositing with the photography of others, I don’t get the fun of the shared shoots, and I don’t get to claim the results as my own. Too, with collaboration there is always the need to work out the logistics of collection and distributing the royalties, and dealing with the difficulties of making various choices (such as who will distribute the images and in what model) involving more than one person. Here, with Tanya’s beautiful images of dancers, it would be foolish for me to let those potential problems get in the way of producing some beautiful and financially rewarding work.

Raw Files, Motion Blur, And White Backgrounds

I chose a few of the dancer photos and had Tanya send me the raw files via my ftp site (when technology works don’t you just love it!). The difficulty with these images is that the dancers were photographed in motion against a white background. Their clothing and hair had motion blur making it impossible to strip the images entirely out. The only way to succeed, at least as far as I know (important disclaimer!), is to incorporate the dancers into a background that was at least very close to white…but what the heck could such a background be? When shooting images it can be advantageous to think ahead about possible compositing options, and where possible, shoot at least some images with backgrounds that make the post shoot work much less arduous!

A Metaphor For Freedom…and Love

I started with the dancer in a red shift. She could be stripped out, except for her hair, with a simple clipping path converted to a selection. My first thought was that putting her in a sky could create a metaphor for freedom, vitality and energy. As I pondered the problems with her hair it popped into my mind that if I had her head against a cloud that had a similar white tone to the background she was photographed on, I could simply fade her hair into the cloud with a layer mask and it would work perfectly. As I looked through my cloud files I came across this image of a heart-shaped cloud and I knew I had the right combination.

A Royalty Free Image and Valentine’s Day

I used the pen tool to create a clipping path, leaving a wide swath around her hair, but a tight path around her limbs and dress. A one-pixel feather was used in converting the path to a selection. I copied and pasted her into the sky image and used “Free Transform” to position and size her. As I mentioned above, I created a layer mask and with a soft brush, and "painted" with black to fade her hair into the cloud image. This final image represents not only energy, vitality, and freedom, but also love, joy and…Valentine’s Day! This image will sell a lot, and for a lot of uses. It seems perfect as a Royalty Free image and is headed for the Blend Images RF collection.

Spirituality and Alien Abductions

In the next image, a woman dancer in a green dress, was in a pose that suggested to me that she was being lifted by some invisible force…as if, perhaps, by some “tractor beam” from a flying saucer. This stock photo could be used for concepts ranging from alien abduction and science fiction to spirituality and philosophical uses. I could even see it as an image indicating being “carried away”, something that could actually be used to advertise or promote a number of different products or services. Of course, I always reserve the right to be wrong!

Art Directors, Designers and Rights Managed Collections

I found an image I had shot of New York and used “Hue and Saturation” in an adjustment layer, to create a shaft of light for the beam. I again used the pen tool to create a clipping path around the model, but leaving a wide area around her hair. After copying and pasting the dancer into the beam area I re-adjusted the lightness of the “beam”, with that adjustment layer, until her hair almost blended into the background. Then with a layer mask and a soft brush I finished “fading” the hair into the background. This is a stock image that will probably be a lot harder for Art Directors and Designers to utilize… and has a high production value look…so I submitted it to Getty who is placing it into their “Stone” collection…a high-end Rights Managed collection.

Giving Up Ego And Reaping Rewards

By collaborating, Tanya and I have each had to give up a little bit of our investment in ego, but we will both (hopefully) reap greater rewards from the resulting stock photos than we otherwise would have. I am not really a fan of the phrase “Win-win”, but this is as good a case of that as any!

Guest Blog: A Recently Rounded Perspective on Microstock by Scott Redinger-Libolt

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 04:35:00 +0000

Photographer/art director Scott Redinger-Libolt gets a new perspective on microstock and shares it with us in this guest blog.

A recently rounded perspective on microstock
by Scott Redinger-Libolt

As many of you know, a large part of my income as a photographer is from stock. Other sources include assignment, creative consulting, editing, and retouching. I do not participate in microstock…however, I just had my first experience purchasing it for a client. I must say, I felt very guilty and wanted to share some realizations I had during the experience (hands still clutching the bloody knife).

One of my editing clients is the Green Labor Journal who is a non-profit organization. With a small team of writers and researchers, the journal provides information on a monthly basis including the complex politics of energy, green jobs, green education, union news, and affiliate articles. Their efforts are quite noble and like most righteous organizations, their funds are severely limited.

Needless to say, I bought a photograph from microstock, and it took this first hand experience to awaken me to the broad spectrum of effects caused by this one simple act. The picture was of solar panels being installed by workers on the roof of a commercial building. OK, let’s stop there for a moment. As a photographer, I know what it takes to make a connection with a solar company, secure a model release, and get access to shoot on the roof of a commercial building in this litigious and liability stricken nation. These hurdles alone make for an extremely valuable subject matter in stock due to the scarcity of coverage. This particular image, a very nice shot I might add, has further value due to the attention and growth in the “Green” and “Solar” industries…a perfect combination of supply and demand.

Like many stock photographers, I’ve been asked by most agencies to shoot green energy and had lightly started some research last year. The time and travel involved with producing this content has factored into my inadequate coverage of the subject. Having seen and bought another photographer’s end result for less than $5 has given me reason for pause. Based on the downloads of this particular image, and from what I know about average purchase price, file size, etc…I calculate that this one image will make the photographer about $600-800 in the first year. Not bad on a single image, but you can’t calculate RPI on a single image without knowing how many images were shot that day and how many of them don’t sell as well or at all…and, of course, the tapering lifespan is a factor. Given my experience in RM & RF, I believe this particular image could be making nearly double this amount per year in either of these licensing models. But I don’t want to dwell on this too much because my enlightenment was of a bigger picture …pun not intended.

When I joined Green Labor Journal as a freelance photo editor, I had also hoped that one day I would be shooting editorial pictures of the green workforce and attribute my skills to a noble cause. But as I clicked “Buy” on this microstock image and made this well-deserving client aware of this outlet for extremely cheap content, I saw my personal assignment hopes evaporate before my eyes. Oh… and all while my skills as a photo editor were being commended. By now my head is twisting in ways it had not before been twisted and…I had to write this entry for the pursuit of John’s blogging efforts in trying to make sense of it all.

Wait… there is a moral to the story. Non-profit organizations would not be able to function if it were not for inexpensive content outlets. We are seeing a resurgence in countless aspects of activism in our nation right now, and it is our duty as caring individuals to participate in noble movements. Both, government-subsidized as well as publicly funded not-for-profit organizations, have increased by drastic numbers in the last few years…and remarkably so, in the face of adverse economic situations. The budgets of these organizations have played a big part in the evolution (or de-evolution) of discounting content. I don’t feel good about microstock undermining my stock revenue as well as my assignment possibilities…however, to quote Spock, “It is illogical to dwell in circumstances beyond your control”. We can even see an opportunity here in creating mid-level priced and microstock content that specifically targets the needs of non-profit organizations who wouldn’t be buying RM or RF anyway. Bang…that was the car door slamming as I race with my camera to the closest field of genetically-altered wheat.

To inquire about Scott’s creative consulting and photography, drop him a line on his website: www.redinger-libolt.com

Cultivating Curiosity To Improve Your Photography

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:07:00 +0000

Curiosity about other cultures and ways of life are a strong motivating force in great travel photography. I photographed this woman of the Padaung tribe in a remote Burmese village. They were as curious about me as I was about them; they had never seen westerners before! Note the brass coils around her neck!

Curiosity Makes For Better Photography
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it can greatly enhance your photography! Curiosity is a cornerstone for becoming a “people person”, essential for successful people and lifestyle photography. Curiosity, about other cultures and lifestyles, is a primary motivating force for great travel photographers. And curiosity about the world we live in can open up this world for photographic exploration and documentation and lead to all kind of opportunities and even adventures.

People Will Open Up And Share
Most people have the same favorite thing to talk about…themselves! If you either have a natural curiosity about people, or can develop that curiosity, then you have the key to creating great rapport with people. Just ask them about their lives, what motivates them, what interests them, where there passions are. That can lead to far more rewarding and productive experiences, photographic and otherwise, for all parties concerned. If you can generate genuine curiosity and explore that with people they will open up and reveal all kinds of fascinating and useful information, access, and adventures. In one case, when I had been in India for only a couple of hours, I asked a taxi driver, a Sikh, about his religious beliefs. One thing led to another and soon I found myself photographing inside the incredible Sikh temple in Delhi.

Curiosity Leads To Great Experiences
But curiosity is important at home too. Recently I was shooting a model and began to ask her about her family. Before long she was sharing pictures of her parents and siblings, all great looking people, and offering to recruit them for another shoot. Seldom, if ever, has my curiosity led me to anything other than great experiences, and it has invariably left the subjects of my curiosity feeling flattered and better about themselves.

Curiosity Is A Powerful Tool For Stock Photographers
Curiosity is an especially powerful tool for the stock photographer. We are always in need of ideas, subjects, locations and vocations. How often have we allowed ourselves to sit next to someone on a bus or plane in silence never knowing what great information or wonderful opportunities have been missed? I once spent an entire flight sitting next to man, from New York to San Francisco. We finally started talking as we exited the aircraft. It turned out he was an author and I had just finished his book days earlier…and by not being curious…and not pursuing that curiosity, I missed a chance to delve more deeply into what I thought was a fabulous book…from its author no less! Just by being interested in other people, and expressing that interest, I have gained access to race cars, yachts, ultra-light flying, and the most amazing meal of my life. I have been invited to weddings and funerals and family celebrations. I was once invited to fly in the cockpit of a commercial airliner, and another time invited to photograph a mock operation on a cadaver…though I have to admit that I passed that opportunity up.

Curiosity Can Be Cultivated
The key to making curiosity work for you is to have your curiosity be sincere. Like many other things, if you practice you get better. I have to continually remind myself that I am not the center of the universe; that I already know all about me, and that other people are a treasure trove of interesting things, if I can just bring it out of them. Despite all my wonderful experiences from expressing my interest in the lives of others, I still have to work to get myself to express that interest. I have to cultivate both my curiosity and my willingness to pursue it. I seem to have an unreasonable expectation that I will be imposing on people, and yet I do not remember a single unpleasant event from investigating that interest. I am sure there were many dead-ends, but so what? What is far more important is what is to be gained by a simple and friendly greeting, followed by a sincere interest in another person. Cultivate your curiosity and practice sharing it. You won’t regret it.

Opening The Doors To Photography Opportunities

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 04:59:00 +0000

Is the glass half empty or half full? The photography industry is under siege, but there are opportunities out there!

One Door Closes, Another Opens
How often have we heard that when one door closes another one opens? I think that we all believe that too, to a certain extent. But when we are talking about our own livelihood it is a bit more difficult to get behind! And yet, taking that maxim to heart is an important step to a great future. A close friend of mine, and former assistant, was, until a couple of weeks ago, the manager of business that is doing quite well. He walked in one day; the owner called him in and fired him. Surprise. You don't have a job anymore!

True Story: A Better Job and New Opportunity
I called him today to check in and see how he is doing. Great it turns out. He had just returned from a ten-day trip to Europe, paid for by an acquaintance of his who now wants him to run his North American operations. This is a true story, and as I said, is happening to a good friend of mine. My friend ended up with a new and better job in the same industry, with more opportunity, and all within two weeks of being unexpectedly fired. If he hadn't been let go, that opportunity would have passed him by.

Too Early Is Better Than Too Late
Now look at our own industry. Under siege by image glut, low prices, crowd sourcing and image theft. Perhaps we can open the doors to new opportunities by letting go of our belief that the photo industry shouldn't be undergoing these changes. We can start opening doors even before the old doors slam totally shut. The time to do that is now. Opportunities take time to find and develop. I don’t want to wake up one day and realize that I have been passed by…I’d rather be too early than too late. Also, If there is one overriding thing I have learned in my last year of working on my website and SEO (search engine optimization), it is that the opportunity I see in Internet searches takes time to develop, and a lot of it! I can see progress, I can see that my efforts are starting to pay off, but I also see that I am probably at least another year away from the kind of Internet success that I am after.

Understand Where the New Opportunities Are
Instead of jumping on a forum and bemoaning all those photographers who are ruining the photography and stock photo industries, take that time to understand where the new opportunities are, and get working on them! I don't know about you, but it wasn't easy for me to reach success under the old paradigm, and I don't expect it to be easy under the new one either. I know it is going to take work, but I know there are opportunities here.

Google Searches and Print Sales
Do you know how many searches there were for "wall décor" in the last year? Google reports the number at over 21 million! Are you getting your share of print sales? Wordtracker reports searches of "Hawaii stock photos" at 52,000 last year. Invest a little time looking at keyword searches to see where some opportunities are for you, with your areas of expertise and what you like to shoot. Then get to work on your site and make sure that people, who are looking for what you have to offer, find you!

Tracking Searches and Increasing Revenue
I use SmarterStats to track the searches that bring people to my site. A year ago I was getting a few people a week. Now I get hundreds a day. Someone came to my sight today searching "lighthouse storm photos", and someone, hopefully the same person, went from my site to a lighthouse-in-a-storm photo that I have on the Corbis site. I won't know for three months or so whether there was a license of that lighthouse image, but the point is, that because I have made my images available for those seeking such images, I have a far greater chance of earning revenue from those photographs.

Using Creativity to Find Opportunities
Of course, the Internet is not the only source of opportunities. I have a photographer friend looking into 3D video, and another photographer friend who is using his photography knowledge to devise a turnkey system for doctors to photograph their patients. Use your creativity to find opportunities that appeal to you. My point is lets not wait for the door to slam before opening the door to those other opportunities! Opportunities are seldom easy, and seldom come to you. Now is the time to go out and find them and to put the time and effort in to making them payoff.

A Stock Photo of Chaos, and Decisions

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:27:00 +0000

The result of experimenting with no goal in mind, this stock photo can represent many concepts from Chaos to communications to the Internet.

Is It A Good Stock Photo?
My last blog post was about the importance of “play” in photography. The above photograph was the result of my latest playtime. Is it a good stock Photo? Will it sell well? I don’t know. I am not even sure if I am going to submit it in its current form. I do love the sense of chaos, the sense of motion and the dynamic colors. For me it can represent many different themes from the firing neurons of a brain, to interstellar intelligence, to networking, to Internet communications (it even has a kind of net-like structure to it) and much more.

City Lights At Night And Photoshop
The image is the result of two separate “play” sessions. The first one involved shooting city lights at night, and the second session was using Photoshop to combine and enhance some of those city lights. Now I will let the image “gestate” for a bit before deciding whether to combine it with yet another image, alter in some yet-to-be-determined fashion, or submitting it as it is…or what the heck, maybe both!

Decisions: Rights Managed or Royalty Free?
Before submitting the image I will have a decision to make. Let’s assume for a moment that I decide to send it in the way it is. So would it be better as an RM image, or as an RF image? On the RM side it doesn’t appear to be the kind of image that would sell a large number of times, nor does it seem like an image with a lot of competition. One thing that might push it in the RF direction is that it could work as a background kind of image. In my experience “background” images seem to do better as RF images.

Rights Managed, Royalty Free and Misconceptions
Another point to consider: A lot of potential licensees of stock images are under the misconception that they cannot afford Rights Managed images. Or they believe that rights managed images are necessarily cumbersome to license. Yet, I am seeing a plethora of sales under $5.00 (even had one sale last month with Getty that netted me four cents!). I spoke recently with a doctor who had licensed one of my RM images through Getty, for use in a Power Point presentation, and who told me that it was as easy to license as the photograph as it is to buy just about anything online. Nonetheless, there are a lot of people who do limit themselves to RF and Micro imagery. If I submit the image as an RM one I do run the risk of limiting the market for it.

Similars and Sisters
The final point I have to take into consideration is whether or not I have, or plan to create, images that are similars and/or sisters. If I am going to have one or two such images I can still go with Rights Managed, but more than that will push me into the RF category. Ultimately I am prejudiced towards Rights Managed because of my long history with it. But I do believe it would be a mistake to not continue to contribute to Royalty Free as well.Some of my Royalty Free photos make every bit as much money as my Rights Managed images. I might add, that when one of my editors/art directors makes a case for an image to be one or the other I almost always defer to their suggestions.

A Light At the End of the Tunnel
As I write this it occurs to me that the above image is also a good representation of my own thought processes as I try to find my way in this turbulent world of stock photography. In the end, you try and make as much sense of the chaos as you can and hope that there is a light at the end of the tunnel (and that the light isn’t the headlight of an oncoming locomotive!).

The Importance Of Play In Stock Photography

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:33:00 +0000

This unique image of a hand shake, symbolizing "sealing the deal", "Teamwork" and "Agreement", is a direct result of just "playing", shooting for the fun of it rather than with a goal in mind.

Letting Go Of Preconceptions
At least once a week, usually more often, I will take some time to experiment without any preconceived idea of where I am going to end up. This might entail grabbing my camera and heading out to the Marin Headlands, or walking alongside the bay in Sausalito. It might mean setting the camera to "B" and spinning crazily around as I shoot city lights at night, or it might mean trying to shoot everything out of focus. It means letting go of preconceptions and just playing with my photography.

Playing With No Goal In Mind
My experimenting can also take the form of sitting down at my computer and perusing my files to see what might catch my eye. When an image does catch my eye I open it up and start playing with it. Playing with it by perhaps trying Photoshop filters, or finding other images to combine with it, or freaking out the curves. Just playing to see where it takes me, with no particular goal in mind. As often as not it leads me to something interesting which, in turn, will trigger another idea, and the next thing you know, I have a new and fresh stock image or even series of images.

Playing Is Vital To Creativity
Sometimes, after several hours of "playing", but not getting anywhere, I will start feeling a sense of urgency, like I need to be succeeding. When I catch myself feeling that I stop, take a deep breath, and remind myself that hey, I'm a stock shooter, I am earning money at that very moment, and I not only can afford to "play", “playing” is vital to my creativity; vital to my success as a stock photographer!

Routine, Spontaneity, Consistency And Novelty
In addition to "play time", I need routine and I need spontaneity, I need consistency and I need novelty. I need routine and consistency, self-discipline, to be productive, to turn my ideas in to photographic realities. Without routine, without self-discipline, it is far too easy to get caught up in all of those small tasks ranging from paying bills to surfing the net, that can consume our time so relentlessly. As part of my routine I reserve mornings for creating and submitting images, and afternoons for dealing with less “productive” tasks…and then reward myself for completion of those tasks by getting back to creating images. But I need to break my routines, to play and to explore with no pressure to achieve, in order to come up with fresh and interesting ideas.

Pushing Creative Boundaries
One of the things that makes stock photography so interesting for me, and in it’s highest form one of the most creative of endeavors, is that there is so much freedom to play and explore, unrestrained by the restrictions and limitations imposed by client and corporate needs. It is almost our duty as stock shooters to push the boundaries of creativity and to lead the commercial photography world to new and interesting places. It is certainly vital to our continued success as stock photographers to push those creative boundaries…and to do that we can’t forget play.

Photographer, Art Director, Editor Scott Redinger-Libolt Interview

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:53:00 +0000

Image of Latina women with low rider cars shot on a Blend stock photo shoot art directed by Scott Redinger-Libolt.

Interview with Photographer, Art Director and Editor Scott Libolt

Thank you John for the opportunity. It’s a privilege to be interviewed by a top shelf photographer such as yourself. In efforts to be completely candid, I must preface this interview by stating these are simply my current opinions, they are ever changing, and in no way represent the viewpoint of any stock agencies I have ever worked for. Not everyone agrees with me all of the time …not even myself.

Scott, I have only been art directed on stock shoots twice in my life, and once was by you. I have to say it was a great experience and I remember thinking during the shoot that you were saving my… well, lets say your contribution to that shoot saved the day.

Ah, yes… our famous Lowrider shoot. Good times… we’ll have to do another one soon.

Still, I don’t really know a whole lot about you. I know you shoot stock and you have been (and are) an editor/art director for Blend images. Can you fill us in on your journey to being both an art director and a stock shooter?

My first photo gigs were in the early 90’s shooting publicity stills on film sets (mostly horror films) in Los Angeles. This was one of the most interesting photography experiences of my career. I learned a lot about filmmaking and the camaraderie on-set is wonderful …but I couldn’t see myself growing old in Los Angeles eating junk food and smoking cigarettes in-between takes.

Inspired by travel photography, I became curious about stock photography and employed myself at Westlight (one of the top five agencies at the time). Westlight was formed by National Geographic photographers, lead by Craig Aurness. Amazed by the people and photography that surrounded me, I strayed from the assignment path completely and by 2000, I began shooting stock under the pseudonym, “PBNJ Productions”. Simultaneously, I held Editor and Director positions inside agencies such as Corbis, Brand X Pictures, Jupiter Images, Blend Images, and SuperStock.

You could say I bring a unique combination of skills and experience to my profession now as I shoot for as many stock agencies as I have worked inside. The rounded perspective has made me a well-informed advocate for photographers and agencies alike. I currently divide my time between shooting stock, assignments, creative consulting for photographers, and freelance photo editing for Blend, SuperStock, and the Green Labor Journal. My wife and I just moved to Miami Beach last year, which we are very excited about.

Scott, how does your experience as an art director change your approach to photography?

Not so much the directing, but the overall agency experience has made me a much more profitable stock photographer for sure. Knowing what makes a stock photo sell is the key to success in this business. Evolving one’s style with the changing times is also very important. My only complaint is that after 14 years in this industry, it becomes harder for me to shoot subjects like fine art, edgy self-promos, editorials, etc.. I developed a bad habit of questioning the commercial value of whatever I was working on. This is really bad for the creative process and I’ve had to distance myself from stock in the past to redefine my inspirations and renew confidence in my creativity.

Does your experience as a photographer improve your ability to communicate and work with other photographers in your capacity as an editor/art director?

Consulting photographers on making better pictures actually started with my employment at professional photo labs in the late 80’s and has been a quest ever since. My experience as a shooter and skills with Photoshop further enhance my art directing abilities. I believe that by knowing the scope of creative options and how to achieve them gives me an edge. I must say, I have my challenges as well…. I often find myself directing a photographer to shoot a scene as I would shoot it myself. It’s very hard sometimes NOT to impose my own personal style and vision onto the project even though its actually my job to do just that. Twisted, huh? With that said… my efforts have been both praised and criticized.

Do you ever want to just take the camera out of a photographer’s hands and shoot the damn shot?

Yes, and I’ve done it a number of times …though always at the photographer’s request. I’ve requested specific f-stops and lighting techniques too. Some photographers have boundaries while others commend the experience and team effort. Everyone’s different and one of the important skills of art directing stock photographers is knowing the level of participation that is expected. Years ago, I flew to the tropics to art direct a photographer for Corbis. When I arrived, the photographer told me, “I usually just shoot whatever I want” …so, I was completely hands off and the photography was beautiful. Whatever it takes… I don’t mind lugging C-Stands or ordering lunch.

Do you have any observations about having your own work edited by someone else?

Because of my experience, I provide very tightly edited shoots to my agencies. As a result, my acceptance rate is pretty high and RPI is above average at most agencies. I know what my best-sellers will be and I think it’s important not to give an editor any opportunities to choose bad (less sellable) images. Equally important, I don’t want editors to over-select by choosing too many unneeded frames. Each picture costs me time and money in post-production and I don’t want to clog up my workflow with low or non-selling similars. I do really like being art directed on a shoot. It takes off a lot of pressure and frees me up to be more creative.

What do you like to shoot the most?

This is a hard question for most stock photographers as many are generalists. With stock, I mostly like the constant changing of subject matter and strategizing new challenges with each shoot. My wife and I shoot most of our projects together. Our inspirations are similar and our specialty is People/Lifestyles. However we both find more personal fulfillment these days when shooting spontaneous travel and fine art. When I’m shooting, I think equally about the composition, the feeling, and the authenticity conveyed within the image. Hitting the target with all of these crucial aspects gives me much joy and satisfaction …and this feeling is why I shoot.

Coming up with a constant stream of ideas can be pretty daunting. What is your approach?

When seeking subject matter for stock photography, it’s best to keep a calendar of events. Start by outlining everything that is in some way participated or celebrated…. Holidays, Sports, Travel, Weddings, Babies, School, etc… Nearly everything humans obsess on is cyclical. The same goes for needs of art buyers. If photographers can hit with the right subjects at the right time, they can maximize the life and profit of their images. Once you have made a subject calendar that is in-line with your inspirations, locale, and resources… you must shift the whole schedule backwards to account for advance art buying (about 3-4 months) and your “time-to-market”. Time-to-market varies depending on your own workflow and that of your agencies. You can plan your whole year out in advance and use it over and over. If I only followed my own advice with this process, I’d be… well… probably not sitting at my computer right now.

To what extent do you research your shoot ideas?

Films, fashion mags, and real life are my top places for inspiration. Really great styling, quirky documentaries, unique people, and interesting places turn me on. It’s so important to take time and soak up the things that surround us every day. I mean really soak it up… you might realize that you are missing quite a bit.

For ideas (other than the handy subject calendar), I suggest looking everywhere EXCEPT at stock agency search results. Look there ONLY to see what your competition is. Do not make a shot-list from what already exists. Photographers must shoot outside the redundancy found in agencies if they want their pictures to be noticed and licensed. Working with a good art director or editor can help you develop your ideas and steer you into a more original space.

How do you go about finding the “holes” in agency collections?

Your editors should be able to give you a list of holes …or you can research them pretty well yourself. With our travel photography, we simply do destination-specific searches, break-up the trips into cities, and portion out to the agent with the least amount of relevant search results. Same process can be done with lifestyle shoots by searching subject, concept, and ethnicity to find the agency with the least coverage.

How do you prepare for a stock shoot?

I like to get all the production tasks locked-down first before I let myself indulge in the creative part. Location, casting, crew, permits, props, wardrobe, rentals, lunch, and logistics first. Then hopefully, we’ll have a couple of days left for creative but not always. By this time, I’ll have likely accumulated the key shots in the back of my mind or on little scrap notes I stuff in my pockets. Production can be stressful but it’s also a distraction that allows for the creative process to manifest itself without too much pressure from me to be brilliant or to be doubtful.

Tell us about your experience with Blend. Has working with Blend been different for you than with past or other agencies?

Working for a progressive company like Blend is awesome. Many of Blend’s employees work from home (which is great for the planet and the bottom line). I’ve worked with Sarah Fix and Rick Becker-Leckrone, in many capacities and at many agencies, for the last 13 years. For the last few years at Blend, I’ve been responsible for editing, managing, and preparing all promotional imagery on Blend’s website and eNewsletter. My part-time schedule allows me to set my own hours and gives me time for personal projects.

You and Cristina work as a team. How do you divide up your responsibilities?

Yes… We live, love, work, and fight together 24/7. I usually drive the original concept of our shoots whether stock, portfolio, or assignment. We both share pre-production tasks and Cristina takes a lead on post-production and marketing. During our stock shoots, we both are shooting simultaneously using different focal lengths. The night before, we coordinate who will shoot what, when, and from what angle and lighting. This method has proven very successful as we generally get an equal amount of selects with two styles of coverage. It just takes more crew to assist but it is totally worth it.

In your opinion, what makes a great stock photo?

A great stock photo is fresh, unique yet familiar, can be cropped horizontal or vertical, and has space for client’s text/logo. For best sales potential, stock photos must have context and end users should be able to apply a multitude of concepts. The ever-growing trend for realistic advertising also dictates a more respectable aesthetic.

What qualities does a photographer need to succeed in stock?

A trust fund… perhaps a second job? Just kidding (kinda) …but we all have our own definitions of success. In my opinion, professional photography is as much a lifestyle choice as it is a profession. The satisfaction from making photographs is part of our profit and should be factored in (but not taxed).

It doesn’t matter what you are shooting these days (stock, editorial, or assignment), revenues have declined considerably. The hay days of the late 90’s – early 2000’s are finished and we need to get over that. The truth is however (in stock at least), the revenue back then was too high to sustain itself and a market correction was inevitable. Very few agencies actually reached high profit margins due to the overhead and marketing it takes to function and compete. I’m not saying that the current revenue average is appropriate either… the economy must factor in. I believe active shooters will see a noticeable bounce this year.

So, what qualities are needed to succeed in stock? A thoughtful and realistic approach to managing a creative business, flexibility during economic slumps, lots of research, trend awareness, and an annual production plan to create specific imagery intended to provide solutions to art buyers. Sound easy?

What are the most common mistakes you see stock shooters making?

1. New photographers shooting what they “think” stock should look like: When an agency signs a new photographer, many times it’s because of their best portfolio work (which may not look like stock at all). The photographer then believes they must change their personal style to fit “the bland and generic mold of stock”. They remove the personal flair that attracted the agency in the first place which results in a lack of feeling in their work and prevents their photographs from standing out. Don’t change your style! Instead, apply it into the commercial subject matter you are now faced with.

2. Opportunistic shooting without context: This is another mistake made by photographers new to stock. Instead of developing a commercially viable subject to shoot for stock, photographers often end up shooting what falls in their lap. A model needs headshots so a trade shoot is discussed and executed without much effort spent on making it contextual, conceptual, or even commercial. This results in a whole bunch of portraits of a model being a model. Pictures like this are in abundance and easily get lost in search results because of very little keywords associated. Put your model into a commercial role that fits their type.

3. A great shoot but no post-production: I see this more and more now that photographers are out-sourcing their processing/retouching in large batches. I understand the need to cut corners but be sure you approve the batches before submitting finals…especially if you are spending less than a dollar per image. I’ve seen whole shoots that are too dark, too muddy, bad color, poor retouching, no retouching, etc…. If the images don’t pop as thumbnails, they will get over-looked and sales will suffer. You must polish them until they are shiny and bright.

4. Wait and see: A common occurrence with new photographers is they do a few shoots, get maybe 100 pictures on-line, and then stop shooting until they see some revenue. This makes it near impossible to kick-start the royalties into anything substantial. Stock photography takes time and while you are waiting for royalties to come in, the best thing to do is keep shooting. If you want to test the waters, that’s fine …just dedicate a couple of years and make 500+ images before you analyze your earnings potential. By all means, shooting stock isn’t for all photographers but you have to jump in headfirst like you would with any other profession.

At this point in the stock industry, we generally have three choices: Rights Managed, Royalty Free, and Microstock. Do you contribute to all three models?

I actively shoot RM & RF imagery. Depending on how a shoot looks after editing, I make a choice where to direct the content. I don’t do Microstock because I can’t justify the expense vs. profit potential. I like my photography to retain a high production value… This could be in the quality of models, location, post-production, or all three. These things cost me money and I can’t lower my standards so my content can be sold for less money. I would surely lose all satisfaction from my craft. This isn’t to say it’s not right for other, hard-working individuals who are able to produce high volumes of low-touch content.

Where are you putting your most effort and why?

While we’re waiting for our assignment world to resurrect, we are shooting primarily for portfolio and then repurposing it for stock. I’ve found this to be a great way to stay creative and after using this strategy for over a year now, I don’t like to shoot anything for stock unless I can also see it in my portfolio. That means it can’t look a thing like stock. It’s my self-inflicted rehab from years of commercial compromise. And funniest thing of all… the agencies love the content. My editor at Blend remarked he had not seen a submission with so much soul in a long time. This also changes our subject line up for the year because we shoot to attract specific clients …so we shoot with a dual purpose which doubles the value of our photographs and without losing site of client’s needs.

There are many who question the long-term viability of the Microstock model. Do you have any thoughts on that?

I think Microstock is here to stay and the prices will likely continue to rise. I believe it is a price-point dictated partially by an actual consumer need but mostly by individuals who started with a simple, short-term plan of building a low-touch, high-traffic, content purchasing website with only one purpose… to sell it and get out. Geniuses in that respect, I must say… but polar opposite to an agency founded by photographers who have longer-term goals.

Any other thoughts on how the stock industry might look in coming years?

The thought of trying to predict it exhausts me. We have had so many surprises in this industry. If you think about the string of events: Stock first undermined editorial assignments with an RM licensing library and separated the stock photo industry from what was previously known as clip art. Then came the RF option to balance out the playing field and even offered whole CDs of content at a further discount. We can’t forget the subscription frenzy who saw profit potential with unlimited usage of whole collections (for an annual fee). Agencies started production companies to achieve the breadth and depth required to have such wholly-owned offerings …and then comes Microstock and other low-level price points. All the while, acquisitions, productions halting, staff cuts, office closures, fire sales… and you ask me, “what’s next?”

My prediction: With so many price adjustments happening with microstock going up, RF going down, mid-level collections forming, I see the possibility for two major things happening:

1. A merging of price points. If large portions of RF content continue to move downward into a mid-level offering and microstock continues to be marked up, we will inevitably be creating a huge, possibly unmanageable pool of similarly priced content. Hopefully, the cream of the RF crop will retain integrity and remain at current rates with swift and easy access. Otherwise, art buyers looking for content might have experiences much like shoveling snow in a blizzard. I believe RM will remain pretty safe and stay somewhat like it is now. Some agencies have already added varying price points to RM which is fine as long as it’s all clean, readily available, and not confusing. The future challenge will be in managing the zillions of cheaper pictures efficiently.

2. As these aspects of the industry become blurred together by price merging, possible collection mergers, acquisitions, non-exclusive cross-over, etc… There will be a few beacons of light in the dense fog: Niche agencies that retain specialty aspects and highly organized collections of top-shelf content should be able to cleverly set themselves apart from the growing masses. What could be better for an art buyer than the salvation of a few great specialty shops where they can get in, find exactly what they need, and get out quickly. The “positive experience” of licensing content will become increasingly important for agencies to provide. Veer had this strategy figured out long ago with their tightly edited collection and award winning marketing...and they were really just another general collection that sold fonts. Going forward, I believe it may take a lot of clever marketing on the part of the specialized agencies to solidify awareness and redirect the traffic to them. They must make a big push now to change the habits of art buyers as the larger “super collections” are becoming weak and overwhelming, it might just get a little easier to grab much more of the pie. The David & Goliath era is here and other industries are experiencing this same phenomenon.

We hear an awful lot about stock footage these days. Photographers are doing some very creative things with video shot on DSLRs. The Red One has almost become a cult obsession, and who hasn’t spent too much time on YouTube? Has the time to shoot video arrived and do you participate in, or have any plans to move into, stock footage?

I thought about getting into footage ten years ago when cinematographers were making great money…however, I was quickly uninspired when I heard that a lot of the subjects I was interested in were already covered. Agencies were limited at that time and were no longer accepting stuff like time-lapse, slow motion, street scenes, nature scenes, artsy stuff, etc., so I decided to stick with stills. Now, with new HD cameras flooding the market, Internet streaming, and websites hungry for video content, it’s certainly reopened the door. Footage is a highly accessible media with a larger marketplace than ever before and agencies need to replace a lot of their old film footage with newer looking digital coverage.

Knowing what we know about the evolution of stock stills, you can guess what my concerns might be if the prices of footage continues to be unregulated by the filmmakers and offered below RM prices. Web usage fees are currently very low (even for footage) and it probably should be …but we can’t propagate another medium where the cost of production takes a year or two to recoup before seeing profits. I love motion and often reflect on my time spent on film sets. I’d love to shoot and direct stock footage…so I’d love for my worries to be put at ease. Filmmakers need to unite and hold firm on licensing fees. UNIONIZE.

Do you track your sales results? If so, what kind of information are you looking for?

I use to keep very elaborate records for many years. I tracked all my shoots… production cost, revenue per shoot per year, revenue per image, best selling images, etc…. I gained a lot of helpful information and could see which shoots did well, which didn’t, longevity of images, rate of decline, seasonal peaks, etc… My spreadsheets were beautiful works of art.

In 2008, I stopped tracking everything except my average Revenue Per Image (RPI) and my average Cost Per Image (CPI). That’s really the bottom line for me and the simpler I can make things, the less time I have to sit at my computer. Once you know your average RPI (from all agencies combined), you just have to keep your CPI well below. I like to keep my CPI at 50% of my average RPI so I can be somewhat assured that the shoot will reach profit in the first year. The agency with the highest individual RPI usually gets first look at our shoots. As these averages fluctuate, so do my investments in shooting.

Assuming you know which of your images are best sellers, how can you use that information to your advantage (try as I might, duplicating best-sellers has never proven particularly successful for me)?

Well, for example: Say you have a testimonial portrait of an African American male café owner and it sells really well. Sure you can copy the shot and use a female or another ethnicity male. Sometimes it works really well but it’s not a sure thing. Depends a lot if the shot is concept driven or if it relies on the model’s charm. Often enough, the model is the single most important thing to a client. Could also be the timing of the first shot that made it hot…then, after a year or two, the concept isn’t as relevant to our society.

The common thread in my best sellers is that they are all very conceptual, usually rare in the industry, or if not rare, they are best-of-class executions …meaning they are better (or more up-to-date) than the best of what’s on the market. I could duplicate them all and make out nicely but I find it boring to repeat myself. Duplication can be good but only after your original image has lived its life out. If you duplicate your shots too soon, your images are in competition with each other. This does little to diversify your collection and is not an efficient way to increase your profit or the profit of the agency. It’s like playing multiple bingo cards… you want to cover as many slots as possible (not the same slots, multiple times).

Do you do any direct sales?

Not any stock sales but my wife and I are launching a fine art website by end of this year.

Do you think that direct sales will be an increasing part of the puzzle in coming years?

Definitely …but I think it is an either/or type of business model. Having agencies sell for me frees me up to do things other than stock photography. If selling stock was my only passion, I’d probably sell direct too. I think it will become increasingly easier to make direct sales provided your website is optimized for visibility. There are so many new image search tools being introduced so Google will become more effective in time. If you decide to market stock directly, it doesn’t mean you have to stop selling through your agencies. Diversify your collection as much as possible.

As I work on my SEO and increase my web traffic, people are finding and licensing images from me. They are finding my images through Google searches. So far that is the exception rather than the rule. Do you believe that such online searches will become increasingly important for buyers to find stock photos, or will such searches remain on the periphery?

Finding photographer’s images directly is bound to increase but I think sales will remain periphery in comparison to agency websites unless the photographers have enough money and time to continue a vigorous marketing and SEO strategy. So, it’s a matter of doing the math and comparing the net profits same as we do with all of our agents. In the end, I think it is still wiser to sell through as many viable portals as possible.

Do you have any thoughts about utilizing Flickr to gain an audience for stock images?

I don’t have time for social networking sites and even if I did, I don’t believe in using these websites for monetary gain. I can’t believe that a client I am trying to attract actually has time to “friend” or “follower” me. I have no interest in virtual fame or popularity. I believe publicity seeking on these sites goes against the initial concept of sharing content and ideas. At least this is how they started …and the whole Internet for that matter was based on sharing. I know that we rely on the Internet now to make a living …but Americans shouldn’t try so hard to commoditize everything. Instead, make time for real life contacts, tangible experiences, and real friendships.

Scott, a young photographer visited me in my studio this afternoon and asked if she should pursue stock for a career. In the past I always would have been encouraging, but today I just couldn’t sing the praises of the industry. What do you, or would you, tell young photographers if they ask about a career in stock? What advice would you offer to those new to, or just beginning their careers in stock photography?

Stock photography can be really fun, creative, and rewarding. It’s what you make of it really. Work on your online portfolio! Your website isn’t just to help you get assignments…. It will also help you get contracts at agencies, attract models, and give you industry respect when collaborating with stylists and negotiating access to locations.

There are two main strategies to making stock photos. Some shooters concentrate on quantity in hopes that a lot of pictures will sell for a little bit each while others concentrate efforts on making single images, usually very conceptual, that will sell fewer times but for bigger amounts. Find the method that best fits your personal inspirations, skills, and lifestyle.

The first year in stock is very hard as there won’t be much money coming in. Stock takes time so you must be patient and set yourself goals as to how much money you can invest to kick-start that revenue. Be sure to choose an agency who has a good RPI. Look on their website and contact some photographers who are shooting similar content for them. You should try to make at least 200-300 selected images in the first year (per agency). If you do your research, listen to your editor, shoot smart subjects with commercial models, and spend not more than $5000 - $7000 doing it, you should be in great shape and inline to increase your goals for the 2nd year. If you can achieve more than 300 selects, your experience will be more rewarding. Your revenue expectations must be realistic and your faith will be tested more than once.

Do you have any advice for us old dogs about how to survive this image-glut and the twin terrors of Microstock pricing and the recession?

It’s a very hard time for the advertising industry as a whole right now. One good thing is that recessions are cyclical …so our economy is as sure to recover, as it is sure to fall again in 5-7 years. We all need to understand that we are in a non-necessity industry making every one of us extremely vulnerable during economic slumps. Therefore, we must not live beyond our means. As for microstock’s affect on our livelihoods, I don’t think there is anything to do except to adjust and evolve our business models to accommodate the changes. With good quality images flooding into these lower price points, all we can do is make better pictures so we can continue to justify a higher price and make our pictures stand out among the “glut” as you put it.

Is there a positive note you can leave us on?

I think there is a renewed sense of hope for the Rights Managed licensing. RM built the foundation for this industry and I believe we are coming full circle to embrace it once again. My personal RM revenue has seen the least decline and the most stability over the last decade …so in the long term; I think that’s a pretty smart place to invest. I believe there will always be a large enough quantity of clients who prefer licensing RM imagery through a respected source rather than wade through a rising sea of lower-level imagery. If RM’s higher standard of quality remains in place (meaning if agencies don’t flood it with similars and mediocrity), it’s armor will shine brightly and continue to provide an outlet for professional stock photographers and sophisticated art buyers alike. It’s up to everyone’s ability to uphold the integrity and prestige of RM…or the perception at least. Based on our experience with what is happening to every other price point, we have no choice. I have a similar hope for very high-end RF imagery with proven sales records. While most agencies are spending time identifying lower-end imagery to sell at a discount, I think it’s just as important to use efforts to identify the highest quality and push it forward. There is a fog coming and agencies need to work hard on their shine and allure.

A similar circumstance with stock footage… the integrity of the filmmakers will be challenged by low prices and limited licensing options through big agencies. Footage has a lot of possibilities if filmmakers come together and form outlets for direct sales similar to how Blend Images formed as a unity of photographers interested in retaining control of content.

Thank you John for the opportunity to inform, inspire, anger, and vent. I hope you enjoyed my ranting. I’m always open to comments and invite criticisms. Photographers seeking creative consultations, please drop me a note on the contact page of my website: http://www.redinger-libolt.com

Tips For Making Best Selling Stock Photos

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:04:00 +0000

A sense of motion, a strong concept, versatile cropping possibilities and relevance to the market's needs help make this "green" stock photo a strong selling image.

Best Selling Stock Photos, Sales Volume and RPI
While there is no magic bullet for creating best selling stock photos, there are some principles that can help you achieve consistent sales volume and RPI (return per image).
I will briefly go over each of five important points that I have learned from some of the best stock shooters, art directors and creative directors in the business, as well as from my own experience.

Suggestions, Wisdom and Stock Photo Efforts
The points we will go over include: Motion vrs. Static, Horizontal, Vertical, and Square Crops, Negative Space, Concepts, and individual models vrs. Groups. Keep in mind that these are not hard and fast rules, but rather suggestions gained from my own experience and from the wisdom offered by other veteran stock photographers and industry professionals. As you plan and execute your shoots, if you can keep these suggestions in mind, you can increase sales and income from your stock photo efforts.

Motion Vrs. Static:
Motion sells. I first heard this from Tom Grill, the most experience and analytical stock photographer I know. I have first hand experience as well. When shooting any situation in which motion can be appropriate, be sure and include it. Off the top of my head I can think of several instances where a shoot has included the same situation with and without motion. The motion has to be done well, but when it is, most of the time, the motion images out-sell the static ones.

Horizontal, Vertical, And Square Crops
In terms of cropping there are several points to consider. If your thumbnail doesn’t grab the interest of whoever is looking for images, then you have already lost the battle. Thumbnails on stock agency sites are designed to fit both vertical and horizontal images. By having a square thumbnail your picture utilizes all the available real estate, your image is bigger and tends to stand out more. It is also my belief that if you can frame your picture so that it can be cropped for verticals, as in a magazine cover, and also as a horizontal for applications such as magazine spreads, then you are allowing for the greatest possible sales of that image.

Negative Space
Negative space, particularly in the world of stock photography, can be a very positive thing. Think in terms of headlines and body copy. Allowing room for type will also help maximize your sales potential. In general allow a bit more room for cropping than you might otherwise. You never know how someone will want to use your photos. They can always crop in tighter, but can’t utilize the parts of the image that you have cropped out.

Concept Stock Photos Sell
As a rule, concept images outsell those without concepts, and often by a very large margin. Ideally you can create lifestyle images that have concepts; concepts such as success, standing out from the crowd, teamwork and freedom. I try and incorporate some of these concepts, and others, into every shoot.

Individual Models vrs. Groups
The question about whether to shoot groups or multiple models as opposed to single models, is a bit trickier. Pick your situations; don’t just shoot groups to be shooting groups. Each model adds expense and complexity to your shoot. If you do want to tackle groups it is important to have a thorough shoot list with more scenarios than you think you will need. That way if one idea is starting to flounder, or proving troublesome, you can move right on to the next. This is one area where it can be particularly important to do your research. Because it is more expensive and challenging to shoot stock of groups (even small groups of two or three models), there is less competition for those shots. Check and see what kind of group shots are in demand and are under-represented in the collections you shoot for. If you can shoot what is needed in an edgy way that looks “real”, then you will do very well.

Motion, Framing, Negative Space, Concepts And Groups
Again, the above are suggestions, not hard and fast rules. But if you can add motion, or a sense of motion, to your still images, pay attention to your framing and crops, allow for negative space, illustrate concepts, and add the judicious group or two, you can add to your RPI, your sales volume, and your bottom line.

Shannon Fagan, Photographer and Stock Artists Alliance President

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 05:02:00 +0000

Shannon Fagan photographed this young girl in New Mexico, and found a print of it in China (see interview for details).Photo ©Shannon Fagan

Shannon, I know you as a top stock shooter and as President of Stock Artists Alliance. I also know that you have done many large produced shoots both here and abroad. You have won a raft of awards from Communication Arts Photography Annual to PDN to Print and even to the Addys. Can you fill us in on your background, how you came to be a photographer and how stock came to be your focus?

Thanks for such a nice introduction John. I’m at the ten-year point in my career and it’s been a decade’s worth of introspection these past few months. Our industry is rapidly evolving into unprecedented territory. I took a seat recently in attendance at multiple key industry conferences: Media Bistro’s User Generated Content Conferences in San Jose and New York, the Picture Archive Council of America’s Conferences in Chicago and Miami, the Photo Plus Expo in New York, and the Society of Digital Agency’s Conference in New York. I’m soon en route to The Professional Photographers of America’s ImagingUSA convention in Nashville. It’s an honor to share my observations from this collective experience with your audience. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned this past year, when you’re an industry President during a recession, and during a sea change in media content sourcing; everyone seeks an active opinion. You and I won’t fail to deliver here J

I concentrated in photography during a college degree filled with academics and art/photography courses at the University of Memphis. I had key mentors such as art photographer Larry McPherson, sculptor Greely Myatt, and painter Richard Knowles. Prior to that, my high school senior year included explorations of creative independent thinking speared on by a Fulbright exchange educator Luc Weegels from Amsterdam. Collectively, these persons taught me everything that I needed to know about process, about being prolific, and about being a professional. I took internships in New York City summer after summer, and when I graduated in 1999, I was ready to begin my waking dream of combining creativity with business. I loved photography, and I loved art, but I knew that it was necessary to earn a living in turn. Stock photography was a natural component and I was quickly being presented with multiple contract opportunities.

What agencies carry your work and do you also license images yourself?

I’m with nearly every major collection for stock photography internationally. It reads as a who’s who list of image aggregators, including microstock as a recent addition to the mix.

I currently not involved in direct licensing. It’s not that I don’t believe in this manner of distribution, as there are some very worthy proponents in this area of selling. I’m an admirer of the collections of Jim Erickson and Saxon Holt for example. Both have fantastic business models, niche content, and established clientele. This is very smart for the type of businesses that they have found themselves involved in.

If price is the “holy grail” of our industry, then completing direct licensing is both a business and a lifestyle choice. I have chosen to coordinate the logistics of travel to photograph, and to run the daily business operations. I’m also the creative director and technician. Completing direct sales and marketing would take a major expense and commitment initiative on my part. I’ve chosen to focus my energies elsewhere, and it’s partially a choice of reducing my overhead and remaining flexible to changes in our industry in the years to come. When you commit your business to direct licensing, you must first acknowledge the necessary means financially, the time logistically, and the support infrastructure long term. Your primary goal is to drive adequate sales traffic to offset these startup and yearly costs.

Direct licensing sure sounds popular these days, especially with the availability of a simple Google search for images. In my experience, image creators must be level headed and understand that a bulk core percentage of stock image buyers just want “a photo”, “any photo”, and they are not willing to wait for a return phone call, nor able to pay consistently more than the going market price. Direct licensing really works for collections that cannot be obtained elsewhere, and for which have established clientele already interacting with the niche-oriented photographer/s. Current agency contributor contracts do not allow for direct licensing by the contributor. One must understand that taking on direct licensing means taking on a level of business commitment long term with a separate offering unseen in agencies.

Tell us a bit about SAA, this new merger, and why we photographers should join.

The Stock Artists Alliance is the world’s only trade organization devoted to stock imagery licensing. It is now merged with the world’s largest photographic organization, The Professional Photographers of America. We choose to join forces in a consolidation of opportunity to provide the Alliance of Visual Artists (PPA’s umbrella organization) with an unparalleled level of stock expertise. They provided us with access to top legal experts, some of the best benefit packages for photographic members worldwide, and a service orientation that goes unmatched. This combination of forces will bring SAA members offers of equipment insurance, health benefit packages, seminars for business training, their own dedicated AVA/PPA Imaging USA conference, and a membership services department dedicated to their individual needs. We have an SAA dedicated publication, Keywords, and a dedicated email forum uniquely designed to address ongoing debates in the stock photography industry. We initiated a twitter stream this year and Facebook presence. We’re the only trade organization that addresses stock concerns directly with top agency owners and creative staff. It’s a prime membership to include as part of one’s business planning and daily operation. I encourage your readers to join in and participate in the discussion.

Micro stock has exploded onto the scene, but seems to be reaching a maturation point, at least for many of the top micro producers who are for the first time seeing their earnings level off. Do you have any thoughts on the future of micro stock?

User generated content is hot, and for microstock, it is being created professionally by photographers amongst us. To some degree, it is an oxymoron to call professional microstock content “user-generated”. Earnings are leveling off because of an oversupply in nearly every channel of imagery internationally. Free imagery isn’t seeing a leveling off in earnings however (I’m being a bit tongue and cheek here!), and it is becoming a new competitor as users provide talent in trade for exposure.

I have a great respect for microstock. Microstock photographers are some of the most business savvy in our industry. Its history is a classic self made commercial art success story that is a reminder to nearly all of us who started out in art school with dreams of being professional photographers. The future of microstock is a repetition of other classic branding stories. There will be stratification of the offering by quality and price, and price itself should continue to rise, albeit slowly. It will continue to eat away at traditional pricing for imagery that is inherently the same or can be obtained at lower prices.

I’d look at the airline industry in terms of where it goes from here. There are top tier airline carriers with limited routes, but their clientele is small, particularly in a recession with a tightening of budgets globally for the next couple years. There are mid tier fliers and they take the bulk of traffic with great expanse. There are low cost competitors, with perhaps no frills, but great service. Passengers “dressing up” today for any international flight in business class, let alone coach, has become a thing of the past. Expecting complimentary dinner service has also permanently changed. This goes to say that flying as an art of travel isn’t special anymore and we might take note of that with the following.

I’m going to take a lot of flack for saying this next statement, but I do feel that what we do as an industry for commercial photography is not any more insular than the B2B businesses hiring us. Expect media in the coming years that is generally less driven by quality and creative invigoration, and more driven by price and availability. I appreciate this New York Times article by technology visionary Jaron Lanier, and audio interview. Making a portrait of Lanier was my first-ever editorial portrait assignment. I shot Kodak negative film with a Pentax 67 camera and delivered contact sheets to Fortune Magazine. It’s an understatement to say that our manner of business has changed dramatically since that time, and it was uniquely resonant to me to read about it Lanier’s book “You are Not a Gadget”.

Look at the airline industry and how tickets are bought and sold. Where did the travel agents go? Availability will be the next self-fulfilling prophecy in commercial art. Desktop publishing software took out the printing industry. Rights managed creativity was cherished because that was what was prolifically available. This table turned and then went to Royalty Free. It is now microstock.

We are reading online newspapers proliferated with cell phone images. We are watching television commercials shot with low-end cameras to be made to look “user-generated”. We want to create our own content. We want to be individually famous for 15 minutes. Apple and Facebook are on this trend line. Do not expect to bend the wants of the consuming public globally. Microstock listened to that, intelligently. In fact, it helped to develop it as a self-fulfillment to what was an anticipated global desire, just as Apple’s iPod did with portable mp3 music at a low cost. Follow your heart and combine it with your creative and business intelligence. You do not necessarily have to be a microstock photographer to succeed. You do need to be positioned with where the marketplace is going.

Royalty Free images have certainly been suffering from the glut of such imagery available. As photographers, our response to declining revenue from that glut is to produce more imagery. Do you see any way out of that vicious circle?

I take a lot of direction from comments made by Jeff Howe, author of the book "Crowdsourcing", when he addressed the User Generated Content Conference in New York. Howe said "photography is the canary in the coal mine, with inexpensive cameras, easy editing, and internet access. The threat to photography is a continued downward price pressure due to natural pressures of supply and demand." We are not seeing a decrease in the interest to provide image content online, rather, it is exponentially growing.

I believe the vicious circle may be starting to slow. However, ironically, it’s not because there isn’t a desire to have it continue by the content creators. Photographers love to shoot. I objectively project, and assess in observation, that it is slowing because those that create the content can no longer afford to create it in the quantities that they did in the past. This is because revenues are being choked by distributed offerings at lower price points, ‘free’ being one of them. To maintain continued investment, one needs a steady revenue of encouragement. The big question yet to be determined is what is the tipping point for contributors to earn a living vs. returns on investment that they are experiencing this year and next?

The next question to follow is one that we have witnessed play out for the past two years already. I ask this analytically. What happened to all of the motivational mechanisms for an agency to support its self-funding contributors with art direction support, production help, imagery training, and regular meetings to keep the buzz of energy alive? What happened to mentorship? The signal to seasoned contributors and seasoned agency staff, if you read between the lines, is that the image licensing industry is confused, financially struggling, and veterans are necessarily expendable. This is a market condition at this time, and for small business owners operating as full time professional photographers, generally energy begets energy. Leadership is becoming a rarer commodity as images commoditize.

As traditional contributors find other paths that are more lucrative and more rewarding, will crowd sourcing or new professional or semi-professional photographers be able to take their place? My gut tells me yes, but my business sense tells me no. Shooting stock independently, as a professional, takes years of experience and innovation cultivation. Agencies have laid-off numerous instigators of creative direction, i.e. their salaried art directors and editors. There are now more laid off professionals in this area than there are available positions for them to be assimilated into. They must and will migrate to other professions, commercial art not necessarily to be one of them. This is a dot com era bust for the stock photo industry. There could be two upcoming changes in our traditional industry: increases in royalty percentages to core contributors to encourage participation, and/or ‘perk’ programs to initiate veterans. Major microstock agencies are already doing this with their regular contributors whose canister levels or selling levels are high. I’d take note of that. It’s quite impressive on their part. It’s one of the reasons we are not hearing of professionals in the user generated fields jump ship to more traditional lines of selling.

Microstock has a different need than Rights Managed. Contributors all have the same need. They need to be cultivated if to be retained over time. When the industry was on the growing upswing, cultivation was high via agency staff support, regular agency meetings, and the like. Now, we are witnessing a downswing. What goes up, yes, does come down. Ask veteran assignment photographers about their career changes over time. Being a freelance commercial artist is not a protected, tenured, salaried position, and agencies will see changes to “who” is providing the content. It is highly unlikely that the stock photographer of tomorrow is being actively cultivated by today’s agency staff in a manner that retains long-term relationships. Imagine for a moment, the start up fixed overhead costs associated with ingesting new contributors on a self-funded traditional scale. Veterans of today will slow submissions, retire, and move to new industries. It’s happening in 2009, and I agree with what was explored at the UGCX in New York – this will be the year that it all changed. This opens up a new era in stock photography. Flickr and iReporter might be a good model for the future of content in years to come, and if we’ve seen self-fulfilling prophecies of the past, I cannot help but see that what’s available is what will be bought. It’s not that the model that currently exists is invalid. It continues to work. I’m pointing to where we’ll be in 2-5 years. Everyone agrees that licensing content on the web is due for a change. Now that average prices to produce the content exceed what the content sells for, one knows that the current model is broken.

How do you feel about the future of Rights Managed stock photography?

You, John, have been a voice of reason for rights managed this year and you’ve shared with your readers some really wonderful insight. Rights Managed imagery continues to carve out a stable future and strategy. It is an ingredient to a successful business if the contributor enjoys shooting it and is interested in creating the types of unique content needed in this area. Personally, Rights Managed has been my best success for creative imagery and personal artistic development for my entire career. It may not have trained me in the logistics of a diverse offering and building my business to a new revenue level for re-investment elsewhere, but it was a crucial component of my shooting and will continue to be.

One thing I find mildly distressing is Getty’s current fixation on Flickr. I have even heard that some Getty photographers have started putting images through flickr instead of Photographer’s Choice (Getty’s pay-to-play option) to avoid the PC charges and perhaps get a better acceptance rate. How do you see flickr’s role in the larger picture of the stock photo industry?

Flickr highlights just how much a contributor now must ‘play the system’ and not just create award-winning imagery alone. I would go so far as to say that distribution of imagery is more important than what the imagery is itself. Jaron Lanier’s book also addresses this important truism of Web 2.0. This has created the vicious circle that we talked about above. It encourages imagery to be commoditized. This is just simply a business condition at this time. It does not show any signs of letting up any time soon, so my advice is as follows: As a contributing creative commercial artist you have a responsibility to your business (to your models, your crew, your future hires) to stay in operation. They rely upon you as a market maker. Flickr is leveling the playing field, yet again, to the barriers of entry to license imagery globally. If you assess that it is worth your business’ time to channel distribution via Flickr, I would vote to try it. One must look at the amount of time it takes to participate in licensing via this manner. Flickr was not designed as a place to house professionals’ full time portfolios, and yet, in evolution, it has tested that. It’s a tool. Use it as such if it fulfills a need that you have. The industry will eventually adapt around that, just like it did around the digitalization of photography.

There are an increasing number of options to detect copyright infringement of images, such as PicScout and Tin Eye, to name just a couple. Do you think that there will be a shift away from so much piracy?

I’m in Beijing at the moment, and I just got off the Skype phone with PicScout’s CEO Offir Gutelzon. I was shocked to learn that in the United States, where intellectual property has reportedly the highest degree of enforcement, that 85% of all online imagery being used is pirated. 85%! These are PicScout’s numbers talking here, and if it’s 85% in the US, how much more could it be in other countries throughout the world? I was informed that in China it is estimated that all major stock agency licensing accounts for only 40% of imagery use in the marketplace there. The other 60% is pirated. If that’s the case, then China is doing better than the United States! Take that!

This is such a difficult discussion to be had because many companies project what the infringement percentages are, but no one can ever truly know. The best we can do is educate and make available offerings that allow an easy license to avoid the theft of imagery online. User habits are in line with human nature and the tendency is that if you give someone an inch, they’ll take a mile. That’s a tough act to follow when enforcing legal use of intellectual property licensing online. You can read this two ways. Give people an easy manner to license, and they’ll do so. Give people an easy way to steal imagery unchecked, and well, they’ll do that too.

For many of us these are tough times in the stock photography business, yet there are more people buying stock images than ever. In fact, it is easier than ever to break into the stock photo business, though I think harder than ever to make a good living at it. Can you share your thoughts on the changes that are rampant in our industry and what strategies you are using to deal with those changes?

I’ve touched upon several of these above. One of my favorite podcasts of the past year was from Stanford’s Technology Ventures Program lecture series. Scott Kriens, President and CEO of Juniper Networks said, “there is an inverse relationship to the amount of credit that one takes for success, and how useful the information is that they provide.”

This has been a year in which to do personal introspection and self-assessment as to what lifestyle one wants to have as a photographer. I’m not the only one thinking this, but I might be the only one saying it. Earning a full time living from the profession in the future is clearly under pressure. For the analysts amongst us, we’ve seen it coming for several years. Trade organizations are shifting. Photography publications are shifting. Trade conferences and seminars are shifting.

Ironically, education and validity to the medium of photography remains rooted to the dream that one magazine assignment, or one substantial award will lead to a lifetime career of success. That system started shifting in the early 1990’s. To expect a bounce return to normalcy, pre-recession, would be naïve to suggest. I would not want to be a leader who shares a lack of objectivity, and often, in our media, unfortunately, being objective and pragmatic is viewed as pessimism. The overly zealous, and those with a lack of regard to current needs in our industry, will fundamentally be weeded out.

It is wise to test new technologies, but timing is everything. As returns on shoot days for self-funded stock imagery push themselves into years instead of months, this industry is more and more about entrepreneurship than it is about being an artist. It always has been when you investigate the personalities who are at the top. Follow your heart. I’ve said this several times because this is the best advice that any successful person in any career field ever gave me. If that is in photography, you will always be at the top of your game. Following your heart means recognizing what you are most interested in and what you inherently are good at. I am most proud of photographs that I have made, not because they won awards, but because they touched those around me in a way that I could not have done had I not held a camera in hand. This career is about connection. I love what I do because I can connect people together.

Do you see social media as essential to success as a photographer in the coming years?

It depends on how it is used. Social media is a very potential waste of time. Uh oh, did I say that out loud!? And yet, I love being a participant on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and whatever comes next. It is, no doubt a distraction to my core work, but I can’t help myself because I love being ‘in the know’. That is what makes the abilities of the Internet and mobile communications so successful within the context of social media. It is transforming where we get our trusted sources of news and, in turn, visual content. Humans are social animals and we gravitate to community. We are at a time when the medium, well, perhaps the context, of what constitutes ‘being’ a photographer is changing. The beauty of this is that all photo enthusiasts can share these changes and thought processes via the readily available accesses of social media. Facebook alone has become a massive self-promotion tool for the creative field. I daily get invitations to personal fan pages, networking events, or group integrations. Isn’t it ironic at just how much cutting through the noise of social media mimics the same manner in which stratification of our own licensing industry is undertaking? Irony or not, yes, I believe that social media is a critical component of being a small business in the coming years, but it’s because it’s always has been. We used to just call it ‘networking’.

Are you employing social media, and if so, how?

I’m actively involved with Facebook and Twitter and I just joined QQ and RenRen in China! These mediums are quintessential ways to learn about my colleagues and my friends’ interests and happenings’ globally. From a business perspective, as a photographer always seeking a great idea on which to expand upon, the medium of social networking is a quick means to disseminate and obtain what I like to call ‘whereabouts’. My friends post their needs or interests and I respond. I post mine as well, and a network of sourced information hits my ‘in’ box. It’s the random aspect, filtered, that makes these networks so successful. They naturally filter themselves and provide me with creativity and contacts. Just as any project, the more you put into them, the more you obtain back out.

OK, a bit more about your photography…where do you get your ideas from?

My best ideas come from personal and direct observation. I know that’s a fairly simple straightforward answer, but it’s becoming more and more true as the internet homogenizes us. I never achieved success by direct copies of others’ works, nor their opinions. Be willing to stand out on your own, no matter your work, no matter your ‘take’. This alone is being a success, and today, with all that we’ve talked about above, it is so much more critical than it was just five years ago. Yes, it’s all been done before. Our planet has been Google-d. Therein lies the biggest threat to our creative industry in the years to come. We will suffer from a lack of thought innovation, not technical innovation. There will be a perceived need to not create when there is so much free and available content online at the click of a button. Your ideas as a commercial artist will need to speak to both; what sells, and what sells artistry. The latter will become more rare.

What do you enjoy shooting the most?

Ha! Well, I enjoy a challenge. The more limiting the idea, the more mundane, the more logistically intensive, the more creative it is. Send me your “boring” projects. I’ve had just as much fun shooting a “business handshake” as I have had traveling to shoot throughout Beijing or British Columbia. It’s about the mindset in place when tackling a challenge. I’ll admit, I tend to bore too easily and am on a constant search for a new unchartered adventure.

Can you share a favorite image of yours with us and perhaps a bit about how the picture came to be?

I’ll share a favorite image of Getty Images’ Beijing office. It is one that I was so proud to see hanging as inspiration above the sales staff when I arrived to a meeting there last week. I traveled to Santa Fe, NM in 2003 for a commercial assignment and returned months later to complete personal work. I photographed a young girl in a tiara peering through a star shaped magic wand in her grandmother’s living room. She was glowing with pride and at the same time, all dressed up, acting in a manner of sticky silliness that makes us all feel like a kid inside. It could have been shot anywhere. I did it in New Mexico because I developed a relationship of trust with those that I had been working with there. Remember when I said that the most important aspect of photography for me is connection? I have connected this moment, totally initiated on my own behalf with a family who had never modeled before, to an agency sales team 7000 miles away working in the world’s fastest growing economy. I take pride in this. Send me your impossible projects. There’s no such thing as impossible in my repertoire.

Any words of wisdom or advice that you would like to leave us with?

Again, follow your heart, and most importantly, don’t ever take ‘no’ for an answer. If you do these two things well, you’ll always have a career in visual imagery. You’ll also do yourself a favor, because, you’ll always be great at what you do. No recession or unemployment statistic can belittle that. People love people with energy and those are the only people that I want working on my team. They’re the only people that I can afford. Don’t agonize with bitterness over these adjustments that we’re seeing in our industry. Embrace them with the complacency that as shifting occurs; opportunities open up for movement into other new challenging needs in our economy. One of my key art mentors once told me during a drawing exercise, “You are not a slave to the still life laid out before you.” As photographers, we are illustrators to the elements of life that we rearrange with our lighting and design, retouching, and communication. Seek your best opportunity in this. Others will follow.

To see more of Shannon's work: http://www.shannonfagan.com

Accepting Responsibility, The Cornerstone Of Success In Photography

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:31:00 +0000

Taking total responsibility for yourself, is a cornerstone for success as a photographer.

Responsibility For Success or Failure
A good friend of mine called me today and let me know he had just been laid off. He was in a high-paying management job, and his boss came in today and out-of-the-blue fired him. That has to be devastating. When I think of all the down sides of working for someone else it reminds me of how fortunate I am to be self-employed. If I put in the work, I get the reward. There are no office politics to deal with, no personality conflicts, and no one I have to count on to pull me out of a jam. I am totally responsible for my own success or failure. No one can fire me.

Blaming Robs You of Your Power
While it is true that no one can fire me, my career does seem under threat. Photographers, particularly long-time stock shooters, are having a difficult time. My own income is down almost thirty-perecent…which isn’t too bad by a lot of accounts. But if you truly accept full responsibility for your self, there is no blaming. I don’t blame the micro stock shooters and I don’t blame Getty or any of the other agencies. Blaming others just robs you of your power. That doesn’t mean I like the downward price pressure from micro stock competition, or the fact that Corbis just lowered my royalty percentage, or the fact that Getty is now sending me royalties of less than a dollar per license. It is just that complaining about it not only doesn’t do any good, but it actually directs my energy away from dealing effectively with the new realities.

Responsibility Means Learning
Accepting total responsibility for your success or failure is perhaps the key step for successfully competing in photography today…at least if you want to make a decent living at it. To succeed in the face of the kind of overwhelming competition that is emerging in this flickr, iStock, and Internet era requires total commitment. It means a whole lot more than making great photos. It means learning about distribution, learning about the market, and learning your craft. Sometimes it means learning something difficult to learn that you may not end up using at all. I am learning SEO. I have been learning Final Cut Pro and have no idea if I will eventually end up needing it or not. I haven’t yet tried shooting video with a DSLR, but I am going to because I think I would be remiss if I didn’t explore that possibility. I am taking full responsibility for my future as a professional photographer.

Industry Assessment, Opportunities, and Strategic Thinking
Being responsible for your future means realistically assessing the photography industry and where you fit in, where the new opportunities are, and which ones you are both suited for and interested in pursuing. I believe that strategic thinking is going to get more and more important. It used to be, with stock, you just had to make great images, or heck, even not-so-great images, and send them in. I my mind there is no doubt that this business is just going to get harder and require more and more strategic thinking. If you are not ready to take total responsibility for your photography future then your future might be in serious doubt.

Circling Vultures, Story Of A Stock Photo

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:30:00 +0000

Bing used my stock photo of circling vultures for its search engine background. The image is handled by Getty Images.

Circling Vultures, Bing And Getty
Yesterday Bing was using one of my stock photos for its background image…a shot of vultures circling overhead. Getty Images handles the licensing for that particular image. It will be interesting to see how much they licensed it for. I can pretty much guarantee it will be for less than I think they should have licensed it for!

Negative Images Can Sell Well
The picture is a good example of a negative image that can sell well, as well as one that cost almost nothing to create. The only cost, really, was my time. I photographed the vultures as they flew over my studio (hmmmm, wonder if that is significant…), one at a time, then used Photoshop to composite them together and create the sun flare.

Composition, Flexibility and Body Copy
I paid careful attention to the composition (Bing has cropped in just a bit) so that it would have the flexibility to be used for both verticals and horizontals. I placed the circling buzzards off-center to allow both for visual interest and to provide a clear area for body copy…but here it works well for layout of the search engine.

A Central Place For the Eye to Rest, and an Iconic Message
The sun flare was added using Photoshop’s render>sun flare filter. That does two things; it allows for the eye to have a central place to rest, and it adds to that subconscious, iconic sense of impending doom that we all carry within from watching those movies where the desperate, dying hero, crawling through the dry parched desert, looks up into the sun and its’ accompanying lens flare, just before being rescued.

The Photoshop sun flare filter helps add the iconic feeling of doom to this image of a businessman crawling through the desert. This stock picture is handled by Blend Images.

State of the Stock Photo Industry, Sand Dunes And an Oasis
At any rate, the photo is graphic, reads well as a thumbnail, carries an iconic metaphorical message, is flexible in its composition, and cost virtually nothing to create.
It might also be a little to close to home as it is also a great metaphor for how so many of us professionals view the current state of the stock photo industry. But just because the vultures are circling doesn’t mean we are doomed. There may yet be an oasis just over the next sand dune. I am betting there is. It is an oasis sustained by creativity, good business decisions and, perhaps, SEO.

An oasis in the desert (I shot the Gobi desert in Mongolia, the palm tree was photographed in Brazil) is an iconic image for hope and salvation. Image handled by Getty Images.

Stock Photos That (Don't) Suck

noreply@blogger.com (John Lund) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 05:59:00 +0000

Stock Photography Sucks...Or Not!
How many times have you heard that stock photography sucks? I know I have heard it far too many times, and I think that complaint is just wrong. A more accurate statement, in my humble opinion might be, “I hate how long it takes me to find a really good, creative and appropriate stock photo!” Another sentiment that kind of rubs me the wrong way is “Stock photos cost too much!” I would suggest rather a more accurate statement should be, “I don’t have the budget to license appropriate imagery”.

Some Alternatives To Stock Photos That Suck
Let me put humility aside and offer a few of my own alternatives to “Stock photos that look like stock”, that do exhibit creativity and relevance, and offer a superlative value (the licensing fee is far less than the time, effort and money that would be required to think up the idea (hey the ideas do take time and work to come up with), hire the models, find the locations, secure the props, make the exposures and labor over the digital manipulations.

The Social Media And/Or Networking Photo

Teamwork (or lack of it…)

Health And Beauty Products

Anxiety, Stress or Fear (you gotta love the expressions!)

What The…?

I have to admit, that last photo isn't mine, though I do represent it for stock. It was shot by a friend of mine, Ginna Fleming.

Incredible Stock Photos, Keywording And SEO
All kidding aside, there are an enormous number of incredible stock photos out there. The trick for those who need stock is to find the darn things. I am attempting to help out art directors and designers, art buyers, and everyone who needs quality imagery, by getting my images online and doing a good job of keywording and SEO. Am I a nice guy or what?