Linda Johannessen, CEO of microstock site YAY Micro, believes that microstock photographers are getting a rough deal — and should do something about it. As long as photographers are willing to accept low commissions, she argues, the large players in the microstock market will be free to increase their earnings at the expense of their contributors. The solution, she told us, is for photographers around the world to club together and fight for a fairer share of the profits.
“The marketing channel in microstock leaves the photographers powerless, except for the largest contributors. It’s an unfortunate situation, and I think the only way to combat this is for microstock photographers to join together in a global union.”
Old school photographers might have experience, contacts and a bag full of equipment built up over the years, but young photographers now have an important advantage. While shooters who picked up their first camera more than a decade ago may be a dab hand in a darkroom that’s now been turned back into a closet, younger types tend to be more familiar with Photoshop and digital manipulation. When it comes to digitally preparing images for sale, they’re faster, more creative and less sensitive to the pain. Older photographers have had to learn to adapt. The need for Photoshop skills though are now well-known. Less familiar is a host of new techniques that photographers will have to master if they’re to stay on top of their industry and continue to make money out of their images in the future.
There are two ways to enjoy a high standard of living as a photographer. The first is to create great pictures, sell them for large amounts of money and rent out your services for giant commissions. The second is to charge regular amounts of money for your work but move to a place where the cost of living is lower but where there’s still enough growth and vibrancy to support a photography business and deliver an interesting time.
Shanghai, for example, is China’s most dynamic city. It contains more than 20 million people, has a per capita income of almost $1,000 a month and an annual growth rate of around ten percent. When it comes to the cost of living, residents can take their pick of Western-style two-bedroom apartments for a little over $1,000 or local digs that are equally comfortable for much less. That flexibility, growth and the thrill of living in a city as lively as Shanghai has brought in more than 100,000 foreigners who now call the city home. Some are highly-paid expats living luxury lifestyles but many are independent workers trying their luck in a growing market and a place they can afford whatever their income level. Many of those workers are photographers but even Shanghai, they’re finding, is not immune to the pressures affecting the photography market.
Does the world really need another microstock site? With dozens already on the Web, including the Getty-owned giant iStockPhoto, it’s hard to see why anyone would want to enter a marketplace in which competition is so tight. Photographers are hardly crying out for another platform on which to receive a few cents for a sale and buyers don’t need more sites offering the same images they can find everywhere else. And yet at the beginning of August, Envato, a creative network, launched PhotoDune, giving the Web another place where photographers can upload images in the hope of making a sale and users can download pictures at prices that start at a dollar. It’s possible though that despite the platform’s familiarity, PhotoDune has one advantage that might just help it to deliver buyers that arrive fast and stick around: it has a market.
PhotoDune looks like every other microstock site on the Web. Royalties are a flat 25 percent for non-exclusive contributors and range from 50-70 percent of the sales price for exclusive sellers. Photographers though need to have produced more than $75,000 in sales to earn that top rate, and more than $3,750 to move from 50 percent to 51 percent. With prices that range from a buck for an image of 0.2 megapixels and rise to $7 for an image of 14.3 megapixels (or $15 for an extended license that allows the image to be used on products), that might take some time. Currently the most successful image on PhotoDune has just 35 sales. That compares poorly with iStockPhoto where many of the most popular images over the last three months have sales approaching 1,500 downloads but the site is growing at a reasonable rate. Two weeks after the launch of its public beta, PhotoDune was offering 230,000 images from over a hundred contributors, including Yuri Arcurs.
Every community has rules and everyone who wants to join that community needs to know those rules. That doesn’t mean that you can never break them but you should know what those rules are — and the consequences that come from ignoring them. That’s true whether you’re trying to join the country club or the community of people who make money from their photography
1. Know the value of your work.
This is the hardest rule to follow, which is one of the reasons that it’s broken so often. It’s also the rule that raises the most complaints from established photographers when they see less experienced shooters ignore it.
Amateurs have invaded the photography world. They have limited skills, little talent and wouldn’t know a great photo if it were pasted on a billboard next to a headline saying “Great photo!” They’re responsible for bringing down the price of photography for everyone and it’s their fault that the same dull images of grinning models and headset-wearing women appear on page after page and ad after ad. And that’s just the buyers.
There are no figures that indicate the percentage of stock photography bought by part-time business builders rather than professional image editors but the corollary of the decline of editorial photography has been the rise of online image use. It’s that demand that underlies the rise of microstock: low-cost images for businesses, particularly websites, with little income, no budget and often one person who does everything from planning the website to answering the phones, including buying the pictures. Professional photographers might complain about the growth of enthusiasts with folders full of cheap images of variable quality but the same complaint applies to the people who buy those images. Stock buyers are now as likely to be part-time enthusiasts rather than full-time professionals as the contributors themselves.
Photographers hoping to sell usage licenses are always shooting in the dark. They have to produce images first, investing in time, effort, model hire and equipment, then hope that they’ve generated pictures for which there is a demand. Their compositions may be based in part on experience, on a browse of a site’s most popular images, or on a review of their own sales statistics, but there are also a number of other factors that a photographer can consider as he or she starts thinking about images that are more likely to attract a buyer’s eye.
The easiest option is to produce pictures which include ethnic minorities. This is a demand that comes up again and again from buyers, especially those whose clients are selling outside the United States. Customers want to see people in ads that look like them, so if your portfolio is dominated by shots of one particular ethnic group, one easy way to raise sales might be to expand your model base and create some pictures that can sell further afield.
Everyone seems to be doing workshops these days, says Doug Beasley, a former fashion, advertising and commercial photographer who now specializes in fine art projects. With a living as a photographer increasingly hard to come by, teaching enthusiasts and professionals has come to look like both a lucrative way to supplement commissions and license sales, and an enjoyable way for photographers to benefit from their expertise.
Beasley’s workshops though started long before the digital revolution hit the world of photography. He’s been teaching for more than 20 years, initially running classes locally in the Twin Cities but soon stretching further afield as offers came in to teach people as far away as Guatemala and Peru. Read the rest …
There’s never been a worse time to be a photographer. Newspapers are cutting staff. Prices are dropping through the floor. Rights are being reduced and the only part of the industry that’s showing signs of growth are the competition. There’s also never been a better time to be a photographer. The price of equipment is falling even as the quality improves. The walls that kept out talented enthusiasts are collapsing, giving part-timers a chance to bring their talent to market. If print is feeling squeezed, it’s only because the Web has stolen its readers — and the Web has an insatiable demand for images.
For the Boston University Center for Digital Imaging Arts, it’s the second of those two scenarios that holds true. The cup isn’t just half-full, it’s overflowing with new opportunities for people willing to put in the time and effort to learn how to use their camera: Read the rest …
Selling images should be easy. Stock agencies now look at the photographs, not the photographers. Buyers have multiplied as millions of Web pages have spread across the Internet. The gap between collectors and creators has broken down as sellers can use their own marketing skills to create their brands, build a reputation and promote their art. But it isn’t easy. Moving from talented enthusiast with hard drive full of pictures to a semi-professional shooter with a portfolio of sales and a steady revenue stream can take time, hard work and plenty of frustration. This is what you need to do get started.
1. Sort Your Images
You might take thousands of images before you start thinking about making sales. Some of them you’ll delete but many you’ll just transfer to your hard drive, categorize and leave. When storage space costs so little, there’s no reason to be selective about the photographs you keep.
The biggest difference between amateur photographers and professional photographers isn’t necessarily the talent and it doesn’t even have to be skill. It’s the expenses. For enthusiasts, the amounts that they spend on new lenses, on driving to locations and on buying props is the price they pay for entertainment. For professionals, those are outlays, investments that have to be recouped if they’re to continue paying out of their pocket. It’s a difference that’s been at the heart of the criticism laid against microstock photographers. The format can only pay, some have argued, if you don’t factor in the cost of production. A new statistics tool for microstock sites reminds even part-time photographers that when they’re looking to make money, costs should drive decisions and define shoots.
Created by Andrey Popov, a software engineer and semi-professional photographer, Microstock Analytics logs onto microstock sites and collects data that includes sales figures, file information and thumbnail images. Once the numbers have been crunched, users can display the results as graphs, comparing their sales across different platforms. At the moment, the system works with iStockPhoto, Dreamstime, Fotolia and Shutterstock, with more sites planned based on user demand. The service was launched at the end of May and is now being used by more than a hundred photographers. Pricing is based on usage: tracking up to 500 files is free but the price rises to $299.99 for a one-time unlimited license. The program works even with giant portfolios; during testing Popov was able to track 40,000 files and 4 million sales.
The iPad wasn’t built for photographers. The in-built lenses are punier than those on most smartphones, memory space is limited, library functions are poor, bulk processing is impossible and upload a RAW image from the iPad to another device and you’re going to lose noticeable quality. When we asked one photographer what surprised him the most about using a borrowed iPad during a shoot, his reaction was a blunt “how useless it is.”
Maybe he wasn’t trying hard enough. The iPad isn’t a replacement for a Macbook or a desktop and it certainly can’t function as a camera, but with the right apps it can make a useful and mobile tool for photographers on the move. These are some of the most important apps that a photographer should pack into their iPad.
For photographers selling their services directly to the public, the benefits of maintaining a business Facebook page are clear enough. Face tagging pushes pictures of brides and wedding guests to clients and their friends, showing off their work to potential leads for free. Paid advertising lets them focus their deal on demographics as targeted as engaged women aged 25-40 within 50 miles of their studio. But what about stock photographers? Does Facebook offer anything for professionals and enthusiasts whose buyers are more likely to be businesses than individuals? According to the experience of at least one stock photographer, if the aim is only to sell licenses, then the answer may well be no.
Todd Arena started his career as a graphic designer, using stock images to create custom magazines, ads, websites and corporate identities for large corporations. Realizing that many of the contributors whose images he bought were selling the same work hundreds of times, he began producing his own pictures, beginning with graphics and art elements before working his way up to photography. He upgraded his gear, improved his photography skills and in mid-2008, after being laid off from his graphic design position, switched to full-time stock photography, shooting mostly lifestyle images, food and sports. In addition to promoting his images primarily through microstock companies, he also now runs his own stock site at Arena Creative.
The Internet now contains thousands of stock photography sites, giving editors a huge choice of image sources, and photographers a wide range of outlets for their images. We’ve checked sites and pored over lists to produce our own guide to stock photography.
We’ve broken the sites down into subject categories but it’s likely that many overlap. Certainly, the large sites will also include niche subjects. Not all of the sites accept contributions but many do.
Entries are arranged alphabetically and should not be considered as recommendations. Be sure to read the terms and conditions carefully, and let us know about your experiences with the sites on the list and any that you think we’ve missed.
Three years ago, we noticed a clause in Facebook’s terms and conditions that worried us. The clause appeared to grant Facebook the right to create derivative works out of members’ images, to license members’ photos and even to transfer the rights it claims over those pictures to others. We alerted Bert Krages, a legal expert who specializes in the laws relating to photography, and he confirmed our suspicions. Facebook’s terms did indeed allow the social media site to do pretty much anything it wanted with the pictures uploaded to the site. In fact, Krages told us, the clause was written in such a way that Facebook could even build a stock library out of its members’ contributions if it wanted. That was three years ago. Things have changed and Facebook has updated its terms. That clause though, and the rights it grants to Facebook, remain.
Facebook isn’t the only site to place its hand on the intellectual property owned by its users. TwitPic’s recent kerfuffle over copyright ended in a muddle with the photo-sharing service declaring clearly that users “retain all ownership rights to Content uploaded to Twitpic.” But echoing Facebook’s rights grab, the terms then go on to state that:
“by submitting Content to Twitpic, you hereby grant Twitpic a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and Twitpic’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.”
Wedding photography provides plenty of scope for creativity. Although it’s not as free as photographic art — which itself is only as free as collectors and gallery owners allow — it does leave plenty of room for experimentation. So some photographers have long combined the formals with photojournalism while others have gone as far as Trash The Dress photography, a style that takes the bride’s glamour to extremes. But what happens when you add video to your repertoire? How creative can your results become when you think outside your usual boundaries and what effect can the creativity that allows have on your business?
One professional who’s now discovering just what removing a job label can do for his work is Michael Escobar. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Escobar rejects the title “photographer” and offers creative media work that covers photography, videography and even Web design. He’s self-taught in all of those fields so his business should really have failed. It’s hard enough to master one competitive discipline but to cover three and to do it without professional training should be a stretch of ambition too far.
Today’s photographers no longer need to learn darkroom skills or bone up on the different kinds of chemicals they’ll be pouring into trays, but they do need to pick up a wide variety of skills that have little to do with image-making. They need to understand the difference between RAW and Jpeg image formats. They have to learn how to edit in Photoshop. And, toughest of all, they have to figure out how to market a website. While a plethora of portfolio sites now make the website-building relatively simple, bringing visitors into that site when there are so many alternatives available on the Web is a challenge as tough as capturing a bride’s beauty in dim light when she’s sobbing into her bouquet. One solution might be to team up with other photographers and hope that the crowd attracts clients.
That, at least, is the hope of Behance, a company aiming to bring together creative professionals from fields ranging from animation and architecture to Web design and woodworking. While the firm isn’t giving out membership numbers, according to Community Manager Sarah Rapp, photography is one of its “top creative fields.” The company has even launched a stand-alone product at Photography Served to help art directors and image buyers to find the right talent for their campaigns. For Rapp, the mass appeal of a service like Behance’s is the only way for creative professionals to effectively market themselves. Read the rest …
When the Photographer’s Gallery in London closed its doors for refurbishment in September 2010, it opened a new kind of gallery online. Teaming up with Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren, authors of Street Photography Now, a collection of documentary images, the museum is now encouraging the book’s contributors to set enthusiasts weekly photographic challenges, and placing the results in a series of Flickr groups. It’s a year-long strategy that’s allowing for broad participation among the gallery’s supporters, extending the influence of the book and making good use of Flickr. One contributor though, has taken the approach a little further.
Documentary photographer Mimi Mollica followed up his challenge with some personal interaction, commenting on the images directly and guiding the photographers who took part in the exercise. Impressed by the enthusiasm shown by the project’s participants, he was inspired to create a new way of teaching photographic skills to people who want to improve their photography, wherever they may be. Read the rest …
It doesn’t matter how great your photography teacher or how respected your course, it’s only when you reach the church and spend time with the bride that you realize exactly what’s involved in completing a successful wedding shoot. It’s only then that you understand what to bring, who to photograph, how to manage the guests and what it means to make a living out of events. One way to pick up that essential experience is to follow around a professional photographer before you start trying to land clients of your own.
For a new photographer, the benefits of being a second shooter are clear enough. You get to attend weddings, become used to the way the shoots work, learn from an established professional, gain an understanding of professional photography and build a portfolio with real wedding shots. You can also get paid. The rates vary, and for shoots that involve shadowing rather than shooting (and especially the first few times with a new photographer), can be nothing. But for photographers coming to the end of what is in effect a kind of internship, it’s not unusual to earn as much as $500 for a day’s work taking pictures and learning the business without the responsibilities that come with being the main supplier.
If you’ve ever felt that Flickr’s Explore page has been ignoring you, that your images deserve the attention the page brings and that Yahoo’s site just isn’t fair… you’re right. Flickr’s Explore page is neither fair nor intended to be fair. As Serguei Mourachov, an engineer responsible for the page’s algorithm, explained to us in 2008:
“The algorithm that populates Explore pages is not fair by definition. It’s not created to judge, but to find something that could be interesting.”
