Attitude Is Everything

Attitude is Everything!  Too many stock photos? Be inspired! I make a conscious decision to be inspired by my fears rather than to drown in depression. I made this image for Blend Images.

Many Ways To Become Depressed

There are so many ways to become depressed in this business! If I start perusing other photographer’s work I can quickly become despondent over the vast numbers of really creative work. Or I can become near suicidal over the even vaster numbers of crappy photos that threaten to, or actually do, bury my own images in a sea of mediocrity (and yes, some of my images are crappy too…I admit it.)

5-Cent Sales And Big Cancelations

Sales reports can be a great source of depression as well. On my last sales report I had a 5-cent royalty for an RM image. I also had a $1,500.00 canceled sale…and that sure doesn’t help my frame of mind!  A few days ago I spotted one of my still images in an ad on television. It is a little hard to spot because it is one of many images used and goes by in the flash of an eye…but nonetheless…there it is on television. It is an RF image which means it is kind of hard to track down how much I got paid for the image…but the largest sale for it in the last several months is $14.00. Swell.

Waiting For Images

Waiting for images to go up is another great way to ruin an otherwise good day. Images occasionally get lost, often take forever to get online, and get rejected for ridiculous reasons.  My favorite “lost” image story happened with Getty. I submitted an image, forgot about it, and it popped up one day in my collection…three years after I submitted it! It sells pretty well…and is a tad depressing thinking about all the sales I missed out on during those three years!  I have been watching Corbis lately and while I may be exaggerating, it feels as if I haven’t had a new image go up there in months!  Though I did see a Corbis image of mine used in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that might net me anywhere from $1,000.00 to $5.00…who knows (do I seem a tad bitter today?).

The Importance Of Attitude

My point here is on the importance of attitude. If I let all that stuff get me down then my productivity will surely follow in a downwards arc. Instead of being depressed at the vast number of awesome images out there I need to be inspired to create even better ones of my own.  Rather than being depressed by the endless waves of mediocre, or worse, images that threaten to drown out my own sales, I need to have the resolve to create images that are so on-target, relevant and visually interesting that they rise above the vast morass.

I'LL Show Them!

The emotional shock of a low sales report is energy I can use to motivate myself to create new work. “I’ll show them” is a lot more productive than “Why bother?” Any of us who have participated in stock photography for any great length of time know that there are up months and down months…and that the up months have gotten progressively more challenging to achieve. But those up months are still available provided we have the motivation not just to create new images, but also to do so in a very thoughtful way. We can no longer afford to just create images, now we have to pay attention to what the market needs and wants and where the buyers are going.

Still Making A Living And Having Fun

One of the few things we can have control over is our own attitude. By making a conscious decision to have a good attitude we can turn negatives into powerful positive forces.  Despite the constant barrage of arrows and darts that seem to continually find me, I am still making a good living at stock photography, and when I don’t allow myself to succumb to negative emotions I realize I still am having a great time creating fun images and enjoying the community of my fellow stock shooters.  

Choosing A Stock Photo Agency

 

It's a jungle out there when searching for a new stock photo agency!

Choosing A Stock Photo Agency

There are hundreds of stock photo agencies out there, and more seem to spring up every day. In the volatile and every changing stock photo industry it can be important to diversify. You never know when an agency may fold or undergo a dramatic turn for the worse, or when some upstart agency (remember iStockphoto) will come along and upset the apple cart. Even a gradual shift in the client base of agencies can sneak up on you and leave you scrambling. Whether you are looking for your first agency, or an ancillary one, or perhaps one that offers penetration into a new market segment, here are thirteen important points to keep in mind (I have to give credit to Rick Becker-Leckrone, CEO of BlendImages, for bringing these points to my attention). 

1.         How will the agency ensure that your work is viewed by the maximum number of potential customers?  How extensive is their sales network?  Does it include the highest producing agencies like Getty, Corbis, Shutterstock, and Masterfile? If the agency is not relying on distribution, how much are they prepared to invest in marketing?

2.         If the agency offers direct sales opportunities, how does their search / retrieval system and e-commerce platform function?  Be a secret shopper.

3.        What new licensing models and innovative ways does the agency have for getting non-traditional buyers to explore and license your work?

4.         Who else’s work does the agency represent?  Any shooters you know and admire?  Call them and get their perspective on the agency.

5.        What kind of systems do they have for editing and ingesting content? Can you upload edits from anywhere in the world 24/7?  Can you upload high-res and model releases?

6.         Will you have an editor to work with in generating shoot ideas and to provide sales statistics and feedback on how different types of imagery are performing?

7.         Will they represent both your stills and motion stock?

8.         What kind of experience does the agency personnel have in delivering results in the stock photo industry?  Look for at least 15 years industry experience in an editor and even more from senior management.  

9.          How well placed in search will the content be on sales partner sites?

10.       How big is their overall library?  If too large, your work will get lost.  Look to see how much work exists in their collection that is similar to yours. 

11.      How long will your images take to get to market?

12.       Will the agency have face-to-face photographer meetings and provide creative research reports on a regular basis?  What does the agency provide in terms of support outside of basic editing? What is the overall level of transparency of the agency?  Do you have any idea what their gross revenue is?  How many images in the collection?  What the goals of the agency are?  Who the owners are?  Good to know all of these things.

13.       Does the agency understand the legal requirements of stock and carry a robust E&O policy?  If there are legal complications, do they have the knowledge, legal counsel, and wherewithal to defend the agency from lawsuits arising from models / clients?  Do they carefully vet model / property releases?

Getty And Blend

My own agencies of choice are Getty Images and Blend Images. Getty, being the largest of the traditional agencies, is an obvious choice. But Blend is a very interesting one as well (Disclaimer: I am a co-founder and owner of Blend Images).  With Blend my images not only get a wider audience with both RF and RM content on Getty, Corbis, Masterfile, Superstock and God knows how many other distributors, but I also get my images up on Microstock sites at macro prices. How cool is that? The eyeballs appear to be migrating to places like Shutterstock, Fotolia and others. With Blend Images, without any additional work, I get representation on Shutterstock, Fotolia, iStockphoto and others. In addition, I can actually call Blend and get a person on the phone! I might add that I know other Blend non-owner contributors who have the same experience…and not just with art directors and creative directors, but with all of the staff right on up to the CEO, Rick Becker-Leckrone. Finally, Blend gives me art direction, research reports, and creative meetings as well. As a matter of fact, I head off Thursday to a two-day Blend meeting and workshop focusing on motion stock.

A Word About Royalty Splits

If your goal is to make as much revenue as possible then it is important to look beyond just your royalty split. Running an agency is expensive. Shutterstock, for example, is reported to have spent $40,000,000.00 on advertising last year. An agency that gives photographers an unrealistic share of the royalties won’t have the funds to run effectively, and it is important to remember that 50 or more percent of nothing is…well…nothing! What is a fair royalty split? I don’t have an answer to that question. But that may not be the best question to be asking.

Consistent Production The Key To Success

Once you have signed with an agency the key to success is producing your best work consistently. It is consistent production more than anything else that will eventually lead to success. It is a universal truth with stock photographers that big royalty checks motivate us, and small royalty checks tend to sap our creativity and motivation. You have to be aware of that and move beyond it.

Seeing Results

One final note.  In my own experience (and I don’t have experience with micro agencies) it takes time to see results. Give it a good year of consistent production before judging the success or failure of the agency.

A Question For Photographers

For photographers the search for ideas is a never ending journey and one that is often best served by moving into unexplored territory.

The Search For Ideas

As a stock photographer I am always searching for ideas. The search for ideas is endless and can be a real challenge. There is a tendency, at least for me, to go back over my existing work and checking my sales database for what is selling and for which images and ideas have been more successful than others. But it is vitally important for my long-term success to ask myself just what ideas have I not done yet.  More than that, what techniques and styles have I neglected to explore?

Images You Haven’t Created

Of course, ideas that I haven’t done have no track record and no sales to peruse to judge their success. But what that question might do is enable me to push beyond my current boundaries and come up with something that might well be very successful and that won’t “cannibalize” sales from my existing image base. It only makes sense that expanding your library of images into new areas and categories, categories that don’t compete with your existing images, are a primary method of growing your overall income. But the exercise of determining what image areas that you haven’t yet created has other benefits as well that accrue even if the images don’t turn into best sellers.

Creating Images And Expanding Skills

By creating images that are different than what you have already created you will expand your photography (and other skills), learn more about what is valued in the marketplace, and hopefully put a little more distance between you and burn out. This is often referred to as moving outside your comfort zone. I know that pushing myself out of my own comfort zone has brought some huge, and unexpected, rewards. Creating new kinds of work keeps the creative fires burning and promotes the growth that is necessary to avoid becoming irrelevant.

Diversity And Investment

Additionally, by broadening your offering, you will help insure that if a given style or

Approach goes out of style the impact on your own revenue will be minimized. Diversity, after all, is a cornerstone of investing whether it is in the stock market or the market of stock photography.

Ladder To Success: The Strategy Behind A Stock Photo

An old idea with a new twist, a businessman climbing a ladder created from people standing on each other's shoulders is an example of a stock photo strategy that has paid off for me.

Strategy Of A Stock Photo

While there doesn’t seem to be any sure fire way to guarantee that a stock photo idea is going to result in a successful (financially) image, a strategy that has generally worked well for me is to start with an iconic symbol and add a new twist. If you can add into the mix just enough ambiguity to provide for more than one concept, then the odds of an image generating a good profit increase dramatically.

Iconic, Boring, And Potentially Compelling Imagery

Take for example the classic, iconic symbol of a businessman climbing a ladder. What could be more common, hackneyed and even, at this point, boring? Yet such an image has the advantage of being a quick read, something that is burned into our subconscious and can be powerfully compelling when presented in a new and different way.

Images With A Twist

It was with this idea in mind that I decided to create an image with a significant twist, a ladder created from people standing on each other’s shoulders and using their arms and legs as rungs.  A cool thing about such an image is that the concept broadens from the classic “climbing the ladder of success” and “challenge” to include “teamwork” as well. By adding a background of high altitude clouds we can even bring in the concept of “the sky is the limit” and “possibilities”. 

Photo Of A High Altitude Cloudscape

Adding the high-altitude cloudscape in the background helps raise the potential of this concept image by providing a background that most of us seldom see unless we happen to be seated at the window of an airliner at a very opportune moment.  This cloudscape background image is actually the combination of several different captures combined in Photoshop.  Any time we see something that we don’t see very often it tends to be more compelling.

Over A Dozen Separate Photo Shoots For One Image

The models who are creating the ladder were each photographed separately for a different project…a human DNA chain, which by the way has not sold despite being online for over a year now…oh well.  So, to put this image together we have something like a dozen photo shoots of models (albeit for different images), shooting out the window of a jet (headed back to the Bay Area from a shoot in Mexico), and probably two days of Photoshop work between putting a cloud image together as well as compositing the human ladder and so forth.

Time, Effort And Pay Back

Ultimately the question for me, as a professional stock photographer, is whether such images are worth the time, effort and resources that go into them. It really comes down to whether the image will pay me back sufficiently for my time and effort. While some images, such as the DNA image, clearly don’t work, many others do. I expect that this image will bring in at least $5,000 or more over the next five years, and if it does I will consider it successful. If it brings in a return significantly below that amount then my strategy will have failed me.  While it is impossible to know what the future will bring, to this point creating images like this human ladder have served me well.

Anatomy Of A Stock Shoot

The models for this stock photo of "A Monkey On Your Back" were shot  of  during three different shoots over a period of several months.

Many Ways To Shoot Stock Photos

There are probably as many ways to go about shooting stock photos as there are stock photographers. In the twenty odd years that I have been shooting stock my own approach has gone through numerous changes. As I have spent the last several days preparing for a shoot that I will undertake tomorrow I think that now is a good time to share my most recent approach.

Fine Tuning Shoots And Profit

Since the returns on stock photography have plummeted in the last few years I, like pretty much every other photographer I know, have fine-tuned my shoots with economy in mind. Keep in mind that my approach is simply my approach. There is nothing magical about it, but it works for me. One thing I can say about it is that I never fail to make a significant profit from one of these shoots…though it can take up to a year before the returns become “significant”.

A "Motivating" Idea

I start each shoot by coming up with an idea that I really want to execute. For this shoot that image started out as a dollar sign formed from people.  Once I have a “motivating” idea I create a shot list that expands on the original idea. My shot list for tomorrow’s shoot now has 24 image ideas not including variations of portraits and any of the inevitable spontaneous ideas that will no doubt come up.  Because creating a dollar sign from people involves twelve models, and to have them all in the studio at one time would be very inefficient, I am starting the first “installment” with three models. Most likely I will photograph the remaining nine models each in a separate shoot.  My “idea” list is all over the place. One shot will involve a woman throwing a man’s belongings out a second floor window…another involves a tug o war in an office cubicle (yeah…I do produce a lot of “corny” imagery…but I do try and make it entertaining and it does sell…).

Casting Models

BTW, I found these models on S.F. Casting.com. I am paying them $30.00 per hour with a two-hour minimum, and am providing them with digital copies of the photos for their portfolios.  I have used bank tellers, my loan officer, a restaurant hostess, waiters, and people I see on the street and friends and family as models. A great thing about bank employees is that they have good business attire! The important thing is to be clear with the models about what you doing and what you are paying and to always get the model release BEFORE you start shooting. I have asked the models to bring three changes of casual business clothes and to be camera ready (hair and make-up). I have extra clothing on hand from previous shoots (it is rare that the models actually show up with entirely satisfactory clothing).

Rehearsing The Shoot

I spent today "rehearsing" the shoot...working out the lighting and set-up for each shot including the sequence in which I would take them. On my shot list I included the various power pack settings ( I use a combination of ProFoto and Speedotron power packs), light placement, f stops and so forth. I also include check boxes for each set-up to insure I don't miss anything. At this point in my career I seldom, if ever, hire an assistant, so I put the camera, in this case a Nikon D800 (I also use Canon gear), on a camera stand, set the self-timer, and played stand-in. A slow process, but stress-free which is really important to me. No one to please or worry about except myself.  Tomorrow, for the actual shoot, I will have my partner Stephanie working with me…otherwise I would definitely hire an assistant for the day.

Raw Materials...For Years

After I finish, well, even before I finish shooting all of the models on succeeding days, I will be spending a lot of time putting images together.  Shooting these models will provide me the with basic raw materials I need to keep me busy making images for about two months and in some cases will provide raw materials for years down the road…assuming there will still be a need for stock photos years down the road!

Getty Sales And Numbers For Thought

In the stock industry choices have to be made about price vs. volume and which direction both photographers and agencies are going to choose. Make that choice wisely!

My latest Getty sales report looked a little different than usual. A While back, through some sort of “glitch” Getty mistakenly included a few of my images in the Thinkstock collection (and I believe the images have since been removed). Some of those sales showed up last month and some again this month. Last month I kind of shrugged them off, but this month I decided to take a closer look.

What caught my eye was that a few of the images seemed to be doing quite well. One of my images sold 46 times out of Thinkstock, another sold 42 times, and a third image sold eleven times.  You know that whole thing about volume making up for lower sales prices? Well, here is a very small and very unscientific look at that proposition, because each of those above images were also still available as RF images on the Getty site giving me an opportunity to compare how they did at subscription prices on the Thinkstock site as opposed to how they did at “traditional” RF prices on the Getty site.

The first image, with 46 Thinkstock sales, netted me…are you ready…$18.40. The image sold as an RF image off of the Getty site four times for a total of $1,312.86.  Hmmm…I think I’ll take the RF! But what about the next image? That one, with 42 subscription sales brought in $16.80. It only sold twice on the Getty site, but brought in $31.20.  Again…I’ll take the RF. The third image sold 11 times at Thinkstock, bringing in $4.44. It sold twice as an RF image and brought in $155.26.

As I said, this is such a small sampling over such a short time period that drawing conclusions should only be done with the utmost caution.  However, it does reinforce my suspicions that I am better off with higher priced imagery. There is a price point at which the volume just does not make up for the low prices. That concerns me since there seems to be a movement of clients away from the higher priced sites, including microstock sites such as iStockphoto, and towards the less expensive agencies such as Shutterstock.

Whenever I peruse microstock sites I just can’t believe that some of those incredible images are available at such low prices. It is going to be very interesting to see how the industry does in the coming years. How are agencies (and photographers) going to succeed if they compete on price? The images I mentioned above each took hours of post-production work above and beyond the photography involved. I am just not seeing how subscription pricing would justify my work (though again, this is a miniscule sampling). I am hopeful (thought sometimes I wonder why) that agencies are going to figure this out and because I am producing consistently at as high a level of quality as I can, that I will do well as a result.

By the way, a few weeks ago a Blend Images Photographer had a sale, of an RF image, of $60,000.00. Of course, those little victories are more akin to winning the lottery than anything else, but it is important to realize that there are still clients out there who are willing to pay for the right image!

So is the answer for agencies to provide better searches, exclusive content or a better experience? I really don’t know, but I do know that my brief taste of the results of rock bottom pricing is a bitter one!

Ideas and Execution In Stock Photography

 

Ideas are fundamental for the success of stock photography, but they are secondary to the importance of action and execution.

 

The Most difficult Aspect of Stock Photography

The most difficult aspect of stock photography, for me, is coming up with ideas; Ideas that fit the parameters for my success. The ideas I am referring to need to be ones that I believe will sell multiple times, that either have a clear strong concept or stand out enough that they will doubtless draw attention.  I have to be convinced that the images will earn an amount appropriate for the resources that go into them. The most money I have ever spent on a stock photo shoot was $12,000.00, but that shoot has returned me over $50,000.00. If I am going to spend a lot of money on the execution of an idea then I need to be very convinced that it is a smart investment.

Ideas And Diversification

Ideas can be simple, quick and inexpensive, or complex and challenging to bring to fruition. I try and balance them out creating a mixture of RM and RF, of dramatic concepts and photos as simple portraits. Since I can never be totally sure of what will sell and what won’t, I diversify as much as possible. I like to have images in many categories from finance to travel to lifestyle…though I have to admit I don’t do enough of the lifestyle imagery.

The Importance of Execution

While the ideas are the most challenging aspect of my stock photography, execution is the most important. If you execute enough mediocre ideas you will earn money. If you don’t execute then even your very best ideas will earn nothing.

The Importance of Quality

Another important aspect of execution is in the quality of the imagery. Again, I have to admit that sometimes I fall down in that area. I tend to get in a rush and sometimes take short cuts in not spending enough money on props, wardrobe and locations. All too often I also fail to give the images enough time before submitting them…then a few days later I see some detail that could or should have been done better, but it is too late.  With so many images competing for attention it is vital to make sure your images are better than the ones they are competing with.  That is something I still need to improve upon.

The Formula For Success In Stock Photography

Lately I have been hearing from more photographers who are doing well with stock photography. What seems to be a consistent thread with these photographers is that they consistently produce imagery and do so with ideas of what the market needs in mind, and a clear understanding of what will sell. Ideas + Execution x Distribution is one formula for success in stock photography.