Photography And Dealing With Change

Sometimes the best way to deal with change is to take a deep breath and relax.

The Only Constant Is Change

I had an epiphany last night. It relates to that old adage “the only constant is change”. I have been feeling relieved lately that most of the change facing the photography industry, and the stock photo industry in particular, is behind us. My epiphany, however, is that most of the change is still ahead of us, and will be coming at an ever faster pace! Yikes!

New Cameras, iPhone photos, And Copyright Issues

In just the last month some stock agencies are starting to take iPhone photos, Canon and Nikon have each announced new cameras with ISO ratings of 200,000+, and Le Corbusier, the French furniture company, has won a lawsuit claiming that use of their products in stock photos is a copyright violation. Geez. The change affecting our industry is coming from all directions!

A Strategy To Deal With Change

Whether it is real or perceived, the need to keep up with rapidly proliferating social media developments, technology advancements in both stills and motion, the endless struggle with copyright issues on and offline, the ever increasing influx of imagery, as well as all the other coming changes that I cannot even imagine, is threatening to overwhelm me! The realization that such an onslaught is not going to abate, but rather accelerate, makes me realize that I need some sort of strategy to deal with all this change. Trying blindly to keep up with it isn’t working and is actually cutting into my productiveness, and more importantly, my satisfaction with life!

Google + And Flailing

When I first took up rock climbing (indoors only…I am actually a bit of a coward), my instructor-and girl friend, Stephanie, lovingly demonstrated what I looked like during my climb. She called it flailing. Thrashing wildly about is what it looked like to me. That is how I started to feel last night trying to figure out Google +. I added 500 photographers to my circle, I think. I dunno…but I do know I was flailing! It wasn’t pretty, and flailing is never good.

Less Can Be More

When it comes to dealing with change less can often be more. For example, rather than diving full-bore into social media efforts, and possibly getting sucked into a bottomless pool of plus ones, likes and links, something that can easily consume all the hours I have in a day, I am better off just dipping a toe in the water and watching the relentless current swirl around me without having to thrash wildly about. Most of those hours will be far better spent making cool images and enjoying my life.  That seems to me pretty much true of all these changes. It seems to me that it is better to embrace change with caution rather than abandon.

A New Mantra

So my new strategy for dealing with change is simply a mantra: No flailing! When that anxiousness starts to well up, I will just remind myself to keep enjoying the moment and remember not to flail!

Photos For Blogs, Student Use And Photo Products

This funny cat sitting on a bed wearing slippers is now available for personal use licenses.

Creating Photography Revenue Through The Internet

In my endless effort to create additional photography revenue through the Internet I have taken another step. I have created a limited gallery of images on Photoshelter to take advantage of their “Personal Use Licenses” and photo imprinted products. I am using my Animal Antics collection of funny pet pictures, and only ones that are not currently handled by stock agencies. My initial gallery can be viewed here.

SEO For Photographers

Photoshelter does an admirable job of conveying information about SEO and other topics important to photographers. But I am not expecting Photoshelter to bring in much traffic. I suspect that search engines such as Google see them as a “content farm” and therefore do not rank them highly in image searches. I could be wrong, and as much as I have learned about search engine optimization over the last three years, I still don’t comprehend the whole process of how Google and others determine the search engine results. I don’t believe anyone outside of the search engine companies really know all of the ins and outs of ranking highly for web or image searches.

Photos For Blogs, Student Work And Photo Imprinted Products

My plan is to use the traffic I generate from my own site and offer those who find the images concerned (my Photoshelter collection) the opportunity for personal use such as non-commercial blogs and websites, student uses and so forth as well as photo imprinted products, by providing links to the Photoshelter collection. The solution isn’t terribly elegant, but it is better than nothing at all…a lot better! It is also important that I have the system work without my being involved. I get quite a few emails from students and others who wish to use my images for a variety of purposes that do not justify enough of a licensing fee to even pay for my time to read the emails!  Hopefully this can relieve me of some of that problem while still generating additional income.

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

Since I am paying something like $29.00 a month for the Photoshelter account I view this as a one-year $350.00 experiment. Actually, just putting up the images takes up more of my time than $350.00 would pay for…by a considerable amount. But as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained! Hopefully that money (and time) will be rewarded sufficiently by a combination of personal use licenses and products including mouse pads (with cat pictures), coffee mugs decorated with silly dog photos, and t-Shirts for animal lovers. We will see. I might add that this effort is supplemental to my ongoing CafePress.com experiment which also offers funny cat and dog pictures on a wide variety of gifts and photo-imprinted products.

Funny Animal Pictures For Advertising, Editorial And Personal Uses

I have started with 30 funny animal pictures; cats, dogs and other animals in human-poses and situations virtually all of which were created originally for greeting card use, but that can also be used for advertising and editorial purposes. I would love to see stock agencies offer personal use licenses as well. Perhaps some do and I am just not aware of it. Microstock agencies perhaps? However, with these images, because I have an exclusive contract with one greeting card company, I cannot offer them in the Royalty Free and Microstock venues, they have to be Rights Managed stock photos.

The New Cameras...The Coming Thing, or Dinosaurs?

What will the future of high-end digital cameras look like?


The following is a forum post by Lanny Ziering, CEO of SuperStock and a stock photographer himself. Lanny brings an interesting perspective on the new crop of digital cameras....

I've been following the discussions about the new Nikon D4 and Fuji X-Pro-1 with great interest. There are so many new, appealing cameras that have been announced: Canon 1Dx, Panasonic GX1, Sony NEX-7, and, of course, the Nikon D4 and Fuji X-Pro-1. It got me thinking. What are all these cameras telling us about where photography and cameras are headed? What will the top-of-the-line professional camera look like 3-5 years from now?

The Nikon D4 or Canon 1Dx are undeniably the state of the art in tools for professional photographers. But, I can't help but feel they are the camera of today and not the camera of tomorrow. They remind me of a Porsche Panamera Turbo S, which in my book is the most amazing, state of the art sedan made today. But, in all honesty, that Porsche tells us more about the cars of yesterday than tomorrow. On the other hand, there is the Toyota Prius. Ugly, boring to drive, but the Prius tells us a lot more about where automobiles are headed than the Panamera. That said, I've driven the Prius and hate it. I've driven a Panamera and loved it. But truth be told, the Panamera is a dinosaur.

I think that Nikon D4 is like that Panamera Turbo S--a dinosaur. So what is the Prius of cameras? The new Fuji? The new Panasonic? All interesting cameras, but I think the model of the camera of the future is the Sony NEX-7. I'm not crazy. I realize there is no comparison between a Nikon D4 and a Sony NEX-7 as a professional tool. But it is hard to believe that high-end professional cameras 3-5 years from now will continue to have mirrors and prisms. I also think mechanical shutters will be phased out over the next 3-5 years. Mirrors, prisms, and shutters add bulk, weight, noise, vibration, and complexity and all in the name of solving yesterday's problems. The Sony NEX-7 is the first camera to move substantially in the direction of the future. I think its form and feature set are the prototype of what is to come. It has no mirror, no prism, and the first curtain of the shutter is not needed to begin the exposure. It has a viewfinder that probably gives a more accurate representation of what the final image will look like than anything you can see on ground glass sitting inside a mirror/prism box. The NEX-7 body weighs 353 grams versus the Nikon weighing 1340 grams. Even a plastic digital Canon Rebel body weighs 570 grams.

Like the Red One was totally disruptive to video cameras, the Sony NEX-7--or probably the camera that Sony introduces in the next year or two to replace it--will be as disruptive as the Red. An interesting questions is whether Nikon and Canon will effectively make the switch away from mirrors, prisms, and mechanical shutters. Neither has a serious mirrorless offering yet for enthusiasts, let alone pros. It will be interesting to watch.

Just wanted to share my thoughts.

Lanny Ziering
Lanny@SuperStock.com
SuperStock

Busines Is Great!

Photography businesses, like most businesses are marathons and succeed as a result of the continuous execution numerous, and endless, small tasks.

How Is Business?

People often ask me, as small talk of course, how business is, or if I am staying busy. As a self-employed person I am as busy as I want to be. As someone trying to maintain a successful photography career there is no shortage of work to do! As for how business is, its great! I am certainly not making as much as I was a couple of years ago, but my income appears to be stable and I still believe there is ample opportunity for growth.

The Photography Business Is A Marathon

Achieving growth in a photography business, at least in my photography business isn’t easy. But I keep in mind that my business is a marathon, not a sprint. I need to be the tortoise, not the hare! My goal this year is to do everything just a little bit better. Learn a bit more about social media (especially Google+ and possibly Tumblr), keep adding content to Cafepress.com, adding content to Imagekind.com, adding content to my website, blogging, and most importantly, creating a wide variety of stock imagery. Ultimately, everything is important and doubly so now when competition in the photography industry has reached such astounding proportions!

Forecasting Winners

As I mentioned, this business is a marathon. A lot of those things that I want to do a little bit better are things that may take years to provide a reasonable payoff, and I understand and accept that many things I do may never pay off. But just like with stock photos, some will payoff, some won’t, and it is very hard to forecast which ones will be the winners. It is helpful to remember that there are photographers (and others) who are employing pretty much all of these processes successfully, whether it is selling fine art prints online, successfully employing social media to attract new clients, or earning significant revenue through online ads.

Increasing Visibility

I do believe that core to the future of my business is building traffic to my site. As I increase the visibility of my images I increase my revenue from all of my sources…and from sources I have yet to begin participating in. With an increase in visibility and traffic more people license my stock photos, more people buy greeting cards and other photo imprinted merchandise, more people buy fine art prints, and more people click on Google ads. I make more revenue from more sources.

Business Is Great

So, like a tortoise in the fabled race with the hare, I plug along testing the social media waters, adding new sources of revenue, improving and refining my business activities and work flow, making stock photos, and possibly most important of all, enjoying my business. How is business? Business is great!

Weird Stock Photos That Sell!

Weird Stock Photos That Sell
I thought it might be fun to look at some really weird stock photos that actually sell reasonably well. Fairly often I come up with stock photo ideas that, after execution, actually strike me as weird, ill conceived, or just plain dumb. Yet some of these less than stellar images actually end up selling. In this blog post we will look at three such examples of weird stock photos that have sold multiple times resulting in over a thousand dollars in royalties each into my hot little hands.  I will speculate on why these images are selling, as well as delve into what made me create the image in the first place.

A super hero costumed model standing on a conference table in an office in Bangkok has actually sold quite well!

A Super Hero, A Tight Crop, And Eighteen-hundred dollars
At a photo shoot in Bangkok I somehow got the idea of having one of the models dress up in a superhero outfit. I shot the model standing on a conference table cropping at mid thigh. I shot that crop as a alternative to the full length shot of the model because the full length version just wasn't working for me. The upward angle seemed to severe and the ceiling didn't make for a great background. I hesitated to send this image in because I couldn't for the life of me figure out what anybody would use it for! Lo and behold, in the last three years the image has been licensed over ten  times for a total (to me) of over eighteen-hundred dollars. Go figure!

 

In impromptu pose results in a new perspective and a stock photo that sells well.

 

A New Perspective And Thinking Outside The Box
My friend Paula Zacharias and I were photographing models in Buenos Aires. We had completed all the usual stuff, people in meetings, at outdoor cafes, using cell phones, you get the idea. I don't recall why I asked them to undertake this pose, and to this day I can't figure out what people use it for, but it has brought in over a thousand dollars in the last three years. Perhaps it is being used to advocate a new perspective, thinking outside the box, or maybe it is advertising a product that makes business less arduous. Hey, if any of you ever see it used let me know!

Clouds form the shape of a hand point a finger in an unusual stock photo that can be used for concepts such as cloud computing or religion issues.


Cloud Computing Or A Message From God?
I think I saved the best for last. Yes, I am a little embarrassed that i created this odd image, but hey, it sells! For what? Again, I just don't know. Perhaps it points to cloud computing, or has some sort of use in the realm of religion. What ever it is used for, I just can't put my finger on. But sell it does and has also earned me over a thousand dollars in the last several years. Perhaps the message here is that it isn't a bad idea, when shooting stock photos, to stretch into the realm of the silly, the oddball or even the outright weird. In the long run a little bit of "coloring outside the lines" can really pay off!

Advice to Photographers From Industry Leaders

 Eleven photographers and industry luminaries offer advice for photographers in the upcoming year.

I hire fun people.  It has to be fun.  If it’s not fun, I can’t do it.  I do get nervous and that’s not fun.  The work usually suffers for it though, so if I feel the nerves coming on I over prepare. Then, it all works out OK. 
 Annabelle Breakey Interview  (Photographer)


The popular advice tells us to choose one thing and to do it well and to do it for the rest of your career. Come on folks. Most of you came into this business wanting to make pictures of a wide variety of subjects. Yet photographers choose to do this OR that. I believe it is time to do this AND that AND that AND…  To manifest love by encompassing and manifesting your many passions.
Ian Summers Interview (Creative Consultant)


“Doom and gloom” have been words used to describe our industry for the longest times. And every creative field echoes the same sentiment. We have been and still are a huge financial industry in all areas of photography and we will continue. I believe that photography, as an art form, will never die. As technology advances in our industry, new opportunities are being created. More people enjoy photography and more institutions display photography. As for all creative fields, it is a difficult road, but we should be optimistic that we are in such a great profession. Our artists should remain enthusiastic and optimistic because they are doing what they love, which to is the essence of life
Jerry Tavin Interview (Founder, Young Photographers Alliance)


After all these years, the most precious thing we own is the potential that at any moment something incredible might happen.  It’s the potential that drives the bus. Thomas Edison said everything he ever found he found while he was looking for something else.  Stay alert.  It’ll be fun.  You’ll see.
Walter Hodges Interview (Photographer)

There are a lot of shooters cranking out quantity and sites are increasingly seeking to get out from under this inundation of content. It is not good for customers, or agencies, to be hosed down with endless images of a high-production but low-creativity nature. And while ‘more unique images’ appeals to the creative in me, if your few gems are hard to find or positioned out-of-place then they will not sell and you will starve. So you need to know your market and get better exposure than the competition. 
Lewis Blackwell Interview (Director of Strategy, Image Source)

To me, there is no better way to get ideas on style, body language and trends than to sit at the mall and people watch. Authenticity is king at your local mall! You can observe the body language of people using their hand held devices, what people are wearing and how they are wearing it.  Are you doing a shoot involving teens? - hang out by the food court. Are you having trouble picking wardrobe? - hang out by the banana republic. Are you doing a baby boomer fitness shoot? - go early and check out the mall walkers. Are you doing a mother / child shoot?- hang out by baby gap. 
Jim Doherty Interview, (Senior Art Director, Blend Images)


The thing that makes the best stock photos in my mind is a connection between the subject and viewer, easy read, and clear concept. People aren’t just smiling in front of the camera but they are living in front of the camera and the photographer is just documenting that. It is not as easy as it sounds though. A stock photographer needs to be able to look at the scene they are shooting and ask themselves “What is the point? What is the Moment to capture in this set up?”
Siri Berting Interview  (Photographer)

Keep your photos fresh, if you don’t have assignment work, work on personal projects.
Jessica Mirolla Interview (Freelance Art Buyer)


I had burned out of managing disinterested parties on photo shoots for production outlays that were taking longer than I felt was wise to break even.  I found that I could not cut costs further and still forecast an adequate income; nor could I maintain a happy and healthy lifestyle as I squeezed the expenses whilst raising my crews’ stress to unnecessary levels. I chose to stop, take profit on my royalties, and change what I was doing.
Shannof Fagan Interview (Photographer)


It is very hard to speculate where tomorrows stock industry will be showing it's strongest returns so staying involved and on top of our research for all the models of stock is a daily investment of our time.
Jonathan Ross Interview  (Photographer, Founder of Spaces Images)

I believe we, in the future, will see buyers getting bored by the microstock look. And this will probably make personal branding more important, if not necessary, if you want to succeed in the industry.
Yuri Arcurs Interview (Photographer)

What Has Social Media Done For Me?

 A woman pauses to examine her world of social media, a sphere of portraits ranging from friends and family to business associates.

Checking My Facebook Page

This morning I began checking my Facebook page to see what was new and I realized that at least 80% of the posts were by people who I didn’t even know. I have the habit of saying yes to whomever sends a friend request. Now I have posts in Russian, Dutch, Thai, Spanish and languages that I can’t even guess at. Posts from close friends, people I barely know, and people that I don’t know at all.

Feeling A Little Left Out

I have mentioned before that when I peruse Facebook I sometimes start feeling a little left out…though oddly enough the things I feel left out of are things I am not really very interested in anyway. What does that say about me?

Keeping Up On Cool Images

For me Facebook seems to be primarily a way to keep up to date on the cool images that Colin Anderson makes…which of course makes me wonder why I don’t come up with cool images (okay…I do come up with some cool images…but certainly not with the style and romance of Colin’s work). My friend Shalom Ormsby shares his benevolent perspectives on life, Shannon Fagan shares his humorous adventures in China, David Sanger (and many others) share their cool iPhone pix (hey, how come my iPhone pix don’t look cool?), and everyday is somebody’s birthday…which since I only check every couple of days I am usually just finding out I missed someone’s birthday.

Two Thousand Followers And Irrelevant Tweets

Then there is twitter.  I have over 2,600 followers, hardly any of which I suspect ever see the once-a-week tweets that I make. I follow over two thousand twitterers (is that what they are called?), and how can you possibly stay on top of all those tweets? I sure can’t…and most of the tweets are totally irrelevant to me.  Once-in-a-while I do hang in there, scrolling down all those tweets till I find one that looks like it may lead to something interesting…though most the time what they lead to turns out to be something written by someone for whom English is their second, or third, language.

Goolge +, Klout and Linked In

I have a Google + account too. I visit that religiously…ever few weeks. I have no idea what do with it except make circles…but I already go round and round enough already! Klout sends me emails to let me know how influential I am…but I have no idea what the scores mean. I get requests everyday to link to people on Linked In, though mostly they are people I don’t know. I think I read somewhere that you actually are supposed to know the people you link to…of course, I say yes anyway because it seems like the polite thing to do.

Spam, YouTube and Vimeo

The first thing I do every morning is throw away the fifty-odd spam emails I get during the night, the ones my spam filter doesn’t catch. I have three email accounts two of which I haven’t looked at in months. YouTube comments on my video channel of mostly slow motion videos go to one of those accounts…last time I looked at it I just felt overwhelmed…and haven’t gone back since.  That reminds me…I started to put some stuff up on Vimeo, but never followed up with a second submission. Oh Well.

What Has Social Media Done For Me?

What has social media done for me? Well, if nothing else, it gives me something to do while I eat breakfast, something to do every few minutes at work, something to do while I watch TV in the evenings, and something to blog about!