Getty, Image Search and Participation

 

 For stock photographers image search is critical, and participation in communicating with our agencies is a vital part of every stock shooter's business.

Image Migration And Falling Stock Photo Income

For a while now Getty has been migrating a massive number of iStockphoto images onto their site. It isn’t unusual to do a search and get page after page of nothing but E+ images. I find this rather disconcerting, and it possibly explains the fact that virtually every Getty stock shooter I know has seen dramatic drops in their income during the last two months.

Forums, Complaints, And Strong Emotions

Over in the iStockphoto.com site the forums have been abuzz with complaints from the micro guys and gals that are unhappy with…well…pretty much everything. It’s interesting that while we traditional shooters are unhappy with the low prices of the micro images being uploaded to the Getty site, not to mention the number of them, the microstock shooters are unhappy with high priced images being migrated to their site. They are not afraid to express their STRONG emotions about everything from site functions to royalty rates. Heck, administrators have even been pleading with the members to pull it back a bit: http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=349591&page=1.

What Keeps Me Up At Night

I believe it is inevitable that all the major stock photo sites will have a complete range of stock products available from subscription to Rights Managed. I am hopeful that I can create imagery that is good enough that it can successfully compete with all the other images out there. What really keeps me up at night is the idea that my images won’t get seen. And right now, on the Getty site, it sure seems headed in that direction. I hope it is some kind of ingestion glitch, but glitch or not, I can’t believe it isn’t having a deleterious effect on my sales at least at this time.

The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Grease

Getting back to all those E+ images going up on the Getty site. That huge influx of imagery onto the Getty site is probably happening at least in part because the iStockphoto shooters are not shy about expressing their opinions.  On the other side, we Traditional shooters are a tame bunch. The squeaking wheel gets the grease…and us silent types are getting left out of the search. Time to speak up. By the way, I have been with Getty since the beginning, and have never known them to penalize any one for expressing their opinions no matter how adversarial in nature.

A Fare Shake In Image Search

Frankly, we traditional shooters do have value. Our imagery doesn’t look the same as the mass-produced imagery that is the current hallmark of the really successful micro shooters.  The stock industry needs those of us who contribute images that don’t look like micro, but they need to be reminded of that. If Getty owes us anything it is a fare shake in image search…something we aren’t getting at the moment.

Participation Is Critical

I have been as guilty as anyone in staying too quiet, but participation is becoming rather critical. Whether you are with Getty, Corbis, Masterfile or any other stock agency it is important to stay informed and involved. Don’t worry about whether your voice can make a difference; just make your voice heard. In fact, making your voice heard is doing the agencies, and all of us in the stock industry, a favor.  The more honest input the powers that be have access to, the better decisions they can make.

Long And Arduous And Worth It

This process of making the web work for your stock photography business can be a long and arduous one. I started my serious efforts eight months ago, and while I have seen results, they aren’t as impressive as I hoped for. But I am not discouraged, far from it. I am more convinced than ever that a strong presence on the Internet is going to be increasingly beneficial and important to all stock shooters.

My goal is to be getting 10,000 to 20,000 visitors a day to my site. Right now I am averaging a tad over 300 a day. That is up from one visitor a week eight months ago, but obviously I have a long, long way to go. But even with just 300 a day I am seeing a benefit. Today I was contacted by an Agency in New Zealand about licensing an image they found on my site. I asked them how they happened to find me. They told me they had searched Getty and Corbis and the “usual places” but couldn’t find the image they wanted. They then did a Google search and found my image.

Since virtually all of my images are handled by various agencies, most of those who find something they are looking for on my site are sent on to the respective agency handling that image, and I don’t know if they make a purchase or not. But I do see that every day numerous visitors do go to an image page and then on to Blend Images, Getty, Corbis, and Kimball Stock. I don’t know what percentage of these visitors’ license stock photos, but some do, and as my traffic increases so will those sales.

As I mentioned, success on the Internet, for me, is proving to be not just long, but arduous as well. The process of uploading my images, along with the metadata entry, is agonizing for me. In each of the arenas I am attempting to incorporate there is a ton of work to do. I am way behind in tagging and key wording the images I have on ImageKind. My CafePress site requires mountains of work before it will be ready for prime time. My efforts with Flickr at this point are pathetic and my own site is rife with mistakes, misspellings, inadequate key wording and lack of images…and what I really want to be doing is making images! But I firmly believe that in the long run getting my images seen is at least as important as making new ones.

Getty has instituted “stacks” in their search. The result is that while overall the bulk of my images will be seen more readily, some images will be buried much deeper. What can I do about that? I can get more eyeballs on my images through my Internet presence. I can do that by getting all of my images up online, making sure that they are key worded well, and that my site is filled with well-organized quality content. I am attempting to add quality content by writing articles, interviewing important people in our industry, and sharing my experiences in this blog.

Art Directors, Editors and Stock

Art Directors, Editors and Stock

A woman and a barrel

About a month ago I submitted a stock photo of a woman wearing nothing but a barrel, a modern take-off of an old image for having lost everything, to Getty Images.
They turned it down because they didn’t think it would sell. OK, I next sent the image to Corbis. They turned it down because it was “an old idea”. A few minutes ago I was in the grocery store and there, on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine, was a shot of several movie stars wearing nothing but barrels.

Photographer’s Choice…an option at a price

Whether or not my image will sell will be eventually answered because when Corbis turned the shot down I re-submitted it to Getty as a “Photographer’s Choice” submission. Getty, in response to numerous complaints over a protracted period of time by their photographers, came up with Photographer’s Choice brand. It is a program in which an image can only be rejected for technical reasons (though “sisters” are not allowed either). Of course, the photographer then has to pay a fee to have the image put into the system.

What is the value of an editor or art director?

This all brings up a couple of questions. First, what is the value of an editor or art director, and what recourse do we have if we believe an editor to be mistaken? I know that in my own case it does seem to be a conundrum. I have certainly have had the experience of having an art director offer criticism and art direction that has enhanced my images, sometimes by a huge margin. Editors have given me some awesome ideas as well. I have also had them make changes that I believe were actually to the detriment of a given image. Then there are the editing choices. I am sure that any photographer who actively submits images to stock agencies has had the experience of bewilderment in reaction to photos that editors have rejected.

Among my favorites: An image turned down by Getty was then used as a catalog cover for The Stock Market and the first sale was for $17,000.00. Another image turned down by Getty was used by The Stock Market to represent the agency in trade shows. An image turned down by Corbis has generated $2,000.00+ in the six months it has been for sale on the Getty site! An image of a young girl dressed as an astronaut, turned down by both Getty and Corbis, and then put into Getty’s Photographer’s Choice program, is my fifth best selling stock photo for 2008! I could go on and on with examples of images being rejected by one agent and taken by another; and examples of rejected images that eventually get placed and subsequently earn excellent revenue.

Now I no longer have an editor at Getty. Instead I submit via their portal and I never know which individual will be doing the editing. I love their portal, I don’t miss the art direction, and I occasionally wish there was someone I could turn to at Getty to bounce ideas off of, get feedback from, and help me decide wither an image belongs in RM or RF. I also know that their choices sometimes make me crazy! At least Getty has that Photographer’s Choice mechanism to provide some remedy for the stock images that I believe strongly about. BTW, virtually every photographer I know who participates in Photographer’s Choice tells me that they earn more per image with PC than with the regular brands. I don’t know if everyone is being truthful, but that is what I am hearing!

Optimization for distribution and licensing

Now in Micro stock, if you are not “exclusive”, you can always submit the images to another agency. For me though, since I do not participate in Micro, I now have a new option, adding rejected images that I believe in to my own web site. It is yet another way in which having a web site can pay off. I recently read that over half of all art directors are willing to search individual photographer’s sites for stock images. I’ll bet that percentage just keeps going up as Art Directors get more and more tired of the same old images and photographers get smarter and smarter about optimizing their sites for distribution and licensing over the net.

Getting back to art directors and editors. There is no doubt that they provide a valuable service; and equally in doubt is that due to the subjective and arbitrary nature of photography, they are not always right. In those cases where you can actually correspond with an editor, fight for the images you believe in. I find that in those cases I usually prevail about half the time. In those cases where you don't have that opportunity to correspond, send that image to another outlet or put it up on your own site. If you believe in your image someone else well too; you just have to get that image in front of those other believers!