A Targeted Approach To Stock Photography

We stock shooters are facing some huge challenges, and things certainly aren’t as easy as they used to be. But opportunities still exist. To succeed we need to be targeted. We have to know our target audience, know how we can reach them, and know our unique strengths that make our work right for that market. There are a number of photographers and stock entities that we can turn to for inspiration.

I look at the work of Colin Anderson and can’t believe that he won’t continue to do well. He knows whom he wants to reach…the image buyers who recognize quality and have the money and willingness to pay appropriately for it. Colin is creating images that others without his creativity and DRIVE just can’t. He has learned how to use 3D and combine it with photography to create his unique vision.

Dan Heller takes an entirely different approach. He also knows whom he is trying to reach and how to do it, and is being rewarded for his work. Dan leverages his unique knowledge and insights into SEO, the Internet, and sound business practices to bring his images, and those who want them, together.

Blend Images is another inspiration. Blend has identified a niche, the celebration of ethnic diversity, and is not only serving that niche well, they are also providing their photographers with unmatched resources and a great community. Blend is thriving for its efforts.

On the Micro side you have the example of Yuri Arcurs who has the vision, work ethic, and organizational skills to become a stock photo powerhouse. Not everyone is suited to the kind of phenomenal output (while maintaining quality) that Yuri manages to accomplish, but Yuri has mastered it.

Tom Grill is a master at determining where the holes are in the stock agencies and then filling the holes with amazing efficiency. He understands and exploits the data from his sales reports in order to pinpoint exactly where he needs to put his energies in order to maximize his profit.

The point is that there are many different ways to succeed in stock photography. As individuals and companies we each have to know our own strengths, know who our market is, and figure out how to match our strengths to that market. We then must have the drive and perseverance to follow through on that effort. What are you best at? How can you distinguish your work from that of others? Who is the most suitable market for that work? How can you best distribute to that market? Answer those questions and the rest is just elbow grease and belief in your self.

Is it Still Viable To Make A Living In Stock Photography

As I was coming out of Whole Foods tonight with six small red potatoes and two salmon (farmed) filets, I ran into a young photographer whom I had first met about a week ago at a local photography event. He is familiar with my stock photo work and had a question for me. His question, “Is it still viable to get into stock photography?”

Simple question, and the simple answer is “yes”. But there is a huge caveat there! I used to encourage everyone I met to get into stock photography. I still think it is an awesome career choice, but now I have a very difficult time encouraging people to get into it. Earning a good living at stock photography is definitely harder now than it used to be. So what determines whether or not you will succeed at it?

I think you can boil it down to three factors; Desire, openness and perseverance. Let’s look at desire first. A few nights ago I was feeling pretty fed up with working. I calculated how many hours I put into work. Generally speaking, I average 73 hours a week. No wonder I was feeling fed up! That number even surprised me. I have been shooting stock since 1989 and shooting nothing but stock for at least seven years. And here I still am putting those kinds of hours in. Good thing I love doing the work. While I don’t necessarily believe that other people have to put the same number of hours in that I do, I do believe that it takes more hours than you would put in if you had a 9 to 5 job. You have to want to succeed in this business badly enough to put in the hours, and to do all the things that aren’t fun. Those un-fun things will be different things to different people. For me, bookkeeping, finding models and locations, entering metadata, and trouble shooting computers are part of what I would really prefer to not have to do. But do them I do.

Openness might be something that you haven’t thought of as a requirement for success in stock, but it is one of the most important qualities. You can get a lot further a lot faster in this business if you are open to hearing what others in the business have to say. It is a constant struggle for me to put aside my own beliefs and hear what art directors and creative directors have to say. What they have to say about what needs to be shot and how it needs to be shot. I have to be open to hearing what people have to say about my work and how to improve it. When Jack Hollingsworth and Shalom Ormsby both told me I should be blogging…I really didn’t want to do it. But I listened, and now I actually am enjoying it. It isn’t easy being open to all the changes going on in stock, but if you want to thrive and prosper, you have to.

Perhaps the most important quality of all is perseverance. This business takes time, and a lot of it. Not only does every aspect of it take time, but there will be discouragements too. As a matter of fact, I got one today…I got my Getty Sales report. Let’s not think about that right now. While time to market in many cases has increased exponentially, some agencies can still take months to get your images up, and additional months to collect and distribute royalties. With many of my RM images have seen sales take off after as much as two or in a couple of cases, three years before the first sale! Your going to have your work senselessly rejected, get ridiculously small sales, and experience insane income fluctuations, but you have to take it all in stride and stay focused on creating great work, relevant to the market, and working like crazy to get that work in front of those who need it.

There are many different ways to make it work. People succeed at Micro, at RM and at RR. They make money with stills and with video. Some produce volumes of work and others produce jewels. There is a way that will work for you if you have the desire, the openness, and the perseverance.

Landing On Your Feet In Tough Times

There are a couple of principles that I have built my photography business around, principles that just might help you land on your feet in tough times. Those principles are: Basing my business around income producing assets and multiple income streams. Long ago I made a conscious decision to focus on producing images that would bring in a continuing revenue stream. Later, when I got involved in the greeting card industry, I realized that it would also be a good idea to diversify my photography to generate a separate income stream.

For a time my income streams included assignments, stock and what is called paper products. Paper products covers products that have your photos imprinted on them and can range from coffee mugs and mouse pads to greeting cards and calendars. When creating my Animal Antics images, pets in anthropomorphic poses and situations, I have generally tried to keep the paper product rights myself. The idea is that I can get royalties from the distributors of products which can generate considerably more income than if the same images were licensed for a one time fee through a stock agency.

While I am still keeping the stock and paper products income streams going, I haven’t done an assignment in years. Now I am adding an additional income stream through advertising on my site. Right now that is in the form of Google click-through ads. Eventually it may include other advertising.

A lot of my fellow photographers question my wisdom on including advertising on my site, but I really think the potential of the advertising out weighs the relatively unobtrusive Google ads. I also believe, especially since I am not seeking assignment work, that if someone is looking to fill a particular image need, and they find a suitable image on my site, the advertising isn’t going to bother them. Time will tell.

Another venture I am currently undertaking is adding a video component to my stock (see video below). A side benefit from undertaking the video is learning new skills. While initially very reticent, I am now enjoying learning Final Cut Pro and am starting to think a little more in the way of motion. Another plus is my enjoyment of collaborating with others in undertaking video projects.

All of us photographers need to at least be aware of what alternate income streams might be available to us. Just taking a quick mental survey of photographers I personally know actually brings up quite a few possibilities. I know of one photographer who does quite well leading photo tours to exotic locations. Subsidized, income-producing stock sorties…not a bad gig if you can swing it! Another photographer I know supplements his income with weekend seminars in his field of expertise. Still others are offering online education.

Many additional income streams can be set up to be minimally intrusive on your time. Selling prints through a company like Imagekind, retail products through Cafepress or Zazzle, or even the aforementioned Google ads, are good examples. A word of caution though, doing a thorough job of setting up a program with a company like CafePress, or even Imagekind, does require a lot of upfront time.

A final word about finding supplemental income streams. My experience has been that any time I push myself beyond my normal zone of comfort it has been a positive experience. When you add up the benefits, additional income, insurance against market fluctuations, and acquiring new skills, well, the effort is bound to help you land on your feet!

Unexpected Revelations of Beauty and Grace

I have spent the last week learning Final Cut Pro and getting started editing some 500+ clips shot with the Phantom HD high-speed video camera. The camera can shoot 1000 frames a second at HD resolutions. The results can be truly mesmerizing. Thankfully, editing the clips for stock is relatively simple. Nonetheless, learning to use “four point garbage mattes”, 3-way color correction filters, and Time Lines has been a bit challenging. But all of it is worthwhile when I get to view a few seconds of unexpected beauty and grace. For one such moment check out the video at the bottom of this post.

The opportunity to shoot with the Phantom came about because over the years I have had a close working relationship with GVS systems, a Leading developer and manufacturer of ruggedized digital video recorders and media management for the aerospace, broadcast, defense, digital cinema, post production, and sports worlds. They needed a beta tester for an elegant solution they have come up with for the challenges of shooting with the Phantom. Their software/hardware solution (GVS9000 2XU 444 VTR) is capable of dealing with the huge quantities of data captured by the camera (32 gigabytes every 4 seconds) in a simple and efficient way.

This was demonstrated to me dramatically when I went on line and checked for alternate Phantom workflows. In one forum I read this:

Download the cine files to harddrive and use Gluetools (Mac) / Phantom Control Software (PC) to mov file in lower resolution workable format for offline. Once edit is locked use Iridas FrameCycler Pro / SpeedGrade HD to conform the edl with Cine files. Iridas products can access cine files directly. The other option is using Gluetools you can relink the offline files with Cine files and then directly export as DPX log frames (settings needs to be done in system preference based on various options and choice) and then take back to Color Grading and output your work to TV / Film.

Phew! I am reminded of what a novice I truly am…and how simple the world of stock clips is. With the GVS workflow we captured the scene, then were able to view the results within seconds at whatever frame rate we wanted. If we liked those results, we “clicked” on “capture” and the raw footage was converted to Pro Res QuickTime movies and saved to the hard drive on the fly, again in only a few seconds. Now I am editing those QuickTime movies in Final Cut pro.

The simple workflow allowed us to focus on coming up with and capturing what David Fischer, the photographer I was collaborating with, called the “unexpected revelation”. Over the coming weeks, I will combine learning Final Cut Pro with narrowing those 500 clips down to the fifty or sixty best. Those clips will then be submitted to stock agencies and go up on my site.

I am not sure yet how large a role video will play in my stock future. But this brief foray is proving alluring. I have enjoyed collaborating with other photographers in the shooting stage. Learning Final Cut, while a bit challenging, does feel good. I guess if I could shoot with that Phantom all the time it would be a no brainer. It feels more akin to the concept images I make in stills…and when we find one of those “revelations”, well, it just doesn’t get much better than that!

A Knock Your Socks Off Stock Photo

A Knock Your Socks Off Stock Photo

It is always exciting for me when I come up with an image idea that doesn’t seem to have been done before, and that is relevant to the market. I no longer remember when I first had the idea to create a “Knock your socks off” image, but the idea was rekindled when my girlfriend, Stephanie, was showing me how she could flex her toes. I checked on Getty and Corbis and didn’t see any similar imagery. This is potentially a really great stock image. It is a concept stock photo that can be applied to any product or service, or even to something as generic as a sale. The image has humor going for it. Funny pictures can be powerful attention grabbers. The photo is simple, a quick read, and has an “iconic” place in our culture. Another side benefit of an image like this one is the relative inexpensive nature of creating it.

The big decision for me was whether to have a “dust” cloud showing to emphasize that the socks are being “blown” off of the feet. There was also some question as to whether the toes should be articulated so much. Ultimately I decided that the dust clouds would help make the message more obvious, and that the articulated toes added to the humor.

The shoot was simple; I had Stephanie sit on the edge of a table and flex her toes. I lit her feet with a beauty dish above the camera and a soft box behind and on either side. I used Profoto 7B flash units. I filled a pair of socks with bubble wrap and positioned them on a light stand. I used the same lighting set-up as with Stephanie’s feet, and fired off a few frames. To create the dust cloud I used some face powder that had been left in my studio at some point. I created a pile of it on a piece of white foam core, then sprayed the pile with canned air with one hand while shooting with a Canon 1ds MKIII in the other. Not really a recommended technique, but it worked. Of course, my studio smelled like face powder for a week!

I used the pen tool to create clipping paths around both the feet and socks, then converted the paths into selections. I created a new “canvas”, then pasted the feet into place. Next I brought in the socks and sized and positioned them. I brought in two of the dust shots and created layer masks to fade them away into the background. I then duplicated the feet layers and dragged those new layers to the top. The next step was to create layer masks to hide the new feet layers, then I used white “paint’ with the airbrush to create the illusion that the feet were showing through the dust clouds.

All in all, it only took a few hours to put the photograph together. The final question is whether the image should be a Rights Managed image, or a Royalty Free one. I finally decided that I would stick with RM on this one. An image like this one will probably do equally well in either model, but my ego tends towards Rights Managed, and that’s how this “blow your socks” off image ended up.

Service As A Guide To Stock Photo Success

If I had to use one word to describe my strategy for success in the stock photo world it would be service. Service isn’t necessarily a word that you might associate with success in stock photography, but hopefully I can present a convincing case for it. Business Gurus often say that service paves the road to riches. I think it is true. Let me explain.

Service as a stock photographer reveals itself in several ways. As an example let’s look at an experience I had yesterday. A doctor on the east coast emailed me asking if she could use one of my photos in a power point presentation. The image was of a patient and doctor consulting in a recovery room…with an elephant standing in the background. The doctor is presenting to a group of her peers. It is very important to her to give a powerful, interesting and effective presentation.

The first way that I was in service to this doctor was by creating an image that goes beyond your normal everyday image. The photograph is not just out of the ordinary, but it is also relevant with a quick, clear message. When you create images that stand out from the crowd, have a strong message and are needed in the marketplace, you are in service to your clients.

But how can you take that service even further? By making it as easy and efficient as possible for potential clients to find your images. When the doctor was looking for an image, she typed into Google “elephant in the recovery room”. I just did the same thing to check and see how quickly that image would show up. My image came up first on the Google search. Now that is service! As they say, time is money. If you can save a client time and effort your images can command a higher price point, and if it takes too long to find that image it dosen’t matter what price you charge, you aren’t going to make that sale (yes, I know, we license the images rather than sell them).

I believe in agencies; they do have the “eyeballs”, the traffic if you will. But I also believe in supplementing those agencies by putting your images online and making them easy for people to find. In the above example the doctor contacted me because the image in question has not yet been accepted by an agency. Once it is with an agency collection, my site will direct people interested in licensing it to that agency. BTW, the “elephant in the recovery room” image was submitted to Getty two weeks ago but has not yet been edited (accepted or rejected). Another "aside", I am the patient in that image:).

Being in service to your stock photo clients means getting your images up online with a search capability, great key wording and a large enough image for a client to easily see details and quality. It also means serious SEO (search engine optimization). Without the SEO component, all that work you put into creating great images might go to waste.

Service is rewarded. Keeping in mind how you can be of service to your clients will keep you on the right path. Service to your fellow photographers will also find its reward. You can’t always tell how or in what form that reward will come, but I have seen it happen too often to not understand the truth of it.

Creating A Social Media Stock Photo

Social media and social networking are huge topics right now and there is a need for images representing them. They are also, in my opinion, difficult to create images for. That is a good thing. If I am correct it means there will be inherently less competition for the images that I come up with. In this environment of image over supply that is a critical criteria for me.

I don’t remember exactly what sparked this latest idea, but it was centered on the intention of coming up with those “social media” themes. Oh, I do remember! It was those “flickr photo clouds” that Getty is promoting. I thought, geez, I should do my own photo clouds. Somehow, when I see Getty, with whom I have such a large image investment, promoting their flickr collection so prominently, I tend to feel a tad anxious and resentful. The trick is to channel that hit of energy into creativity and productivity. Then it occurred to me that I could have a “photo” cloud around a person’s head indicating their “connections” on social media sites. The image could also work for networking, business connections, even communications in general.

I got pretty excited. Over the last few years I have shot plenty of images of people that I can pull the “cloud images” from. I browsed through some of my recent shoots to see if I could find a “base” image, one with a model in a situation and pose that would work. I needed an image with a fairly plain background. With all those smaller images floating around, the picture could get too busy very quickly. It is important that an image remain simple enough to be a quick read at thumbnail size, since virtually all images are first seen by prospective licensors as thumbnails. The photo should be a positive image with the primary model looking happy and confident. If the model was in a business environment it might help broaden the potential market for the image, expanding it into the realm of business networking.

It didn’t take long to find what seemed like the right image to work with. From an office shoot I did a little over a year ago, I came across an unused out take that in no way was a similar to any accepted shots. Once I had that image I just started looking through the numerous shoots that were readily available on my archive drives. Every time I found a likely shot for the cloud I just opened it, copied the portion I wanted, then pasted it into the base image.

It only took me a couple of hours and my image was done. Sort of. I sent the composite to my editor at Blend Images. He loved it. Hmmm, now the realization sets in. With so many pictures around the model's head, and some of them groups, I am going to have to come up with over a hundred model releases stretching back over five years! I wouldn’t be surprised if it took me two days to accomplish it! Well, guess I better quit blogging and get down to tracking down those releases!