Wrestling With A Stock Photo Strategy

Sumo Wrestlers and Trapeze Artists
A good example of the approach I am currently taking to my stock photography can be seen in a recent shoot based around a Sumo wrestler. The idea originated from a shoot I did a few years ago. I had photographed flying trapeze artists to illustrate concepts such as teamwork, risk and skill. During the process of digitally compositing the trapeze picture it occurred to me that one trapeze artist about to catch another very heavy, overweight trapeze artist could be both humorous and effective in illustrating “the impossible”, risk, and the need for assistance.

Large and Proud, Funny and Compelling
Thing was, I was too embarrassed to ask an extremely overweight person to model for the shot. I even wondered if such a photograph would be insensitive or demeaning to people with weight problems. I don’t remember exactly what triggered the idea of using a Sumo wrestler, but as soon as the idea hit me I knew I had to do it. Sumo wrestlers are both the epitome of large, and are proud of their size. That solved all of my above concerns. Using a sumo wrestler would also emphasize the size difference and make the image all that much more funny and compelling.

An Imposing Force and A Kitten
My producer contacted a sumo wrestling association and we secured the services of a three hundred pound plus Sumo Wrestler named Americus. A very imposing fellow, but also very nice and enthusiastic about our photo shoot, though we did have to clear our shot list with the director of the association. The principle image was the trapeze one, but we filled out the list with ideas such as the wrestler as an imposing force, about to wrestle a small business man, holding up a small kitten, walking a tightrope and a number of other conceptual ideas.

A Day To Shoot, Ten Days To Image
The photography took a day to shoot and I spent the next ten days or so putting the digital composites together. Eventually I got bored and moved onto other projects. I still have more scenarios to complete with the sumo wrestler but they involve additional location photography. Someday I’ll get around to them.

Blend Images And A Rights Managed Collection
In the mean time I placed the images with Blend Images, a stock photo agency (in the interest of full disclosure…I am one of the founders of Blend) specializing in the celebration of ethnically diverse business, lifestyle and conceptual images. The sumo stock images are part of Blend’s new Non-exclusive Rights Managed stock photo collection, though a couple of images were deemed more appropriate the royalty free collections.

This shoot embodies a lot of my stock strategies. The images are primarily for Rights Managed collections, I base a shoot around a strong concept and add to the shot list as many related concept images as I reasonably can, and I try and find the best possible distribution for the images.

Stock Photography And the Timeless Image

I came up with what I thought was a great idea, a kind of positive spin on the old half-full, half empty glass theme. My idea was for a photograph of a hand holding up a glass with a rainbow in the background creating the illusion that the rainbow was pouring into the glass. A timeless concept stock photo illustrating success, optimism, positive thinking, and the way forward.

The image went up on Getty. They accepted it into their Stone collection. Good start. I waited for the checks to start rolling in. Nothing. I waited six months and finally a sale!
My share came out to $80.00. Then, a short nine months later, another sale, this one for $63.00.

In the nineteen years that I have been seriously producing stock I have learned, if nothing else, that I can’t really predict what images will be best sellers. I do know that of my concept images only a handful have failed to sell to at least some extent. Another thing I have learned is that images can be very cyclical. I have had a number of images fail to sell, literally for years, then suddenly take off. I have images that take off right out of the gate earning royalties like crazy, only to tail off and even stop all together. Then, sometimes they will come on again. You just never know.

With this particular image of the rainbow/glass things did bump up a bit in 2007. The total royalties for that year came to $374.60. Then in 2008 the royalties came to $1,818.18. Half way through 2009 the image has earned $871.29. The total to date is now $3,207.07. This is getting awfully close to being a decent selling stock image. It certainly means the afternoon I spent making the image was well spent. The image may never be a best selling stock photo, but there really isn’t anything to date the image, so it should continue earning, perhaps sporadically and maybe not in huge quantities, but earning nonetheless.

I have come to the conclusion that you have to give an RM image, at least my favorite kind, timeless conceptual ones, five years before deciding whether or not the image is successful. Sure, some you know about right away, but my whole stock strategy is based around creating images that will provide income for a long period time, preferably forever. Despite all the changes that our industry is undergoing, I still see a comfortably long life-span with most of my older images. My best three selling images last month with Getty were all created over five years ago.

If you create great, timeless images, then I believe that the trick in the coming years is to make sure clients see those images. Not necessarily an easy task with the millions of images coming online each month. Do you leave that task to the agencies, or do you take control yourself?

Tango Dancing And Concept Stock Photos

Almost anything can trigger ideas for concept stock photography. While planning a recent stock trip to Buenos Aires, it seemed everyone kept asking me if I was going to shoot tango. Yet, for whatever reason, tango was not appealing to me. But because I was being asked so much I decided to see if there was something there that did appeal to me.

I started trying to think outside the box, so to speak, about how I could put my own spin on some Tango dancers. Cliché’s appeal to me, and one popped into mind. “It takes two to tango”. There might be something there. Plus, dancing can be a metaphor for teamwork, an essential and always needed business concept. I could have them holding a contract and pen to indicate sealing the deal, agreement and negotiation. Plus, tango also has that dramatic element to it.

I started picturing tango in an office. It could be dramatic and conceptual. Might be worth investigating further. The next step for me is to see if I can base a shoot around the tango concept. It occurred to me that tango dancers are, or at least probably are, athletic. Maybe I could add in some other “athletic” shots in. One technique I use for brainstorming is to think of opposite. One opposite of two people dancing is…fighting.

At this point I felt I had enough to base a shoot around. I had my Argentine producer (and fellow shooter), Paula Zacharias, check on models and an office we could shoot in. She found two tango dancers both of who also know some martial arts. One of them suggested another friend of theirs who was also a martial artist. We decided to go with the three of them. When the woman tango dancer asked if she could bring her young daughter to the shoot we decided to add some mother daughter shots as well.

It turned into a really fun shoot. We started in the office, which was actually limited to the reception area. We had the woman tango dancer, her young daughter, and a man tango dancer. The fourth model was to meet us later at the second location. This was a pretty low-key shoot. Just Paula and me, our models and one ProFoto 7b power pack with two heads. We were shooting with a Canon 5D. We spent an hour in the office shooting tango dancing, mother and daughter at work, and both the woman and the man karate-kicking the monitor (with the help of a little post-shoot Photoshop work).

Following the office portion of the shoot, we left for the nearby Puerto Madera section of Buenos Aires. This is a trendy waterfront area with lots of new shops, cafes and a cool suspension footbridge. We started with a little tango dancing on the bridge and then switched to a fight scene between the men, again using the ProFoto 7b. After a half hour of shooting a security guard ushered us off the bridge. We then shot various activities in the immediate surrounding area including working at a laptop at an outdoor café and strolling by the shops with mother, father and daughter. There was also a business park and we used the buildings as a background and had the models on each other’s shoulders with the top person scanning the horizon, some more fighting scenes, and, to finish up, shot the models sprinting towards and past the camera.

A simple half-day shoot with free locations and model fees amounting to $150.00. Not bad! I got 35 selects into Blend Images. The images recently went up so I don’t have any sales information yet but I am confident, from experience of two things. First, these images will sell. Second, you never know if an image is going to sell. Hmmmm….

The Continuing Challenge: RM, RF or Micro?

I am not cut out for producing large quantities of images. My love is for producing highly Photoshop-manipulated concept stock photos. I am guessing that eliminates me from Micro stock…so if anyone reading this has experience that would suggest otherwise, I’d love to hear from you!

I am in stock photography for the money, for the freedom and for the fulfillment of creating images that I want to create. Most of the stock photos that I make require a lot of work to think up, hours of Photoshop work to complete, and a fair amount of capital investment to produce. I know from experience that some of these images can earn just as much in RF as in RM.

I also know from research that some of the best selling Micro images can earn enough to justify putting images into that category. However, in RM I have often had the experience of having an image languish for up to three or four years before suddenly earning thousands of dollars. An image that is not a best seller can still bring in thousands of dollars. I also know that there is no way to predict whether a given image will be a best seller. It seems to me a much bigger risk to place the few images I create into a Micro market.

The image accompanying this blog, an image of the earth as a globe covered in freeways, has been up on the Corbis site for six months without a sale yet. I thought it would be a runaway best seller, or at least sell a couple of times a month. Oh well.... But I trust its time will come. The photo is an example of the kind of picture I love to create most. It’s not like a lot of other images out there. Given the right headline it can have a clear and strong message. It makes a striking visual (if I say so myself). Whether it ever sells or not, it is an image I am proud of.

A disadvantage of Rights Managed photography is that many buyers feel they cannot afford RM and limit themselves to RF or Micro. I think that is unfortunate as I can attest from my sales reports with Getty and Corbis that RM images can be had at VERY affordable prices. I have long said that with RM images you can always undercut RF! I have to admit that I also have an ego bias towards Rights Managed. I even have a hard time contributing to RF for that reason. It is about valuing my work. Of course, I have far more images in RF than RM and those images have done very well for me, particularly with Blend Images. For business reasons I think it prudent to be involved in both models.

When I hear from some of my friends about how well they are doing in Micro, it makes me anxious. With all of the buzz about micro, I keep feeling like I should be participating. And yet, every time I come close to submitting images to Micro I just can’t pull the trigger. I certainly don’t begrudge those who do choose to shoot Micro, and someday I may yet end up with images in Micro. But for now I am limiting my submissions to primarily RM with RF as a continuing hedge.

What Is The Best Thing I Can Be Doing For My Business Right Now?

Every once in a while I get the urge to go back over my files and “glean” some stock images from them. For example, I have hundreds, probably thousands of travel pictures, some of which are, even if I say so myself, spectacular. There are also a great many images that were rejected by one or two agencies and that, with a little “tweaking”, just might make the grade.

I bring this up because I just came across a folder of some travel photos that I think are really outstanding, but don’t have a stock agency home at this point. Yet, I am resisting that impulse to go through those files, find those gems, and get them out. I have to ask myself this important question, (Courtesy of motivational guru Brian Tracey…and I suppose a great many others), “What is the most important thing I can be doing for my business right now”. I can tell you from experience that going through old files and “gleaning” images isn’t that! For some, going through those travel images might make sense. But my travel images are largely unreleased, and as good as they may be (at least in my mind); there is no shortage of good or even great travel stock photos already out there.

Usually what happens is that I spend an entire day tracking down old model releases, trying to figure out caption material and/or dealing with imperfect files in Photoshop. Then the files get rejected, or at the end of the day with my enthusiasm waning, I begin to realize that my material really isn’t that great (or it probably would have been sent in and accepted long ago), or that the photos are not particularly unique or relevant to the market. Then I start feeling frustrated over having wasted my precious time in the first place.

In a slight variation of this theme, a few weeks ago the idea came to me of a businessman “riding a tiger”. I had once rented a tiger and shot a number of images of him with 35mm Ecktachrome. Now since I moved my studio a few years ago I haven’t even looked at a slide. I have about ten file boxes filled with those 35mm plastic sheets of what, 20 slides each (when I moved several years ago I threw away several garbage cans of old slides). I spent a very long day climbing up a ladder, struggling in not killing myself getting those heavy boxes, un-labeled in my moving haste, down and then scanning each slide sheet for Tigers.

I never did locate all my tiger images, but I did find one that looked like it would fill the bill. I had the image scanned as a hi res file. In years past I would have scanned the image myself, but last year I sold my fifteen-year-old $54,000.00 drum scanner for $2,000.00 and felt pretty lucky! I got the image back opened it in Photoshop and…yuck! It was soft and grainy. Marginal. I don’t want to do marginal work. I still want to create that image, but I think I am going to have to rent that tiger again.

Right now, with the glut of images, stock and otherwise, and the almost unfathomable daily increase in those pictures, my time is way better spent in either thinking up and creating fresh new photographs that are needed in the marketplace, or in getting my images in front of more potential users.

Getting back to the gleaning analogy, what would provide you with a better return, harvesting a crop of great new photos, or gleaning through those kernels that slip through the cracks and are left in the field?

Ruminations On Moving Into Motion Stock Photography

I was recently privy to an Internet conversation among a number of accomplished stock shooters about stock video. These photographers range from some who have barely tested the waters to veterans with solid backgrounds in shooting motion stock footage. In that conversation one photographer mentioned that he had sold his RED (The Red One is a high end digital camera that can shoot both feature film quality video and still images as well) and is no longer producing video. He feels that the return on his investment just isn’t worth it when compared to both the satisfaction and the return on investment he gets from shooting stills. Still another shooter was lamenting the disappointing results he is seeing from the sales of his initial efforts in the realm of motion stock.

Those two aren’t the only ones who are backing away from motion. From what I am seeing it seems there is about a 50/50 split, among those who are speaking up, between the shooters feeling negative about motion stock and those who are bullish on it.

Some very respected people are saying there is money to be made in Micro stock footage. The demand for video is growing and there is still “low hanging fruit” in the micro video world. Some are advising jumping into that market using the new crop of DSLRs that shoot HD video…and keeping the shoots at the lowest end of the cost spectrum. To me it seems that may well be true, for a while.

When I look at my own admittedly small experience I see some of my clips doing very well, and some not selling at all, similar to stills. But here is what I am thinking. The right video can pay well. But video is harder to shoot. Everything has to be perfect. You can’t solve problems with Photoshop. I was watching video with one of my compatriots. It was a beautiful shot panning with a woman jogging over a hilltop at sunset. As the woman jogged she came between the lens and the sun creating a beautiful flare. It was perfect except for the just noticeable camera bag in the background. If it had been a still image the fix would be simple. As a video, it’s a no go.

The scary thing for me about shooting for Micro is how much competition there will soon be. If there is opportunity there, at least in the long term, I think it will be by producing footage that rises above what the majority of shooters will be doing. It seems logical that most shooters will be “grabbing” footage, so the opportunity will be for “produced” footage that is targeted and has reasonably high production value.

As for me, I plan to compete in the RR/RM categories where the potential returns are much greater and the competition will be less. I am also going slowly. I am being very careful about shooting footage. I am also keeping my eyes out for unusual opportunities. My recent three-week shoot with the Phantom HD camera is a good example. The ultra slow motion HD footage that we could capture with that camera made it a no-brainer when the chance to shoot with it came up. It was worth the investment in time, models, supplies and so forth. But for the most part I will confine my video to just those situations where I already have made the investments for a still shoot and it is a relatively easy situation to add in some video, or there is a unique opportunity in terms of the content we can capture and/or virtually no costs involved in the shoot. A couple of examples of video that has done well for us: A pan across Buenos Aires from the top of the second highest building in the city, footage of a rock concert we staged for a still shoot, young children running and tumbling by the camera.

One possible reason to get into motion is the increasing likelihood that advertisers will want to have cohesive material in both motion and stills for their campaigns. That could become an important selling point and increase the price point of the material as well. Another reason might be if you have a burning desire to shoot motion. I don’t, and that might be another reason for my caution. I do enjoy my brief forays into motion, but my true joy comes from making still images.

For me, the most important reason to “dip my toe” in the video waters is to keep on top of my profession of stock imagery and to continue to learn and grow. If there is a sea change towards motion I want to be at the helm and not in the lifeboat!

Lifestyle Stock And Minutes You'll Never Get Back

I had lunch yesterday with an old friend of mine who remarked that "Things change when you can see the end". He was referring to the fact that he wants to work less and enjoy his life more. He, like me, is 57 years old. It is true. Even at, say 49, life looked different to me. Increasingly, every minute is important. More and more I look at my stock photo career and ask myself how I can use it to not just make money, but to enjoy my life. A good example can be seen in a stock shoot I did in Buenos Aires.

I arranged to go with two friends of mine, Dew Kelly and Sam Diephuis. Both are excellent shooters and often work with me to produce stock photos for Blend Images. This was a ten day trip to produce stock photography and produce it in a way that we could also really enjoy the experience.

After committing to the shoot the first thing we did was to look for some locations for our shoot. We settled on three primary locations knowing that once we were there we could fill in other locations and shoots as needed. The first of our locations was found via the Internet, www.apartments BA.com. We found a luxury Apartment on one of the top floors of the second highest building in Buenos Aires. It has 360 degree views of the city and a clean, modern look. The apartment easily accommodated the three of us, and we were able to stay there as well as shoot there. Even at $600.00 per night it was a bargain. What we saved over the location fee of a comparable place in the U.S. more than paid for our travel expenses! We shot stills and video. Sam shot a panorama video from the roof of the building and that footage, while only having sold twice so far, pretty much paid for the cost of renting the location.

The apartment provided for both upscale lifestyle shots and business shots (the dining room also passed for a corporate boardroom). We shot party scenes, people with their dogs, romantic couples, domestic chores, home exercise and much more. I was able to wake up in the morning to breath taking views and to begin shooting without schlepping equipment. We could dine out or cook our own meals. Actually, we had so much "shoot" food that we couldn't eat all of it. But hey, we had a refrigerator and freezer to store it in. We had a washer and dryer, rooftop access and grounds to enjoy. Not a bad way to conduct a stock shoot!

We rented a smaller, but still nice apartment, for the remainder of the shoot. Our shoots (put together with the help of our Argentinian producer Paula Zacharias) included a gym (shooting a gymnast doing his routine in a business suit), a theater (where we staged a rock concert, a bodybuilding contest, a political debate and also shot audience reactions), and a soccer shoot in which we hired a local semi-pro team. We had an awesome time and came back with tons of great content including ethnically diverse lifestyle, Business, and concept images.

An important thing to remember for these kinds of shoots, is to get property and model releases upfront. This trip went smoothly in that regard, but I have had some unpleasant surprises when I have failed to take the “upfront” precautions. Another important thing is to look closely at every model release before the model leaves. On the whole, models do a terrible job of filling out releases (they also do a terrible job of bringing their own wardrobe...but that is another story). When shooting in situations like these I also tend to hire extra models. The expense of one or two models is small compared to having everything set up and ready to roll, and then not having enough models. It is always a good idea to allow for the "model flake factor" (no offense to the many models who are professional, prompt and thorough).

Also, when in foreign countries it is important to understand the cultural differences around time and commitment. I have shot in Argentina many times and have finally gotten use to my producer calling up models at 1:00 in the morning for a shoot that day! Come to think of it, maybe the most important thing to remember when shooting in far off places is to bring you best attitude. I always try to keep in mind that if a shoot just isn’t working, for whatever reason, it won’t be the end of the world, and every minute I spend in unhappiness over it is a minute I will never get back.