Funny Animal Pictures and Lessons Learned

This funny picture of a cat with a canary feather in its mouth started a huge additional source of revenue for me.

Funny Animal Pictures: A Cat and a Canary Feather
My Animal Antics series of funny animal pictures began with my image of a cat with one yellow canary feather protruding from his smiling face (click here to see a sampling of the Animal Antics series of images). I originally created the image as a stock photo, but before I submitted it I was invited to exhibit at the Sausalito Art Festival (way back when it was unusual to be using Photoshop). Someone had advised me to bring some un-matted 8x10 prints in addition to the larger matted and framed fine art prints. The first day of the festival I sold all 8 of the Cat & Canary prints. I went home that night and printed up a dozen more…and the next day I sold all of them.

Greeting Cards and Anthropomorphic Pets
I realized at that point that I had an image that really clicked with the public. As I thought about it, it occurred to me that perhaps the image should be a greeting card. I made an appointment with one of the art directors, Collette Kulak, at Portal Publications. I showed her a few of my anthropomorphic animal images, including, or course, the cat and the canary. I then suggested that perhaps, with Portal’s help, I could be the animal equivalent of Anne Geddes, who was enormously popular with her images of babies in flowers, pea pods and so forth. Kind of a bold statement in retrospect!


Exclusivity and Higher Royalty Rates
Collette, to my everlasting amazement, agreed with me! We started off with four images and added a few more each quarter. After about two years I was beginning to wonder if all the work I was putting into those images was worth it. Then suddenly one quarter I got a royalty check of about $6,000.00. After that things just took off. The cards became so popular that Portal offered me a higher royalty to be exclusive with them, and soon I was Portal’s best selling card artist. I held that position until Portal was purchased by a venture capital company and slowly carved up until nothing was left.

Funny Cats, Camaraderie, and Gratifying Work
I am now in the process of reviving the line with new distributors. The cards are doing well and I am excited to see a comeback taking shape. I thoroughly enjoy working with the pets and the process of creating funny cat photos and humorous dog images. I also enjoy the camaraderie of working with a team, something that rarely happens in my stock photography. One other aspect of this undertaking that is gratifying: I receive a ton of e-mail from people who just plain get a kick out of the cards.


Coffee Mugs, T-shirts and…Barbecue Aprons!
In addition, I am making these images available at CafePress for a variety of imprinted products including coffee mugs, mouse pads, T-shirts (for both people and pets), water bottles, and yes, barbecue aprons! If you check out the site you can see all the various items. This is all part of my process of diversification, of seeking out ways to reach as wide an audience as possible for existing images, images that I think of as income-producing assets.

Gift Books, Christmas Ornaments, and Lessons Learned
To date the Animal Antics pictures have been used (exclusive of CafePress) for figurines, picture frames, Christmas Ornaments, Gift books (printed in seven languages), checks, Purses and Tote Bags, Vet reminder cards, calendars, and, well, I can’t even remember all the products! The gift books had a good run (Andrews McMeel published three of them), the greeting cards still sell like gangbusters, and everything else kind of fizzled after varying degrees of modest success. In all of these efforts I have learned a few things.

Get An Advance
I have learned that you should always get an advance (so when, if for whatever reason you don’t get paid, at least you have something). An advance isn’t just money in your pocket, it is an indication of the faith, and effort, that a publisher/distributor has in the product. Not only that, but at least you have something if the client ends up running into their own financial problems…a lesson I learned all to well when I provided the images for a Calendar without requiring and advance. The calendars were printed and sold, the company changed hands, sold off its calendar division and disappeared. I pursued the matter briefly but realized it was going to probably require more legal fees and time than was worth the effort.


Take The Royalty
If you believe in your images and the product, and are offered a choice of royalties or a flat fee, take the royalties. If that original cat and canary image had been licensed through a stock agency as a greeting card I would have received several hundred dollars. With royalties I have earned over $6,000.00.


Be Stingy With Your Rights
I have learned that you should make sure that whoever is distributing the products has a good record for that kind of product. A company that is great at distributing greeting cards may be terrible at selling calendars. Do your research before giving up rights.


Explore Your Options
In the environment we photographers currently find ourselves in it is important to take the same kind of advice any good investment counselor would make: diversify. There are many ways to diversify and some of them might just end up being your main gig! Explore your options. Start looking around you at all the ways photography is used. In what ways are images like the ones you make being used? Diversify, make good business decisions, and your images can work for you for in a lot of ways and for a long, long time.

Information overload...I Think My Head is About to Explode!

Information overload...I think my head is going to explode!

Facebook, Linked-In, and Google Analytics
I haven’t figured out Facebook yet. I twitter, sort of, I blog, a lot, and spend countless hours entering metadata, reading blogs, trying to understand what the heck is going on in this crazy business, uploading images, consulting with my webmaster on our ongoing SEO efforts, and occasionally taking a look at linked-in. I just learned how to view alt text with my Firefox browser, and to check my Google page ranking. I do keyword research; check my smarterstats reports and Google analytics.

Final Cut Pro, File Maker Pro, and Fetch
I have learned some Final Cut Pro, am struggling with File Maker Pro, need to download numerous firmware updates, can’t ever finish downloading any software updates and can’t get my licensing straight with Fetch. One of my computers is slower than molasses and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. The battery on my UPS needs replacing and beeps at me every fifteen minutes, and costs about the same as replacing the whole unit. Not cheap.  Somehow I only have one card reader, which is always plugged into the wrong machine with a card in it that I don’t remember if I have downloaded.

Monitor Calibration, Microsoft Office, and Bridge
I have two one terabyte RAIDs online, both filled to the brim…and about five one terabyte drives with stuff haphazardly copied onto them…and not much room left to do anything with. I haven’t calibrated any of my six monitors in, well, years! I have three laptops and one works…though the battery last approximately twelve minutes. I can only use Microsoft office on one machine at a time, and, naturally, it never seems to be working on the machine I need it on. On one machine bridge refuses to see all the images on one of the RAIDs, but works fine on everything else. I have no idea what “permissions” are.

Inaccurate Restrictions, Captions and a Human Answering the Phone
I realized the other day that Getty has inaccurate restrictions on at least some of my images, but do I really have time to check on all six thousand? I noticed yesterday that one of my captions at Blend Images refers to a man as a woman. Is that important? Well, at least if I call Blend a human will answer the phone!

Video, Metadata, and Modelreleases
I have two videos waiting to be sent to Getty, but can’t face doing the metadata. My first Canon 5D video is sitting on a couple of cards waiting for me to figure out the Final Cut Pro thing again. The stills from that shoot are on a couple of more cards…I know they are around here somewhere! For that matter, I bet the model release are too…I never through any of that stuff away! That reminds me, my printer is out of ink….

Battery Life, The Genius Bar, and Google Buzz
Should I worry about my battery life when I only pick up my camera once a month? Should I keep them on the charger…or is that for the ProFoto 7b batteries? Why can’t I get my e-mail on my iPhone…I used to be able to! For that matter, how come the guy at the Genius bar couldn’t figure out what the problem was?  Some photographers are creating apps for their promo efforts.  What! Am I supposed to create phone apps now? And what is this I hear about Google Buzz?

I think my head is going to explode!

A Revolution In The Professional Photography World

The photo world is in a revolution, and no one knows where we are going to end up. How do we keep on the road to success?

Shannon Fagan, Ellen Boughn and Yuri Arcurs

In a guest post by Shannon Fagan on Ellen Boughn’s blog , Yuri Arcurs (hey, to start off a sentence with those three names in the first fifteen words---pretty impressive), comments that his rpi has dropped from over $9.00 per image per month two years ago, to half that now, and is possibly on it’s way to $3.00 per image per month, below which he will not longer be able to produce and still earn a profit. That is, to me, a pretty stunning comment…and not a very uplifting one either.  Here is a photographer who is generally acknowledged as the premier microstock shooter in the world, and in my opinion is one of the world’s premier stock shooters of any business model, and he is anticipating his profit dipping to a point where it isn’t worth his time to produce! Yikes!

A Blog Post Worth Reading

BTW, this is a blog post worth reading. Lots of interesting stuff. David Sanger offers some extra-curricular reading that is also fascinating. I am terrible at reporting on what others say…but check out Ellen’s blog its makes for a fascinating and informative read.

We Are In A Revolution

I will say that after reading the material David suggested, it really hit home to me that we are in a revolution where the old ways are dying and the replacement ways aren’t known yet. I suspect that this revolution will continue past my age of productivity, or even my lifetime. What we “professional” photographers are faced with is a career-threatening change that is accelerating rapidly and for which there are no certain answers. On the bright side there is an accelerating need for images. On the downside, image theft is rampant, image supply is infinite, and old distribution models are crumbling.

The Low End and The High End

Popular theory has it that you can thrive both by supplying the low-end of the market, and/or by supplying the high-end. Here we have the premier low-end supplier, Yuri, indicating that he has to make 11,000 images a year to maintain his income, and that soon it might not be worth his time continuing to produce. Oops…there goes half of popular theory. At least if you are supplying the high-end you don’t have to produce 11,000 images a year!  Heck, after twenty years of producing stock imagery I have personally produced somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 images. I can’t compete with Yuri (but then it sounds like Yuri might not be able to compete with Yuri…). 

Where to Turn For Hope

Where do I turn to for hope? Well, a couple of areas. I have doubled the number of images I have with Getty in the last two years…and my income is only down 30%. So, if I keep producing at my newer high levels, and the market quits dropping…at least I am still earning enough to live decently. So that’s at least not the end of the world with those afore mentioned caveats. My Blend Images sales are also came down, but not quite as much, and they actually seem to be going up again…so that is hopeful. I am not giving up on agencies yet. I am still making very good money with them.  It may just be that today’s agencies will become the filters that will be required in the coming years in order to deal with and find the images a buyer needs with a reasonable amount of time and effort. I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone else does either.

Images That Stand Out

For me the biggest hope is that I can produce images that stand out enough that there will still be people and companies that are willing to pay a reasonable amount for them…whether they find them through an agency or with internet searches, or through some yet-to-be-determined vehicle. Of course, the challenge of getting buyers to find your images is an immense one, one that I believe (though I may be wrong), can be done through SEO, patience, perseverance, and perspiration (earlier blog post). If you agree you better start implementing that right now, because I suspect it will take years of dedicated work.

The Key: Quality Photos

The key to almost everything for photographers is creating quality photos. Algorithms that reward those with the best-selling work are popping up at agencies everywhere. Quality content is a key to building traffic and attracting buyers for direct sales. And in an Internet world where comparing prices has become so easy, well, you are going to have to have the best looking work in any given price range to make the sale. Quality photography and diversity are our best options for surviving, and even thriving, in this revolution.

Stampeding Elephant Newsweek Cover Photo

Newsweek used one of my stock photos of elephants for its March 1st Issue cover.

Newsweek Elephant Stampede Cover Photo
Just found out that one of my Getty Images, a herd of stampeding elephants, is on the March 1st Cover of Newsweek. Fame for a week! What is really amazing to me, and what continues to amaze me, is how easily the market can accommodate multiple uses of an image. Had it not been for Charlie Holland, and a couple of others who pointed it out to me, I would never have known the image was a Newsweek cover.

Stampeding Long Horn Cattle and a Need To Get Out More
I have images that have been used hundreds and hundreds of times and have never seen them in use! A couple of months ago Time used one of my elephant images in a spread…never did see a copy of that! Another “stampede” image, a herd of stampeding longhorn cattle, has been licensed more times than I can count; yet I have never actually seen it used. Amazingly, it is very rare that I ever see any of my photos in use. It has only been about a half-dozen times over twenty plus years that I have actually just “happened” on one of my stock photos being used. Maybe I need to get out more!


The Devil, The National Enquirer and Maxim
A photo of me as the devil was used in the National Inquirer…and no I didn’t see it while standing in line at the grocery store…someone else did and alerted me to it. The same image was once also used by Maxim magazine. I set a pretty high standard with my self-portrait! In another case in which someone else alerted me to the use of one of my images, a shot of a fisherman on Inle Lake, in Myanmar, was used on the paperback copy of Amy Tan’s Saving Fish From Drowning. The publisher used an image shot by my friend and colleague Nevada Wier (great blog by the way), for the hardcover version. Oh well….


A New York Street Artist
I do remember one time when I personally saw one of my photos being used. I was perusing a sidewalk gallery in New York where street artists were selling their wares. One of them was selling photo prints, including one of my silly animal images. Close inspection revealed it to be a rather poor color copy of one of the greeting cards. I chose not to pursue the matter.

A Lighthouse In A Storm and Success
Another time I was photographing an executive for an annual report. He wasn’t being exactly cooperative, until I pointed out that the poster on his wall, a shot of a lighthouse in a storm in a "Success" poster, was one of my photographs. He must have really liked that poster because his whole attitude changed and suddenly he couldn’t have been any more cooperative!


Image Over Use and Micro Stock
It is with the above in mind that I rarely, make that never, worry about an image being over-used. Of course, over-used is better than over-emulated (using a “nice” word there). One thing that would make me crazy if I were in micro stock would be the option people have of seeing which images are best sellers. I don’t think that is good for the company, for stock shooters, or for clients. It has to have some limiting factor on the diversity of a collection. But I digress. I think I will go back to enjoy my brief pleasure at seeing one of my photos on the cover of Newsweek!

Oh, one more thing, here is my Public Service Announcement of the week (and one I heartedly endorse):

Involved in stock photography?
Please take the 2010 SAA stock survey at

http://j.mp/SAA2010survey

results will be collated and published

Cute, Funny Animal Pictures and Plan "B"

Funny animal pictures are part of my Plan "B" to diversify and increase my security and earning potential.

Cute, Funny Animal Pictures
More than once I have been introduced as the “the guy who creates the cute, funny animal pictures”. I have to admit, it is with mixed emotions that I hear that. As a photographer my ego can’t help but want to be known for “serious” work. However, I really don’t do much “serious” work. Further, after a career of some thirty years as a professional photographer, I have never received as much genuine thanks for creating images as I do for the funny human-like animal pictures. A week after 9/11 a United Flight Attendant sent me an e-mail telling me that one of my humorous cat pics brought the first smile to her face in a week. A week doesn’t go by without my getting at least one random phone call or e-mail from someone who is thanking me for creating those photos and bringing a smile to their face.
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Millions of Pet Owners and Photo Creations
Now, with the stock photo business going through such transitional pains, I have a renewed appreciation for those anthropomorphic photo creations. I can’t help but believe that the market for products with photos imprinted on them, now made accessible by the Internet, represents a truly enormous opportunity. There are over 37 million cat owners in the U.S., and over 43 million dog owners. All I want is about ten cents apiece!

Funny Animal Pictures and Anthropomorphic Offerings
According to Wordtracker there were over 23 million searches for “funny animal pictures”. Hey, if one percent of them bought an animal print from me, and I made a mere $5.00 per print, lets see…I would make (my math is always suspect here) oh, about $1,150,000.00. If it were only so easy! But there isn’t anything easy about it. Shooting animals is certainly challenging. The stripping out of hair and fur necessary for compositing my anthropomorphic offerings sure isn’t easy. Perhaps hardest of all is attracting traffic to my site in sufficient quantities to actually provide a significant amount of revenue. But then, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

Diversification and Different Revenue Sources
For us photographers, stock or assignment, now is an important time to diversify. By having this “funny animal” sub-specialty I am tapping into a much different revenue source than the standard stock photo licensees. By selling photos as products, i.e. coffee mugs, T-shirts, tote bags, mouse pads and more through CafePress, I am reaching a different clientele. Photographic prints represents yet another diverse source of income that ought to be accessible to any photographer. Just like in the investment world, diversification provides an increase in security, and who knows, you just might end up liking the “plan B” more than your “day gig”!

Plan “B” and Creating Effective Stock Photos
Having a “plan B” helps me relax a bit and I think actually makes me better at my primary task of creating effective stock photos. I try and work on each aspect of my business each day, and changing tasks, such as taking a break from compositing to work on key wording, or switching from uploading images online to writing a blog entry or article, helps keep me invigorated and enthusiastic. For example, the first thing I did this morning was create a composite stock photo for Blend, followed by working on SEO strategy, then entering sales reports into my database, and finally, working on a stock photo for Getty. Now I am at home writing this blog on my laptop, and in just a few minutes it will be time to veg for a bit and watch the Olympics. Actually, that is going to happen right now…later!

Teamwork, Challenge and a Dramatic Stock Photo

Quad Sculling, four people rowing a boat, demonstrates teamwork, adversity, challenge and risk in this "impossible" stock photo.
Timeless Photos and Long Term Success
This image of Quad Sculling (in sculling a light boat is powered by people using two oars each…quad sculling refers to such a boat with four people) is exactly the kind of image I most enjoy creating. It has a strong, but flexible, message or concept. It has drama and interest and even humor (as in “Yeah, right”). The photograph is on the ragged edge of believability…is it real or not? And finally, the photo is timeless, something I think is tremendously important for long-term success in the stock imagery business.


Teamwork, Challenge and the Impossible
Sculling has always been a strong metaphor for teamwork, and as such has been used countless times as a stock image. This version still speaks of teamwork, but takes it a couple of steps further. This is teamwork in the face of risk, challenge, adversity and perhaps even the impossible. I can’t help but think that an appropriate headline might be “Sometimes even teamwork isn’t enough”. Come to think of it, this image might be hitting a little close to home for us photographers!


Old Concepts, Shot In New and Different Ways
As I have mentioned before, old concepts, illustrated in new and different ways, with a strong message pertinent to the marketplace, tend to do well. This image represents any efforts being attempted by a team, but with huge challenges and an uncertain outcome at best. It could be the government attempting to deal with the recession, or a sales team overmatched by competition, or any number of other situations in which an entity, be it corporation, government or organization, is faced with huge obstacles. For example, I could see this being an editorial image about the government attempting health care reform!


Extra Ideas
This image is also a great example of how I work these days. I come up with an idea that I want to illustrate, and then build a more comprehensive shoot around that first idea. In this case I knew I needed four models (to replace the people I had originally photographed in the boat, two of whom were just kids). Then I went over my comprehensive list of ideas to see which other ones were waiting for me to shoot models in-studio in order to finish. I came up with 17 ideas. I knew that I would not be able to complete the photography for that many, but I wanted to make sure that I had extra ideas in case one or more of my planned ones just weren’t working out. As it turned out, I managed to get the raw materials shot for about eleven of the ideas.


Four Models, A Boat, and Three Waves
In my studio I set up the lighting to match that from the original sculling shoot. Since I had shot the boat from a bridge I stood on a ladder to get the correct perspective. I printed out an 11x17 print of the boat and kept it with me on the ladder. I then shot each model and compared the LCD image with the print to make sure I cam at least reasonably close to the poses that would work. Before letting the models go I also did a quick cut and paste in Photoshop just to make sure things lined up right.
I put this image together using four model shots, the boat, and three shots of waves taken from atop a bluff in the Marin Headlands on a day with particularly large swells. I crafted it in such a way that it can easily crop as a horizontal for, say, magazine spreads, or vertically for a magazine cover. There is also plenty of room for headlines and body copy, though the texture of the water might be a bit busy for that. Total Photoshop time was about six hours.


A Rights Managed Image
While the concept of teamwork is one that is always in hot demand, as are such themes as risk, challenge, and adversity, having the rather negative probable outcome as part of the image makes me think that the audience for this photograph will be on the small side. Combine that with the greater-than-ordinary amount of work that goes into such an picture, and I think it would be best served as a Rights Managed image, so that is how I am submitting it. And now I have ten more images to get back to working on!

Patience, Perseverance, and Perspiration:A Stock Photo Strategy

A businessman pushing an elephant out of the room was created for the stock licensing market.

 
This funny animal photo was create with the consumer market in mind.

Google Searches, Consumers and Stock Agencies
I believe are many more potential purchasers of photography doing Google searches (what I will call the “consumer” market) than those searching stock agencies. This “consumer” market includes everyone looking for fine art prints and bathroom wall décor to photo-imprinted coffee mugs, tote bags, T-Shirts, greeting cards and, yes, licensing stock photos (though they might not know that they are seeking to license a stock image).

Stock Agencies, Publishers and More Money
I also know that it is a heck of a lot easier for me to make money by licensing stock through the traditional agencies than it is for me to license images directly or to penetrate that consumer market. As I have said before, if I want to earn more money as quickly as possible then I should be shooting as many pictures (intelligently) as possible and getting them into Blend, Corbis, Getty, Kimball and SuperStock (my agencies in alphabetical order) as quickly as I can. Similarly, I can earn significant money by getting more greeting cards of my silly animal pictures into the market through brick and mortar publishers.

A Ton of Work and Slow Progress
After over a year of pushing SEO, upload and key wording images, blogging, writing articles, and putting images up on Imagekind and CafePress, I have learned a couple of things. Firstly, it is a TON of work! Secondly, there is progress but it is agonizingly slow. I have gone from an average of one unique visitor per week to my website, to an average of almost 500 a day. I have gone from about 1 sale on CafePress every couple of weeks to pretty much an average of one sale a day. And don’t forget all the click-through ad revenue…about $5.00 a day.

Pumping Out More Images
Given all of the downward price pressure from low price stock and an oversupply of images the idea of trying to pump out more and more images, and adding to that oversupply, just doesn’t make a whole lot of long-term sense to me. I still very much believe in stock photography, and frankly, particularly looking at my Blend sales, I’d have to say there is still a lot of life left in the old girl yet. But it ain’t like it used to be. Not in RF or RM. But creating more new quality content can still work for both the short and long term.


Changes In the Photo Market, Bad Business Decisions, and the Recession
I used to make a killing in greeting cards as well, and I am down about 70% on those (I am only down about 30% on stock photos but still earn enough to make me feel a little guilty). Given that the greeting card company that used to publish my cards made some seriously questionable business moves (like firing their entire sales staff), it is unclear how much of that drop is due to the changes in the photo market and how much due to bad business decisions and the recession.


Shipping Product, Generating Traffic and Income Streams
This brings to the point where I am now, trying to continually adjust my time and efforts to provide for the maximum return. I have to look at both the short and long term. For me, the short term is creating images and getting them to the stock agencies, what Seth Godwin would term “shipping product”. The long term, for me, means tapping into the vast powers of the internet and continuing to build traffic to generate income from that “consumer” market as well as guide more users of stock photography to my images at the various agencies that handle them. The seemingly slow nature of that process is secondary to the evidence that it does work. Ultimately, they all work together. Creating more images for agencies, which I can then put up as additional content on my site, will both generate that short-term income (hopefully middle-term and long-term revenue as well), and will generate more traffic that I can channel into various income streams.

Creating Compelling Stock Photos As Quality Content
My tasks, then, are to create compelling stock photos, market-needed images, get them onto my site, and continue my SEO through key wording, blogging, article writing and link-building. In short, creating quality content for the agencies and my site. I guess it boils down to patience, perseverance and perspiration…all with a sense of urgency.