Art Directors/Buyers Searching Google For Images

This image of a conductor orchestrating a vivid fireworks display was just found via Google on my site and then licensed through Blend Images. Art Directors and buyers do find images on Google!

What Buyers Want From Photographers

What particularly caught my eye in the new survey by Photoshelter “What Buyers Want From Photographers” were two statistics. First, 61% of buyers search Google for images, and secondly, 87% go to stock agencies for images (though it is a little unclear on whether the survey was indicating that 87%  go to stock agencies for images…or 87% go to agencies other than Getty and Corbis…(but either way you can’t beat the agencies in terms of getting art directors to see your stock images). 

Getting Work In Front of Stock Photo Buyers

Think about it. If your images are not on your site, and your site isn’t optimized for the search engines, you are missing out on the chance of getting your work in front of 61% of image-licensing art buyers (be they designers, art directors, art buyers, editors or whatever). That is huge! On the other hand, if you are not with stock agencies your missing out on the 87% of image buyers (or more) who turn to agencies.

Fatter Stock Photo Royalty Checks

I would propose that you are well served in having your images online on your optimized site whether those images are with agencies or whether you license them yourself. It just makes sense. If you are with agencies you can link your images directly to where people can license them through the agency. That way the process is automated…no negotiating, answering e-mails or phone calls or anything else. Just get a fatter royalty check each month (or quarter).

Additional Stock Photo Income

I don’t take the trouble to track down how many of the twenty to thirty people each day that go from my site to the agencies actually license my imagery…I imagine it is a relatively low percentage. And yet, with Blend Images in the last week I happen to know that two art buyers found the images on my site, and then were directed to Blend where the licensing transactions were completed. In both cases I had forgotten to provide the link from my site to the Blend Images site and had to manually provide that link to the buyers. In those two cases the increase in my own income amounted to just over $800.00.  Yesterday I also completed a transaction in which I licensed two more images, that are not with any agencies yet, for a total of $600.00. My stock photography income would be noticeably lower at this point without my efforts at getting my pictures online and putting the time and effort into SEO. The downside thus far has been the tremendous amount of time and effort I have put into the site...time and effort I believe will be well rewarded over the coming years.

Building Traffic For Photo Sites

Further, by doing this work now, if at some point it makes sense to be licensing more, or even all of my own work, I will already have the hardest thing to achieve in place…the traffic!  If that sort of back-up plan is important to you, then the time to start is now. Building traffic for your photo site takes time…and a lot of it. Plan on giving it three to five years to achieve decent results.  Of course, what "decent" means can vary. It has taken me two and a half years to go from one person a week to well over a thousand a day...and my goal is ten thousand a day (got a ways to go).

Online Photos and SEO Is Good Business

One more thing. As any successful business can tell you, success comes from servicing your clients well. When you put your images online and provide proper SEO, you are making the lives of art buyers easier. You are helping them find the images that solve their visual problems. Simply put, getting your photography on the Internet, and making it easy to find, is good business.

Airport Control Tower Inspired by Sleeping Traffic Controllers!

An airport control tower, and a dramatic cloud photograph were combined to create a concept stock photo about management, control and vision.

Air Traffic Controllers, Hawaii and A Photograph

Two weeks ago, before all the controversy and news around air traffic controllers sleeping on the job and watch Samuel Jackson DVDs, I found myself on a jet landing at the Maui airport. On my lap was my Canon 1DS MKIII with a L-Series 100-400 zoom lens mounted. As we taxied towards the terminal I scanned the scene through my window for anything interesting to photograph. The only thing that caught my eye was the airport control tower. I squeezed off a half dozen frames with the lens fully zoomed in to 400 millimeters.

Shooting From A Moving Aircraft

I have to say I love that lens! Mine is exceedingly sharp. Even shooting from a moving aircraft, and through a well-used porthole window, I managed to get one pretty sharp shot of the tower. The trip to Hawaii, I might add, was intended not for any specific shoot, but rather to “harvest” images for future projects…and to do so in a pleasant environment. An aside here, pictures of Hawaii still sell even though one has to question how there could ever be a need for another tropical beach scene! I have had great success at making travel into profit centers through my stock photography.

A Control Tower, A Dramatic Cloud and Photoshop

So here we are two weeks later and air traffic controllers are dominating the news. Hmmm, says, I, an opportunity for a stock photo!  This is one of those insanely easy to create images. I simply used the Photoshop Pen Tool to create a clipping path around the tower, turned it into a selection with a one-pixel feather, and then hit my good old “Command-J” to create a new layer of just the control tower. I went back to my Hawaii photographs and found a dramatic cloud I had photographed at Ho'okipa Beach Park (near Mama’s Fish House).  I copied it and pasted it underneath the control tower layer. I duplicated the tower layer again, used a layer mask to “paint out” the actual room at the top, then dragged the remaining structure down to create the effect of a much taller structure. A little “dodging” around some of the antennae, and of course spotting, and Voila, a new stock photo!

A Digression To Sensor Cleaning

BTW, I bought the 1DS MKIII when they first came out…and have never cleaned the sensor! Hey, it is dirty, and I do need to clean it…but how clean it has stayed, with repeated lens changes, is pretty amazing! I was even changing the lenses between the 100-400 and a 16-35 zoom on the beach with the wind buffeting me like crazy. But I digress…back to stock photography!

A Concept Stock Photo About Management, Vision and Change

This airport control tower image is about not just the turmoil around the air traffic controller problems, but is a concept stock photo about management, vision and change. It can be used for editorials about everything from turmoil in the air traffic controller industry, to airport expansion plans, to more general advertising uses for products and services that can help companies manage operations and communications more effectively. This tower image can be about management, control, communications, change, and who knows how many other uses. It took less than an hour from start to finish for the post-production and other than my general travel expenses cost me nothing to photograph.  How cool is that?

Of Property Releases and Problems....

Failure to secure a property release, despite the promise of one, BEFORE my photoshoot in this beach house, cost me $3,500.00!

Models “Turning On” Photographers

Recently stories about models “turning on” photographers have been popping up (one such occurrence being displayed by “a photo editor” .  Of course nothing can prevent a model from suing you whether you have a signed release or not, but if you do have the release odds are you will prevail. It does remind me of the importance of getting that release though!

It also reminds me of the importance of getting that release, model or property, BEFORE the shoot. I can share one instance of where I did get the release, but because I waited until after the shoot it cost me dearly.

A Stock Photo Shoot, A Beach House, and A Problem

Two of my associate photographers and I were setting up a shoot in Stinson Beach on the Marin County coast. We checked the various house rentals (houses right on the beach) and found one that would be ideal. The property manager told us getting a release would not be a problem. Famous last words….

Don’t Even Try To Bargain With Me

After the shoot, a two-day affair with about fifteen models, three photographers, a make-up artist, her assistant, a producer and her assistant, and three photographer assistants, we sent a property release over to the management company. That got back to us and informed us that the owner of the property would not sign it. I had my producer track the owner down and use all of her charm to coax a signature out of him. His reply to her: “Don’t even try and bargain with me…I am a personal injury attorney. $3,500.00 for the signature…take it or leave it.”

A Property Release and A Significant Expense

I took it. It was worth it too. So far that shoot has brought in close to $40,000.00 and is still earning. But that was $3,500.00 and a lot of time and trouble (chasing down and dealing with the owner…I shortened the whole dramatic episode considerably) that we probably wouldn’t have had to swallow had we secured a release up front. Including that $3,500.00 the whole shoot cost $12,500.00…so it turned out to be a significant expense! Something to keep in mind….

Where There Is Smoke There Is Fire

Just make it standard policy to NEVER shoot BEFORE you have signed releases for both models and property in hand. Also, in my experience, if there is any reticence on the part of a model in signing a release…you probably don’t want to shoot with that model anyway…where there is smoke there is fire!

Strange (And Entertaining) Long Tail Keyword Searches For Photos

Somebody searched for the long tail keyword "person trapped behind a bar code" and ended up on finding this image on my site. The long tail keyword is key to pulling in large amounts of traffic to websites."

Long Tail Keyword Searches

Well over a thousand people came to my website today from various search engines. It can be both entertaining and informative to peruse the search terms that were used. Almost all of the search terms that bring people to my site are “long tail keywords”, keyword phrases of three or more words. Interestingly enough, although my site is all about stock photography, I don’t ever recall seeing the search term “stock photos” bringing anyone to my pages (the closest thing to that on this day was one search for “stock pics”).

Bizarre And Specific Searches For Stock Photos

Most of the people who do find their way to my site don’t actually find what they are looking for, something reflected in my 72% bounce rate (which, from what I understand isn’t too bad).  In some cases the searches seem so specific and unique, and yet fit some of my images so well, that it is hard to understand (artist’s bias here) why the person searching doesn’t go on to license the image.  Some of those keyword phrases are so bizarre it one would never expect them to be searched for…and yet I do have stock photos that fit the phrases!

Strange and Entertaining Search Phrases For Photography

I have put together an edited list of a dozen of the more entertaining and strange search phrases (long tail keywords) for this one day, as well as a list of a dozen of the very specific and often off-beat search phrases that fit images that I actually have in my stock photo collection (though those images still might not be what the person searching for really wants). In the case of the latter list I have linked the phrases to the images on my site that I believe meet the requirements of those searches. In each case the phrases are complete with the original spelling, capitalization and so forth.

Strange (Long-Tail Keyword) Search Requests:

video camera strapped to frypan

elephants sensitive to texture

funny pic cat with shark teeth

who are the men in orange robes

sexy lips due to exercise men with pics

dangerous baby image

dog wearing fire extinguisher

john john surfer father

Pictures of george washington signing the one dollar bill

how to test tube baby real pictures

teamwork cats fishing

picture of a bird running down the road with a piece of chicken

english bulldog testiculs

Strange (Long-Tail Keyword) Search Requests with links to appropriate Images:

boston terrier makes funny face

blue face of holding their breath

women lifting men photos

dog wearing fire extinguisher

picture dog meditating

picture of cat getting a manicure

animal play table tennis games funny images

lightbulb in the shape of a brain

picture of a bull dog riding a motorcycle

lord ganesha symbolism

woman wearing a barrel

dairy cow surfing

Expected Searches and Appropriate Images

Of course, there are many searches that one would expect people to search for, and to find, on my site. These searches are for things like lighthouse in a storm, political elephant and donkey butting heads, and pics of hospital patients in traction. But they aren’t as much fun to peruse!

Creating A Stock Photo Illustrating Man Made Disasters

A negative stock photo such as this fiery mushroom-shaped explosion over a road ahead, can still generate excellent sales.

Picture of a Nuclear Accident

The recent tragedy of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant meltdown in Japan got me to thinking about how I could make an image that could be used to bring attention to the dangers of radioactive accidents and other man made dangers.  I wanted the image to be dramatic and iconic. While it was the nuclear accident that first prompted the idea, I also wanted this stock photo to work for other man made disasters as well. For radiation concerns a mushroom cloud would make perfect sense…and a fireball and explosion can represent all kinds of man-induced destruction. Such an image could be used to draw attention to everything from Nuclear power plant dangers to Predator drone missile strikes, to terrorist bombings to gas pipeline explosions.

The Long Road To Disaster

Having the fireball exploding over a road that stretches out into the distance can show that we are headed towards such disasters. Having the event happen at sunset can indicate that the end is near. In addition, the fiery clouds of a sunset can work to make the explosion fit more naturally into the environment.

Road Trips, Fireballs and Stock Photos

Having worked out the basics of the image in my mind I went to work searching my archives for the necessary raw materials…a fireball from a public “fire” performance, a long stretch of desert road from a road trip, and a sunset image from another road trip (road trips are great for stock photo raw materials).

Creating Stock Images: The Right Stuff

Creating the image was actually relatively simple and once again affirms my belief that Photoshop is easy when you have the right stuff (photos) to work with. I was able to build the mushroom shaped fireball explosion by using bits and pieces of a fireball photographed at a night performance that included the liberal use of fire. I used layer masks and the “Lighten” mode to blend the pieces together and composite them into the sunset. Next I put the road image into the sunset picture, again with layer masks. I used both “curve” and “Color Balance” adjustment layers, with masks, to create an orange reflection on the road. The Photoshop work took me about three hours to complete.

Negative Stock Photos And Images That Sell

Conventional wisdom has it that negative images don’t sell. While it is true that for the most part negative stock photos do not sell as well as positive pictures, in some cases they can sell quite well. One advantage this image has going for it is that there isn’t a lot of competition for it. To further bolster its potential market I crafted the image so that it can work as a horizontal, vertical or square.  There is plenty of room for headlines, mastheads and body copy. The image is simple and powerful and is a quick read as a thumbnail, something very important in today’s Internet-centric world. I chose to submit this stock photo to Getty Images as a Rights Managed picture and it has been accepted for inclusion into the Stone collection.

Sign Posts For The Shortest Route To Success

Finding your weak points, and bridging them, is a direct route to success.

The Most Important Thing You Can Do For Your Career

What aspect of your career is the most challenging for you? What knowledge gap do you have that is holding you back? What is your "weak link"? Find that weak link and turn it into a strength. Then find the next weak link, and make that into a strength. Anyone who actually does that cannot help but move up the ranks of success! Look at those problem areas in your career (and your life) as sign posts showing you the most direct route to success.

Assignment Photography, Negotiating and a “Bridged Gap”

When I was doing a lot of assignment photography my biggest “gap” was in my negotiating ability. We are not talking a small gap here…more like the Grand Canyon! Many times I actually had art directors, after hearing my estimate, suggest that perhaps we could go a little higher.  It was obvious to me that I had a problem that I had to deal with. Through a lot of personal work I was able to get marginally better at negotiating, but being a tough negotiator is not pleasurable for me and doesn’t come naturally. I solved my problem by going outside of myself. I “bridged that gap”, by getting a rep.

A Photo Assignment Negotiation In Progress

Shortly after agreeing to work with my new rep I turned a negotiation in progress over to her. I had almost agreed to a job for $12,000.00, which was the total budget this particular client had for the job (or at least what they told me). My rep came back from the negotiations having secured $29,000.00 for two years of usage. That was ten years ago. By January of this year, after yet again re-negotiating the use, we have brought in somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000.00.  Sure, my (now former) rep has kept 30% of that as her share of the fees, but without her I would have settled for that original $12,000.00!

Stock Photography and The Image Glut

My negotiating skills, though having improved over the last twenty years, are still abysmal. Another way that I have compensated is by turning to stock photography where all I have to worry about is making the images. The negotiating is all handled by agencies.  Over the years that has worked very well for me…that is until the onslaught of the image glut and the fall of the barriers to entry (microstock) into stock photography. With this development comes an “opportunity” for me to work on another set of skills, skills that will help me compensate for the changes in this new world of stock photography.

Stock Photos and SEO

Now the knowledge gap facing me is the challenge of getting my work, my stock photos, in front of more people. So I am now “bridging” that gap by using my website to gain more visibility for my work…and to expand the ways in which I can monetize it.  I have to master SEO (Search Engine Optimization), or at least get up to speed with it. Once I gain sufficient proficiency in that task I am quite confident that a new “opportunity” will present itself. And so it goes.

What Challenge Faces You?

What challenge faces you? That challenge just may be a sign pointing directly to success. Knuckle down and turn your weaknesses into strengths. If you can do that there will be no stopping you.

Writing: An Essential Photography Skill

Most photographers have a difficult time with writing, yet writing may hold the key to a photographer's future.

A Million Words On A Photography Website

I now have more than one million words on my website! So why would a photographer be excited about having so many words on his site…particularly when most of us professional photographers cry foul when art directors put copy over our images…and when we strive so mightily to create sites free from words that might distract from the aesthetic integrity of our photography? It is because this Internet thing has twisted everything around. Now one word is worth a thousand pictures (because search engines can’t “see” photos). In reality, if you want to get those gorgeous photographs seen, then your going to need words, and lots of them.

The Unseen Photograph

It was Socrates who said “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  I would contend that the unseen photograph is not worth creating. So whether you are trying to make a living at photography, or sharing your vision with as many people as possible, you are going to need, and increasingly so, to turn to words (you can disregard this suggestion if you are only indulging in photography for therapeutic reasons).Words are what get your images seen.

An Important Skill For Photographers

I believe that one of the most important skills for us photographers to develop, at this point in time, is the ability to write. I am not talking about just adding key words here either, but rather having the ability to write clearly, cohesively and compellingly (I am still working on that). Having the skills to communicate effectively through writing can help with proposals, estimates, blogs, books and innumerable other endeavors that make up the world of photography. Writing certainly isn't always easy, and it takes time and effort. But the results are worth it...getting your work seen is worth it!

Stock Photography, Taking Control, and Writing

For me writing is playing a central role in my efforts to maintain a successful career in stock photography; an effort to make my photography easy to find through search engines and in doing so to supplement my agency sales and add additional revenue through a variety of photography-related avenues from imprinted gifts to print sales to online advertising. But perhaps most importantly, writing and the Internet are giving me an opportunity to take more control over my photography career. Ultimately we all have to take responsibility for our own success or failures. We owe it to ourselves to find the tools that are necessary and that work for us, and with the emergence of the Internet as the de facto vehicle for finding just about everything, well, developing writing skills is as close to a no-brainer as there is.