The most valuable thing for my stock career right now

The most valuable thing, right now, for my business success

I often ask myself “what is the most valuable thing I can do right now for my business success?” As a stock photographer my immediate answer is: “Create more images!” But I don’t think that is really the correct answer. In my particular situation, and possibly yours too, the answer is to get my work in front of more potential buyers.

To buy it, they have to see it

My reasoning is as follows: If enough people see mediocre or even poor work it will sell. If I create the best work in the world and nobody sees it, it won’t sell. I do have a body of work, and I do think it is, at least, better than average. If I want to increase my income would it be better to create more work that is increasingly hard to find in the over-supplied market of today, or would it be smarter for me to increase the visibility of my work, an effort that would also boost any new work that I create in the future?

If they don’t see it, it doesn’t exist

I have many images that I think would sell if an art director became familiar with them. It is kind of like that old saying “If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody hears it, does it make noise?” For example, I recently shot a series of Sumo wrestler images that combine drama and humor. In one pose the Sumo wrestler is squared off with a businessman. This is a great image to illustrate any product or service that allows small businesses to effectively compete with large ones. But how many art directors, designers or photo editors know that this image exists? How many would even think to search under “Sumo” if they were looking for an image to solve this visual problem with? If they don’t see it, it doesn’t exist!

It quickly becomes very clear to me that the problem of visibility is the primary problem facing me in my stock career. Should I rely on Getty, Corbis and others to solve that problem? That would be a resounding no. My problem is not their problem. As with so many things, being proactive is the way to get the best results in this case.

What to do?

Long term I think it is important, as a stock photographer, to build your brand. It is important to create awareness in the potential users of stock photography that your work deserves special attention. In the short term, I think it is important to get your work in front of them. In both cases, the vehicle by which you can do that effectively and with relatively little cost is through your web presence.

The answer

In my case, I have decided that the most important steps I need to take right now to insure my continued success in stock is to keep improving my web site in terms of both search engine optimization and in getting more and more of my work up on the site. It is an inherently slow process. Uploading and key wording my stock pictures is a laborious process. Tonight I will be watching Survivor on TV while I use my laptop to enter Meta data for those stock photos.

Four months ago I started this process of making my web site truly work for my stock career. At that time I was getting about one person a week to my site. Now I am up to close to 200 a day. My goal is to get over 10,000 people a day, heck, maybe 20,000 a day (Dan Heller is getting over 20,000 a day). The progress is agonizingly slow, but it is also very real. In the last four months I have sold several prints, made enough off of Google Ads to pay for my hosting, and am aware of at least 2 stock sales through the agencies that were referred from my site. There may well have been many more, but I cannot track that. I have also handle a couple of transactions myself for images that are on my site but are not handled by other stock agencies. Like I said, slow, but encouraging!

To sum it up

I am certainly not quitting making new stock images. Far from it. I have actually increased my efficiency at creating images and create new stock photos on at least a weekly basis. But I realize that right now the best thing I can do to bolster my career is to continue to optimize my site in order to establish my “brand” and get my work in front of more buyers (licensees).

Feeling Overhwhelmed

Feeling Overwhelmed

I find myself feeling overwhelmed today. I have stock photos to be processed and composited from several shoots, including last week in Hawaii. I have video I have to edit and put into clip form for Getty from a number of shoots. I barely know how to use Final Cut Pro and can’t remember how to download the video from my P2 card (when shooting with the Panasonic HVX200 I either shoot to a P2 card or a FS-100 drive).

I have a bunch of stock pictures that Getty has rejected and I can’t decide where else to submit them. I have accepted images that I have not yet uploaded to Blend. I have video I shot in Buenos Aires eight months ago I haven’t yet edited. I have images accepted by Kimball Stock I haven’t uploaded. I have image ideas that are half-completed but I am missing elements for.

I have two ominous envelopes from the IRS sitting on my desk and one from the state of California.

I bet I have thirty e-mails I haven’t answered yet. My CafePress.com store desperately needs my attention, as does my ImageKind.com project.

I have two interviews that are waiting to be done.

The meta data on my own web site database needs LOTS of attention and I still have 6000 more images to upload!

My twittering is falling behind, I haven’t looked at Facebook in days, and I have sales data from Corbis and Jupiter that I haven’t entered yet.

My garage leaks, my girlfriend says I am not courting her anymore, and my scale says I am getting fat.

All of this was set off when a friend of mine sent me an e-mail asking me what I thought about ImageSpan (www.imagespan.com). They are a possible solution to those who want to be able to market their own stock photos without an agency. If anyone out there has an opinion about them I would love to hear about it!

Back to being overwhelmed. I have to remind myself to take baby steps. Just look at my to do list. I know from experience that if i update it, re-prioritize it, and just take the items one thing at a time I will at least have the illusion of being in control...and that will help. I also know from experience if i do just keep putting one foot in front of the other I will eventually look-up, and sooner than I expected I will have arrived!

In the meantime…I have a conference call I have to get on!!!

John

Shooting Stock Video on Oahu

Video shoot in Hawaii

David Fischer, an old friend and fellow photographer, and I just finished our first joint video shoot in Hawaii. We wanted to add to our stock video collection and test out a gyro device used to stabilize video (and still) cameras. Our thinking is that the gyro might be something we could use instead of a steady cam. Each has its place; the gyro tends to make the camera steadier while the steady cam is better at keeping the camera level. David and I are both enjoying the collaboration process. David is more experienced with motion having directed commercial productions.

We are staying at the Ko Olina resort. We first arranged to get permission to shoot on the property (a property release). The resort, actually a condominium complex, is located right on the beach on the island of Oahu. The grounds include a meandering stream filled with Koi, several pools and hot tubs, and assorted gardens.

Shooting with a Panasonic HVX-200

We mounted the gyro on my Panasonic HVX-200 video camera. We were also shooting with an FS-100 hard drive. The Panasonic records directly to the drive. It takes a bit of figuring out, but enables us to shoot over an hour of 720p 24 HD video at a time. This camera is the one that was recommended to me by Getty when I first talked to them about getting into stock footage. They felt, at that time, it was one of the best entry-level cameras. I also purchased a Manfrotto tripod and a Manfrotto 501 fluid head. This system has been working well for me. The next purchase may be a higher capacity P2 card. I have heard you can now buy 64 gig cards. I bet they cost a fortune though!

Getting our feet wet with Koi

We started off filming the Koi. For any of you who are not familiar with them, Koi are actually a member of the Carp family. Koi have been documented to live up to 226 years and in Japan are actually passed down from generation to generation. In Japan they are known as “living jewels’, but are also known as water pigs because they will eat just about anything. Koi grow up to three feet long and can weigh fifty pounds. They can be expensive, and championship Koi have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars! Watching them undulate lazily through the clear water with their brilliant colors of reds, oranges and yellows was almost a meditative experience. I am anxious to see how the video looks.

After filming the Koi we moved on to the pool. There we had a model (my girl friend’s daughter, Anabelle) dipping her feet into the water. We panned across the rippling water, up her feet, and then continued panning on up the palm trees and into the sky. Finally we headed to the beach and shot her walking along the edge of the surf as we followed behind, a few inches above the sand. We shot variations of this for about fifteen minutes until a security guard informed us that we could not shoot on that beach without written permission. Oh well….

The gyro makes it smooth…and jerky!

As far as the gyro goes, it has both benefits and drawbacks. On the one hand it can make the camera movements more steady, but if one moves a little too quickly the gyro can make the camera jerk. As with anything, practice helps! The gyro also adds more weight. After the shoot I was starting to feel like Popeye! I am not yet sold on the device and need to give it more of a work out. Stay tuned on that.

Hitting the road

From there we hit the road. David and I drove North up to Turtle Bay and spent some time shooting 10 to 15 foot high waves, and surfers, on various beaches. I managed to shoot some stills too. I know it sounds really cornball, but I think if I replace one of the surfers with a businessman in a suit it will sell. Stay tuned for that too. I do intend to make the image, corny or not, and will share the sales results. Expect to hear more on that in about six months. Stock is a long, slow process and it will take that amount of time for me to make the image, get it accepted and up online, and start seeing income from it. I will say, though, Getty’s upload portal works very well and has considerably shortened the time-to-market.

To sum it up, our first little shoot was fun and productive, and while we haven’t made a final decision on whether we should purchase the gyro, it definitely makes for smoother hand-held operation. Adding video to my stock efforts not only increases my earning potential, but also is helping keep my working experience fresh and fun. Not a bad combination!

Shooting a waterfall for stock, or not.

Photographing a waterfall on Oahu for stock

Yesterday I decided to find and shoot a waterfall for an image I want to create. The image I have in mind is a concept stock photo of a man going over a waterfall in a barrel. I photographed the man in the barrel, in my studio, a couple of months ago. However, I don’t have a suitable waterfall image.

So here I am in Oahu, a seemingly great place to shoot a waterfall. Not so fast. It seems that finding a good waterfall to photograph here is actually rather difficult. I did a Google search and didn’t come up with much. The only one that seemed it might do for me is called Manoa falls. The various articles I encountered on the internet indicated it is a relatively easy hike of about one mile in each direction, through lush jungle foliage including a bamboo forest. The falls are 100 to 150 feet in height (depending on which article you read). Sounds pretty good!

Somewhere between a trickle and a vapor

Well, there was some jungle foliage, though the bamboo forest was barely twenty yards long. I have certainly encountered “jungle foliage” that was much more lush, and bamboo forests that were much more impressive, on other Hawaiian islands. The falls themselves fell somewhere between a trickle and vapor. Not exactly what I need for my stock photo.

A magnificent vista

It was good, though, to get some exercise; and I am sure that at some point in the future some of the foliage shots I got will come in handy. One scene in particular did get my adrenalin going. Near the start of the hike there is an open expanse just before the trail starts heading uphill. Thirty yards up the trail, when I turned and looked back, the scene looked like something out of Jurassic Park. It was really a magnificent vista and there is no doubt in my mind that I will find a use for it someday.

A service to others

Even though the falls were not adequate for my waterfall needs, I was glad I did the hike. The hike also led me to something that perhaps is more important than photographing falls. As I reviewed the hike in my mind I realized that I could write an article about my experience and illustrate the article with the pictures I had taken. I am sure I could put together this review of my experience that would very helpful to others in my situation and that are considering photographing waterfalls in Oahu. I could write the article that I wanted to find. My hike could end up being of service to others. These others, in turn, would be brought to my site where they might find a photograph to license, a product to purchase or even click on an ad. I could take that whole experience and turn it into a service to others that would in turn drive traffic to my site.

It further dawned on me that this is a strategy that I can apply to many of my shoots. I can write about the shoots and end-up with more viewers for the images I create, more traffic for my site, and a very satisfying lifestyle. Hmmm, enough blogging for now, I have an article to write!

First Impresssion UGCX (expo and conference)

I have just returned from the first UGCX (User Generated Content expo and conference). What I came away with (besides a good sized pile of business cards) was in increase in my optimism about the future. I heard over and over again from everyone from Guy Kawasaki to Patricia Vargas (Senior Director of Content, Jupiter Images) that ultimately great content is what counts most. To succeed in stock photography is largely putting great content in front of buyers.

I also consistently heard that rights managed stock photography is going do well. As if to confirm that general belief, I received word during the conference that Blend Images, a stock agency of which I am a part owner (more on Blend Images in an upcoming article), had made its first direct (on its own web site) Rights Managed sale…for $9,664.00. Not a bad start! Blend also had a very good 4th quarter of Royalty Free sales.

Another common theme was that the growth in the demand for imagery is growing rapidly, and will explode once the economy picks back up. Alan Meckler shared his belief that the next ten years will find 15 billion new web sites…most of which will need multiple photos. Key question, will they be buying Micro, Macro…or getting free images?

Perhaps the coolest thing I saw was TinEye.com. TinEye enables images searches across the web. Upload one of your own images, or any image for that matter, and you can instantly search their database of 1.5 million images (indexed by their web crawling spiders) finding every place the image has been used and how it has been changed. Can you imagine the ramifications if image theft can be virtually eliminated? Wow!

I didn’t fully understand the ImageSpan presentation, but it also struck me as something that could change the landscape enabling individual photographs to compete for a part of that online pie. I’ll have to check that out a little further. I also got a better understanding of Creative Commons and think that might also be able to play a role in diminishing online theft and increasing at least the awareness and mind set that every image has value. That can only help our industry.

Anyway, it is late and I am ready for some mindless TV. More later!

John

Rights Managed, Royalty Free, or Micro Stock?

The Choice Between Rights Managed, Royalty Free, and Micro Stock

Recently a friend of mine, Greg, a man who owns a house painting business in my town, requested that I create photograph for him to run in a direct mail piece. Greg was familiar with my Animal Antics® series of images in which I anthropomorphize cats and dogs putting them in funny human-like poses. He asked that I photograph his own two dogs and utilize them in a similar way…put paint brushes in their hands, and have them
appear to be actually painting a house.

Greg told me that it was the first direct mailing he ever did in which not a single person requested to be removed from his mailing list. He was ecstatic with the results. Why do I bring this up? Because it is an example of how the right picture can make a huge difference for small and large businesses alike.

Are people willing to pay for quality?

As a stock photographer this is a huge issue. I know the right picture can indeed make a significant impact. But perhaps a bigger question is, are people willing to pay the premium for such pictures? I suspect that the answer is that knowledgeable people will recognize the value, and those who do not realize the cost benefits of quality imagery will opt for the less expensive options.

I firmly believe that as time moves on more and more images will be searched for and found on the web outside of the traditional channels of the stock industry. I want to be prepared for that. As I plan for the future I run into the question of whether to put my images into the Rights Managed category, the Royalty Free category, or the Micro Stock category (which seems to me to just be a lower priced Royalty Free model). I believe that the Rights Managed category is most appropriate for the bulk of my stock photos. Yet if I stick to that category I might be shooting myself in the foot. If it does come to pass that eventually the majority of picture sales come from individuals outside of the traditional stock industry, I don’t see them calling up Getty and negotiating rights for an RM image. The most compelling reason to put images in Micro Stock, for me, is the sheer number of people who are looking at those images. But, if people are searching and finding my images via Google (or some yet-to-appear search mechanism), then the appeal of Micro Stock simply becomes one of lower price.

At this point I am counting on creating stock photos that are strong enough that a potential buyer who sees them is willing to either pay Royalty Free rates, or to pick up the phone and negotiate for an RM image. I am not yet ready to put material into the Micro Stock business model. The recently abandoned (modified?) Rights Ready model championed by Getty seemed interesting to me in that it created a higher-priced category that also seemed reasonably simple to license. There still seems to me to be merit in that strategy so perhaps we will eventually see it evolve to the point where it truly works. I would love that!


Where to put stock images?

At least one industry pundit has suggested to me that the migration of sales outside of the normal stock industry channels means that it would behoove me to quit submitting my images to the agencies and license them all myself over my web site. Maybe someday that would be a good strategy, but I think that day, if it ever comes, is still a long, long way off. Despite the industry problems, my stock sales remain strong. Buyers within the stock agency channels are still willing to pay for a quality image. Every month I have multiple sales in the $1,000.00 and up range (and yes, Getty sales in the 40 cent range too). Hey, apparently one of the great things about RM is that it can actually undercut RF and Micro prices! However, for now I am going to concentrate my web site stock efforts on increasing the exposure that my “agency” images have and directing potential buyers to the appropriate agency where they can license the image without my having to get involved.

If any photographers who might happen to read this have any stories of images that have made a difference I would love to hear about them. It might help us all if we help educate the market place and the consumer to the true value that a great image can provide.

Time to Be Shooting!

It seems that a lot of photographers have cut way back, or have stopped shooting stock altogether. I can understand that. Every time I turn around I hear bad news for the economy and threatening news on the stock photo front. Today I happened across a micro stock blogger who was pretty pumped up that after six months of dedicated work, he had just earned a new monthly high of over seven dollars. Is that depressing or what? BTW, no offense intended to all you micro stockers. I encourage micro stockers to learn as much as they can about the other areas of stock. The market embraces all the forms of stock and all of us need to know as much as we can.

In my opinion though, now is a great time to be shooting micro or macro. I can’t help but feel the weight of all the bad news and it makes me want to conserve my money. But I haven’t lost sight of the fact that almost every stock shoot I have attempted has turned a profit. Seriously. And in this economic environment there are deals to be had; it isn’t hard to find people willing to work at bargain rates.

Great images rise to the top

My approach is to put extra effort into coming up with shoots that either cost me little to nothing, or that I am super excited about both in terms of the shots themselves and in what yield I believe they will return. Of course, I pretty much believe that if I am really excited about creating a stock image it will naturally end up turning a nice profit. Great images rise to the top. I have a number of images that to this day I can’t figure out how people use, but I was excited about creating them, and I still love to look at them (one of my big vices is staring endlessly at images I have created). And many of these ideas have brought in thousands of dollars. A quick example of an image that cost nothing but has returned thousands: a close-up image (RM) of an airplane lavatory sign indicating, “occupied”. Now don’t go and copy it…it still sells!

Creativity is the answer, again

Creativity is the answer, as it usually seems to be. Creativity not just in creating the shot, but also in coming up with photographic ideas, and in coming up with ways to create images that don’t require a lot of money. I keep a list of hundreds of ideas. I am constantly adding to this list. I can now go through that list and filter out the ones that can be executed with little to no expense and bring those to the front. It is a creative challenge. I am actually having fun with it!

One great benefit from these times is that I am fine-tuning my process; becoming more efficient and less wasteful. These processes not only serve me well now, but also will serve me well in the future. Already I have benefited from relying less on employees. When an assistant recently moved on I resisted replacing her. Not only does that save me some overhead, but also as a result of it I have learned to use programs myself that I used to relegate to others. Ultimately I not only save money, but I am also in more control of my business. It’s all good!¬