Combining Stock Photography And Motion Footage

Several months ago some friends of mine, veteran and successful stock shooters, planned and carried out a fairly ambitious stock shoot, in Tahiti. They decided that they would like to include some stock footage in addition to their stills. They looked into renting a video camera, but in the end chose instead to hire a Director of Photography and fly him and a moderate amount of equipment (he did own his own camera) to Tahiti. I don’t know exactly what they paid, but it wasn’t cheap. However, stepping back and looking at the whole picture, the bulk of the expense for the shoot was already in place for the stills. Adding video to the mix, even if it wasn’t cheap, spreads out the financial risk of the whole shoot, adds the potential marketing point of having both stills and motion of the same material, and provides a relatively smooth avenue of learning the ropes of video.

My friends came back with great material, both stills and motion, and were very positive about the experience. Their still images are excellent, but that is expected. I have seen some of the footage and it is very good too. They are using the footage not just for stock, but also to promote their photography business as well. Having an experienced DP handle the technical side of shooting the video freed them up to explore their creativity and, in addition, enabled them to enjoy the experience more. The DP was also able to add to their vision with suggestions drawn from his own years of experience. The question now is whether their investment will pay off. Time will tell, and I suspect that the answer will be a resounding yes.

In seeking advice from photographers who have successfully incorporated motion into their businesses I have found that most recommend hiring a DP as my friends did. I also have encountered several who have taken it upon themselves to jump right in and shoot film or video themselves. I have taken the latter approach. About two years ago I bought a Panasonic HVX-200, an HD capable video cam. By the time I had bought the various accoutrements I needed (tripod, fluid head, P2 Card, case, basic lights etc.) I had about $12,000.00 invested. Here it is two years later and I personally have never shot with it!

I have, however, made the camera available to several of my “associates” in exchange for a percentage of the royalties. We now have about 50 clips online with Getty from these efforts. Those clips are bringing in about $1,000.00 per month average for the first six months they have been available. Interestingly enough, of all my stock photo sales for the first quarter of this year, four of my twenty best selling images are motion clips! My investment is a long ways from being recouped, but the results up this point are very intriguing.

The best selling clips I have so far were shot as an adjunct to a still shoot in which I rented a theater in Buenos Aires, and put on a mock rock concert. My friend and colleague Drew Kelly shot the video. Since the motion was piggybacked onto a still shoot you might say it didn’t cost anything. But the point is that the clips that are selling the best did have quite a bit of production behind them. Investing in stock shoots does have risk. You can lower that risk by combining motion and stills.

In another case of combining stills with motion I joined forces with fellow photographer David Fischer, and shot extensively with a Phantom HD High Speed camera. We shot stills as we could, but our primary efforts went into the motion. One of the still images, a dove being released by a magician, is posted above. Again, I believe the stills will pay for the effort regardless of whether our video is successful or not.

Combining stills with video adds to the difficulty of doing each well and thoroughly, but it spreads the risk. I also believe that it will become increasingly important to advertisers to be able to access both stills and motion from the same shoot. Right now agencies are not geared up to promote this advantage, but eventually I believe they will. It only makes sense. Even more importantly, I am comfortable with the still end of things. I know those stills will make me money even if I totally blow it with the motion and because of my comfort with stills I am much more likely to actually plan and carry out video shoots. And I am learning. Perhaps, in these times, that is the most important thing of all….

Stock Photo Success By Thinking Inside The Box

Sometimes thinking inside the box can work extremely well for stock photographers. After all, most of us think inside the box most of the time, and if we, as stock photographers, can create images that take advantage of that thinking, then we have a good chance for a great selling image. A good example of this is seen in the case of clichés.

A cliché is something that is very familiar to all of us, so familiar that it must have some basis in truth, or perceived truth, and, like going into Starbucks, can have that comforting feeling of the familiar. If you can find the right cliché and illustrate it in a new and interesting way, then thinking inside the box can really pay off.

In the example I have here, we have all seen cartoons of patients in a body cast and traction. We all have a mental picture in our minds from those cartoons, a stereotypical image that probably doesn’t actually exist in real life. I did a search on the major stock sites and found only a smattering of body cast images, none of which matched that ubiquitous cartoon version that resides in our heads.

I arranged for permission to shoot in a surgery center. My associate, Stephanie Roeser, created a body in a plaster cast using pipe insulation and, plaster impregnated gauze purchased from a medical supply company. I photographed the body cast prop in position on a hospital bed in the recovery room. Next I lay down on the bed and had Stephanie photograph me. Then it was a simple matter to use Photoshop to add my fingers, toes, eyes and nose to the cast double.

The finished image works for a wide variety of concepts in business to business (B2B), consumer advertising, and even editorial use. This “traction” image even goes beyond medical and pharmaceutical categories one would expect. It can be used to illustrate themes such as dependency, catastrophe, and risk. Creative art directors will no doubt be able to find yet other uses for the image (one of the fun things about shooting stock is seeing the cool ways other creatives use your work).

Thinking outside the box is a great goal, but sometimes thinking inside the box can produce some pretty good results. Learn to leverage those visuals that are familiar to your potential audience and your stock photos will be in demand for a very long time.

Intention: A Powerful Tool For Success In Stock Photography

INTENTION is one of the most powerful tools you have at hand for achieving success in the stock photography business. I have written several times about generating stock photo ideas, and that I believe “Intention” is the primary tool for doing so. That is, having the INTENT to come up with a stock photo idea makes practically any other endeavor in that direction work.

I think the same thing is true when trying to learn from looking at the photography of others. Have the INTENT to learn something. It is a great exercise to decide consciously that you are going to learn something from looking at other photographer’s work. That “something” might be lighting or propping and styling or Photoshop effects. Whatever it is, if you set the intention first then look at pictures, the learning is almost guaranteed.

This morning I came into work and had the INTENT to create a stock photo from existing files that I had on hand. I keep a large number of images in a folder I call“Resource Images”. I continually add to the folder and occasional purge images. This repository, or library of images provides me with such “parts” as skies, backgrounds, textures and occasionally, people, to utilize as necessary in the creation of my stock photos.

This library of pictures also acts as a kind of idea playground for me. Often I will decide to create an image on the spur of the moment and turn to these images for ideas as well as for parts. I will find an image that catches my eye and start to play with it, putting it in different backgrounds, maybe combining the image with another, or altering it in some way, to create a viable stock shot.

Sometimes I find all the parts I need to create an image, sometimes I get an idea but need to shoot some more to bring the idea to fruition, and sometimes it is just an exercise in frustration. This morning things came together and I was able to create a stock photo and send it off to an agency for consideration (in this case I sent the photo to my editor at Corbis). I’ll let you know how it turns out!

The image (above) is a fabricated skyline, a cityscape of some future metropolis that doesn’t actually exist, except on my computer. The idea germinated as I looked at a skyline shot taken in Buenos Aires. The buildings looked very cool and futuristic. It occurred to me that a whole skyline of ultra modern buildings could be a very useful concept image for stock. I picked through my digital files finding some skyline shots of San Francisco that I could mine for buildings. I used Photoshop to combine and alter some of the buildings and to simply stretch-out and adjust the color of others.

I made sure that the finished image could be cropped either as a vertical or horizontal. This image isn’t going to set the world on fire, but I will be willing to bet that it sells reasonably well…and it only cost me a couple of hours work…nothing more.

Because I don’t see this image selling like gang busters I have submitted it for RM where there is actually more flexibility in pricing than in RF, where I get a larger percentage of each sale, and where there is always the possibility of a truly large sale. Large sales do still happen. Last month Getty sold one of my images for $18,000.00+. My share was over $8,000.00. Stock isn’t dead yet!

Getting back to my original point, intention is a potent tool for so much of what we do in stock photography; for coming up with ideas, for learning, and for creating images. Get in the habit of setting conscious intention; cool things happen when you do!

One Photographer's Criteria for Successful Stock Photos

I had a minor epiphany today. I was talking with my brother and he commented that my stock photos were fun to look at. It instantly occurred to me that “fun to look at” might actually be a good standard by which to judge whether an image idea will make a successful stock photo. Certainly my favorite images to make are ones that are fun to look at.

I use File Maker Pro to keep records of all my stock sales. I took a look at my sales for the past five years and ranked them. Almost without exception my best selling images were fun to look at. They either contained a high element of humor or drama. These images are entertaining. It makes sense too. Given the choice between an image with a high entertainment value and an image that isn’t such fun to look at, it makes perfect sense that clients will choose the former.

While it is a bit unrealistic for me to only create those entertaining images, certainly that is what I am focusing on. They sell the best and I enjoy making them the most. That being said, when I set up a shoot for one of my ideas there are inevitably opportunities to create lesser images that make financial sense. For example, I have an upcoming shoot in a surgery center. I have several “main” ideas that I am eager to do. But as long as I have a surgery center at my disposal it makes sense to shoot some of the more pedestrian images that can fulfill a need in the market place. Shots of patients in the waiting room, of doctors and patients consulting and so forth. Naturally, I can and will continue to do some of those images. It just makes good business sense. However, at this point I will limit those “filler” images to ones that naturally evolve from the images I am drawn to create.

For moving a stock photo idea to a photographic reality my new criteria is that the finished image must be:

Fun To Look At
Have a message applicable to the market place
Be a quick read even at thumbnail size
Make an emotional connection
Have an unexpected Twist
Be fun for me to create

Keep in mind; these are my goals for my own work. Certainly other criteria will be more appropriate for other photographers. And my images certainly don’t need to fit all of those criteria. If an image fulfills two or three of them then the image is probably worth doing. And finally, as promised a blog or two ago, above is my falling piano image. I hope it is fun for you to look at!

Of Editing And Rejection

Today I received an e-mail from Getty basically saying that we should aim to get at least 50% of submitted images accepted, and that our acceptance rate will be taken into consideration when our submissions are edited. I guess they want us to edit our work a bit tighter…OK, a LOT tighter.

This helps validate my belief that tighter editing is better editing. It also seems, in effect, that we need to brand ourselves for and to the Getty editors. Part of what I used to find desirable about stock was that it was all about the image and not the photographer. But change just keeps happening and now branding for stock photographers has truly become important.

If you want to make a good living at stock, making great images simply may not be enough. Getting those images in front of their audience just keeps getting more difficult and more important. To do that, I believe, is going to require branding, marketing and a lot of strategic planning. Your body of work is going to have an impact on how many images you get into agencies and how quickly those images come up in searches.Your body of work is a key part of your branding. Your reputation, your branding, and your marketing (for me "marketing" means a solid web site with great SEO) will help you get your images seen, whether they are seen through agencies or your own site, or both.

Just for fun, above, I have included a couple recently rejected images: The “brain” image was rejected by Getty for being “too complex” and the stairway image for being “oversubscribed”. Oh well….

Collaboration And Strategic Alliances

I have written before about the importance for me of collaborating with others and developing strategic allies. Well, I have just finished two weeks of shooting with a Phantom HD video camera. This amazing camera shoots 1280x720 HD (720p) at 1,000 frames per second! The reason I got this opportunity was because I have developed a strategic alliance with my main supplier of computer and networking solutions, Grande Vitesse Systems.

I agreed to help them test a software solution they have developed for the Phantom Video Camera that greatly speeds up the efficiency and use of said camera. But the strategic alliance didn’t stop with Grand Vitesse Systems (GVS). The shoot took place with the help of another photographer friend of mine, David Fischer. We collaborated on our ideas and execution and used his much larger and better-equipped studio. Unlike me, David has lots of hot lights, large camera stands, and some custom made lighting gear. Having the use of such resources for two weeks of shooting made a huge difference.

Now we have two terrabytes of digital assets (video) to edit. As we complete the edit I will make the videos available for viewing through my website (above are two of the stills we shot during the filming). We shot some pretty interesting stuff. As we put the software through its paces we tried to shoot footage that would have a market, and that would provide a revelation, a glimpse into things that happen so quickly that viewing them in slow motion reveals the unexpected, reveals something we have never seen before.

We couldn’t resist doing the old “Dart into a Water Balloon”, and I have to say I think we captured the best version I have ever seen. Among the other things we shot were flowing hair, bouncing dice, falling coffee beans, raining money, fire, water, flying food, a dove release, flying insects and more. The right subject matter, shot in super slow motion, is truly entrancing.

One side benefit for me in shooting video for two weeks straight is that I began to see how I could work more video into my stock photo business. I have become much more comfortable with working in motion and with using hot lights. I am also about to get a whole lot more experience with editing. As I get more experience with the entire video process I will be a lot less resistant to incorporating motion into my stock mix. The increasing use of video is definitely part of the change that is going on around us, and as Sarah Fix, creative director for Blend Images commented (see her interview here: http://www.johnlund.com/Interview-Sarah-Fix.asp), “It is exhausting, and ultimately self-defeating if one doesn’t see change as opportunity”.

So I have just had a great and productive time diving into change and opportunity. In the long run that will prove more valuable than all of the videos David and I shot in the last two weeks. But without cultivating those collaborative and strategic relationships, none of it would have happened at all.

Crowd Sourcing Crowd Enforcing?

Crowd Sourcing Might Become Crowd Enforcing

A few days ago I had a very interesting conversation with Randy Taylor of The Copyright Registry. The Copyright Registry is a service to help photographers deal with the ramifications of passage of the Orphan Works Bill (should it pass). But the interesting thing to me, at least at this point, is a possible side benefit of their service, finding, and establishing a record of unauthorized use of images. Figures on copyright infringement on the Internet indicate the problem is truly staggering with upwards of 80% of photography usage being without permission.

The Copyright Registry makes it possible for anyone to find the copyright owner of any content, as long as the content has been entered into the registry. The Copyright Registry sends out spiders that use image recognition software to match photography on the Internet with the works identified in their registry. This process creates a record of where and for what time periods those works have been used. This information then becomes available to the owners of the work and can be used to ferret out unauthorized uses and help establish abuses for use in legal proceedings.

As you can imagine, The Copyright Registry isn’t the only registry out there, but they do have some unique approaches, and at $25.00 per year, they seem like a bargain. The efforts of The Copyright Registry and other such services just might turn the tide against the massive copyright infringement that we see on the web today. If it becomes simple and affordable for every photographer to protect their work, then crowd sourcing might not just be the origin of so much artwork, but also the ultimate safeguard of that artwork.

Some salient points about The Copyright Registry that Randy shared with me:

-Users can find the owners from copies of their
images, including the uncredited, altered,
unattributed, stolen ones. It's all about
enabling users to find image owners.

- No pictures are uploaded or stored. It's all
done with text, which can be a simple database
export with hundreds of thousands of records at a
time. Very easy and efficient.

- Though we created this to counter the effects
of Orphan Works legislation that is progressing
worldwide, it has real-world benefits right now,
today, while statutory damages still apply.

- The cost is $25/year to register unlimited
images - a price set to attract semi-pro
photographers. Photo agencies get a huge benefit
from that ultra-low price point.

- Though it seems too good to be true, there is
no risk, no downside. Rights granted are less
than those granted in click wrap agreements with
major search engines. No images are exposed
beyond their current web exposure. Rights holders
are merely enabling people to find them from
copies of their images.

Check them out for your self: C-Registry.com