Authentic and Real Images

Posted on 12/23/2014 by Jim Pickerell | Printable Version | Comments (4)

The not so new buzzwords in stock photography are “Authentic” and “Real.” In theory, a photo can’t be authentic or real unless it is captured as a grab shot of something that happened in front of you as you move through life. Many would like for you to believe that if the image is staged in any way by a professional it can’t be authentic or real, no matter how hard the professional tries to make it look that way.

Part-timers take a high percentage of the photos that are considered authentic or real. They photograph what they see that interests them. The fact that 99% of what they shoot isn’t of interest to anyone other than a small collection of their Facebook friends doesn’t make the images any less real.

Professionals who want to produce images that sell probably need to strive for what the world has defined as authentic and real. Part-timers that produce authentic and real images need to keep a few other things in mind if they really hope to get the image used. If the image involves people the photographer better make sure they have a model release because people who are photographed in unguarded moments on the street may get upset if an image of them is used to promote a product or service they don’t like.



Image creator also needs to take the time to properly keyword their images so they can be found. For most the keywording effort is not the fun part of taking pictures.

The problem is that there are millions of people producing millions of these “uniquely real and authentic” images every day.  The more there are the less likely it is that a willing buyer will find what they are looking for  -- even if it is keyworded. With all the images being produced millions will end up with the same general keywords.  Since most search algorithms will show the most recent shot first (if no editing is involved) then if someone doesn’t want to use that image within a few hours of the time it is uploaded there is a good chance it will be buried so deep in the pile that it will never be seen (except by Facebook friends).



Part-time image creators may find that they have to produce thousands of images just to make one sale. It seems likely that most will very quickly get bored with the whole exercise and move on to something that is more fun.

To try to solve this problem for the part-timers organizations like Foap and Scoopshot offer interested customers the opportunity to create “missions.” With a mission image creators know that a willing buyer is looking for something specific. The part-timer can then go out and look for that subject, take pictures of it and submit them. This is a lot like what the professional photographer does, but maybe because a part-time amateur is doing it the image will be more authentic and real than one a professional might shoot.

However, even when they are working on a mission there are some additional problems for the part-timer. If the subject is not very specific and one that only a handful of people on earth have the capability of shooting, then there is a great likelihood that many shooters will be competing for the same sale.  The customer is not obligated to buy anything if they don’t like what they see, and finally, even if the customer buys an image they will pay significantly less than any professional would expect to receive. Thus, the part-timer has to decide if it is worth the trouble, or if it is more fun to just take pictures, post them on Facebook for their friends to see and be done with it.



My prediction is that lots of part-timers will try selling their work (certainly lots of people have downloaded the apps), but very quickly most will get tired of bothering with this activity. It is too much effort for too little reward.?

There is also an organization called ImageBrief that daily lists missions from major professional image buyers. The minimum price for an accepted image is $250 with 70% going to the image creator. Many of the requests offer much higher fees. These are definitely aimed more toward the professional, but the missions suffer from some of the same problems listed above. If the image is easy to shoot there may be lots of competition. In many cases the need is so unique and the time to produce it so short that the photographer either has the image on file, or he doesn’t. Still it takes time to find and submit the image. A few photographers have had some good success, but many find that the time it takes to review all the requests and submit something for consideration when they have it (there is no obligation for the buyer to accept anything) is not worth the trouble.

Long range these user-generated sites are not likely to be any great threat to photographers who plan and organize their shoots. The planner will try to create images that look more authentic and real even when they use paid models and props. They will extensively keyword their images and post them on sites that make it easy for customers to drill down and find the best of what is available on a particular subject.

Customers who want something specific that they can’t easily find on a major stock photo site will still need to identify a photographer who can do the job and guarantee a reasonable fee when the work is delivered.


Copyright © 2014 Jim Pickerell. The above article may not be copied, reproduced, excerpted or distributed in any manner without written permission from the author. All requests should be submitted to Selling Stock at 10319 Westlake Drive, Suite 162, Bethesda, MD 20817, phone 301-461-7627, e-mail: wvz@fpcubgbf.pbz

Jim Pickerell is founder of www.selling-stock.com, an online newsletter that publishes daily. He is also available for personal telephone consultations on pricing and other matters related to stock photography. He occasionally acts as an expert witness on matters related to stock photography. For his current curriculum vitae go to: http://www.jimpickerell.com/Curriculum-Vitae.aspx.  

Comments

  • Paul Melcher Posted Dec 23, 2014
    If this is true Jim, how do you explain Instagram being valued at $35 Billion by Citigroup and expected to bring in $2 Billion in 2015 ? As a remainder, Instagram is almost entirely made of part-time image creators who receive no money in exchange to shooting and posting their photos. Microstock companies ( Fotolia and Shutterstock), mostly supplied by part time image creators also have very healthy businesses and show no signs of dimming down. Hoping part-time image creators will get bored and disappear is a terribly erroneous assumption that will lead traditional photo businesses who believe it to fail.

  • Jim Pickerell Posted Dec 26, 2014
    I must confess that I don’t understand Instagram. I don’t use it. But I don’t think Instagram has much relevance to the business of earning revenue from the images a person produces. You acknowledge that, “Instagram is almost entirely made of part-time image creators who receive no money in exchange to shooting and posting their photos.”

    While the microstock companies have profitable businesses, there are a indications that they are becoming less profitable for many contributors. The over supply, and the lower pricing in many cases, is making it hard for many contributors to maintain the level of revenue they were earning a few years ago. Granted, many of these contributors are part-timers so they are not trying to support themselves from their stock photography earning, but their costs of production are going up while their earnings per hour invested is going down.

    Certainly the middlemen involved in delivering photos can continue to make money. They get their product at no cost and pay a percentage of the revenue they receive to the creator. Once they have built a successful marketing channel the cost of adding additional product is negligible. If a significant percentage of it never sells, or never generates enough revenue to offset its cost of production it is of no concern to the middleman. As long as something generates revenue and that revenue is enough to offset overhead and marketing costs that’s all they need.

    The major concern of the middleman is that another middleman will enter the picture and take market share from them, or force them to spend a lot more to maintain their market position. Think iStock and Shutterstock and maybe Adobe/Fotolia going forward.

    Then these middlemen may find other ways to generate revenue like selling advertising space. Presumably someone wants to look at all these photos that are being posted. Advertisers want to reach these viewers and will pay money to place their message next to, or inside these photos. Middlemen like Instagram can facilitate this process. They place the ads and collect the money. But none of this money filters down to the image creator. I’m interested in trying to help image creators figure out how they can earn money from the images they produce.

    You’re right that image creators will never disappear. If some get tired of shooting and more on to other things a flood of others will take their place. There will always be the next generation of image creators like my granddaughter who posts images on Instagram for her friends to see. Advertisers will pay money to put their message infront of her and her friends.

    But, I’m interested in what it takes to produce images that someone will actually pay money to use. When I talk about “authentic” and “real” I’m thinking in terms of what image buyers say they want. My granddaughter’s images are authentic and real, but she’s not placing them where anyone who buys images is likely to see them.

    The people who post images on Foap, Scoopshot and the microstock sites put them in these places because they hope to earn revenue from their images. When that’s the motivation I think they will eventually discover that authentic and real is not enough. The image must have something else to make it useful to a buyer and worth paying money to use.

  • Paul Melcher Posted Dec 27, 2014
    Jim hi,

    You make a lot of good points here but you leave behind some valuable ones.

    I understand that your point of you is, as you say " interested in what it takes to produce images that someone will actually pay money to use". Your vision is one of the classic pro photographer. Nothing wrong with that. However, because of that approach, your analysis is solely of a marketplace in decline, as you quite precisely explain here and a lot of your posts'.
    In other words, you are trying to apply old models upon new strategies and, of course, it doesn't work very well.

    Let me explain. Companies like Foap or Scoopshot ( ImageBrief is different ) do not care nor do they need to care about who submits images to them and how frequently. Wether a user repeatedly submits images to every single mission or not, it is irrelevant. That is because they work with a continuous flow of shooters that are either new, sporadic, one timer or addicts. In volume, it adds up to continuous submissions, today or in 10 years. There will always be a group of people submitting images .
    Remember, 1.8 billion images are uploaded every day, they only need a few hundreds per week.
    The only way they will loose shooters is if they stop publishing missions or, as you rightly say, if a better competitor sucks their traffic.
    Is this good for the classic pro photog? no. But it's a reality. And not one about to disappear.

    What pro photog need to understand is that the old traditional "I shoot/ I submit to photo agency/ I collect nice paycheck" is dead and will not come back. It has been canibalized by microstock for commercial stock and exsanguinated by dying press conglomerates for editorial.

    How the market is growing, who are the new players and why they are growing is important to find where the next opportunity might lie. While you don't understand Instagram, you should, because it's a photo agency, a middle man as you call them. Think of it:

    It collects photos from a variety of contributors and offers them for display and distribution on a single website. The only difference, is that, up to know, it wasn't collecting any money from downloads or anything else. That is about to change.
    Instead of charging a fee to download and use their images, Instagram charges a fee to advertisers who want to reach people looking at those images. To the tune of $2billion a year, much more than any photo agency has ever made. Without ever charging a license fee.

    Shutterstock or Fotolia could decide to stop charging for downloads and instead turn themselves into a Instagram competition . After all, they do have 10 of millions of images. But there is one problem. Those images are neither real nor authentic. They are fabricated snapshot for sale. And people can not only see that but have no interest in looking at them.

    Advertisers are becoming very aware of this situation and more of them are looking to Instagram for images because they are authentic and real, dropping Shutterstock in the process. Shutterstock knows this and is actively working on combating it. At one point, the two will merge. Stock photography will meet Instagram-like companies and vice versa, bridging the currently existing gap.

    By telling your readers to not care, ignore and dismiss this trend will forcibly throw them out of the possibility of creating a revenue for themselves.

    Thus my comment.

    ~ Paul M


  • Bill Bachmann Posted Jan 5, 2015
    Paul,

    Your last comment confused me. If it is true, as you say, that these Instagram type sites are not charging for usage, but i[make $$ by advertisers that want the people that look at the images to see their message, then how does your last sentence make sense. How if they avoid Instagram will they "be forcibly thrown out of the possibility of creating a revenue for themselves"??

    I personally still do quite well selling my images on RM and I don't listen to all the doom & gloom stories. There always are people who say you can't do things (like make $ in stock today). Funny, I do make money on stock by charging a fair price that covers my expenses and much more.

    As much as ten years ago ... no. But still one of the top sellers in the world and I love getting a fair price for my work rather than giving it away to be "seen" or for one dollar (where I would make 10 cents) each time it is used.

    www.billbachmann.com



Post Comment

Please log in or create an account to post comments.

Stay Connected

Sign up to receive email notification when new stories are posted.

Follow Us

Free Stuff

Stock Photo Pricing: The Future
In the last two years I have written a lot about stock photo pricing and its downward slide. If you have time over the holidays you may want to review some of these stories as you plan your strategy ...
Read More
Future Of Stock Photography
If you’re a photographer that counts on the licensing of stock images to provide a portion of your annual income the following are a few stories you should read. In the past decade stock photography ...
Read More
Blockchain Stories
The opening session at this year’s CEPIC Congress in Berlin on May 30, 2018 is entitled “Can Blockchain be applied to the Photo Industry?” For those who would like to know more about the existing blo...
Read More
2017 Stories Worth Reviewing
The following are links to some 2017 and early 2018 stories that might be worth reviewing as we move into the new year.
Read More
Stories Related To Stock Photo Pricing
The following are links to stories that deal with stock photo pricing trends. Probably the biggest problem the industry has faced in recent years has been the steady decline in prices for the use of ...
Read More
Stock Photo Prices: The Future
This story is FREE. Feel free to pass it along to anyone interested in licensing their work as stock photography. On October 23rd at the DMLA 2017 Conference in New York there will be a panel discuss...
Read More
Important Stock Photo Industry Issues
Here are links to recent stories that deal with three major issues for the stock photo industry – Revenue Growth Potential, Setting Bottom Line On Pricing and Future Production Sources.
Read More
Recent Stories – Summer 2016
If you’ve been shooting all summer and haven’t had time to keep up with your reading here are links to a few stories you might want to check out as we move into the fall. To begin, be sure to complet...
Read More
Corbis Acquisition by VCG/Getty Images
This story provides links to several stories that relate to the Visual China Group (VCG) acquisition of Corbis and the role Getty Images has been assigned in the transfer of Corbis assets to the Gett...
Read More
Finding The Right Image
Many think search will be solved with better Metadata. While metadata is important, there are limits to how far it can take the customer toward finding the right piece of content. This story provides...
Read More

More from Free Stuff