Most still photographers say their best pictures tell stories. To a limited degree, this is true. But photographers need to start thinking about more complete and complex stories, not just the best story they can tell in a single frame. This is where the opportunities lie.
In the story above Tom Grill offers his thoughts on where the stock photo business will be in five years. (If you haven’t read it yet
click here.) While I agree with a lot of what Tom has to say, I believe the vast majority of photographers will find that stock photography will offer much less of an opportunity than the picture Tom paints. In the next five years it will become increasing difficult to earn a decent living, or even a profit, from producing still images on speculation. Remember profit is defined as revenue earned minus expenses and time invested to produce the product. There will always be a handful of photographers who are exceptions to the rule and buck the trends, but there will be fewer of them.
The December issue of U.S. News and World Report will be the last printed on paper. Beginning in 2011 and marking a three-year transition to a new business model, the publication will go entirely digital, though it still plans to continue printing a series of print products.
Eye tracking studies by Jakob Nielsen, a Web site consultant and author of a number of books about design and user interface, show that users pay close attention to photos and other images that contain relevant information but ignore fluffy pictures used to “jazz up” Web pages.
Skeptical photographers are struggling to understand whether Corbis’ new Contributor Gateway and the elimination of foreign office fees will actually benefit them. Many have focused on the royalty reduction from 40% to 37.5%. In order to participate in the Gateway, contributors must sign a new contract with Corbis and agree to this lower royalty rate. However, the 35% foreign sales office fee that is currently being deducted from sales made by any office outside the contributor’s home territory will be eliminated
If you’re a professional image producer looking for assignments, and you live or would like to work in remote parts of the world, the new World Assignment Web site may be for you.
Paul Melcher recently wrote a story that asked, “Are You Carving a Photography Niche – or Digging Your Career in a Hole?
” Melcher argues that there are few inadequately covered niches left and points out that perhaps those niches that do not already have thousands of images available exist because there is no demand for the subject matter. He also asks: “If you do not know who your customers are, if you do not have your own data, how can you niche yourself?”
A Selling Stock subscriber recently asked, “Do you have any idea of what are the actual market shares of Getty and Corbis worldwide?” A lot of guess work is required to answer that question as there are no longer any numbers publicly available to help in such an analysis.
SuperStock refunds photographer royalties after purchasing U.K. agency.
I’d like to encourage you to take a look at some of the “Free Stuff”
available on this site. Click on this link
(
http://www.photolicensingoptions.com) and you find a list of Free Stuff
in the column on the right. The stories listed will give you a good
sense of the resources available on this site.