Beginning stock photographers often ask those with experience for numbers they can use to construct a "business plan." They start by asking what kind of annual return-per-image they can expect to earn from a collection of a given size. This story outlines some of the steps photographers need to take when considering stock photography as a business.
For many photographers seeking to earn some, or all, of their living
producing stock images, one of the most important decisions in 2011 will
be whether to retire from the stock photo business or get into
microstock. Many photographers who are licensing their images at
rights-managed or traditional royalty free prices have seen their
revenue decline significantly in the last couple of years. They are also
skeptical that it is possible to earn any significant money licensing
images at microstock prices. As a result quite a few are choosing to get
out of the stock photography business.
Getty Images, Inc., has unveiled its new Photos.com site, developed for
value-conscious small business owners, marketers, graphic designers, web
designers and other creative professionals. Photos.com currently offers
2.5 million royalty free images and illustrations.
Getty Images editors say that they are still seeing plenty of great
content come through from a wide range of sources, in particular Flickr
and iStockphoto. They say there is no shortage of photographers
submitting new imagery and that they are editing tighter than ever for
their house collections and in particular their RM brands.
Corbis Motion has expanded its collection of video clips to more than 500,000 with a recent addition of more than 200,000 clips. Approximately two thirds of Corbis Motion clips are available in high definition (HD) and the collection includes a large selection of royalty-free (RF) clips that provide customers added value and flexibility.
As it becomes more difficult to earn a living producing stock images some photographers are looking for other ways to use their photographic skills. Taylor Davidson specializes in business and event photography in the New York City area. In March 2010 he launched
Narratively, an agency that specializes in providing assignment photographers to cover events.
It time for rights-managed sellers to adopt many aspects of the microstock pricing strategy.
The immediate reaction of many RM sellers will be, “I’ll never sell my images as royalty-free.” That’s not what I’m proposing. Photographers will continue to manage the rights to their images. They will continue to be able to license exclusive and restricted uses to their images. But from the customer’s point of view the basic pricing model will look and feel just like the microstock model that they have come to prefer.
If iStock is really interested in improving the quality of its
collection and bringing the work of the best and most experienced
photographers into its top end collections it needs to drop the
requirement that exclusive photographers not have images that are
licensed as RF with any other agency. All the company really needs is
that the specific images they represent, and any similars, not be in any
other collection. They don’t need to define “exclusive” this tightly.
It is interesting that even Getty Images only requires “image
exclusive”, but iStock want to have more control over the lives of its
photographers.
An exhibit of the work of several young photographers who are
participating in the Young Photographer Alliance mentoring program is
opening at the Calumet Gallery, 22 West 22nd St, New York City from
January 14-28. The gallery will be open from 8:30 to 5:30 Monday thru
Friday and 9:00 to 5:30 on Saturdays, closed Sundays.
2011 may be the year when the stock photo industry returns to the idea
of exclusive representation -- specifically, being exclusive with a
microstock agency. For many year the widely held belief has
been that the way to maximize returns was to get your images represented
by many distributors. Now, iStockphoto’s has developed an exclusive strategy that may bring
about a change in this way of thinking. While there are several
downsides for image producers to the iStock strategy, the upsides may
more that compensate for the difficulties.