This story is not about stock photography. Lately, I have been concerned about the state of Democracy in the U.S. This story outlines some of my thoughts. It is an issue that should concern every U.S. citizen, and maybe citizens of other countries. If you have friends who might be interested in this subject, please feel free to forward the story or use the information in any way.
It should come as no surprise that, in recent years, online waivers and release forms have grown in popularity, especially during the past year. They’ve made it much easier to collect information while maintaining pandemic-approved standards. The stock photo industry, for example, has benefitted from online photo release forms. It provides an effective and efficient way to collect releases from models and online waivers will continue to be utilized as a better approach to signature-collecting.
I launched Selling Stock in 1990 with the goal of helping professional photographer understand the stock photography business and the opportunities it offered. For a couple decades many photographers earned significant additional revenue from the licensing of stock images. A large number earned their entire living by producing photos on speculation and licensing them as stock.
The chart below allows you to easily track the growth trends of Shutterstock quarter-by-quarter over the last 11-years and see the number of images in the collection, number of downloads and the gross quarterly revenue at the end of each quarter. You can also see the average revenue-per-download and revenue-per-image-in-the-collection trends.
Shutterstock has reported Q4 2020 revenue of
$180.9 million up 9% compared to $166.4 million in Q4 2019 and up from $165.2 million the previous quarter. Revenue per download was
$3.91 per-image compared to $3.44 in Q4 2019 and $3.79 the previous quarter. The average revenue per download for all of 2020 was $3.68 compared with $3.43 for all of 2019.
Photographers got a late Christmas present when President Trump signed the massive 5,593-page, $1.4-trillion omnibus spending and COVID-19 relief bill, titled the
Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021. () Buried deep within this omnibus spending bill was the 63-page
CASE Act.
I purchased my first Nikon camera in 1958 when I lived in Tokyo. At that time Nikon was the premier Japanese camera company.
Nikon has announced that they will now move all manufacturing of new equipment from Japan to Thailand. The reasons are simple: Blue Collar workers in Japan average
$18.94 per hour -- Blue Collar workers in Thailand average
$4.15 per hour.
After
my article a few days ago about
Wirestock's questionable deal with Freepik, I got some comments and pointers that I want to summarize here.
If Jon Oringer of
Shutterstock donated his annual salary of $4,598,580 to image creators who produce the products Shutterstock licenses, and divided it among creators based on the number of images licensed, how would that benefit image creators?
If you use
Wirestock to aid you in the process of filling out descriptions, titles, keywords and other required fields, and submitting images to stock agencies you need to read this story by Robert Kneschke (first published in German) and consider taking action before December 19, 2020 if you hope to earn much from your images in the future.
Wirestock’s “Instant Pay Program” could be a way to help the middleman make more while the image creator earns less for the images he or she has produced.
Shutterstock doesn’t want their contributors revealing how much – or how little – they earn. Presumably, this is because they believe that if contributors knew how little they might receive for the imagery they submit they wouldn’t bother to submit anything.
According to aerial stock agency
HOsiHO it is becoming harder and harder for video images creators to earn enough to support themselves. See its appeal to Stock Image Banks
here. There has been a decline in assignments and prices for the use of video clips have declined so much that professional independent videographers are finding it difficult to justify continued production.
There are many businesses where one or more “middlemen” are needed between producer of the product and consumers. Digital technology is making it increasingly possible to reduce, or eliminate, the need for middlemen in many industries. When this is possible (assuming the technology developer doesn’t take a disproportionate share of the price the customer pays) the creators of the product can get a fairer share of the amount the consumer is willing to pay and has more control over the price charged for the work performed. This can benefit consumers as well as producers by giving them more direct access to the creators of the product they want to use.
Getty Images has announced an exclusive partnership with
GLAAD, the LGBTQ media advocacy organization, working together to challenge harmful and cliched visual stereotypes of the LGBTQ community, through the launch of their first collaborative effort, a set of guidelines aimed at improving the visual representation of the transgender community. As part of a broader commitment, this new partnership encourages the creation of authentic, diverse imagery and videography, aiming to empower the media and advertising industries to choose visuals which authentically represent the LGBTQ community.
The United States Copyright Office recently created an
informative webpage dedicated to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; an influential law established in 1998 relating to copyright enforcement in the new digital age. The page provides a brief overview of each section of the law and its respective application.
A number of stock agencies are complaining that they don’t get enough new submissions of in demand imagery. See
here. They are seeing increasing requests for "diversity," "African American," "Black Lives Matter" and say that images showing more minorities and ethnic groups are needed. For the most part they are very unspecific about what these images should show.
Shutterstock, Inc. has announced its
2021 Color Trends report. By analyzing pixel data from the year’s top downloads and mapping each pixel color to a HEX code, the report reveals the three fastest-growing colors that will tell the story of 2021, as well as local favorites from around the world.
Photographers who want to earn a portion of their living in the future creating images need to quickly learn and start using Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) skills. (See
this story)
The
National Geographic Image Collection, owned by The Walt Disney Company, is scheduled to close effective December 22, 2020. National Geographic
was sold to Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox for $725 million in 2015. In March 2019 Fox was sold to Disney and Murdoch and his family became the second largest shareholders.
Shutterstock has announced the buyout of AI-driven music platform
Amper Music for an undisclosed sum. The move adds to a growing trend of stock image sites getting involved in rights-free music. Earlier this year, Adobe
inked a deal to carry rights-free music catalogs from both Epidemic Sound and Jamendo, while Getty Images also hosts a royalty-free music library by
Epidemic Sound.
Those setting prices for photography are focused entirely on profits for agency managers and
compensation for capital investment. They give very little
consideration to the well being of creators. Compensation for stock
photos is widely out of balance with production costs. Changes are
needed. Photographer need more control over how their work is priced and a larger share of the fees customers pay. With new technology such changes are becoming increasingly
possible.
We are living in a time when Artificial Intelligence is dramatically changing the way visual content is created. It may not be long before stock photographers are no longer needed to produce photos for commercial use. Photographers will still create photos for personal use and their own entertainment, but visual content for commercial purposes will be created by graphic artists using AI to tell the story and produce the effects their customer needs.
This story first appeared in German on
Robert Kneschke's website. Why photographers give away their pictures on platforms such as Pixabay remains mostly incomprehensible to me even after this article. Sometimes, however, the authors do not even know that someone else is illegally offering their images for free.
Adobe Stock has released
Adobe Stock Creative Insights, a data report revealing information collected from Adobe Analytics on 149+ million U.S. visits and millions of asset uploads to Adobe Stock between January 2019 and September 2020. As recently revealed in
Adobe’s State of Creativity survey, 91% of creatives admit that COVID-19 and nationwide protests have inspired them to incorporate real-world issues into their work, with 87% reevaluating the subject matter of stock imagery in campaigns.