Macrostock
Photographers complain that stock photo fees are way below what it costs
them to produce images. And they are right. But, the prices volume user
pay for images will continue to decline. Here’s why.
In 2009 I started to use
iStockcharts to track about 196 of the top 250 sellers on iStockphoto. While figures for the other 54 of the 250 contributors were available, their names were not. Consequently I left them out of my research. iStock has over 100,000 contributors, but it is believed that well over 90% of the images in the collection and well over 90% of the total downloads belong to the 37,085 contributors whose information is available on iStockcharts.
Getty Images has notified agencies (Image Partners), whose work is currently being licensed by Photolibrary, of Getty’s intention to “retire” (close down) all the Photolibrary websites during the last quarter of 2011.
In an article published in the British Journal of Photography (BJP) and entitled “
Stockpiling Trouble: How The Stock Industry Ate Itself?” Betsy Reid founding executive director of Stock Artists Alliance (SAA) from 2002 through 2009 lays out some of the reasons that the SAA will be closing its doors at the end of 2011. Many in the industry will want to review this article.
Alamy has over 24 million images online after adding over one million
celebrity images. The company represents over 570 of the world’s
leading stock and specialist agencies and a vast array of photographers
from every corner of the globe.
Given Internet capabilities, society is rapidly moving away from
Business to Business (BtoB) transactions and more toward transaction
where small Businesses sell all types of things direct to Consumer
(BtoC). Some images will continue to be used in major ad campaigns and
there will be other sales of stock photography at traditional prices,
but the number of such requests will decline. Meanwhile image use by small businesses and individuals will increase dramatically. Photographers need to start focusing on how they can prepare themselves for the new market.
Today, the biggest problem for professional photographers is how to get their images seen by potential customers. Most photographers would agree that the way to get the widest possible exposure for their work is to get their images on gettyimages.com. Sources at Getty Images tell me that 96% of the company’s sales come from images customers find on the first three pages of the search returns. Customers have a choice as to how many thumbnails they want to see on any given page -- with a maximum of 100 allowed -- so three pages of images would be a maximum of 300.
The educational market has always been a big segment of the stock photo business. Some agencies and individual photographers earn the majority of there revenue from sales for educational use. Until recently, most of the photographs used for educational purposes were published in textbooks. All that is changing with
Britannica Image Quest that gives students and teachers unlimited access to a 2.3 million image file.
At the CEPIC Congress in Istanbul a panel of Asian stock agents provided insights into the current market for stock photography in Asia. The panel included: Sandeep Mahewsari of Imagebazaar (
www.imagebazaar.com) in India, Daphne Fu of Panorama Images (
www.panoramastock.com) in China, Daniel Kang of Image Republic (
www.irepublic.kr) in Korea, and Ryusel Yoshimoto of amanaimages (
www.amanaimages.com) in Japan.
On May 23, 2011 in an open letter to contributors Andy Saunders, Vice President of Creative Imagery for Getty Images, outlined what Getty sees as the future of creative co ntent. His analysis will be of interest to everyone engaged in the stock photo business and can be found at
http://www.gettyimages.com/contributors, in the bottom right corner of the contributor log-in page. No password is necessary to view this link.
During the New Media Conference at the CEPIC Congress in Istanbul a panel of picture buyers offered their views on what they are looking for from stock photo collections. Lewis Blackwell moderated the discussion. Picture buyers on the panel included Peter Raffelt of Gruner +Jahr; Matt Burgess of Creature; Martin Casson of Dentsu in the UK; Alexander Karts of Die Bildbeschaffer and Paul Millen from an advertising agency in Istanbul. Two issues of particular interest to image creators and sellers revolved around the use of microstock by these large commercial customers and the lack of outstanding unique images in stock collections.
Image fingerprinting could be a solution for many of the problems photographers face in trying to protect their images. The technology for providing, in camera, a unique fingerprint of every image a photographer creates is already available. All that has to happen is for the camera manufacturers to build this technology into the next models of their professional equipment.
After spending six month translating all aspects of its customer experience into German Alamy has launched a German website at
www.alamy.de.
An increasing number of stock photographers are fed up with low prices and low royalty percentages and are looking for a way to get out of the whole agency/distributor rat race. Many are setting up their own sites and are looking for ways deal more directly with their customers. They recognize that they won’t make as many sales, but feel that the higher fees they will receive for each use will generate more total income in the long run. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that by licensing their images directly to end users photographers would receive 10 or more times the revenue for each image licensed compared to what they are receiving from their agencies now.
Have you given Getty Images exclusive rights to represent some of your
images? Are those same images available for licensing on Veer or Corbis
under the brand name Ocean Photography? Many photographers will be
surprised to discover the answer is YES. Photographers who produced images for PhotoDisc and Photographer’s
Choice RF have recently found some of their images on Veer being
marketed through the Ocean Photography brand.
It’s no surprise to anyone in the stock photo business that average fees
for image use are declining. The questions are how much, what’s causing
the decline, can we make it up in volume and how can we turn it around?
ASMP’s Executive Director Eugene
Mopsik speaks out on the ASMP position relative to the new Getty Images photographer contract. ASMP has been carrying on a dialogue with
Getty for some years as a photographer advocate. While ASMP has had recent discussions
with Getty, substantive results in the best interests of photographers
have not been achieved. Therefore, ASMP believes that it is important
for photographers to stay knowledgeable about the changes in the market and to
be aware of options including changing distributors and self-marketing.
According to Tech Crunch
Getty Images has acquired competitor
The Photolibrary Group. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed and as of this writing no additional information is available on the Getty web site.
When customers first requested rights to use images in both print and
online it seemed reasonable to charge a supplemental fee for the online
use that was much less than the print price. Today, electronic use is at
least equal to print and tomorrow it will be the predominate use of all
imagery. If we continue to price electronic as a lesser usage we will
be offering a huge discount on the price for the majority of our future
licenses. Therefore we must come up with an entirely new strategy for licensing electronic uses.
Every photographer detests copyright infringers. When one of their
images is used without compensation they want to be paid not only their
normal fee for the use but a reasonable amount for chasing down the
infringer and enough penalty to insure that the infringer won’t do it
again. The goal is to give everyone incentive to be honest. But is going after infringers really accomplishing that goal and is it generating more business for the future?
Prior to 1976 a commissioning client owned the copyright to images
created by photographers. At that time the vast majority of images that appeared in
publications and advertising were created on assignment. The 1976 copyright law changed all that and gave photographers control of their work and the ability to license narrow and specific rights. Now, the business world is pushing photographers back into a model that
looks very much like pre-1976. The promise of a continual income stream
from our creations often seems distant and unobtainable.
A rights-managed photographer recently told me that travel photographers must continue to
market their work as rights-managed because there is not enough
customer demand on microstock sites for travel images to enable
photographers to cover their costs and make a profit. He acknowledged that people who shoot model released business and
lifestyle photographs might be able to earn enough to profit from
licensing their images as microstock, but argued that it won't work for
the travel photographer. I decided to search iStockphoto for some popular locations and see how
many times the top ten images from each of these locations had been
downloaded.
The Stock Artists Alliance (SAA), a photographer trade association, has
announced that it is discontinuing operations. Founded in 2001, this
organization came into being after Getty Images announced that it
planned to make significant changes in its photographer contracts. At
that time relations between Getty Images and its contract photographers
had become steadily “more strained” over a period of 18 months.
Getty’s move to sell some of its royalty-free images on both
www.gettyimages.com and www.istockphoto.com is presenting some problems
in pricing usages and is sure to drive more Getty Images customers to
iStockphoto.
The concept of royalty-free stock photography was invented in the early
1990s because many picture buyers felt that it was unfair for image
prices to be based on how the image would be used rather than their cost
to produce. The pay-based-on-use system (rights-managed wasn’t even a
term used at that time) was a particular problem for picture buyers
because they needed to track future use of any image they purchased to
make sure the use wasn’t exceeding the license. Customers wanted a way
to avoid this extra administrative hassle.