Macrostock
Paul Banwell, Senior Director, Contributor Relations for Getty Images has just sent contributors the following letter regarding Getty’s directions for the future. This information should be of interest to every stock image producer and distributor regardless of their relationships with Getty Images.
A couple weeks ago I wrote an articles asking
“What Is ‘Commercial’ Stock Photography.” I questioned how big the demand is for “candid,” “natural” and “real life” grab shots of what happens in front of the photographer rather than staged shots that look real but are carefully posed with great production values. A reader suggested I contact Jerry Taven who founded Nonstock about a fifteen years ago.
One of the biggest problems with stock photography licensing today is that there is often no clear logic behind why a higher price should be charged for one image and not another. In this article we explore how the industry's marketing strategy might be improved to generate more revenue for creators and distributors, as well as making the image search process more user friendly for customers.
Photographers choose to sell their work as RM for three reasons: (1) They believe that everything they produce should only be licensed for prices higher than those charged for RF, (2) They dream that one, or a few, of their images will eventually be licensed for an extremely broad, major use. Customer who make such uses are willing to pay multi-thousand-dollar prices for exclusive rights to such images, and (3) Such high value sales can only happen if images are always licensed based on use. There are several fallacies to these arguments.
robertharding has unveiled an innovative new portal for photography contributors to upload work to their site.
Have we lost sight of what commercial stock photography is? Have we become so obsessed with “real life” and “natural” the we think that anything that is arranged or posed is bad? Does an image have to shock to be good stock?
Munich-based
StockFood GmbH is now part of Hubert Burda Media´s network. StockFood is one of Germany’s most respected photo agencies. As market leader, it carries works by more than 1,000 food photographers from around the world. StockFood will retain its current workforce and its independence as a company. Hubert Burda Media is one of Germany´s largest media companies and market leader in food media.
Does licensing images as RM make sense anymore? If you’re licensing your images as RM the following are a few things to think about from both the customer and the image creator points of view. If you really want to license your work you must consider why fewer and fewer customers are buying RM images.
Visual China Group has provided a
list of the third party image collections it represents. The combined totals of RM and RF images in these collections is over 10.5 million images. It has been believed that VCG represents all the images in the Getty Images collection, but that appears not to be the case.
At the recent CEPIC conference one attendee asked, “Why do customers continue to buy RF images? Don’t they already have enough? If they get unlimited rights to everything they own, why don’t they just use the images they have already purchased and never need to buy another image again?”
Most photographers use two different figures to track revenue trends – revenue
Per-Image-Licensed and revenue
Per-Image-In-Collection. It’s easy for a photographer to figure his own per-image-licensed figure, but it is very difficult to determine how that might stack up with all photographers because the specifics of the number of images are usually not available even when you know (or have some idea of) the gross revenue collected during the period.
Dissolve has announced it will add over 50,000 premium rights-managed (RM) commercial photographs to its site at
dissolve.com. The photos will be live on the site on June 1.
In order to safeguard its users,
500px Marketplace has modified its submission requirements by asking for extra details to confirm the identity of its contributors. As of May 16, 2016 contributors must confirm their contact information and provide a copy of their government ID before any new images they submit to Marketplace can be sold.
PantherMedia is happy to announce that the royalty free images of the renowned Parisian Agency
PhotoAlto are now available via PantherMedia. This addition gives extra flair to PantherMedia’s Premium Collection. PhotoAlto's images distinguish themselves with a special touch of fashion and style that can only originate from Paris. Creatives all around the world hold PhotoAlto in high regard due to its strong technical quality paired with a specific, individual take on subjects and themes of any type. While the main focus of the collection is on people photography, there is also a strong emphasis on food, travel and other subjects.
Everyone says there is increasing demand for photos. And there certainly is for photos that can be had for $1.00 or FREE. But is there increasing demand from those customers who used to buy photos for use in advertising and major marketing campaigns? The following are some statistics. Unfortunately, this story may raise more questions than provide answers, but the questions are worth considering.
Some Corbis photographers whose images have been integrated into the Getty Images collection tell me that their images are appearing high in the search-return-order for searches of their particular subject matter.
How low can prices go? Is the volume of images used more important than earning money when an image is used? Must we accept whatever the customer is willing to pay, or is it possible, at some point to say NO? If there is such a point where is it? Most photographer will agree there is some point where the people representing our images should say NO, but there is big disagreement on where that point should be.
In recent seminars and webinars Getty provided contributors with information about buyer activity and tried to help them understand what customers need. One of the most important bits of information was that Getty is currently licensing rights to 10 RF images for every 1 RM. For years the average licensing fee for an RM image has been about 2.5 times that of an RF image. While the royalty share of an RM sale tends to be higher than an RF sale (about 35% to 20%) at a 10 to 1 ratio creators are likely to earn significantly more licensing their images as RF than as RM.
A Korean subscriber recently asked the following questions. “I notice you say that many photographers are unable to earn enough money and end up leaving the market. Is there any specific number that you can prove? How many photographers/contributors were there in the past and now?
A videographer wrote recently complaining that two of his video clips had been sold by Getty Images to Viacom for a broadcast show on Comedy Central. This show also appears on the web. These two sales were made through a Premium Access deal and netted the videographer a whopping $8.46 for the two sales.
If you’re a Getty contributor and your sales and revenue have been declining, it may be time to do some searches on Gettyimages.com as a customer would search. Input some of the generic keywords that a customer might use to find your images. See where your images fall in the search return order.
Shutterstock has reported Q4 2015 revenue of $115.9 million and a total of $425.1 million in revenue for all of 2015. The full year revenue was up about 30% from $328 million in 2014. Approximately, $8.6 million of the annual revenue was generated by Rex Features and PremiumBeat that were acquired during Q1 2015, and the impact of foreign currency exchanges. Excluding these contributions to revenue the company’s revenue growth was approximately 27% in 2015 down from 39% in the previous year.
Tomas Speight has joined
Panther Media GmbH as Chief Executive Officer. He will initiate a drive to grow the business into a global presence. Panther Media has a range of initiates relating to clients, international partnerships, as well as new content lines that will be launched in the near future. Further innovations beneficial to both photographers and clients are in the pipeline.
Since publishing “
Next Step For Corbis Photographers” last week, I’ve been contacted by a number of agents interested in talking to Corbis photographers who might be looking for somewhere else to place their work.
I’m getting a lot of requests from Corbis photographers that basically ask, “What should I do now!” Indications are that fewer than 20% of Corbis photographers will be offered Getty contracts. The actual number may be significantly less. Knowing who will and won’t be selected may not happen quickly. This story offers more thoughts on what's likely to happen and offers options for photographers to consider