The opportunity to interact with editors from publishing companies, picture researchers, stock agents and photographers at the American Society of Picture Professionals' Reinvention Weekend in Boston provided a clearer picture of where the business of producing images for publication is headed.
The Obama administration, through the offices of the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel, has recently requested input from interested parties as to how piracy and copyright infringement is affecting the economy. The deadline for filing was March 24. Virtually all photographer trade associations and many other interested parties submitted reports and made recommendations for change.
More and more still photographers are getting into video because of the
appeal of the hybrid still cameras that also shoot video.
Photographers love the visual coming out of these big chip cameras –
what’s not to love? But they quickly find out that if they aren’t just
going to be laying visuals down to a music track, they will need to
start thinking about their audio – specifically a narrative track or
one driven by sound bites from interviews. I work in the corporate
sector, as well as create documentaries, so I do a lot of interviews.
The interviews, along with a scripted voiceover comprise my audio track
and drive the story.
I was in Chicago a couple of weeks ago and stopped by
Zacuto.
Zacuto
is a business that has made outfitting DSLR cameras for video a
specialty. They have cleverly engineered an assortment of their party
add-ons that take these cameras to a higher level. They have also
provided solutions to overcome some of these cameras shortcomings.
Depending on the genre you are working in, documentary work, corporate,
indie films or photojournalism will ultimately determine which way
you’ll need to “trick” these cameras out.
In response to "Stock Photo Lottery," Bill Bachmann said: "I don't know where you get the idea that 1% of images are sold are RM. I think you are pulling that figure out of a hat."
If you're a photographer shooting fashion, products or doing other commercial work for brochures or print ads you will often need access to good locations. Getting "access" to good locations generally requires considerable effort and often fee payments. This story provides some hints on how to solve the access problem.
How to create estimates that get the job and build your business.
Travel photographer Bill Bachmann is an ardent advocate for basing stock image pricing on usage (the rights-managed model), not on file size (the royalty-free and microstock models). In 2009, Bachmann is on track to earn almost $1 million from licensing his travel and lifestyle images.
Jim Erickson breaks all the stock photography rules and yet is one of the world's most successful sellers of stock images. Pick any strategy that everyone agrees is the key to success in stock, and Erickson is probably doing the opposite.
The average annual earnings of photographers responding to the 2008
Selling Stock self-employed photographer income survey are $110,409, leaving out the top five producers whose earnings are uncharacteristically large. Of this, the average annual stock income was $65,475, which means that 41% of photographers' freelance revenues come from something other than the licensing of rights to stock images.
Fifty-five photographers with a gross 2005 income of $8,490,187 responded to our survey. This was up 9.7% from 2004 and 78% of this income was from stock. 30% of the revenue was from Getty and almost 15% from Corbis