What kind of images are generating the most revenue? Is it the amateur produce imagery that is quickly loading up most of the databases, or the more costly to produce model released people, lifestyle, and business imagery requiring complex and costly set ups and arrangement?
North American photographers and stock agencies may have heard about the new European Union GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) law that goes into effect on May 25, 2018, but figured “that’s something happening in the EU that I don’t have to worry about.”
Well, maybe not!
Shutterstock is enlisting the help of IBM’s Watson AI technology to make it easier for marketers to find images, videos, and music tracks. The company announced today that its library of more than 200 million assets will become available in July through the Watson Content Hub, a cloud-based management system designed to aid in the creation of websites, apps, billboards, and more.
When one analyzes the market for images, it is easy to see that the stock photography business seems to be classified into three image groups that clients can browse and license. Press and news images, creative photographs and a mountain of other visual content that goes from cheap to very cheap, defined as Microstock, although if we want to go lower on pricing, we can also find masses of free pictures from unknown, if not desperate authors, produced to generate internet traffic.
In 1968
Andy Sacks, a 20-year-old University of Michigan photographer covered Robert F. Kennedy’s campaign stop in Detroit for the student newspaper, The Michigan Daily. This is a story about how the photos he captured that day ended up getting used hundreds of times 40 to 50 year later and he received no credit or a reasonable share of compensation for their use.
A reader agreed with the lead in “
Escalating Price Based On Demand” that few photographers understand what they should charge for their work, but he argued that there is “another possible consideration.” He said it is important to establish a “floor price” below which you won’t license a usage. He asked, “why won’t agencies allow creator to set a ‘floor price” for ‘special images?’ It can be painful to see $2.50 sales of extremely complicated to produce images. Creators should be able to mark certain "high value images" so they can't be used unless the buyer is willing to pay at least a minimum fee.”
Recently Alfonso Gutiérrez, CEO of AGE FotoStock told one of my readers that a "professional" stock photo collection in an agency should be returning to its contributors a minimum of $1.00 per-image per-year. The photographer noted that his returns from AGE were way below that number and he wondered whether many photographers are seeing that kind of return.
Possibly the biggest flaws in the Blockchain model is allowing photographers to establish one fixed price for their work. As I have
pointed out before very few photographers have any understanding of what they should charge for their work. They may know what they would “like” to get if someone uses one of their images, but invariably that will be much higher than all but a very few customers will be willing to pay to use the image.
The opening session at this year’s CEPIC Congress in Berlin on May 30, 2018 is entitled “Can Blockchain be applied to the Photo Industry?” For those who would like to know more about the existing blockchain offerings, or who are considering putting images with one of the blockchain companies the following are some stories you might want to review.
Photochain is raising funds to build a blockchain based stock image platform that is excepted to go live by the end of 2018. Artists will be able to define the price for their work and receive “up to” 95% of the price they set (depending on the business model). The platform takes a commission to maintain the platform, and to offer support, marketing and other services.
Shutterstock, Inc. has launched of Shutterstock
Reveal, a new
Google Chrome extension, together with the release of its new experimentation site,
Shutterstock Showcase, which features two additional new search innovations -
Copy Space and
Refine.
When hiring an attorney to handle a copyright enforcement case the
Copyright Alliance has suggested five questions photographers should consider.
If you enjoy taking pictures and are considering photography as a career, maybe it is time to think again. If you’re in your 20s or 30s it is definitely time to think again. If you’re thinking about majoring in photography at a University, please don’t waste your money.
Blockchains are being touted as offering great future economic benefit for stock photographers. Photographers will be able to set the price for their work. No waiting weeks of months to be paid the photographers share of the sale. Once the image is licensed virtually 100% of the revenue will be transferred immediately to the photographer’s account. “Technology” has removed the need for middlemen and their costs. Blockchains will keep such great records on every transaction that consumers will be unable to steal without getting caught. Any unauthorized used will be immediately identified and the infringer will be pursued.
Is it all really that good? Check out this story.
Shutterstock ought to think about raising prices. Clearly the number of images download is flat and not likely to grow significantly in the future. Just look at the quarterly download numbers for 2016 and 2017. The overall market for stock photographer is not growing. For years Shutterstock got away with taking market share away from Getty. They though that because their downloads were growing that the market was growing. In reality they were just taking customers away from Getty.
Wemark has announced on
VentureBeat.com that it is looking to replace existing agencies in the stock photography marketplace with a blockchain strategy that supports direct transactions between creators and customers and gives photographers control over the price of their photos.
Shutterstock has reported Q1 2018 revenue of
$153 million up $22.8 million compared to $130.2 million in Q1 2017. On a constant currency basis revenue grew about 12.8% compared to the first quarter of 2017. The revenue was also up $1.8 million from Q4 2017. Revenue per download averaged $3.40 per image, an 16.8% increase over Q1 2017.
A few months ago in an interview promoting his new book
The Good Fight: America’s Ongoing Struggle for Justice, Rick Smolan was asked “How has technology disrupted photography.” Rick has been an editorial photographer since the 1980s, shot for Time, Life and National Geographic and may be best known for his “Day in the Life Of” series of books. The first
six minutes of the interview is worth a listen.
It’s about a month before the
2018 CEPIC Congress, the premier annual meeting of commercial still and moving image suppliers, will take place from 30 May to 1 June at the Maritim proArte hotel in Berlin. Currently 250 delegates from 150 companies and 29 countries are scheduled to attend.
Does anyone know. who owns the copyright to image
607387712 of Marilyn Monroe on Gettyimages.com. Evidently Getty doesn’t. It seems that Getty has the rights to license the image for “Standard Editorial Rights,” but that does not include commercial use rights or print cover rights. Evidently it also doesn’t include the right to license a use for wall décor because Getty will not license the image for that purpose.
SmugMug, an independent, family-run company, has acquired
Flickr from Verizon’s digital media subsidiary Oath. Flickr was founded in 2004 and sold to Yahoo in 2005. Yahoo, in turn, was acquired by Verizon in 2016 for
$4.83 billion. Verizon combined Flickr with AOL to create a new subsidiary called Oath.
As more and more photographers with experience at putting together high production value shoots are leaving the stock photo business major brands are beginning to have trouble finding the images they need in stock photo files. There are plenty of cheap images and plenty of candid, “real life” images, available as stock photos, but often they don’t fit the concepts brands have in mind.
If you’re looking for information about all things related to photography, and are afraid you might have missed something important, you might want to check out Jain Lemos’ new
Photo Ten Five website.
Back in the 1990s and early 2000s stock photo agencies began placing more and more copies of the images they represented with distributors around the world. Initially, this resulted in significant increases in revenue for the image creators and the primary agencies. The Internet and agency consolidation has changed all that, particularly for the image creator. Now, in many cases the distributor system has simply become a way to siphon off a bigger portion of the gross fee paid by the customer to middlemen before the image creator gets his share.
Image Source has announced a new strategic partnership with high end brand, Luxy Images to deliver a bespoke (customized) image service direct to clients in Europe at
www.imagesource.com.