I know the title of this post is a bit hokey, but I’ve been watching the imaging industry and trends over the last few months and have come to a fairly simple conclusion on the state of play ….
Unless some changes are made soon, the general freedom of photographers and artists to create their work will slip out of the hands of many of those that rely on their art and creativity in order to make a living.
Can you be arrested for killing an industry?
Fairly broad statement, but I feel it reflects the truth of the industry as it stands today.
If we were to split the market into 2 with Social on one side Commercial on the other, I’d say the social photographers are surviving better than the commercial photographers.
Wedding/portrait photographers lament about amateurs undercutting the pro prices so they lose out on weddings or portrait sessions and they blame the influx of consumer digital cameras and the plethora of photographers that do workshops and share their knowledge (sometimes for free).
Really, I don’t think this is that great a problem and sharing information only leads to better results for those willing to learn and apply the information.
There have always been keen amateurs and digital has made it more accessible to them as they no longer have to pay for film and processing, but If an engaged couple don’t recognise the quality and value in hiring a professional service, then they surely know that they risk not having the story of their day delivered well.
There will always be someone else getting married or wanting family portraits tomorrow and as long as that continues then there will always be a need for competent and professional photographers. If you’re worried about amateurs taking more jobs away from you, than I’d say you need to look at the quality of your work (yea I know that sounded a bit harsh)
Commercial photography is another matter – and it is in more dire straits than the social market. Not only are the commercial guys contending against amateurs, but they also have to contend against social photographers widening their scope (tends not to happen the other way) as well as a mass of press photographers being thrown into the already saturated marketplace as printing presses shut down and redundancies are handed out.
Typically a press photographer earns (and subsequently bills) 1/3 of the value of commercial jobs and this undercuts the existing commercial market. Added to this many large corporations now try to get as much content for free as they can (e.g. BBC or Redbull). What would be bread & butter work is fast dissapearing.
Despite all of that ….. I still don’t see it as the #1 cause of the decline in the industry today.
Its Stock Libraries
Getty/iStock, Alamy, ShutterStock, DreamsTime to name just a few – all those heavyweight agencies are efficiently killing this amazing industry in a way that no army of hobby photographers ever could.
And the sad thing is – photographers are helping them stick the knife in further.
What used to be the photographer’s pension is now being sold to the lowest bidder through these agencies.
I’ve observed news feeds from various sources telling of Stock agency X cutting it’s contributor’s percentage by yet another 10% or some microstock dropping prices and selling work at a penny per picture and so on.
More recently Getty/iStock announcing that it’s changing it’s contracts so that any Rights Managed image that they ‘manage’ that hasn’t sold in 3 years will automatically become Rights Free and open to syndication (I think they’re forgetting who owns the pictures).
I’ve seen many reports from photographers saying their stock sale incomes have halved or quartered in the last year or two, despite the same number of sales being made.
This, I believe, is the core of the problem in the industry.
Value is being eroded by these billion dollar companies undercutting each other in order to try to retain a majority market share. This then bleeds into to public/corporate consciousness. "Why do you cost X amount when we see images in libraries for sale at a fraction of the price?"
As I read in a recent BFP newsletter, it’s become "a race to the bottom".
How can these companies claim to be struggling when their commodity is given to them for free to sell for a 60-90% share of the item’s value?
Instead of dropping their prices, they should be increasing them and improving the quality vetting standards to ensure quality images. This will attract more quality photographers and therefore more clients and help boulster the value of our service.
Perhaps if they had to make their commodity themselves they would be less keen to drop their prices? 😉
A traditional Agency will try to sell your value and should(?) work towards improving both you and your subsequent sale value.
If they start asking for better quality and then start underselling you and tell you (not ask) that they’re increasing their percentage, then you’d sack them off in a heartbeat.
That’s exactly what the stock libraries are doing and yet they’re still being blindly fed new images every day.
They cite "If you don’t like how we work then dont use our service"
And I think that’s the solution (and hence my "Jerry McGuire" moment)
I see 2 workable solutions:
1) If one of the big agencies were to increase their picture costs by 33%, then they only need to sell 66% of today’s volume to make the same profit.
Photographers will swarm to it. The clients will get better images as the good photographers will leave lesser paying agencies.
Chances are low that (1) will happen, so here’s a better long term solution:
2) Photographers make 100% of stock sales (at the price they set) by self hosting their stock library.
Simple eh?
We already pay for webhosting, and online diskspace is becoming much more affordable.
e.g. 1,000Gb of space and unlimited bandwidth is not uncommon for around £50/year in the USA, so why not use all that space to host and manage your images.
Get rid of the middle men and sell to clients direct?
Personal/Online Disk Space is Cheap
I’ve actually been looking for a simple solution to this for a long time, before caving and purchasing a 30Gb Photoshelter account so I could at least set my own prices with Photoshelter taking 10% of all sales (despite me paying about £250/year for the privilege).
PhotoDeck offer a very similar service (which I found later) that’s cheaper per year, they offer 25% more diskspace and they take 0% commission
However …. I’ve finally found a workable solution for self hosting/management which is a one-off cost of $49 (£35), and if you’re vaguely tech savvy (or have someone that manages your website) then you can easily set this up by yourself.
The website app I found which will run alongside your existing site (if you have one) is called "PicSell"
Website: http://vm.xmlswf.com/picsell
Demo: http://www.xmlswf.com/picsell
People click to add the images to a ‘lightbox’ and then pay at the end to get an instant download of each images at the size purchased …. just like the service stock libraries offer 🙂
It’s still fairly early days, but it will be refined over time and it already seems to do pretty much everything a photographer needs to sell digital images online to clients without having to manage and monitor your library through the process. Go on holiday and it will be quietly and efficiently serving your clients while you’re away.
Best of all, it’s built on an open source website content management system called Joomla.
So the only real cost is for a one-off PicSell license and the time it takes to set up a folder or subdomain (e.g. http://stock.mysite.com) to manage your images. A good webdesigner should have it running in well under a day with the majority of time coming from customising the look of the site/library.
I build my own websites and I’ve yet to look further into this, but I know for a fact that when my PhotoShelter account expires, I’ll have everything in place ready to switch to my own hosted library – for the same cost as a meal out.
So all you pro image makers out there – let’s leave the stock agencies to the holiday point ‘n shoot brigade and retake our industry’s future back into our own hands 😀
I’m getting asked about this more and more so I thought I’d blog a simple answer for people to find
(or me to point them to 😉 )
Typical question:
"I have no idea where to start with licensing etc. I don’t honestly care what the client does with the images, as long as I can also use them in my portfolio. So how does that work?"
Scenario: A client asks you to take pictures for them. Product, commercial, event, whatever.
You do the job to the brief and you make the pictures and you ‘own’ all those images under creative commons copyright law.
For your client to use the images for their intended purpose, they also need to purchase a license for the selected images. Photographers will license for time, usage and exclusivity.
Time.
This can be from 1 day up to unlimited time.
Usage
From 1/4 a subpage on a website, a book cover, a billboard or broadcast on TV.
The potential usage is extremely broad and is normally grouped into braoder definitions
Exclusivity
Normally images are either non exclusive or exclusive to an industry sector only. Very rarely are they exclusive across the board and it’s effectively locking the image down for the client’s use only. But you still have the copyright.
If a photographer sells or signs over the copyright then the new copyright holder canuse and re-sell or license the image as much as they like.
For Photographers AND clients:
To get an idea on expected basic licensing costs, go to a stock library, select a picture and choose the advanced licensing options.
Select a Rights Managed scenario to see how much 1 picture licenses for.
And that’s the very basics.
There’s a lot more to it such as how to relicense and building contracts or working with selling/working in the media and if you want to earn from pictures then you need to know it fully.
[subliminal message]buy BTL ….. buy BTL[/subliminal message]
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Footnote: The question included "I don’t honestly care what the client does with the images".
We should. One of the main reasons the industry is falling apart is because the uneducated are ‘giving away’ their pictures for virtually nothing.
But there’s a simple fix:
http://www.callumw.com/blog/it-only-takes-30bucks-to-make-a-profit-from-photography-and-save-the-industry-at-the-same-time/
Get the book
Read the book
Know your rights
Protect your business and more importantly protect your clients 🙂
I’ve seen a run of articles recently which re-enforce the value of working with a photographer to create an image and marketing material that’s right for you, rather than purchasing stock images, regardless of them being Rights Free (RF) or Rights Managed (RM).
What’s the difference between RF and RM?
Simply put, Rights Free means anyone can buy and use the same image concurrently. You could be sharing the same image for your Children’s Nursery service as another company selling Bondage Gear. You have zero control over it’s use.
Rights Managed usually means that you license the image for a specific use + time so that the same image may not be used in the same arena or publications during your purchased license term (the more it costs, the more exclusivity you have).
This gives you some control of who else uses that particular image, but there’s nothing stopping an almost identical image from the same set being used elsewhere as you only licensed one shot.
So … here are some examples of what happens when people try to save a few bucks on their overheads.
An example image of a call center person on a stock website
The same girl on the website of "a global business and IT consulting firm"
The same girl on a major UK Brand website:
And … oh dear! The same girl on an adult toy website
(clicking in this image reveals a clear image):
The above are examples of website use only, but it also extends to print too.
The next example was found and shared on the blog of Bobballs
Billboard Poster from The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)
"The larger of the two main unionist political parties in Northern Ireland" (Wikipedia)
Within hours, someone from a rival party found the stock image source and used another image from the same set to completely discredit the DUP – and there’s nothing they could do about it …
(except work with a photographer in the first place)
While we may laugh at the above, the actual implications of these "shortcuts" for these companies, designers (and political parties) are extremely severe and embarrassing, not to mention potentially costing them revenue or credibility should both marketing campaigns be effective in the public eye.
The reality is that if you work with a photographer to make one picture, then yes this is going to cost more than a generic stock image.
But if you work with the photographer to make a series of images for you then it works out cheaper than stock pictures.
So the question is .. is your public image only worth £2?