Editorial: The evolution of the stock photo industry
The reactions of many colleagues in our industry -- photographers and stock photo company managers alike -- to the changes brought about by new technology and innovative ways to use that technology have puzzled me for years. As a group, we have a history of spurning new, legitimate business models, rather than embracing them as a natural progression in an ever-evolving industry. Many will recall the stock photo establishment’s rejection of the Royalty Free model when it first appeared in the early 1990’s. For the most part, our industry now recognizes the legitimacy of the RF business model, but only after much wasted time fretting over RF and many missed opportunities to participate in what has become a dominant method of licensing stock images.
I say for the most part the industry has come around. To my amazement, complaints about the very existence of RF continue, as shown by Holly Hughes, the editor of Photo District News, in her Letter From the Editor in that magazine’s November, 2005 issue. In a passage about the increasing use of RF imagery by clients, Ms. Hughes writes, “Photographers’ rights advocates have long criticized royalty-free “clip-art” for commodifying the creative process and undermining the power of creators to control the use of their work.” I agree with the statement, but it raises several issues:
1) For which photographers do these “advocates” advocate? Obviously not the many who gladly produce (and earn a healthy income from) RF imagery.
2) Royalty free imagery long ago surpassed the disparaging “clip-art” classification. RF has attained equal quality with RM both in terms of its artistry and its marketability which has resulted in the very phenomenon of increasing use of RF by clients described in PDN’s Stock Issue.
3) That stock imagery has become a commodity is a symptom of the evolution of digital technology. The Internet has created conditions wherein large companies can deliver more images more efficiently than can individual photographers or small agencies.
4) Photographers may have less control over the use of their work. The control they once had, however, confined their access to smaller markets. The new Internet-based business models allow for wider distribution. At the same time, it gives that opportunity to a wider number of photographers, creating much more competition. In any case, photographers retain the option to stay out of the market entirely, if control is what they’re after.
To put the anti-RF camp’s narrow approach in a broader perspective: RM stock proponents complain that the RF photographers have sold out and have devalued RM imagery. If we accept that reasoning, then assignment photographers can legitimately impugn the RM photographers on the grounds that the RM photographers have devalued the assignment market. Illustrators, in turn, can legitimately criticize assignment shooters for reducing the market for illustrations. What could be more futile?
Now, several recently conceived business models take unfair heat as well. I refer specifically to three: custom stock, micro stock, and image subscription services.
Barring unlawful activities, the only fair test of the validity of a new business model is whether it’s financially viable. Custom stock businesses, micro stock companies, and image subscription services have every right to exist as long as enough photographers participate and enough clients use the service that the businesses can succeed. Photographers and stock photo companies who don't like these models have every right not to engage in them, but they have no right to vilify their proponents.
In the process of starting and testing these new business models, photographers might get stiffed if the models fail, but such is the nature of doing business. Some might argue that the photographers will get stiffed even if the new models succeed. To that I respond that photographers, like anyone in business, have to watch their backs. This is not to say that it’s OK for stock photo companies to mistreat photographers. Photographers must take sole responsibility, however, for what deals they make, who they make them with, and how they contend with non-fulfillment on the part of their deal partners.
I acknowledge this all sounds cold, but the business environment is a famously cold place, especially for artists. Artists must recognize that when they step into the realm of stock photography, they engage in what is as much a commercial activity as an artistic one. They become businesspersons and, as such, they subject themselves to a host of uncaring, numerical factors unmoved by considerations of art or emotion. These factors include:
1) The stock image market, like any open market, subjects its participants to the simple laws of supply and demand.
2) The large companies who dominate the selling of stock photography exist to serve their clients and create value for their owners/shareholders. They do not exist to serve photographers. (In fact, many stock photo companies no longer refer to themselves as “agencies” because that word signifies a legal obligation to look out for their photographers’ best interests, a burden they no longer feel compelled to shoulder.)
3) To the extent that artists provide unique work and service the market demands, they will have control over pricing for their services. To the extent that their work is not superior to the work of many of their peers (at least in the eyes of clients) higher pricing becomes more difficult to support. [For more on this question, please see our feature story titled “Value of a Professional Photographer.”]
The relative indifference on the part of the business world to the concerns of the art world is nothing new. One might say this does not speak well for our society. I won’t argue with them, but that’s not the point. Stock image suppliers serve their business interest better by addressing the realities of the market rather than trying to change the world, however admirable we may find the latter.
I do not question the difficult market conditions these new business models create for photographers and managers of traditional stock photo agencies. Nor do I suggest that the cliché admonition to “embrace change” necessarily makes life easier for those whose accustomed ways of making a living are threatened by them. I do, however, discourage stock photographers and my industry colleagues from wasting time and energy trying to hold back the tide of change driven by the Internet. Apart from the unfairness of it, attacking creative entrepreneurs for finding new and innovative ways to serve customers simply won’t help. Taking a hard look at the market for one’s own talent and product and determining how to find a place in that market makes for a more practical approach. Keep in mind, however, photographers and entrepreneurs alike can’t get too comfortable -- another new business model may be right around the corner.
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Comments
I agree with much of what you write, especially on the market dynamics. I also agree that it is hard to argue against the validity of RF today. I have been a fairly consistent opponent of RF, and it seems like you can only bash your head against the wall so many times before you get dizzy, and stop. It really does appear to be the proverbial race to the bottom, fiscally speaking.
The one area I am in 1000% agreement with you is that the photographer is responsible for the deals they make. I think many photographers who advocate against these sales models are really fighting to preserve the value and control that (US) copyright law grants to artists, against a marketplace that is rapidly stripping that value away. This can only happen when photographers agree to these deals, and they are doing so in droves.
I think that the ‘argument’ to these newer sales models can only be made by trying educating photographers to value their own work. But if you lay all the cards on the table, and the photographer still chooses to pursue RF or Micro arenas, there’s nothing that you can say or do that will change them.
The de-valuation of photography in the market is the reality. In fact I think it’s a pretty sad state that microstocks were able to further degrade the already low value of RF. I’ve said this before in other places; “These types of sites are where photographers who don’t value their own work meet and sell pictures to clients that don’t value photography.”
Right now, I am still trying to wrestle my own answers to the changing market, but still maintain a sense of worth and value for my time, efforts, and craft.
There must be a balance point out there somewhere, right?
Posted by: Gary Crabbe | January 12, 2006
First of all I want to apologize about my english which is not very good, but I hope you understand what I want to say. What Chris Ferrone says is true, but it is also true that the situation of the market is awful and prices are quite rediculous. What we see is that a lot of agencies and photographers which used to make a nice living with photography, have left or gone out of business. In the eighties at least a couple of times a month I used to sell pictures for ten thousands dollars or more, now I can forget about that. I talk very often with photographers used to make half million dollars a year and now they fight to survive. I also don’t like to see the all the pictures I see published are fake. It’s bad also for the consumers who buy products which are not the ones they see on the ads. Talking about Holiday and son on. Also now in order to make money all the agencies are remaking all the old pictures in their files, but what about new pictures? The are photographers which want to shoot hoping to make money in the future? And again Getty and Corbis are buying all the existent photo agencies , there is not a danger of monopoly? But what I want to underpoint is that I don’t like at all the quality of the pictures I see published and going on like this the situation is going to worse.
All the best
Pino Granata
Posted by: Pino Granata | January 13, 2006
I like Chris’ final phrase: “another new business model may be right around the corner..”
Rather than focusing energy on the eroding walls of our present stock photo fortresses, we should be looking at the horizon for insights on how we can ride this Internet wave to even higher levels of stock photography distribution, marketing, and financial achievement.
Even though I live very close to a public library, I haven’t been in the building in two years –ever since Google, et al, have made their amazing technological leaps.
Why spend wasted hours in a library (Sorry, Mrs. Haskins) when a deeper selection of information is available to me through today’s Internet search methods? Even Microsoft has recognized this, as they are about to come out in June with their new search/ad software.
Just as the word “captions” has slipped out of style in our stock photo industry, the word “keywords” will soon be outdated. What will take its place? keyphrases.
Back in the mid 90’s, most people entered a website from what they called the “Home Page”. From there, using the site’s search engine, visitors navigated about the site using a keyword to get information. This often brought them to a page within the site that was specifically useful to them.
Web sites soon began providing image searches. Then along came Alta Vista and a couple other search engines in 1995 that said, “No, you don’t have to go to a Home Page to start your search. Start with us.”
That meant, using a keyword, you could enter a website from anywhere,—a front door, a cellar door, the chimney, or a window.
Back then, how many websites were available? Just under a million. Finding your target subject was not difficult, but it was sluggish. Nevertheless, it was a lot easier than index cards at the local library.
The big improvement nowadays is that search engines allow us to look for subject matter with multiple words: keyphrases. Today, there are over a trillion websites. And several thousand images are entered into the Internet daily. If there are a trillion websites, there are surely a quadrillion images on-line. The question then became, how to find a particular one? If super-sophisticated search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSM, etc., hadn’t come along in the last decade, the corner of the web we know as on-line imagery, would have collapsed under its own weight.
With on-line image sites multiplying exponentially, an event in our stock photo industry is soon to happen: image inflation. Some agencies (portals, companies) are boasting that they are adding 1,000 pictures a day to their site. Image inflation is here. Incidentally, in the Weimar German Republic in the 20’s it took 100 million Reich marks to buy a loaf of bread. It took 7,342 liras to buy one euro when Italy decided to enter the Common Market system. Inflation is not the domain of economics alone. You would think so many images available on the Internet would devalue the worth of each image. It won’t. Here’s why.
Search engine strategies are an entirely new phenomenon for the stock photo industry. Keywording services are already becoming outdated. The new buzzword will be keyphrases. Here’s where new horizons come in for stock photographers. If photographers on their own website you are not identifying their images with detailed keyphrases, they will miss out on sales.
Art directors, photo researchers, photobuyers will become more discerning and search deep, several layers down, for subject matter they know (realistically) was not available decades ago. Thanks to search engines, buyers will be able to find an exclusive picture that no one else has. (“I need a picture of Ronald Reagan in the seventh grade in Dixon, IL”) . Economists tell us that when you have something unique, you can get whatever price the market will bear. Voila! All of us have very exclusive unique pictures in our files. Now they can be found and bought – for a very good price.
Just ask ol’ tymers like Flip Schulke who saved every picture he made of his visits to Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 60’s. Recently, Flip made $24,000 in one month alone selling King photographs. The pictures you make today may prove to be your social security tomorrow—and an annuity eventually for your heirs.
Since text takes up very few 0’s and 1’s compared to images, in a computer database, there’s no limit to the number of key phrases a photographer can enter, or a photo researcher can select when finding that “just right” picture. A return to the Glory Days of stock photography is just around the corner for us. –Rohn Engh
Posted by: Rohn Engh | January 16, 2006
Please excuse my English ( from old European - arrogant
French - ).
Another proposition as a title for this editorial : “ Adapt ( to the American system ) or desapear ( from the planet… of the apes )”.
When CORBIS bought SYGMA some years ago their officials said : “ We will not be able to collaborate with photographers who are NOT TRUSTING IN US … “ This is pure American realism, is n’t it ?
For the Stock photographers of the future, my advise is simple : prepare youself to become “ luxus slaves “ for US stock agencies ( which represent now 90% of the market ).
No way for you in hoping carrying on producing photos and living from them : with douple or triple split systems and search return orders, the end is near : no news !
You want to carry on doing your job : join the staff ! Come and work for 1000 or even 500 $ a day ( STOCKBYTE ), have no royalties and ask no questions . You were liking the possibility of becoming a capitalist with your money and YOUR OWN WORK ? Forget it ! The capitalists ( the good old ones ) will do it like before with YOUR WORK and the money they have made partly WITH YOUR INVESTMENTS : no news !
So everything is OK. But why let the photographer on a standing position in the traditionnal “ walk of the monkey “ ahead of the article ? This is not a realistic symbol for his situation. He is already on his knees, licking the feet of his new masters.
Posted by: henrykardo | January 19, 2006
Keyphrases? If there’s always another new business model around the corner, why stop there? I’m trying to decide between keyparagraphs & keychapters.
Posted by: Jeff Greenberg | January 26, 2006
It is nice to read articles like this one. As an owner of a stock photography “venue” it is refreshing to read the truths I know to be true. One thing that was not addressed here which equally impacts the industry is the pricing structure within the RF world. I am personally not at peace with the discrepancy between the average price per image on a subscription based site versus a site such as Alamy (or my own). I’ve seen photographers put the same image on both “dime sites” and traditional RF sites. As a business owner there is no way I can patrol my content versus other site content to avoid this scenario from happening. I’d like to conclude with my support of the following quote: “discourage stock photographers and my industry colleagues from wasting time and energy trying to hold back the tide of change driven by the Internet”.
Posted by: Julie Landman | May 21, 2006