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August 02, 2005

Smiling All The Way To The Bank

“Smiling All The Way To The Bank”

By Pat Hunt

“Smiling all the way to the bank.” This is a quote from Jack Hollingsworth, one of the country’s top contemporary lifestyle shooters for Royalty Free stock. As Jack puts it: “faster, smarter, cheaper - this is the new mantra for today’s stock shooter. Do it with regularity, and you’ll be smiling all the way to the bank.” Jack exemplifies the modern, street-smart businessman and photographer, who has seized the profitable business model of the day and focused his career on it.

Making a full time career in stock photography is a serious work intensive business, requiring talent, energy, and business savvy. Three people, who have built successful careers in today’s market, are worth studying to learn what it takes to prosper in this industry. Jack has his own unique direction, which we will look at next. Ron Chapple, owner of Thinkstock, is another major player from whom we can gain inspiration. And, Mark Hunt of Boston is the newcomer on the block, whose efforts we can follow from the start, to learn the difficult steps involved in climbing the ladder of success.

JACK HOLLINGSWORTH

Jack has a good jump-start, as his business goes back two decades, when the type of imagery offered to the market was Rights Managed only. He was one of the first to recognize that the changing business models, which developed out of the growth of the Internet, were not to be feared or avoided, but embraced and developed. He recognized that you cannot fight the tide, or the changing times, so you have to embrace them. Jack feels that the Royalty Free model “is a great business model - for customers, photographers and agencies/distributors.” Today Jack is primarily a content creator, a producer, and a photographer. As opposed to those who market directly, he “aggressively partners with non-competing agencies and channels to non-exclusively license the work.” His URL is jackhollingsworth.com.

Currently Jack has approximately 15,000 images in the marketplace and he currently focuses on high-end, model-released lifestyle and business subjects. His primary market is advertising and design, and his principle agents are Photodisc, Corbis, Brand X, Creatas and Photos.com. He still retains markets for his Rights Managed imagery, and those agents include Corbis, Getty, Asia Images, Photis and Index Stock Imagery. He also has his own line of five RF disc products called “World in Focus”, which are marketed through various channels.

Jack has a production staff of five people - a studio manager/administrative assistant, a production coordinator, photo assistant, technical manager, and a financial consultant. He recently went digital, and now uses two identical Canon EOS 1Ds camera systems, complete with lenses, flash and accessories. He says his digital workflow is “organized and sophisticated.” “We use Adobe Photoshop CS with Adobe Camera Raw for almost everything including color correction, retouching, processing/resizing and keywording/copyrighting.” He uses Extensis Portfolio to organize and post to the website, and retains several Macintosh computer systems with an abundance of RAM. He also uses a Sony Artisan monitor for critical color work, Gretag Macbeth Eye-One color calibration for all the rest of the monitors, a couple of Epson printers, and lots of hard drive space.

Most important to success is that Jack keeps up to date on market needs. To him that means “fresh, contemporary, up-to-date, model released people pictures of popular subjects, concepts and themes.” He says his style is “toward the ‘center’, rather than the ‘edge’,” and most of his shoots are 3-5 days in length (8-10 hours per day), and he shoots 5-10 talent per day with 3-4 locations per day. He aims for 50-100 ‘selects’ per day and incorporates a crew of two assistants, a hair/makeup stylist, and a coordinator. Production costs can be around $2500 per day, so to succeed, you have to have “a laser-like focus on creating marketable imagery and listen to your editors.” It also can take 12-24 months after submission to begin realizing positive consistent revenues, so you have to know your business. You have to keep your production costs between $25-$50 per select in order to make a profit.

Jack is a national lecturer, and offers wonderful detailed advice on the industry and how to get involved. These are meetings worth attending. As he states: “I am a very pro agency. I listen very carefully to what editors are telling me. And then I go out and shoot what they need. It’s really that simple. No big secrets here!”

RON CHAPPLE

On the other side of the coin we have Ron Chapple of Thinkstock (www.thinkstock.com). Ron also graduated from a long history in Rights Managed stock, recognizing the maturing business models and following the curve. He is now very successful producing and marketing Royalty Free imagery, and as Ron describes his history: “Business models continue to evolve but the need for compelling content will always be at the center. Royalty Free was simply the next opportunity. Believe it or not, Rights Managed was a bad thing to some photographers in those days!” “My approach was to freshen the Royalty Free marketplace with higher conceptual and production image values. Royalty Free has provided amazing freedom to stretch my creative wings. I’ve never had more fun!”

As opposed to Jack, Ron carries his business to a different level. Thinkstock.com is a fully functioning e-commerce site, where his entire collection can be searched. It offers thematic searches and expert research by the customer service folks. The collection offers 25,000 images in various subject matter, mainly focusing on conceptual lifestyle, business and editorial.

Ron Thinkstock employs a staff of 15 people and has 120+ agents representing his work around the world. Ron says: “Every search engine on the distributor website will bring up images differently so having images in multiple channels increases the odds of making a sale. Volume sales are the essential metric of a successful Royalty Free distribution model.” He adds: “We see a new phenomena of micro-markets developing, and we are providing more conceptual imagery than ever before and also targeting more editorial needs. The market needs creative vision!”

Most of Ron’s shoots are 2-3 hours with a few half-day and full day shoots. Models, amateur or pro, are paid $50 per hour with a minimum guarantee of $100 per shoot. Of the 15 employees, three are digital artists and two are dedicated to full-time footage production. The company has a Marketing Director and a Distributor Relations Director, and two customer service reps as well as three people on a technology team to manage the digital assets and web sites. Ron states: “an awesome office manager and financial manager keep everything flowing smoothly.”

Ron recently sold his business to a large media company called Jupitermedia Corporation for over $4 million. This included Ron’s new start-up – Thinkstockfootage.com. Jupitermedia is continuing to allow the company to operate as a separate brand. Rons’ business has operated withThere are two studios - Maui and Charlotte. Maui offers models of every ethnicity and a variety of locations. Charlotte is ideal for running a business on the East Coast time zone, and the studios are connected by T1 lines that transfer gigabytes of digital files every day. They function with 100% digital workflow, employing the Canon 1Ds, Mac G4s, G5s, 2xServes and 2.2 terabytes of storage arrays on a gigabit Ethernet network.

Ron continues to shoot full time for the company, and When when asked where he sees his the business going in the future, Ron projects: “Content is at the center. We continually look at what’s happening in the market and adapt our strategy. Staying flexible will ensure our future success. Most importantly, the stock business is a ton of fun…pushing the creative edge, providing the right images to clients, and growing Thinkstock into a world class player keeps all of us thinking with both sides of the brain!”

MARK HUNT

The new guy on the block is Mark Hunt of Boston. Mark is known for several enterprises, but Royalty Free lifestyle is his new venture. Since 1985 Mark Hunt Backdrops has been one of the most popular custom backdrop companies in the US, supplying large drops for commercial sets, including still photography, stage, film and video. When the digital age came around Mark had the forward vision to put his backdrops on three RF CDs to offer him a more global image reach. From the beginning Mark has been a photographer, as an artistic adjunct to his backdrop painting and his fine art paintings for galleries and corporate venues. This image inventory is how he extended into the photographic stock industry. From the beginning he has built relationships with various agents, including Index Stock Imagery, Age, Creatas, ImageState and Liquid Library. Today backgrounds are produced digitally solely for RF and manufactured by Creates. The first two are called Paint Details and Painted Backgrounds.

Mark has two web sites - www.markhuntbackdrops.com, which serves as a portfolio for the rental backdrops and showcase for what is available in the digital CDs. Www.mjhunt.com is a display area for his fine art paintings and a selection of travel and editorial photographs. Neither is an e-commerce site.

Graduating to all digital camera equipment opened the door to the production of contemporary model released lifestyle imagery. His first model was the bank officer that gave him the loan. “Business shots are the best sellers,” comments Mark. “I might as well start at the top!” Mark has been building his image inventory all this year, and now has about 4000 images. Some are sent to agents as raw files and some are sent as finished color corrected files, depending on the agent’s needs. Not having the production budget to start, most of the talent has exchanged model releases for images in comp cards and actor’s promotional pictures. He has one full time studio manager and a part time stock consultant. A typical shoot will have an assistant and several models and a hair/makeup stylist. A half-day shoot can net him 50 selects for his agents.

His equipment includes that camera of choice - the Canon1Ds, plus a G5 Power Book, 80 gigs of hard drive space, a G4 in the studio and an Epson printer. He has a Dynalite lighting system, and the necessary software includes PhotoShop CS and iView MediaPro which sets up catalogs for editing and easy viewing in HTML galleries.

“Digital is where it’s at,” says Mark. “Because the weight of production is on the shoulders of the photographers now, upfront cost savings from digital is imperative. It is fast, efficient, cost saving, and creative. The time involved in managing files is immense, but it puts it in your hands.” Like Jack, Mark’s approach is to let the agents do the marketing work, as he has multiple business enterprises and doesn’t have time to run an e-commerce site. “It is difficult to get started in this end of the business, as the commitment to time and effort is enormous, but the payoff will be great.”

Running a full time Royalty Free production business is not for the faint of heart, as excellent contemporary model released images, marketed by the agents with the broadest global reach, is not an overnight accomplishment. However, the market is growing fast, the business is excellent, and there will always be need for new creative content from dedicated artists like these three men.

Author, Pat Hunt, is VP of Corporate Relations at Index Stock Imagery, and a writer for various photographic publications. (path@indexstock.com)

Posted by Pat at August 2, 2005 08:21 PM

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