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February 27, 2006
Faster, Cheaper, Better?
By Pat Hunt
Subscription, royalty free (RF), micro sites, Googling for images and even “free” - it’s enough to make your head spin. Stock photography business models change, mature, and grow these days faster than anyone can keep up. It makes the late ‘90s concern for royalty free CDs seem like ancient history.
The latest dramatic iteration has been the micro payment sites, charging as low as $1 to $3 to license a stock image. This quickly followed the popularity of the subscription sites, where clients can pay one set fee for a period of months to access thousands of RF image downloads. Photographers can earn 20 cents per download in these systems. Image licensing clients from advertising agencies to editorial textbook companies are embracing these windfalls, to access more volume, fight downward pressure on budgets, and just plain enjoy getting any images at all for low cost to “no” cost projects.
A current survey of varied image users garnered some interesting response to what Internet image sites are preferred by clients, and what purchasing budgets are forming for the coming year. When the participants were asked if they were actually licensing fewer images this year because they are easily accessing volume imagery on subscription sites, the overwhelming response was - “NO.” According to Smith-Winchester Advertising, “Not at all. Sites like Getty or Index Stock have made it economical to subscribe to six month or one year plans. If I have a large project where I know I will be ordering a lot of photos, and those photos are not extremely specific, I’ll go to one of the subscription plans to save money. If it’s a one-off, then I’ll go where I can get the best looking image.”
Scholastic claims they only turn to subscription sites when budgets are low or if multiple images will be used on one page. Barnes & Noble is not able to find appropriate images for their editorial book covers and interiors in subscription sites, and a textbook freelancer claims that most of the companies she works for don’t use subscription models. Weekly Reader, on the other hand, says they are licensing 10% to 15% fewer images because of subscription sites, and Avocet Communications says they’re licensing fewer images because of high pricing: “Rights Managed photos tend to be so expensive that we could easily jump on a plane and fly across the country to take the photo ourselves for a cheaper price.”
It would seem over the last year that Getty has held firm on pricing, and the RF prices are creeping up at every company. What does this do for the “free” image exchange sites? This specific group of customers claimed about two-to-one that “free” is not their cup of tea. As one client said, “If I find a good image fast, it’ll never be cheap.” On the other hand, Christina Micek, our freelance researcher, who has written a popular article on Google Image Search (http://www.mactribe.com/articlenews.asp?ArticleId=31 ) says, “Since Google Image Search has become more popular, some sources are allowing free use of images in exchange for what I refer to as ‘bragging rights’. This is still rare, and too time consuming. More often than not, the content providers who give imagery away freely are mostly scientists who have had their research and all data acquisitions paid for by Universities and NIH grants.” Jones and Bartlett Publishers at times actively seeks public domain or free imagery, “but this is because their needs are sometimes not met by stock agencies and the pricing that may be given is well above what is requested by other stock agencies or photographers.”
Almost everyone claims to be the victim of “downward pressure” within the companies to cut costs. One ad agency claims their clients want to bring costs down but the cost of stock imagery is going up. In-house photography using digital equipment is sometimes the answer. The publishing companies express relief that they are able to negotiate special agreements with stock agents and they are also producing more photo shoots. Also the pressure to reduce costs centers on certain editorial projects or titles such as the launch of new authors.
So, what happens in the next twelve months? Will everybody be spending more or less? The response was virtually one-to-one either spending more or the same amount. Few seem to be scaling back. Some ad agencies expect to spend 10% to 15% more. Cutbacks may come in other ways, as Scholastic says they may cut back on the number of images used in a layout - from 2 to 1 per page, or 6 to 4 per spread. Also some are finding it is cheaper to use their own photographer.
Fodor’s travel books are using more images on both covers and interiors, and Wiley Publishing is offering a new series of books that increases need by 10% to 20%. Barnes and Noble also expects to spend more because of volume production increases and not because of pricing demands. As Jones and Bartlett Publishing puts it, “We are spending less on photography per project, but due to the consistent increase in the amount of textbooks we are publishing each year, we are technically spending more overall.”
So, how will low-priced image collections on the market affect their businesses in the future? “Not much,” is an average response, as many companies have leaned toward the RF model for years anyway, and many companies still demand quality, or have to pay to get the unique image they need. As the average textbook company claims, “Until ethnicity requirements are answered, more reality shots provided (less obviously staged), and regions are generic enough, I will turn to imagery outside these collections.” These companies lament that “many of the collections contain images better suited for commercial/advertising uses.” Another adds, “The lower priced image collections allow us to save money on ‘fill’ images and pay more for the difficult to locate images.” Photographers are encouraged to “focus on hard to find imagery instead of imagery that is easy to shoot and plentiful.”
What are some of these image needs that clients struggle to find? The responses vary:
-High quality lifestyle for pharmaceutical use.
-Portraits of sweet looking kids to classroom activity shots, world events, travel and history.
-Fresh, realistic kids and teens in everyday situations, news, health, career development and science.
-Colorful and clear travel images.
-Health, science, public safety, fire, nursing, criminal justice, and computer science.
-Photos from Spanish, French, Italian and German speaking countries.
Poignant survey quotes:
- “For textbook companies, the image must illustrate the point of the text, and that takes first priority. Second priority is quality, but we will not throw out quality unless content is impossible to find.”
- “Calendars require very high quality scans of slides or very good captures. Having said that, I’ve been able to successfully take small digital captures (4”x6” @ 300dpi) and interpolate upwards to 14”x12” with no visible sign of image degradation.. This depends on a quality chip to begin with, and a file that hasn’t been JPEG’d to death.”
So, where are all of these images coming from? Each company listed their low cost and high cost favorites, and the list reads like a PACA meeting. For cost shopping, some searches are focused on Index Open, iStockphoto, Rubber Ball, Photo Spin, Photos.com and Clipart.com. Then the list graduates to the familiar Getty and Corbis, along with frequently named Masterfile, Index Stock, Alamy, Jupiter Images, Superstock, and age fotostock.
Of note also on the list were Picture Quest, AP, eStock, Creatas, Agpix, IBID, National Geographic, Boeing, Veer, Photo Researchers, Bridgeman Archive, Visuals Unlimited, Photo Edit, and Image Works. It should be noted that some of these brands are part of large companies already named.
Jones and Bartlett put it best, “We prefer to work with agencies that not only have a large collection, but pride themselves on excellent customer service, price negotiation and quick/efficient turnaround time.”
Thanks to the following for their generous time and participation –
Torre Lazur – www.mccann.com
Smith-Winchester Advertising – www.smith-winchester.com
McKinney & Silver – www.mckinney-silver.com
Avocet Communications – www.avocetcommunications.com
Scholastic Publishing – www.scholastic.com
Weekly Reader Publishing – www.weeklyreader.com
Simon & Schuster – www.simonandschuster.com
Fodor’s Travel Books – www.fodors.com
John Wiley Publishing – www.wiley.com
Bill Smith Studio – www.billstudio.com
Christina Micek Research – photodemon@hotmail.com
Barnes & Noble Publishing – www.bn.com
Jones and Bartlett Publishers – www.jbpub.com
Heinle Thomson Learning – www.thomson.com
Posted by Pat at 10:29 PM | Comments (0)
INDEX STOCK IMAGERY LAUNCHES NEW CORPORATE BLOG
New York, February - Index Stock Imagery, www.indexstock.com, has refined the design of its corporate blog, www.indexstockimagery.com to help better highlight Index Stock’s base of 1,700 independent artists. The site features the latest additions to Index Stock’s 1,000,000 image collection, and more than 20 “Stock Stories” that describe the adventures, travels and creative efforts of Index Stock artists. It’s fun to read about what it’s like for Jeff Randall to deal with “Narco-terrorists, guerrillas, paramilitaries”; for Chris Barfield to be a US Marshall, chasing down killers; Adrian Mueller breaking cultural barriers by speaking several languages as he shoots; or Palmi Einarsson’s “Patching Up Nature.” These artist’s lifestyles are as amazing as their images.
Index Stock Imagery adds hundreds of new photographic and illustrative images to its site each week. Recent additions have included fresh images of seniors, teens, couples, working parents, medical staff, night life, festive holidays, gambling, national parks, weddings, marine life, flowers, silhouettes and architecture. Travel images added recently include shots from the Pacific Ocean Islands, Mongolia, Africa, Chile, China, Cuba, and Afghanistan.
Index has been a leading source of Rights Managed and Royalty Free imagery for years, and has always been one of the first to offer new technologies and business models to its photographers and artists. It offers five major products:
www.indexstock.com –Editorial and commercial RM and RF
www.photostogo.com – Low resolution RM and RF, posters, postcards, and cell phone wallpapers
www.webspice.com – Web building, web art and clip art, animations, and themes
www.indexopen.com - Subscription RF in high resolution
www.photostogounlimited.com - Subscription RF in low resolution
Index also distributes images through a network of more than 100 partners located in 55 countries.
The new design also covers the latest news on Index, such as its recent distribution deals with Isifa, Isopix, Media Bakery, and NewsCom. Other ‘Useful Links’ give you access to top published stories like, What Stock Business Model Is Right For You or Finding Your Way Through the Stock Lexicon and Alphabet Soup.
Mike Kaltschnee, VP of Business Development, states, “Index Stock continues to be an innovative leader in the stock photo industry, and we enjoy connecting with our artists and clients through our outreach and ‘blogging’ with www.indexstockimagery.com and our CEO’s personal blog, www.dimdump.com. We will continue to build on these formats and look forward to feedback from our visitors.”
About Index Stock
Index Stock Imagery, Inc.™ The Independent Choice For Your Imagination, is an award winning and innovative supplier of photographs, illustrations, and digital images. It represents over 1,700 professional photographers and 80 independent still image providers and has agents in 55 foreign countries. It represents dozens of domestic collections and has 1,000,000 images available online, of which 250,000 are Royalty Free images. Index was the first stock agency to begin storing and distributing images electronically. It started scanning its collection in 1992 and launched its first e-commerce site in 1994. Index’s million-image library is one of the largest and most complete collections of commercially available images in the world. Its four major Web sites, http://www.indexstock.com, http://www.indexopen.com, http://www.photostogo.com, and http://www.photostogounlimited.com, support emailable lightboxes, e-commerce shopping, prints, posters, postcards, cell phone wallpapers, and customized price grids and high-res comps, for qualified customers in the high end design, Web marketing, small business and consumer marketplaces.
Index Stock Imagery, Inc. is a registered trademark.
Contact:
Pat Hunt
path@indexstock.com
Posted by Pat at 10:12 PM | Comments (0)
February 24, 2006
High Energy Dives
Mike Ricciardi
Many travel photographers climb precariously to the top of the world. Mike Ricciardi dives below it. In search of intense beauty and vivid colors, Mike’s underwater photography takes him to such exotic places as Hawaii, Micronesia, the Salomon Islands, Fiji, Tahiti, Papua New Guinea, Thailand and Indonesia. This spring alone, he and his companion diver, wife Ann, will go to Australia and Indonesia.
They venture on “liveaboard” dive boats, like those of the well known Captain Wayne Hasson, who certified Mike and Ann, and is the Managing Partner of the world’s largest fleet. According to Mike, the most beautiful underwater scenery and reefs are at depths of 10 to 60 feet. However, Mike claims, “The first question most non-divers ask a diver is how deep do you dive?” To that he answers, “every dive has a different profile (how deep and how long). Most sport divers today use computers that tell them how deep and how long they can stay down to avoid decompression sickness. When you do multiple dives during a 24 hour period, the computer also handles these calculations, but an individual’s personal fitness and health also come into play.”
Image # 979580
Deep dives (over 100 feet) are generally not the best dives when it comes to seeing a lot of undersea life. The deeper one dives, the less sunlight is able to penetrate. And, since light provides the key ingredient for coral and other living organisms to grow, life becomes scarce at greater depths. However, there are still reasons to dive deep. Mike does this when there are opportunities to see (and photograph) rare creatures, such as Blue Ribbon Eels in Fiji, The Black Corals in the Caribbean, or better yet, WWII ship wrecks in Truk Lagoon. He ventures places intermediate divers are not likely to go, such as the Tuamotu Islands in Tahiti. The Islands atolls sport ocean currents that draw the fish life, but can be quite treacherous for humans. Mike warns that less experienced divers, who often have trouble equalizing their body pressure to depths, and take longer to descend cannot manage in strong currents. To pass diving in currents that run from 2 to 6 knots requires a group of divers to all jump off the tender and descend quickly at the same time. “The nutrients and fish life that run in and out of these ‘gateways’ provide a perfect haven for sharks. It’s a photographer’s dream to see 50 to 200 sharks on a single dive.” Ann ventures along in these dangerous waters to serve as a model to give balance and size perspective to the photographs.
The splashes of vibrant color and eerie shapes catch your eye when you view Mike’s photos of the Fiji purple Soft Coral and Golden Damselfish or the Thailand Andaman Sea Honeycombe Grouper, or the Honduran Blue Bell Tunicates. Evermore strange is the photo of the WWII Japanese sailor skull, gas mask and Soft Coral. No wonder Mike’s images are popular in galleries.
Image # 979587
Copyright images are courtesy of Mike Ricciardi
For more of Mike's images:
http://www.indexstock.com/store/search.asp?SearchStr=///direct 4126
Posted by Pat at 09:24 PM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2006
Our Newest Images, February 22, 2006- Beauty, Hygiene and Fitness, Food, Animals and Children
We are always adding new, fresh images to our already spectacular collection. Take a look and see the newest images we have added.
Our newest Rights Managed Images
Check back to see a whole new set of images next week.
Posted by Valerie at 01:46 PM | Comments (0)
Our Newest Images, February 22, 2006- Israel, Western Europe, Asia, Caribbean, Central America and Southwest USA
We are always adding new, fresh images to our already spectacular collection. Take a look and see the newest images we have added.
Our newest Rights Managed Images
Check back to see a whole new set of images next week.
Posted by Valerie at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2006
Frank Christopher and The Collective Insanity
"The Collective Insanity" - what better way to describe all segments of society as we cross the "lines of mythology" from country to country? This is Frank Christopher's description of the world and its cultural interactions, as he has studied it for the last 50 years through his photography and international exchanges.
View this article on MacTribe - http://www.mactribe.com/entertainmentarticle.asp?ArticleId=9
(Frank Christopher passed away in 2005. He and his work will be missed.)
Posted by Pat at 07:15 PM | Comments (0)
Scott Christopher - Creationist
We all have varied aspects of our lives and shades of being. Scott Christopher takes this theme a step further as he describes his journey through professional baseball, to fine art painting, photography and world travel. He has spent his life with celebrities, starting with his father, Frank, who is credited with initiating détente in the '60s between Russia and the U.S. because of cultural efforts. Scott's spiritual inspiration and love of life lead us to a greater appreciation of the world around us.
View the rest of this article with images on MacTribe - http://www.mactribe.com/articlenews.asp?ArticleId=82
For more of Scott's images:
http://www.indexstock.com/store/search.asp?SearchStr=///direct 1849
Posted by Pat at 07:09 PM | Comments (0)
February 07, 2006
Our Newest Images, February 7, 2006- Graduations, Medical Staff, Couples, Summer, Europe and Asia
We are always adding new, fresh images to our already spectacular collection. Take a look and see the newest images we have added.
Our newest Rights Managed Images
Our newest Royalty Free Images
Check back to see a whole new set of images next week.
Posted by Valerie at 06:52 PM | Comments (0)
February 03, 2006
What Stock Business Model is Right for You?
By Pat Hunt
Where to you fit into the stock photography scene? Do you travel, shoot assignment, work with models, or chase events as a photojournalist? In today’s photo environment you need to consider stock as a possible revenue source in your diverse business plan. Over the last decade it has swept the photo world and engulfed a major client base formerly guarded for the assignment pro. The trick is – where do you fit into the numerous business models?
Last fall, Pat Hunt, Vice President of Index Stock Imagery and Managing Editor of MacTribe, conducted one of Photo Plus’ most successful seminars on: “What Stock Business Model is Right for You.” The Moderator, plus the panel of stars, spent two hours covering the scope of their company’s business ventures to help guide you through the maze of opportunities. Whether you are a seasoned pro or just a ‘wanna be’, their overview is a valuable guide. The following dialog represents highlights from their presentations.
Christina Vaughan is the founder and CEO of Image Source:
“We are the world’s leading producer of high end Royalty Free (RF) imagery. We were founded in 1999 and we are a global company although we are headquartered in London, England, with offices in New York and Germany. We distribute our collection through about 200 outlets in over 70 countries. We are the only Royalty Free company distributed by Getty, Corbis, Jupiter, and Adobe, as well as over 196 other outlets. Any photographer today who wants to be commercially successful has to be trading in RF images. Six out of every ten stock purchases made today are made on RF images. Photographers today are getting a better return on investment from RF images. We at Image Source have already raised our prices twice this year. The quality is exceptional and the technology has made it possible to offer RF to a broad range of image uses. The 70 countries in which we distribute offer a lot of marketing for your images. Technology allows us to do that. A photographer must work closely in line with our agency, and every picture represented by Image Source is exclusive to Image Source.
Success is about getting shelf space and exposure, and about heavy marketing. The question for you as photographers is which RF company is right for you. That comes down to what is the relationship you have in mind and what are you looking to achieve; what sort of investment are you willing to make; and what is your level of creativity. If you are willing to make an investment in RF you can get a good return on your investment.
At Image Source we have zero attrition rate, as we have never lost a photographer. Also we have one of the best records in the industry for staff retention. It’s key to work with people whom you know are going to be around, and have the expertise. Does your agent have fundamental business practices; does it have integrity; are they honest; do they pay your royalty and do they pay them on time? What new markets are they looking for? In Europe, for instance, we are still experiencing huge amounts of growth in RF. The US is the single biggest market in the world for pictures, but all the growth is coming from Europe. Beyond Europe there is Russia, predicted to have the largest growth in advertising revenues in 2006. New markets are opening in China, India and Japan. Our success has been based on creativity, commercial success, people and communication. We are very very passionate about what we do.”
James Alexander is the Director of Adobe Images:
“I think the session should really be called - what business model is right for your customers? The process of being creative has never been more complicated. This has reduced the amount of time that creative professionals have to focus on image acquisition. The creative designers move faster and their budgets are tighter. Rights Managed (RM) is one of the greatest models in the world for photographers and for creative professionals. There is no other model, which allows a creative professional to know where an image has been, how it has been licensed in the world and if you can license an exclusive for that image. RF is also a valuable model for creative professionals with a different set of needs. It might be speed and being able to do a license at 3:00 AM with a credit card. Subscriptions are viewed as a threat to this audience, but the reality is that creative professionals need a model where they can license many images very quickly and they can be used in rapid succession.
Adobe offers the tools to create those designs, whether it’s video, or Flash, or websites or the printed page. Workflows are getting more complicated. So for Creative Suite 2 we decided that we were going to make image acquisition really easy. CS2 allows creative professionals to reach photographers directly through the photographer directory, which lives in the Bridge. We originally partnered with trade associations to populate that directory and we now have about 2500 photographers globally.
We have also looked at enabling access to Rights Managed collections, and we have a directory page of photographers who have RM collections. However the thing that is most exciting for Adobe is our RF offering built into the product. We add metadata about the image that follows the image, while dragging the application from Photoshop to Illustrator to GoLive, and we track those images for you to enhance your workflow. Now we have 450,000 images, and we have developed a strategy for photographers to get into the application directly by going to Image Source, Masterfile, IPN Relay or Getty and talk to them about getting your collections represented for RF.
As a creative professional, you can come to the browse page and be able to search through predefined concepts. We keep previous searches in folders, plus downloaded comps and purchase folders. We remember all the searches and cache the thumbnails. You can do an advanced search for a specific collection, B& W or illustration. We also track all the licensing information for you, and we keep a copy of it on Adobe servers so you never have to track down your agreement. You are one click from opening an image and downloading into PhotoShop. We do provide images for composition at no charge. You can actually reduce the Bridge to a floating pallet over your composition so you can just drag and drop right into your document. There’s a function called Preflighting, which allows the creative professional, before they send that file to press, to make sure all the fonts are in the file. You will get a warning about the low-resolution photos in your comp that says you have to purchase the image, and you can purchase it right in the program. You will come back to the Bridge and put it in the shopping cart, log in, buy and download. I think this will help grow the stock business. Our view is about helping the creative professional be successful and making their workflows much easier.”
Patrick Donehue is the Vice President of Photographer Relations of Corbis:
“We offer Rights Managed, Royalty Free, editorial, commercial, and some celebrity portraiture. The client’s view is the most important thing for us. The best way to approach what business model is right for you is to come to an understanding that the best model is the model that will make you the most money. It’s great doing art and personal photography, but we need to be making pictures that people will use. The business is about a two billion dollar business, and about 75% is in the commercial sector, meaning advertising, graphic design and corporate. Globally 72% of the business is in five countries. In descending order they are-The US, Japan, Germany, the UK and France. The 28% is interesting because there are emerging markets that are critically important and are growing very fast. The Asian countries and India are extraordinary and are growing at a very rapid pace.
At the International PACA meeting this fall, a gentleman from MIT, who runs the media lab, addressed us, and he said something that is extraordinary. There is an initiative to develop $100 laptops for the emerging third world. Countries like China and the developing countries are all over this. Last year I spent a lot of time talking to Creative Directors at ad agencies in Asia, like J Walter Thomson in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Taipei. Even the guys that work in the same companies don’t all agree about what kind of pictures they like and what kind of distribution they like. This all boils down to understanding the client. You have an amazing edge if you have talked to a designer, or photo editor in the last few months. The best way to determine your stock model is to ask your clients. Understand the workflow and demands of a designer. Traditionally there have been issues with the emergence of RF. I have to tell you THAT IS OVER. There are no issues and if you are not playing in that category, you can kiss off 50% to 79% of the market.
What are the common attributes of very successful stock photographers? You cannot make pictures without spending money and photographers have to be early adopters to technology. This business is a phenomenal business to be in. It’s cool to make a lot of pictures, get them in the proper distribution, and get a check every month. That’s a huge deal, when you get sick or can’t work for a while - you still get paid. Remember market requirements change, and you have to be well positioned to deal with those changes and hear the voice of the client.”
Brad Kuhns is Co-founder of IPNstock.com:
“IPN stands for the Independent Photography Network. We started IPN in 1999 building websites for photographers. Some photographers have a need to go directly to their own clients. We started sharing pictures between sites, so photographers could represent each other. In 2003 we were acquired by VNU, the parent company of Photo District News, PhotoServe and PhotoPlus. We can set up web sites that are very capable, with search engines, and e-commerce lightboxes. We build websites and for those that already have site, we add our technology behind your design. This allows you to sell directly to your own clients, to show portfolios, to fulfill assignments, and to broadcast your images to clients. Our portal site provides a place that clients can come and visit, see a broad selection and work with a sales force, as we are making sales for the photographers and doing promotion.
Many of the sites have a very distinct look and feel. Each one has its own branded design. The photographers who get sites from us also get the caliber that big agencies would use. We also have other components that help you solve your archiving need. We provide tools that allow you to do batch captioning. We can read the data out of the IPTC, which is information embedded in the image, and we also have a keyword tool that we are proud of.
Another application for our solutions is assignment photography. You shoot images, you upload them to our servers, and we back them up with redundant storage at different locations. Once you upload all your high res, we produce all the thumbnails and the preview images and the captions. We wrap your branding around the webpage that delivers the assignment. So your client gets a secure encrypted link to see the assignment of that day. Once those images are clear for the client you can click one button and turn them all online for stock.
IPNstock is a Rights Managed portal site and we plan to keep it that way as long as we can. Our asset in this business is the members we have. We don’t have any wholly owned content and we don’t plan on it.”
Paul Banwell is Director of Photographer and Filmmaker Relations for Getty Images:
“We are a very customer focused business. Through creative research we actively try to anticipate what trends will be in the future. Our customers are advertising agencies, design houses, publishers and primarily business-to-business companies. We have a global network, which includes offices in over twenty countries, and we have an agent network as well. We do business with about 100 companies worldwide. We have just launched a fully localized Japanese language website, and we have GettyImages.cn for China coming out.
Our artists often work in a collaborative way, and are art directed and working to a brief to meet customer’s needs. There is an exception, which is the Photographer’s Choice Collection, where photographers place their images on GettyImages.com, in return for a placement fee.
The majority of photographers shoot self-funded RM imagery or RF imagery, and we also do commissioned work where we bear the cost and offer a day rate. The photographer gets a much lower royalty rate but still retains the copyright. There is Photo Assignment where we work directly with clients and work as the middleman. On the editorial side we work with freelance photographers and also employ some photographers directly as staffers.
I don’t think that photographers should get hung up on the specific royalty rates. It varies so much, according to your work and your style of shooting, and what’s appealing to clients. We think that GettyImages is the most powerful global platform for being able to sell images. We have about 2.3 million unique visitors per month.
We are trying to grow every single part of our business. RF, however, has the fastest growth, and we see that trend continuing. If you consider the mobile market and images on cell phones and PDA’s, that is never going to be RM. So, if you can get into both areas, that makes a lot of sense. If you are interested in working with Getty, you can go to Gettyimages.com/contributors.”
John Lund is a Stock Photographer, Author and Lecturer:
“I have been shooting stock since 1990, and I have been using Photoshop since 1990. We have been totally digital for quite a long time, as I started doing digital capture in 1995. I want to collect a lot of royalties and I want to have peace of mind. My business model is to work with agencies, and to diversify. I invest my time and my capital in creating assets, which are stock photos. I have multiple agencies, and I work with Getty, Corbis, Workbook Stock, and Blend. Blend is a new agency of 22 photographers. Working with agencies has a lot of positives, and one is that they do provide ideas. The agencies have so much research, that it’s really a good thing to get the ideas from them. Art direction can be important, and you can go through about 12 different versions before your agent will take something. I find that usually the result is better after I have been art directed.
Also agencies have the biggest audience. You can have the greatest images in the world, and if no one sees them, they’re not going to sell. I have had numerous instances where an agency has turned down an image, and the next agency will use it for the cover of their catalog. That’s another reason to diversify with agencies.
It can take six months to a year before income starts to come back from an image. It can take years before you make a living. Use your creativity for how to get them made when you don’t have the resources. If you do what an agency tells you to do, you will make money. I also diversify through genre. I do conceptual photography; I do lifestyle photography; travel photography and also this thing that I call retail photography.
I diversify through business models, creating both RM and RF. In the case of RF, I will tend to shoot more images. As to which are RM and which are RF, in general my rules are - if the application is obvious, and the uses are many, it tends to be more of an RF image. If the application is less obvious, then it tends to be an RM image. My lifestyle images tend to be RF.
To recap - Multiple agents, multiple styles, multiple business models of RM and RF and different genres, provide me with security and lots of money. Working through an agency allows me to relax, and to enjoy my career.”
James West is CEO of Alamy:
“We are celebrating our sixth birthday this month. A quick summary of what Alamy does:
We sell other people’s images. We are a market place for other people’s pictures. Today Alamy represents around 3.7 million images. We add 200,000 new images every month and we have over 5000 photographers. We have over 300 stock agencies that are RF, RM, production houses, historical archives, museums, university departments and a wide range of material.
Our suppliers are responsible for choosing the license model they want to sell. Today around 70% of our material is RM and around 30% is RF. I would say that 42% of our revenue is from RF. We sell to advertising agencies, corporate marketing departments, newspapers, magazines, publications, and anyone who uses images. Our main markets are the US and the UK. Last year we opened an office in India, which is a very interesting market for us. It’s close to China and we are looking very carefully at that market.
Alamy is all about getting the customer to the picture they need in the shortest space of time.
At least 50% of our transactions are assisted. Half of our sales are online, but often customers call us. As a contributor to Alamy your responsibilities are to edit your own material. The only criteria we have is quality, by technical standards. You must also keyword and caption all the images you send us.
In the future we will be telling you what’s happening with your images on a per image basis, what was your measure of success in the market and how you are doing against the average contributor on the site. We give you online sales reports. You can go online and see yourselves in real time. We also pay 65% royalties on all sales, and we only accept digital files and they have to be 48MB and above. Alamy.com/contributors is where you can find this information.”
Alexis Scott is CEO of Workbook Stock:
“We are very very different than everybody here. First of all, we are 27 years old. We have a coop service for an assignment photographer who values a traditional photographic relationship. These commissions are 50%/50%; the artist supplies the imagery and we take care of the rest. We license the images through our own site, as well as being a third party through Getty. We edit tightly and we have a reputation as a high end advertising collection, with a certain look. We have a private access area for each individual contributor, where he/she can go and see how their images are doing.
If one is looking for stock on our site, they can look at an assignment portfolio. We are balancing this between assignment and stock, both RM and RF. We have approximately 200,000 images and 50% are RF. We also have the online service. This is broken down into two divisions – co-exclusive imagery, which allows you to license your own images on your own web site and to license images on our web site. We also have nonexclusive, which means ‘put the same image everywhere and just see what happens.
We have 62 stock agencies on our site, and 330 coop service photographers. There are 339 individuals on the online service. We have 80 APA members, who get a higher percentage, and we have 11 RF providers. There is also a print product, The Workbook, which has been out for 27 years. We sell to approximately 600 photographers with about 1100 pages, and the book itself is online. When you get a spread in the Workbook you get a portfolio included with the price of your add. We have a ‘self managed’ portfolio, and you have a library of 20 images that you can change out at any time.
There is a division called “Framed”, which is art for spaces. This is a print product, which is also online. It has a different distribution to corporate art buyers, interior decorators, architects, hotels, restaurants, and office buildings. We also have a Phone Book which lists 40 to 50 thousand names of advertising agencies, design studios, the people at the ad agencies, as well as a listing of photographers, illustrators, reps, stylists, hair and makeup, and production facilities.
We have Workbook Resources, which is a list of all the contests and events. Also with Ad Finder art directors and art buyers can call us looking for a certain style or photographer. We get about 40 calls a day. Our Mailing Lists comprise custom and instant lists. Our lists are the most up to date and verified of any list buyers, and we verify every day. This is who we are and we are very very different!”
Pat Hunt is Vice President of Corporate Relations at Index Stock Imagery:
Final comment by Moderator – “Index Stock is a medium sized agency, based in New York City. We specialize in RM and RF imagery, as well as Subscription, Consumer, SoHo (Small Office Home Office), editorial and commercial photography. Know your talent, your funding, your passion, your timing, and your goals for the future. Best of all, love what you do.”
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Pull quotes:
-“Any photographer today who wants to be commercially successful has to be trading in Royalty Free images. Six out of every ten stock purchases made today are made on RF images.”
-“New markets are opening in China, India and Japan.”
-“ It can take six months to a year before income starts to come back from an image. It can take years before you make a living.”
Sidebars:
The Panel:
James Alexander - Director of Adobe Images
James West - CEO of Alamy
Paul Banwell - Director of Photographer and Filmmaker Relations of Getty Images
Patrick Donehue – Vice President, Photographer Relations of Corbis
Alexis Scott - CEO of Workbook Stock
Brad Kuhns – Co-founder of IPNstock.com
Christina Vaughan – CEO of Image Source
John Lund - Stock Photographer, Author and Lecturer
Moderator - Pat Hunt, V.P. of Corporate Relations at Index Stock Imagery,
Author and Lecturer and Managing Editor of MacTribe
And
(RM) Rights Managed (Rights Protected) Imagery is licensed via a pricing model that tracks the client usage in order to retain the right to charge higher prices for restricting that usage to a particular industry. Pricing is determined by negotiating various parameters such as print run, image (file) size, distribution, placement, and image sophistication. For example: “One time, non exclusive, North American, two languages, text book, ¼ page, inside, OR Advertising brochure, ½ page, inside, two million print run, one year, non exclusive, world wide.
(RF) Royalty Free Imagery does not restrict rights of usage and can be published in perpetuity by the licensing client. RF is usually offered in three or four resolutions, which limits its usability and determines its price. Average examples: Low resolution price range for 2 MB file - $59 to $129; medium resolution for 10MB to 18MB file - $179 to $289; high resolution for 30MB to 50MB file - $249 to $359; and a super hi res at 70MB+ for $359+. Range of price for a disc of up to 100 images - $399 to $599.
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Info Box:
Adobe - www.adobe.com
Alamy Images - www.alamy.com
Corbis - www.corbis.com
Getty Images – www.gettyimages.com
Index Stock Imagery – www.indexstock.com
Image Source – www.imagesource.com
IPN – www.ipnstock.com
Workbook Stock – www.workbookstock.com
John Lund Photography - www.johnlund.com
MacTribe – www.mactribe.com
Writer contact info – Pat Hunt – path@indexstock.com and path@mactribe.com
Posted by Pat at 09:17 PM | Comments (0)
THE WAR ON DRUGS
Jeff Randall
“Narco-terrorists, guerrillas, paramilitaries” - How many of us think of these words on a daily basis? Jeff Randall does. Jeff is a freelance photojournalist covering Latin American conflicts and indigenous cultures. Jeff’s travel stock photography does not include glamorous girls on beautiful beaches while relaxing with a drink between takes. In fact, tourists don’t go where he goes, so he attempts to stay in the background and away from governmental bureaucrats. As he puts it: “I figure if I get hurt, killed, or kidnapped, then there’s not much the U.S. government can do so why waste time detailing my trip to them.
Jeff’s recent trip to Colombia to investigate “Plan Colombia” gives us some background about what he is able to learn, trekking through areas where few others go. Plan Colombia is a multi-billion dollar U.S. aid package to fight the proliferation of the cocaine market. It encompasses “training Colombian military, upgrading hardware, eradicating coca, introducing alternative crops, building infrastructure, and developing education programs.” However, the cocaine market, kidnapping trade, and the decades old war with FARC guerillas grinds on. FARC receives funding from the narcotics trade by protecting the fields and labs where the cocaine is grown and prepared. Trying to shut these operations down creates more “violence, death, and retaliatory terrorist acts.”
Jeff is a friend with members of the U.S. Marshals Service, whose activities he photographs. He says they are the best in the business, and their training incorporates such initiatives as “safely moving a principal through crowded streets, how to protect the principal during an attack, counter-measures during an assault, situational awareness, man/team operations, and detail formation and organization.” Jeff also observes the activities of the “hired guns” in the area. They are also usually paid to protect, and have been Special Forces, SEAL, or CIA in a former lifetime. As Jeff puts it: “With all the twists, turns, and corruption associated with this ultimate cat and mouse game, having experienced operators with in-place networks is essential to eventually winning the war in South America.”
Jeff observes that FARC has sophisticated explosives equipment and the best terrorist trainers in the world, including the deadly IRA (Irish Republican Army). They play with such charming devices as book bombs, shoe bombs, large explosive devices rigged with pressure triggers, proximity switches, timers and heat sensing detonation. Jeff says that Bogotá is relatively safe as compared to remote areas of Colombia because training has worked to quell violence in major cities. A little south in Peru, where cocaine flows freely, such groups as the U.S. Special Forces and the Navy Special Boat Teams work under the radar and “some even deny their presence in the country, but they are there and working to further the goals of the U.S. Foreign Policy.
According to Jeff, the surrounding jungle “is a spider web of trails and makeshift roads” used by the cocaine producers to transport chemicals, coca paste and pure cocaine. “The leeching wells and processing labs are almost impossible to find in the dense jungle and difficult to get to once they have been located. This unforgiving terrain is ruled by those who loathe any outside influence, so booby trapping, weapons caches, and camouflage is common practice.”
“If every American citizen could see the death and destruction this business has caused on a global scale, then I doubt they would be so quick to question the resources being used to combat the problem,” observes Jeff. He says you can’t understand the magnitude of the War on Drugs unless you are on the ground with the officers and soldiers who fight it. Even though they are under funded, they are making a difference. “This war in ‘winnable’ but it will take dedication and an understanding of South American cultures to finally put an end to the age-old violence.” This is one of Jeff’s goals as a Latin American photojournalist. His theory is that we should clean up or own streets and drug culture in the process.
WWW.JUNGLETRAINING.COM WWW.JEFFRANDALLPHOTOGRAPHY.COM
See more of Jeff's images:
http://www.indexstock.com/store/search.asp?SearchStr=///direct 4016
Posted by Pat at 07:16 PM | Comments (0)
Man Hunters
Chris Barfield
Chris Barfield is a “man hunter.” That’s a strange description for a stock photographer unless you know that Chris has also been a veteran of the U.S. Marshals Service for the last seven years. The last three have focused on teaching Protective Operations in South America. Chris has had run-ins with homicides, child molesters, drug dealers, escaped convicts and even a chainsaw murderer. That’s why his images and stories for the national publication, SWAT Magazine, are a bit edgy.
Being fluent in Spanish, much of his time has been spent in Mexico, The Dominican Republic, Belize and Columbia. In 2005, he and his partner, Jeff Randall ( also a stock photographer), put themselves in harm’s way to study the Salvadoran gang wars and their effect on the country. Riding along with the select Salvadoran police force, called the Unidad Tactica Operativa (UTO), they set themselves down in the barrio to locate gang leaders from the two main groups: Mara Salvatruchas or MS-13 and The 18th Street, the name being derived from a street in L.A. The guerilla war of the early ‘90s bred most of these youth, who distinguish themselves by tattoos often covering their entire face, lips, head and ears.
In February of 2005 alone, there were 255 murders in El Salvador. The UTO police are well equipped with semi-automatic handguns, including several extra fully-loaded magazines. They also carry Israeli-made Galil rifles, fitted with folding stocks that facilitate use in confined urban environs and vehicles. As they pick up suspected gang members for intelligence gathering, they maintain a 360-degree ring of coverage.
As Chris describes, “There is no DMZ in the barrio. Every inch of real estate has been claimed by one gang or the other. Without exception, a simple encroachment mandates the killing of the violator. There is no respect for human life, as they are cold-blooded killers, who live for the gang only.” Chris’ study shows that “gang violence is actually on the decline in El Salvador due to the proactive and efficient work of these local police.”
Chris is proud to document the work of the U.S. Marshals in his photos, as they are the “oldest and most versatile federal law enforcement agency in the U.S. Today the U.S. Marshals’ main responsibilities are: Judicial Security, Fugitive Investigations, Witness Security, Prisoner Services and the Asset Forfeiture Program. They also have elite units in the U.S. and aboard.” Last year the Marshals Service apprehended 55 % of all federal fugitives; more than all federal agencies combined, including the FBI, DEA and ATF. If you are a fugitive, Chris guarantees that one day you will be greeted by “today’s best man hunters – the United States Marshals Service.
See more of Chris' images:
http://www.indexstock.com/store/search.asp?SearchStr=///direct 4097
Posted by Pat at 06:41 PM | Comments (0)
