I was pleased and honoured to do an interview this week with top stock photographer John Lund about how I’m making money from stock photography – mainly via Alamy and Getty. Our sales on Alamy have risen by 40 per cent in 2012 over 2011.

In the interview I tried to explain the way I approach stock. Basically, I look at it as a business, just like any other. I have a product I want to sell and I refine that product in order to sell more of it. I don’t look at stock photography as art.

There are also some thoughts on the direction of the industry, microstock, CGI, background to incamerastock, choosing what to shoot, and my take on how to start out in stock photography. There are also some thoughts for, as John calls them/us, ‘Jaded Pros’!

You can read the full interview here: http://blog.johnlund.com/2013/01/stock-photographer-jon-boyes-interview.html

As we roll slowly towards the close of another year, it’s time to reflect on some of the main macro stock news stories in 2012 and take a look at the changing face of macro stock photography.
There have been changes and upheavals and wailing and gnashing of teeth. There’s been great news and not-so-great news. There have been victories and disappointments. But there’s no doubt that macro-stock is moving forward, evolving, creating stronger businesses with, hopefully, better prospects for the future. But this has come at a price…

The main changes in 2012…

This year has been a time of consolidation by the big players. In October, the Carlyle Group, a US-based private equity firm, completed the purchase of a controlling stake in Getty Images for $3.3bn. This puts Getty on a firm financial footing but the full ramifications for contributors, and buyers, will take a while to shake out.

The market is contracting and the big players are fighting to tie in their clients (there’s nothing quite like a captive audience) and reach new markets at the same time. With this in mind and their eyes fixed firmly on the future, two of the main players developed new client tools to help businesses management, control and access their libraries: In May, Getty launched Getty Connect http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6oJ_KoK1C8 and in November, Alamy launched their innovative Alamy iQ http://www.alamy.com/customer/help/alamy-iQ.asp.

Last year, Corbis signed a deal with Associated Press (AP), signalling a push to gain ground in the news sector. In November, Corbis went one step further and bought citizen-photojournalism company Demotix (http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/14/corbis-acquires-crowd-sourced-photo-agency-demotix-after-its-move-into-apps/).

This year, Alamy began a major effort to expand their client-base and bring in more advertising, design, marketing and creative customers. They announced an overhaul of their site, a forthcoming rebrand, marketing campaign and changed their search interface introducing new search buttons: (http://www.alamy.com/pressrelease/releases/archive/2012/10/22/160.aspx). In November they also took the unexpected step of reducing contributor commission rates to fund these initiatives.

The smaller agencies did not stand still this year either, one example being that Blend Images announced the forthcoming launch in 2013 of Memento Images, the first mainstream non-microstock camera phone stock library (http://www.blendimages.com/memento.shtml). It’s going to be interesting to see if clients will actually part with cold hard cash for phone images…

What does this all mean…

The macrostock world is changing. Change is not always easy to accept. It’s unsettling and sometimes upsetting. On forums and in private, there has been much heated debate as to whether the big agencies are going in the right direction. Whether their focus is correct; whether creative clients hold the key or whether the money is in the news or video sectors – or whether the cash actually still lies with good old-fashioned editorial and creative stills.

The changes at the big agencies reflect their own uncertainty; they reflect the fact they know they have to do something – and no doubt their figures are telling them they need to do it fast. They know where they are strong and where they are weak, and to grow they need to plug the gaps and gain market share in areas which, traditionally, they have not been strong. This is understandable and sensible business practice. At the same time, the industry is polarising. We have the big boys: Getty, Corbis and Alamy and, frankly, there is probably no room for anyone else up there at the top in the macro-stock world right now. That means everyone who distributes via the big players wants them to succeed – we might not always agree with way they do things, but we do want them to trust them, to believe that they know how to succeed.

But it’s a tough economic climate out there at the moment and there is no real sign that it’s going to improve drastically over the next few years. Nor should we kid ourselves that the world is awash with untapped buyers – remember, stock photography is a small part of the way many buyers, especially creative ones, source images and they have buying behaviours that are going to be difficult to change. How frequently do people change their personal bank account? Not often.

There are undoubtedly many great opportunities out there for the big agencies – and in fact, for the smaller agencies and individual stock photographers – but they may be harder to convert or take advantage of (at the right price) than anticipated. While they may promise a great deal on paper, the reality may be not so inspiring. A lot of the plans I see discussed on forums aren’t thought through. Yes, we can all band together in one great big photographer-run collective (herding cats anyone? ) and create a whizzy website but where are the customers going to come from?  Market-share is everything in this industry and this is the main factor most photographers ignore.

The future for stock photography is hard to predict

The future…

I don’t like huge change any more than the next person. And I’ve done my fair share of teeth gnashing this year. We work incredibly hard here at incamerastock to ensure that every image we produce ourselves and every image our contributors trust us with has the best possible chance of selling. I’d love to say: ‘Everything will be fine, it’s all going to come up smelling of roses’. But, hey, I just don’t know. No one does.

We are doing well. We make more money than we’ve ever done before from this crazy industry. So I can’t complain. But there are times when we think: ‘Does the end justify the means? Is the return on investment enough for the 60 plus hours a week we spend on this thing called stock photography?’ I know I’m not the only one who thinks like this. So what will we do? Well…we’ll do what everyone else is doing right now: Keep Calm and Carry On……base our next business decisions on a mix of statistics, experience and pure gut-instinct and given it’s December…buy a very silly Christmas hat!

Merry Christmas!

Moving countries is a huge upheaval. It takes a great deal of planning, a massive amount of patience (which I don’t have!) and not a small amount of pain. It was pretty difficult when we moved out to France but, surprisingly, it’s been just as difficult in reverse. But now we’re sitting in our new house in deepest Somerset, surrounded by empty bottles of DoomBar beer and plastic jerry cans of the local cider, I’ve had a little time to think about what I already miss about La Belle France!

Obviously, it would be a bit strange if I didn’t miss the food. Food and drink are a huge part of the French culture and their wine, vegetables, meat, cheese and cakes are really something very special.

Strawberry tarts only the French can bake

But there are other things I miss that I didn’t think I would – not so soon. I miss the peace and quiet, the local cows I would pass every day on my walks and runs, the lack of traffic on the roads, elderly people chatting on the street in small rural villages, the Breton coastline, Simon – our brilliant landlord, his mad vicious cat, our neighbour Marguerite’s massive courgettes (that’s not a euphemism), the size of the tomatoes and the colony of birds that live inside the local Intermarché supermarket! Yep, inside…

French cows – ‘Le Moo’….

We were very lucky to have spent time in France – it’s an experience I wouldn’t have missed for anything and I think it’s probably not the last time we’ll be going to live abroad. But for now I’m enjoying UK fish & chips, British beer, pork pies and sausages way too much to put a time-scale on another move!

Here is a lightbox with just a few things I’ll miss about France

Before I start, this is a look at how the business models of both industries have been changed by the digital revolution.This is not a comment on the moralities or otherwise of the Porn industry or indeed, of those photographers choosing to licence images for small fees on microstock sites. It’s simply a look at how close the history of our own stock licencing business model is to that of other industries even though we may not have realised it.

Last night I turned on the TV and tuned into a documentary made by the wonderful Louis Theroux, a fine British film-maker who had previously visited the LA Porn industry in the 1990s and who was now revisiting the people he had met then to see how the industry was going today. If you can get access to the BBC iPlayer you can watch the documentary here.

At the time I tuned in I had no idea I would be writing this blog post. About 15 minutes into the programme it was pretty obvious that what had happened to the Porn industry since the mid-90s had happened to us in the Photography industry too. So I was keen to see how their industry was going to cope in 2012.

History

Back in the mid-90s the Porn industry was thriving. Studios were churning out films to meet high consumer demand. Actors and actresses were paid lots of money for their work because they were in demand and the films were high $ grossing. The cost of production was high due to the technology involved, the larger studios had no real competition.

Back in the mid-90s the Stock industry was thriving. Getty Images was the largest supplier of stock imagery and pro-photographers who jumped into stock production saw huge $ sales and had little competition by comparison with today. The cost of production was high due to film & dupe transparency costs. Obviously in the days of film images (whether transparency or negative) each request had to be physically couriered to the design agency/end-client direct to be scanned for repro then returned.

Distribution model

The Porn industry distributed its content through sex shops and mail order and a few other outlets.

The Stock industry distributed all its content through a handful of newly established agencies like Getty & Corbis.

Content creators

The Porn industry content creators were all professionals, both studios and performers.

The Stock industry content creators were all professionals, both studios and photographers/models.

Then came the internet and advancements in film & camera technology that changed the game…

Amateurs/Self-publishing

The Porn industry saw an influx of amateurs and new start-ups gaining a foothold. They could use cameras that were previously unaffordable to make their own movies. They could set their own prices for content, regardless of the cost of production. For a lot of amateurs they looked on it as getting paid for something they enjoyed doing. Content supply multiplied tenfold overnight.

The Stock industry saw an influx of amateurs and new start-ups gaining a foothold. They could use cameras and software that was previously unaffordable to make their own images. They could set their own prices for content, regardless of the cost of production. For a lot of amateurs they looked on it as getting paid for something they enjoyed doing. Content supply multiplied tenfold overnight.

Internet distribution

The Porn Industry were quick to adopt the blossoming internet as a major distribution channel. No longer would a customer have to risk the embarrassment of running into a sex-shop when they could simply download or stream the content straight into their own home – for a fee.

The Stock industry were quick to adopt the blossoming internet as a major distribution channel. They could distribute scanned content quickly and easily worldwide opening up many new markets. As digital capture quality matured, agencies accepted digital images which made the whole distribution process both faster, easier and more profitable.

In both industries the $$ rolled in. What was going to stop it?

Oversupply/Competition

In the Porn industry the flood of new studios emerging and amateurs running home-made sites became a flood. Soon, the internet was awash with films that could be accessed cheaply and almost free if not free altogether. Competition ensued and studio was pitched against studio and against the amateur producer, all chasing those consumer $ (that in the past they controlled to an extent) but which were now being spent all over the vastness of the internet, not just via their pre-internet distribution channels which were pretty much a monopoly.

In the Stock industry a myriad of new internet-based agencies sprung up to compete against the traditional might of Getty and Corbis. Photographers also self-published and sold image licences directly from their own sites. Amateur photographers realised they could also join the party and started to supply stock sites with content previously only supplied by professionals. Some were happy to upload images and let others use them for free just to be ‘published’.

Fees & business viability

In the Porn industry two things happened. So many films were being made that the prices were falling. due to competition. This had a knock-on effect to performer’s fees. The publicity surrounding the Porn industry’s heyday was such that many young people saw a ‘career’ in porn, however short, as a way of making large amounts of $$ fast. Except the oversupply of performers meant that many would happily work for lower and lower fees just to get the gig in the hope that they would someday become a “star” and earn more money. Many of the amateurs who started their own porn sites quickly realised that without getting qualified traffic/buyers to their sites they were not going to make any money, certainly not the riches they thought they could make by hosting their own self-produced content.

In the Stock industry a remarkably similar turn of events unfolded. When digital cameras hit the magic crossover point of quality & affordability images started to be produced at a phenomenal rate. This in-turn led to an oversupply at many libraries of all the basic image needs and with so much competition the laws of supply and demand kick in and prices get lowered by agencies eager to maintain “market share” (i.e. customers who will only buy from them). I’d mention ‘microstock’ here or the buyouts of smaller agencies by larger ones or the effect on commissioned photography but those are best saved for other posts.

The agencies realised that although prices were dropping, they could increase their profitability by increasing the volume of images sold. So, given that there’s a finite number of professionals still in the industry, agencies turned their sights on ‘crowdsourcing’ amateur content creators, who were actively courted by many of the agencies. This in turn led to even greater numbers of submitted images, massive dilution and oversupply of the “low hanging fruit” type material that had low-production value and was fairly easy to accomplish. Of course, this sold in volume and was good for the agencies who got a percentage of each sale but not so great for the content-providers who only got a percentage of their sales. Most of the amateur content providers can be seen posting on stock agency forums bemoaning the fact that they really aren’t making much money for all the effort they have put in and that fees are on a downward trajectory. I guess if there’s a “porn star forum” somewhere in cyberspace it would pretty much be the same there too.

Piracy

In the Porn industry and Stock industry piracy is a major concern. Just as with any other type of digital media it would appear that some think if they can find it on the internet it’s free, and that applies to some content users like designers and end-clients too. Thankfully DMCA and ‘reverse image search technology’ (where you upload an image and it’ll tell you where else it’s to be found on the internet) are maturing too and making it harder for stolen content to prosper.

Raising the bar & exclusivity

In Louis’ film the Porn industry has realised it has to do something to stop the rot. Competition and continued price erosion cannot be counterbalanced by increased production (not least because a lot of producers had given up on the industry for some or all of the aforementioned reasons). Their solution is increased production values. They are making films with an actual plot, with better locations and set design, with a costume budget and with performers who are ‘exclusively signed’ to a production studio. They are making ‘parody’ films of regular titles (think Porn versions of Superman and Iron man etc). They figure that people will pay good $ for a well produced porn film. Only time will tell.

The Stock industry is still grappling with the problems it has made for itself from oversupply and constant cutting of fees to grab market-share. Top end content providers are being more cautious about who they place their best work with and realise that exclusive models often give the best returns. The race to the bottom seems to have been happening for a while but there are glimmerings of hope too, in the way some of the top-end but lower-priced microstock material is being syphoned off into ‘premium’ style collections.

There is an awfully long way to go yet. Any industry that relies on a digital content creation and distribution model is going through massive change. I was surprised to see that all the problems that exist in today’s Stock Photography industry also exist in the Porn industry. I didn’t expect that. My own feeling is that both lower priced and higher priced content can co-exist to supply different markets. Here at incamerastock we edit tightly, keyword well and have good sales as a result, even though a lot of our content is far from unique, it is, however, well-produced!

Whatever the outcome, it’s clear from speaking to peers and from general reading around the internet that a lot of content providers will no longer accept their work being sold for less than it cost to produce while at the same time battling massive dilution from their competition and seeing their sales fall.

Perhaps exclusivity and higher production values is the holy grail?

Perhaps the Porn industry just might be able to teach us a thing or two…

OK. Summer is finally here. I know this because there is a strange yellow ball in the sky that’s making everything bright and I have my shorts on in the office.But these two things aside, I also know it’s summer because I’m starting to sell images of the British seaside, beach shots and typical summer holiday travel destinations. The thing about summer stock photos is that I never really seem to have enough! In the summer there is just so much to shoot – as long as the weather holds. But that’s the thing about summer – it’s the stock photo gift that keeps on giving – holiday destinations are full of people enjoying themselves, relaxed and happy (the stock photographers are the ones fiddling with their lenses, looking stressed and sweaty!). So, even though, strictly speaking it’s not really the best time of year to shoot, who can resist taking epic amounts of summer shots?

Panoramic view of Weymouth beach in summer Weymouth Dorset England UK

Of course, summer stock photography is not all about travel destinations. Some of my best-selling shots are actually more about the things we see around us in the summer, people sitting outside cafes, sightseeing tour groups, sunflowers, holiday traffic jams, bunting, Pimms, B&B signs, the inside of Nice train station – oh yes! Plus it’s surprising how often people want winter resorts without the snow! This year in the UK we have the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics to add into the mix, so for many UK-based stock photographers it will be a series of day trips and long weekends. Which for me is probably no bad thing – I need way more buckets and spades, donkey rides, kiss-me-quick hats, fairground rides, ice cream vans, sticks of rock, beer gardens, village fetes and BBQs! Pass me another Pimms…

Check out our lightbox of summer stock photography

One of the best things about life is that sometimes a personal interest can be combined with your job. In my case I’m interested in history. And that means I’m lucky enough to be able to take images of historic places and buildings and sell them for stock. I’m particularly interested in the history of the first and second World Wars, so we’ve taken a number of trips to Normandy and other key places in Europe over the years to search out these intriguing – and sometimes highly emotive places. I’m also partial to UNESCO World Heritage sites – they rarely disappoint and their website is very informative. It can be a great place to start planning a stock photography trip if you’re short on ideas.

D-Day Mulberry harbour remains, Arromanches, Normandy, France

I love a nice, quiet, pretty English village scene. Often timeless and tranquil, they are part of the heart and character of England. There is nowhere else in the world with villages that look quite like the ones we have in England – they are unique, which makes English villages, their buildings, objects and people attractive to stock photography buyers as well as to me! The only trouble with them is that when I go out to try and find a great English village to shoot as stock I rarely succeed. But when I don’t have my camera I spend the whole journey gasping at lovely little cottages, craning my neck to see perfect village pubs and slowing down to avoid ducks crossing to gorgeous village ponds. I’ve spent countless happy hours driving through unknown (& never to be rediscovered) dots on the map wondering why I didn’t bring my camera gear!

Wooden clad houses in Abinger Hammer, Surrey, England

The thing about English villages is that many of us can see ourselves getting out of the rat-race to while away our days treading a well-worn path from the village shop, to the cosy pub and back to our beautiful little thatched cottage, chatting to our friends and neighbours along the way. But I think I’ve seen one too many episodes of Midsomer Murders*! And anyway, there are far too many vicious slayings going on in Midsomer for it to be safe for anyone – let alone a mild-mannered stock photographer! But steel yourselves fellow photographers, for English village stock photos will always be in demand. The media love to hark back to the ‘golden past’ when milk was delivered to your door and buying petrol didn’t require a bank loan. So don’t let all that pretend rural viciousness put you off, if you can get to a village near you, just remember to take your camera!

See a lightbox of some of our English village stock photos

* I’m reliably informed by my good friend and wonderful car photographer Steffen Jahn that in Germany, Midsomer Murders is called ‘Inspector Barnaby’. Bet you didn’t know that. If anyone wins a pub quiz with that little bit of trivia, mine’s a pint..!

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