Starting in Stock Photography

[Rider]

I was wondering whether any one has general, big picture advice about stock photography as a way to supplement income.

[vinny]

Don't. You're 10 years too late.

[brian mcweeney]

What Vinny said.

[Kirk Gittings]

Sad but true I think.

[Kimberly Anderson]

I am a 1/3 owner in fogstock.com. Things ain't what they used to be.

[wmsey]

10 Years seems about right though I know some folks who are still making a living, much less than the salad days, shooting Landscapes. These folks have a brand and large collections. If there is a type, subject or concept that isn't represented by thousands of images in the various large agencies, I sure couldn't name it.

www.williamsmitheyjr.com

[Harley Goldman]

What everyone else said. Sad to say, but I think it would largely be a lot of effort for very, very little return.

[jp]

I wouldn't bother. Weddings or selling stuff on ebay would be a better way to supplement your income. Free/cheap internet sources of stock photos which are basically legalized photo-thefting, free images from wikipedia, people with digi-cams and an Internet connection looking to stroke their egos by being published and receiving a token payment, and sources like flickr make it a weak and uncertain business for a photographer. If you know any pro photographers doing stock photography, they are either unusually uniquely blessed with business, or their wives have good jobs.

[Greg Miller]

In the "good old days", professional photographers figured they could earn $1 per photo per year. So if you had 100,000 really good photos, you could have enough money left over after paying all of your production expenses to pay some bills.

These days, it might be $.01 per photo per year.

The best way to make money in stock now is to have images that no-one else has. Everybody thinks that's them, but the reality is you have to be extremely good, extremely creative, and work extremely hard. Every image has to have metadata with the location, key words, and with model/property releases.

[Noah A]

I kind of agree unless you already have a large archive of high-quality, model-released (or historic and newsworthy) photographs.

I signed with a stock agency after I left my newspaper job. Trouble is, most of the photos I took during the first ten years of my career belonged to the newspaper so I was starting from scratch. Also, my work has changed and I'm something of a low-volume photographer now. I shoot 4x5 and produce maybe 1-200 photos a year, which is what I used to do in a week at the newspaper.

I have about 1000 images in my archive, and in fact I have averaged a bit over $1/image/year. But with the way I'm shooting, it'll take a LONG time to start making any real money.

On top of that, my agency is changing the contract. I can't go into the terms but it's worse than my old deal in a few ways. So I'm leaning towards leaving the agency. I won't miss the small amount of income and I'll sleep better at night knowing I'm not contributing to the commoditization of photography.

[Rider]

Thank you for your sobering replies! I knew things were bad, but did not realize how bad.

Here are the goals that I really want to accomplish, and was wondering if you could help me identify any other helpful venues or activities. Stock was only the first idea that popped into my head.

(1) Grow as a photographer by taking on specific projects with specific requirements. [stock was supposed to be one such project].
(2) Make use of existing photo portfolio and photo skills by helping worthy causes, with or without profit.
(3) Become an NPS member.
(4) Supplement my income.

To date, my main use of photography professionally has been to support another artist (by cataloguing and documenting their work for historic and promotional purposes).

[Greg Miller]

Noah - look into Gallery Stock. That is the stock agency I am working with. They command much higher license fees, so despite what I wrote above, I am doing pretty well with them. The premise is they only carry work that would normally be seen (as the name suggests) in a gallery, but that also has commercial value. They represent big names like Shore, Vitali, Meyerowitz, Kander,... They use that Cachet to keep the license fees much higher than Getty, Corbis, et al., as well as catering to clients who are seeking images with a higher production value.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you for your sobering replies! I knew things were bad, but did not realize how bad.

Here are the goals that I really want to accomplish, and was wondering if you could help me identify any other helpful venues or activities. Stock was only the first idea that popped into my head.

(1) Grow as a photographer by taking on specific projects with specific requirements. [stock was supposed to be one such project].
(2) Make use of existing photo portfolio and photo skills by helping worthy causes, with or without profit.
(3) Become an NPS member.
(4) Supplement my income.

To date, my main use of photography professionally has been to support another artist (by cataloguing and documenting their work for historic and promotional purposes).

You may already know this, but to become a NPS member, you have to be a full time working pro, with published work (books, tear sheets,,... to prove it), as well as another NPS member to vouch for you.

[jp]

Thank you for your sobering replies! I knew things were bad, but did not realize how bad.

Here are the goals that I really want to accomplish, and was wondering if you could help me identify any other helpful venues or activities. Stock was only the first idea that popped into my head.

(1) Grow as a photographer by taking on specific projects with specific requirements. [stock was supposed to be one such project].
(2) Make use of existing photo portfolio and photo skills by helping worthy causes, with or without profit.
(3) Become an NPS member.
(4) Supplement my income.

To date, my main use of photography professionally has been to support another artist (by cataloguing and documenting their work for historic and promotional purposes).

(1) You can do that with a little discipline of course without a commercial goal.

(2) I do that as an amateur. There is a transportation museum in town that I sometimes supply photos to. They use them for their cause and even take me flying once in a while in their old planes to get photos. Indirectly, you could supply framed photos to worthy causes for them to auction at their special fundraising events with a reserve price you suggest. It would be more local publicity than stock photo use would create.

(3) Might be worthwhile for some people, but I'm less of a gear whore for shiny new equipment now that I do more LF stuff. I'd love to have a new Nikon d800 but I don't need to be at the front of the line; next year is good enough for me. I'm more into vintage equipment.

[Rider]

Is there any harm in uploading a few hundred pics to a stock site?

[Greg Miller]

The biggest risk is that of your own time. Proper key wording is critical. Sites like Getty & Corbis use professional key worders. They know what words are hot, and the terms art directors are looking for. Many of these are conceptual, such as depressing, elegance, hopeful, feminitiy... Spend at least several hours looking at sites like these to get a feel for how to key word your images. Then try to assign 30 to 50 key words for each image. Lifestyle images move better than nature or landscapes.

[QT Luong]

$1/image/year is still feasible. It used to be much better than that. Some made a good living with just 1,000 images in a top agency. Unfortunately those days are gone and won't come back. Jim Pickerell has been writing about stock photography for decades. Here's an interview of him, titled "The end of stock photography as a career": http://bit.ly/HBmW2F

[Rider]

When you quote x$/image/year, that takes into account both the percentage of photos that are sold as well as the price per sale?

[alexn]

I have looked into stock photography as a suppliment (initially I thought about it as a career) Basically as has already been said, the days of being a professional stock photographer are gone unless

A - You already are one, with an exceptional track record, eye for the market and a personal niche that keeps your images popping up in the top of the search results.

B - You own a stock photography agency.

These days there are too many people who do it. and too many people trying to start... I have found I make more out of my photographs at local markets/art galleries and coffee shops than I would from stock.

[Noah A]

Noah - look into Gallery Stock. That is the stock agency I am working with. They command much higher license fees, so despite what I wrote above, I am doing pretty well with them. The premise is they only carry work that would normally be seen (as the name suggests) in a gallery, but that also has commercial value. They represent big names like Shore, Vitali, Meyerowitz, Kander,... They use that Cachet to keep the license fees much higher than Getty, Corbis, et al., as well as catering to clients who are seeking images with a higher production value.

Sounds interesting. Thanks for the tip.

[Greg Miller]

That is money in your pocket as your cut of the proceeds from the stock agency. $1/photo/year used to be the rule of thumb. Some people did better, some people did worse; but on average it was a usable figure for most mortals (assuming they had lots of images on file). Those days are gone for the vast majority of people. Advertising dollars have dried up, magazines have folded, newspapers have folded, micro-stock has emerged, the remaining $ are being leveraged to get print plus electronic licenses for less than they used to pay for print alone, ... So there are fewer people, with less money, chasing more images, and demanding more rights for the images they do license.

[Rider]

I guess since digital photos last for ever, this process could go on with photos accumulating in ever greater numbers until photos are cheaper than air.

What exactly is microstock?

[Greg Miller]

Micro-stock is the emergence of stock imagery that is licensed for a fraction of what it used to license for. See Shutterstock.com or Alamy.com as examples. Traditionally stock images are licensed based on how they will be used - what media, how many copies, for how long. Micro-stock has licensing that says something like pay the small licensing fee and use the image for whatever use for however long you want to - the license fee has zero correlation to the value the image brings to the licenser of the image.

Digital photos don't necessarily last forever. Fashion/stye has a shelf life. Look at most stock images form 10 years ago and they look dated. Cars, clothes, hair styles, furniture, color palettes,... They all get dated very quickly.

[Robert Jonathan]

Just wanted to add my experience:

I started shooting micro stock about 5 years ago. Actually, I started at Alamy, which was NOT a micro stock agency. I licensed my images as Rights Managed, where you make hundreds per sale instead of a few bucks.

I then went on to iStockphoto, which is micro stock. I ended up making more money from microstock, so I pulled all my images from Alamy, and have never shot for them since. I am also able to shoot for Getty, but I've lost interest all together.

Furthermore, I stopped shooting stock for several years, due to my personal projects with LF film, and also, a lack of interest in shooting boring studio tabletop stuff that's completely uninteresting to me.

Despite my break from shooting for two years I continue to make an income from the portfolio I have, which, to me, is quite remarkable.

I average 8 to 9 dollars per image per year, and that's without trying.

There are members who are making an absolute killing over there, but I have no interest in competing with them anymore.

[alexn]

8~9 oer image per year is quite good indeed.. Especially if you have a good number of images... Would easily pay for my film and chems habit.

[Greg Miller]

Especially if you have a good number of images...

That's the trick. I am making significantly more than that per image. But scaling doesn't work for 99% of people.

[Rider]

I checked out iStockphoto. Most (by a good margin) of the photos I saw there are not what visitors to this site would deem interesting. What is the target audience of microstock sites?

[Robert Jonathan]

Advertisements, billboards, magazines, websites, articles, etc.

This is what stock imagery is for. I never considered shooting "art" for stock. My stock images were very boring and uninteresting.

My top seller of all time is a picture of a glass of beer on a reflective surface/completely white background. It's a typical "generic object" stock photo.

[Kodachrome25]

I have a library of some 50,000 images in a solid niche that still bring in *very* good money, but I have never gone with a trash heap like Getty or Corbis, I saw what they were doing to the industry 15 years ago and went totally underground.

There is still great money in stock, but it can't look like everyone else's stock and it has to be niche...