ABSTRACT: If one is interested in selling their photographic work for the publishing media, one has to be aware of the terminology involved with selling work with stock photo agencies.
CONTENT: I've been involved with photography ever since I can remember and as a child, I was frequently borrowing my mother's old, classic Kodak Brownie camera. It wasn't until around 1977, however, that I got my first 35mm film camera, a Nikkormat EL-W, and I became hooked. Right away I took classes at The New School in New York, and learned darkroom techniques, that is, how to develop black and white film and developing prints. It wasn't long afterwards that I began to seriously consider turning my new passion with photography and turn it into a career as a professional photographer.
While most people who get involved with photography might go the route of becoming a either wedding photographer, or photographing people, or even try to join either a newspaper or magazine staff, I decided I wanted a more broader way of sharing my photographic work as a freelancer and to try to sell my work for a variety of magazines or any of the other publishing media. It only took me a few short years after I got my Nikkormat camera that I already had a fairly sizable collection of photographs in the thousands, and predominantly on 35mm slides, which, back then in the 1970s was the preferred for publication use. I therefore started writing letters to editors or photo/art editors of several magazines to find out what their publishing guidelines were for photographs. Since the subject matter of my work was of a scenic/nature orientation, I knew my work had the best chances of being published for any one of those spiritual or inspirational type of magazines, such as Unity Magazine and so forth. Once I got the guidelines, I then started sending out portfolios of my work, and kept my fingers crossed.
You can imagine my joy then, when I was notified that one of my photos was to be published on the cover of the April 1980 issue of Unity Magazine and I was to be paid for one-time rights usage at one-hundred dollars. I was ecstatic! From there on, I was regularly published, and my photographic work appeared on many more issues of Unity Magazine, plus a variety of other magazines, newspapers, calendars and even books. I even had the distinction that one of my photos, a photo of a stray cat that was featured on the cover of the November 1987 issue of Veterinary Medicine, was later cited the Gold Award for Best Magazine Cover of the Year.
I enjoyed my success as a regularly published photographer up until 1996, when unfortunately several family and personal issues cropped up, putting my photographic career to a screeching halt. Then, a few years ago, while some of those personal issues still hadn't been resolved, I decided to make a come-back and once more have a go at getting my work published. However, I was in for a rude awakening, for the world of photography had dramatically changed all due to the digital revolution, and even the manner in which photography was bought and sold had changed as well.
In my "heyday" of being a published photographer, yes there were stock photo agencies as there are now, and while many of the same principles of how an agency is run is still valid today, nonetheless they worked dramatically differently than now. The Stock Photography industry has been around for decades, with one of the first being H. Armstrong Roberts who began his agency in 1920. The idea of stock photo agencies then was that a photographer would send his/her work, whether slides or prints to the agency who would then represent and market their work. The major drawback was that whenever a photo was bought and used by a client through the agency, the agency would get half of the worth of that photograph while the photographer got the other half. So, say a magazine was willing to pay one-hundred dollars for use of that photo, the photographer got only fifty. As you can imagine, I avoided them like the plague, and preferred working one on one with the editor or photo/art director of magazines.
The eleven years of my not being involved with my photographic work however, had cost me dearly. When I decided to get back into my career, it became quite apparent that I had to learn the business of it all over again. Everything had changed dramatically during those years and of course there are several factors that contributed to changes in the photo world. The greatest change was of course was with the creation of digital photography itself and the accessibility of the computer. While there are a few publications that will still view slides and/or prints, most have preferred to view photographic work in the digital format. The is no longer the need to send portfolios by snail mail any long, and one can often upload their images directly to a publications website, or send images as e-mail attachments, CD Photo Discs or, if one has their own photographic website, a client can now view one's work on-line. Another dramatic change is that often many publications no longer work one to one with a photographer, unless of course they have their own staff, and prefer getting images from stock agencies. And here is where the greatest change has taken place, and not necessarily for the better for a photographer such as myself who is trying to get regularly published.
One of the main problems facing the professional photographer lies with the digital world of photography itself. Now just about anyone who has any kind of digital camera can be a "photographer", whether they are in the professional category or just a hobbyist. People find that they have amassed large collections of images, and now think in terms of selling them to make a little extra money from their photos, and will often hunt around on-line to find agencies to sell their work. This unfortunately has created a deluge of photographic images, as the stock agencies are saturated with millions of images now, and the once "popular" subjects, particularly of the scenic/nature are harder and harder to sell. Also, if anyone thinks that they have found an easy way to make extra money through their images, they are in for a shock. It just doesn't happen, especially with any one of the popular agencies that are out there. The likelihood that your particular photo of that Canadian Goose will sell, while as great as it may be, is slim considering the fact that you are in competition with thousands, if not millions of other photographers with the same type of photo.
One also has to become aware of just what all those terms are that are used in the photography business today. When I was actively selling my photo work to a magazine, my only concern was what kind of rights were offered then. Was the magazine going to publish that photo of mine for a one-time rights ...meaning that they could only use and publish that photo only once? Then, if that company or magazine wanted to use that photo again, they had to pay me again. If that photo was also published as non-exclusive, it meant I could in effect sell that photo over and over and over again to as many other publications, and get paid for it each time. There was of course the other extreme, that is, a photo published under exclusive world-wide rights, where the photographer could in a sense kiss that photo good-bye, for in effect, that company or magazine had exclusive rights over it and in a sense owned it flat-right.
Well the jargon and terminology has changed a bit. Some of the publication rights issues a photographer faces is in some sense the same, only labeled differently. First of all, as far as the stock photographic agencies, there are several types. First there still are the more "traditional" stock photo agencies, who will still "represent" a photographer, and yes, still take their cut of the profits. Not only that, but some of these photo agencies actually require the photographer to pay a fee, such as $50.00 per image to be represented in their database catalog. Getty Images, which is probably one of the largest stock photography agencies in the world, has this as a "practice" if you want to be represented by them.
The term "Rights-managed" that some of these agencies use is similar to the old fashioned concept of "one-time" rights policy, that is, that there is a limit on how many times a "client" wishing to use that photo can use/publish it, usually only once. Also, like the former one-time rights usage, that client wishing to use that photo will have to pay a lot more for that image, usually at least one-hundred dollars or more.
Then there is the other type of agency that falls into the category of being called the microstock agencies and more commonly use what is called the "Royalty Free" rights usage of images. The microstock "industry" only began around the year 2000, and one of the first known one was iStockphoto which is also part of Getty Images. All microstock agencies are doing a great booming business for the world of photography, but at a cost to the photographer. Anyone who is dead serious and considers themselves in the professional category of photography would be advised to stay clear away from these agencies using such rights.
The microstock agency that offers Royalty Free rights can offer clients wishing to use photos for any publication use or need for next near nothing in cost to buy, anywhere from only a dollar to as much as fifteen dollars depending on the size of the image. The client just click heres, clicks there, and for a few dollars the client has their images for publishing needs fulfilled. Sounds great, but only for the the client wanting the photo, not so great for the photographer. Lets face it, if the client is buying a photo for practically nothing, the photographer isn't getting much for that photo. The photographer's end of it, is that each time a photo is downloaded by a client, the photographer usually gets about twenty-five cents.
Now, for the beginner photographer wishing to see their work published, that person might be enticed to think, that for each "download" of that photo, that he or she could make a small fortune with just that one image. Unfortunately, this is not so. The likelihood that the same photo will be picked by a client and downloaded is very slim when there may be thousands of other images nearly similar to it. The bottom line is that if a photographer earns a total of $100.00 per year from downloaded images from that microstock agency, then it's been a great year. Then of course, there is the whole concept of the Royalty Free image usage itself. A client downloading an image for a few bucks can use that image as many times as he wishes to, without any further compensation to the photographer at all. A great bargain for the client, not for the photographer.
As you can see, it can be thought that there is a lot of controversy about the whole microstock photography agency. For the amateur or hobbyist photographer, maybe making a lot of money from one's images isn't a big issue, the idea being that even if one earns a few extra dollars is better than nothing. But for those of us who do consider themselves in the professional category, trying to make a living from the profits from earned income from such agencies that adhere to the Royalty Free usage of image is practically a disaster. Also, many professional photographers are downright against the microstock agency as they have saturated the world of photography with so many images that it's gotten harder and harder for any serious photographer to earn a living anymore.
So what is the serious, professional photographer supposed to do? First, it is wise to do some serious homework and hunt around all the photo agencies that are out there and stay clear of those agencies that use the Royalty Free usage of images and instead find the ones that predominantly use only Rights -managed licensing of images, such as Photographers Direct.
Then of course there are the places a photographer can hook up with where one can get an individual "spot" to have one's own photographic website, and be under their wing so to say, but this will come at a price though. One such place is AGPix which charges a set-up fee of $150 plus an annual fee of $550. Less expensive are the specifically designed photographic web-hosts. One such site is ifp3, where one can create their own photo website at a cost of $240 a year complete with a "shopping cart" where clients can buy your photos directly from your website. Another, which is even less expensive, is smugmug which can range in price for a basic site for as little as $39.00 a year, to a more professional account for $149.00 a year. As a last resort, but a great place to begin in getting on-line exposure for presenting one's work, one can also create a website at anyone of the free web-hosts, such as the one I have used at Tripod.com. These free web-hosts however, will often have those rather annoying pop-up ads that will make a photographic website look rather unprofessional, however, for as little as a $4.95 a month fee, one can eliminate those ads and get more storage space at the same time.
The advantage of creating one's own website to display one's photographic work is obvious. The photographer sets up his own price range for the use of his work. And if one is confused on just what to charge for their images, one great website to get the standard price for photographic images for a variety of uses is at http://photographersindex.com/stockprice.htm. The downside is, is that one has to be rather vigilant and promote one's work. A great way to start such an endeavor is to purchase the book Photographer's Market, which is published yearly by Writer's Digest Books, and go through each one of the listing where your type of imagery will sell best.
Web-hosts specifically for photographers:
AGPix
http://www.agpix.com
ifp3 Web-host:
http://ifp3.com/
For some reading up on the stock photography business you can check here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microstock_photography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_photography
http://www.asmp.org/commerce/royaltyfree.php
Some examples of stock photography websites themselves, click here:
1. {getty images}
http://contributors.gettyimages.com/workwithus/page2.asp
2. iStockphoto
http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php
3. Absolute Photo
http://www.absolutestockphotos.com
4. Photographer's Direct
http://www.photographersdirect.com/
These are only a few---just do a search by typing in stock photography and you'll be deluged with a result!!!
A great resource about the Stock Photography Industry
Photosource International
http://www.photosource.com/index.php
http://www.photosource.com/resources/paid.php
Stock Photo Price Calculator
http://photographersindex.com/stockprice.htm
My Own Photo Websites:
http://melneer.tripod.com
http://melneer.smugmug.com
Image Source~©Melanie Neer~My own photo of a Brown Pelican taken in Orlando, Florida
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