rlord reports

By Richard Lord

The demand for photos has exploded with the internet. The agency/publisher which used 20 images for its print publications per year ten years ago now needs 200 to feed its website. Recognizing a great opportunity, a plethora of companies, which had never had a relationship with photography, were born. Under the direction of businesspeople, they reshaped the industry to convert photos from being intellectual property to a commodity, in which the sole criteria for success would be price.

Ten years ago, a beginning photographer with a couple of thousand stock images could compete with direct stock photo sales to clients. That is no longer true. It takes a lifetime to build a sufficiently large library to be able to meet clients' desires. Back in the day, a large photo agency had 5,000,000 images in its library. Today, 65% of the stock photo market is dominated by two companies and their subsidiaries, which control the licensing of hundreds of millions of images.

Ten years ago, there were industry standards for photo lease costs. The agencies and the individual stock photographers all charged the same for the same usages. That is ancient history. The pricing of images is increasingly become the prerogative of the buyer -- or more specifically, the budget/accounting office, visually illiterate people who view photography as a commodity-- not the user of the photo. Creative budgets, on a per image basis, have been slashed to the point at which it is inconceivable for a photographer, pricing her/his images based upon the old rights managed model, to be able to make a living.

The businesspeople, who dominate the industry, developed microstock as their primary weapon. Incredibly inexpensive images, created by non-professional photographers, have flooded the market. As in any commodity industry, which is how these companies view photography, price has become the competitive factor. They increase their bottom line by exploiting amateur photographers who are ecstatic to have a photo published.

In December, an excellent discussion occurred in the Professional Photography section of LinkedIn entitled "Is microstock really killing markets?" It brought to surface potential problems, e.g. copyright infringement, fine prints in contracts, etc. of which many buyers are probably unaware. Here are some threads:

"Sometimes you get more than you bargained for too. Like the pictures that are supposedly sold legally through stock libraries, but which were stolen in the first place. Next thing you know, you have a hell of a battle with the copyright owner. ..I agree, some of the pictures on microstock sites are brilliant. So why are they not worth paying a respectable amount for? Plus of course, the best ones get used over and over and over and over... ..You really do only get what you pay for.

Because of stock (and especially microstock) I have already had to adopt certain "stock" practices, such as allowing wider uses over a longer term. Some of this is more down to misinterpretations by clients of terms like "royalty free", which they take to mean copyright free, and not reading the T&Cs of stock suppliers properly. ..If microstock agencies started policing use of their images more rigorously, clients would soon realize just how restrictive (and expensive) microstock really is. Getty are already upping the ante, so I'm hoping that tide is starting to turn."

By Tim Gander Owner, Press Photos

"It might be enlightening to poll some of the better photogs shooting micro-stock to determine why they're not with an RM agency. It would be ironic if they'd tried and couldn't get accepted, so went micro only as a last resort - resulting in those RM agencies being undercut by the very photogs who wanted to work with them..."

By Michael Burke Instructional Designer. Photographer