STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY Earning money from your photographs © International College of Media Studies 2004 www.icmstudies.com

Many of the published photographs you see every day are pictures sourced from stock photo agencies, or as they are also called, picture libraries. The market for stock photography is huge. If you want to get an idea of how big, consider the fact that the two major players are Getty and Gates.

You would not be wrong if you assumed that William Gates knows a good thing when he sees it, which is why he has invested millions in buying himself into a corner of the stock photography market. It’s big business.

In the old days stock agencies marketed a photographer’s work on commission. The predominant forms of the marketable image were color

Stock photography...what is it?

transparencies and these were catalogued and stored in conventional filing cabinets.

Digital photography and film scanning has changed all that. The traditional film-based photo library still exists, but their files are rapidly being digitized. Most stock photo agencies are now represented on the net with at the very least a website. Some have their entire catalogues online. All have the capability to deliver their stock photos online.

Along with the traditional approach a new type of photo library has evolved: the online stock photo agency. We’ve already mentioned the two largest, Getty Images and Corbis, but there are now many other agencies giving these two a run for their money.

A stock photo can be as generic as this picture of clouds in a beautiful blue sky. This could have been shot anywhere in the world.

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All photographs and text in this e-book are by the author, Rob Walls and are copyright © to ICMS. They are protected by Australian and international copyright laws under the Berne Convention. They may not be used independently of this publication without permission of the author.

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The new style agency takes a number of forms. Traditional agencies edited photographer submissions and took into their files the pictures they thought would sell well. They charged a variable fee dependent on the use of the picture and billed the client, taking a commission of between 40 and 60%.

Many of the new online agencies operate a little differently to this. After accepting a photographer onto their books they allow the photographer to submit what he or she thinks will sell. That is, the photographers get to edit their own work.

Because operational costs online are lower, some agencies charge a commission as low as 35%.

There is another model, whereby instead of taking

The new agency models commission, an agency will charge the photographers a monthly fee to “host” their pictures online. This fee can vary from $US20 a month to $US100.

Which system you choose is really a matter of confidence and market knowledge. If you have a lot of stock photography and anticipate high sales, paying a relatively low monthly fee can be the best way to go.

On the other hand if you are just dipping your toe into the stock pool and don’t want the obligation or the expense of a monthly fee, the commission option might be the best choice.

There is a third approach, which straddles both systems, but also offer photographers the additional opportunity to sign up to receive photo requests. If you submit

Stock photos are used anywhere a picture appears. Here is one of Rob Walls’ photos of a Tasmanian lavender farm used on a $10 phone card.

pictures to a specific request and that picture sells, then you pay a commission. No sales? Then nothing to pay.

What sort of subject do stock agencies handle? What sort of subjects do publishers seek? Think of the broadest range of subject matter you can, then realize that you haven’t even begun to touch the edges!

This year amongst others I’ve licensed stock of my young daughter learning math on a counting frame for a brochure, a picture of my son waiting for a minor operation in hospital to a medical magazine, pictures of Muslim schoolchildren waiting for a bus in Singapore for an ethnic magazine, pictures of cannabis plants (legal crops) to an organic gardening magazine.

If you can think of it someone somewhere wants it. The best

Subject matter way to learn about what sells is to study the magazines and publications round you. Look at the picture bylines. You’ll soon begin to recognize the agency bylines and in every instance where you see agency bylines this is an example of a stock photography sale.

What types of use? This is one of those how long is a piece of string questions. If it uses photographs it is potentially a market for stock.

Let me give you some unusual stock photo examples. Years ago, a film company making a film of the Olympic Games wanted some crowd shots for out-of-focus back projection in studio scenes where actors were talking. They paid a nice price to use some shots I had taken of out-of-focus crowds

This grab shot of a group of Muslim schoolgirls waiting for a bus in Singapore recently published in a magazine devoted to ethnic issues.

at the tennis at Wimbledon. If you were to look closely you’d see that the crowd is actually static, but the pictures are on the screen so briefly it is un-noticeable.

Apart from the usual newspaper/magazine/book market I have licensed pictures of film stars for posters. I have had pictures on phone cards, CD covers, travel brochures and T-shirts, packaging, annual reports, wine bottle labels etc, etc.

But don’t I need to live somewhere interesting? Where you live is not a major factor in creating pictures for stock. These days I live in a small city on a small island, but I still sell pictures regularly, many of them,

Location, location, location... surprisingly, made within 50 metres of my desk.

A couple of years ago, I received a list of picture requirements for a gardening book. I didn’t have to go anywhere to shoot a lot of the material required. Being a keen gardener, all sorts of pictures on that list were available from my own garden. I’ll tell you more about the economics of this shoot in a moment.

Sometimes the world just comes to you. Some years ago Intercontinental Airlines ran a picture of mine on the cover of a brochure advertising travel in the US. It was a picture of a handsome young Native American in a feathered headdress.

At the time I had never been to the United States. The American Indian was part of a dance troupe that had been

So you think the place you live in is uninteresting? This dramatic shot of a Boeing 747 taking off into the sunset could have been made anywhere. I can hear the questioning from here!

That’s right! The sunset was made from a beach in Bali, but the jumbo jet is actually a travel agent’s model about 22cm long backlit and shot in a studio. The picture has been sold many times over and used in everything from travel brochures to annual reports.

performing in a park in Sydney, Australia. Intercontinental was not interested in where the shot was made. There was no recognizable background (I had deliberately photographed against the blue sky). It fitted what they were looking for.

I mentioned the picture of my daughter. This was shot in our kitchen. Three months later a client in Germany was paying me for the use of that picture.

The thing is you don’t have to live in an exotic location to shoot stock. The subject matter for stock is as broad as your imagination and often just under your nose.

Buying or licensing The end-user of stock photographs does not usually buy your picture.

Buying or licensing? They license the right to use it for a specific purpose and usually they pay according to the end usage.

Who licenses pictures? The traditional markets are magazines, newspapers and book publishers. Apart from the printed page, photographs are used on television, on toys, in jigsaws, on coffee mugs, clothing. As we said earlier, anywhere you see a picture has a potential for stock photography.

Royalty free pictures There has been a lot of controversy over the subject of royalty free stock photography. This is where the buyer for a flat fee gets to use your picture in any way

Shot by available light at the kitchen table just before she left for school, this picture of my daughter, Cassandra, with a colorful counting frame had sold for brochure use within weeks of taking it.

they choose. This suits the buyer, of course. But photographers can be cheating themselves out of hundreds or even thousands of dollars by adopting this sales model.

Sure, occasionally you’ll earn a lower fee by using the traditional usage rate model, but in most instances rights-managed pictures and traditionally licensed pictures will command much higher fees than royalty free pictures. Our advice is avoid doing royalty free deals.

Copyright You should always retain copyright in your photographs. The only reason to ever offer a total buyout for a picture is where the client is offering wheelbarrow loads of money. Does this happen? It does occasionally. One example is the Windows XP

Retaining your copyright screen shot. Microsoft is reported to have paid a six-figure sum to have exclusive use of this picture.

In using a picture a client is only buying the right to use the picture for the specific use licensed to them. This means they cannot, say, having licensed a picture for use in a book, then turn a round and use it for a poster.

This doesn’t prevent the picture being used in other books or on posters by other clients. If they want to exclude other similar uses then they must pay a premium price.

Even when this is done it is usually for a fixed period of time. The copyright, though, still remains with the author.

Some time ago, a student of mine was approached by an American finance company to

This portrait of Australian sheep-farmers with some of their flock was used for a text book published in Canada.

license the use of a picture of a boy fishing from a pier, silhouetted against the sunset, for use on a credit card. They had looked everywhere and this was the only shot that would fit perfectly with the company name, logo and customer credit card details.

Initially they offered him $US5,000 for a 25-year exclusive license. He telephoned me asking for advice and I suggested he ask for more and for a shorter period.

Within 24 hours he rang back to say they had agreed to $10,000 for ten years. OK, so the picture is off the market for a decade, but that picture paid for its keep at the rate of $1,000 a year and because of its relatively timeless nature it will begin earning again for him in a few years time.

How much can I earn?

Earnings What can you expect to earn from your pictures? Accepted wisdom used to be that you could expect to generate about $1 per picture per year. That is 10,000 pictures on file would average about $10,000 a year. It sounds like a lot of pictures if you only shoot a roll of film a week, but to the serious photographer that is not a lot of pictures. But many stock photographers maintain individual libraries of 50,000 pictures or more generating incomes of a couple hundred thousand dollars a year.

To operate at this level you have to approach stock photography in the most professional way. You have to work hard and be a prolific stock producer. Do it well and the rewards can be very good indeed.

It’s a good thing if you can integrate your life with your stock photography. This picture of my son Kim waiting in hospital for a minor hand operation had earned income almost before the wound had healed. I don’t think he feels exploited...

The new online agencies generally have photographers returning between $1 and up to $20 an image depending on subject matter. This means that an astute and talented stock photographer with the right type of subject matter can earn as much as $20,000 a year from only 1000 pictures. Note though that the operative words are astute, talented and that the sentence is qualified by “right type of subject matter”. You can have 1,000 pictures online and make nothing.

It is probably important to note that model released photos will have a wider market and command higher prices than non-released shots.

Earlier I mentioned photography for a gardening book and I think that this is a perfect example of the economics of targeted stock

How much can I earn? photography. On receiving the request, my wife and I put together a shot list of all the pictures we could handle in our own garden. Over a period of two days we shot 25 rolls of 35mm film. The outlay for this inclusive of processing was approximately $500.

We shot pretty tightly. These 900 frames were edited down to about 350 “keepers” which were then captioned and sent to my stock agency. Of these they accepted about 250 pictures into their files.

The publishers used five shots, which after agency commission returned around $600, putting us into a break-even situation.

Within six months the pictures had earned a further $600 and within a year we were $1200 in profit. A year later those pictures had earned another $1800.

This picture of a farmer with a legal cannabis (hemp) crop was shot on assignment for Australian Geographic. It has since sold to an organic gardening magazine and will probably have a long useful life as a stock photograph.

No matter how you slice it two sunny afternoons spent in the garden doing what I enjoy most had earned us $3000! The thing is those pictures continue to sell and will probably still be generating returns in ten years time. This is the way to approach stock photography.

Enjoy what you are doing by all means, but be businesslike; work with subjects you know will generate a profit.

Payment Most online stock agencies pay within 30 days of receiving payment from a client. A few pay immediately they get paid, some pay quarterly. To avoid high bank charges on small transactions, some agencies only pay when the balance of money owing reaches a certain level. This could be anything from $100 to $500.

Picture quality

Quality Picture quality is important. What do we mean by picture quality? Apart from the fact that a good stock shot has to be of a marketable subject, pictures must be well-composed, well-lit, sharp and well-exposed.

Obviously creative factors influence certain aspects of this definition of quality. A blur shot of an athlete in motion is not expected to be “sharp” in the traditional sense. In this instance the unsharpness due to the portrayal of motion is a factor of creative interpretation.

Scans from film must be not only sharp with good shadow detail, they must be clean and free of digital artifacts.

Many stock agencies insist that digital files be unsharpened,

If you snooze you lose...

The clean simplicity of this picture of an Iris in my garden has sold a number of times. It is very important with gardening stock photos to be able to accurately identify the species of a flower or plant.

because the sharpening requirements for reproduction depends on the size the image will be used at and so sharpening is left to the client.

If you like to work on your own without the restrictions of having to shoot to a client’s requirements, if you have imagination and can develop a good understanding of what publishers are looking for, stock photography may be for you.

After all, it is probably the only area of photography where you can make a living and not have to deal face-to-face with clients. If you choice an agency that handles the billing and collection of payment, you don’t have to worry about the business side of things. You can shoot pictures to your heart’s content and let your agency

Is stock for you? look after all that boring administration.

As a way of making a living full time it requires hard work, imagination, creativity and good marketing skills.

As a way of supplementing your income it’s a great way of pay for your photography habit or justifying that expensive new camera body or lens.

For some useful links to stock photography sites and agencies, see next page...

Conceptual stock photos can be made anywhere. This picture of eggs and a basket is another or Rob Walls’ kitchen table shots. It could be used for anything from a magazine article on raising hens to an ad for an investment company (don’t put your eggs in one basket).

Useful stock photo links Want to know more about stock photography? Here are some useful links to some of the best online stock agencies, a stock photo discussion group and a very useful stock photo pricing calculator.

Alamy.com: www.alamy.com

Ozimages: www.ozimages.com.au

Myloupe: www.myloupe.com

Stockphoto discussion group: www.stockphoto.net

Stock photo pricing calculator: www.photographersindex.com/stockprice.htm

ICMS redefining distance education

If you want to know more about earning a living from your photography why not sign up to a course with The International College of Media Studies? Visit our website: www.icmstudies.com

We can show you how to earn money with your camera. We can also show you how to get greater satisfaction from your craft. We guarantee to make you a better photographer!

Have a look at some of the best stock photography of our photography tutors:

Rob Walls’ stock photography can be seen here.

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© International College of Media Studies 2004