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Articles from August 2020
If you are a U.S. photographer hoping to earn at least a portion of your future living expenses from selling or licensing rights to the images you produce,
it is time to seriously reassess your business plan. If photography is a hobby. If the pictures you produce are for personal enjoyment and their earning potential is unimportant. If you have no need to earn revenue from your efforts, by all means continue to take pictures. But recognize that no matter how great your images might be, in all likelihood any future financial compensation you receive will be miniscule compared to the time and effort expended.
The Digital Media Licensing Association (DMLA) Conference will be virtual this year and available to registered attendees for a full week from October 25th through Friday the 30th.? It is expected that there will be nearly 25 sessions, including two keynotes, nine panels and more than a dozen roundtables, all conveniently stretched over the week and available to you from the comfort of your home.
The Google Licensable Badge concept has been discussed for more than
two years and seems to be getting closer to a release. Photographers will need to put a code in the IPTC header of each of their images. When a Google search finds such an image it will display the Licensable Badge with the image indicating that the image needs to be licensed for use. The viewer can then click on the badge and determine where they need to go to negotiate a license for use.
In June German photographer Robert Kneschke did an indepth analysis of the portfolios on the Fotolia website. Adobe displays all the images it represents on both the Adobe Stock and Fotolia websites, but less information is displayed on Adobe. The following information should be an accurate picture of what can be found on Adobe Stock as well as Fotolia.
If you’re a freelance photographer trying to earn a living taking pictures, and finding photo jobs few and far between during this Covid 19 pandemic, you should read
this story. Adam Pratt is one of many freelancers who has seen the demand for his services as a photographer decline. As a result he has re-invented his business. He has been able to use his photography skills and training to turn from taking pictures to organizing personal photos for families.
On Wednesday
Shutterstock announced a public offering of 2,580,000 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $48.50 per share. Of this total 2,064,000 of the shares are owned by Jon Oringer (Shutterstock's Founder, Executive Chairman of the Board. The other 516,000 shares are owned by the company. Mr. Oringer will net
$100,104,000 from the sale of his shares and the company will earn $25,026,000 from its sale of 516,000 shares bringing the total for the public offering to $125,130,000.
If you would like insight into the kind of images that are in demand and what you should be shooting you might want to take a look at
AdobeStock. Adobe offers some features other major agencies don’t. Exploring the site could help you decide what kind of images might earn the most money for you.
After publishing our article
“Getty’s RF ‘Market Freeze’: Expensive Customer Mess?" I received the following clarifying message from Matthew McKibben, Getty Images, PR Manager in The Americas. He said:
Getty Images offers customers anything they want, but their decisions don't always seem well thought out. In November 2019, Getty Images ended the "right managed" license model, with which image buyers were able to buy, among other things, exclusive image rights for certain regions, industries, etc., which they called the "Market Freeze" feature.
ustomers need a better way to quickly review a selection of images than most stock photo sites offer. They don’t need more images. They need to be able to review the best images quickly. Twenty-five years ago this was possible by reviewing the images that had been placed in tightly edited major agency print catalogs. Now that editing is gone. The current marketing goal seems to be to throw as many images as possible at customers and force them to spend their time doing the editing. Historical trends indicate that most customers have found the mages used by other customers to be most useful for their purposes as well. Most customers are not looking for an image that has never been used.
I define Professional Photographers as individuals who are earning a significant portion of the money they need to support themselves and live comfortably from licensing use to the images they produce. The number of such individuals is disappearing rapidly. All indications are that the number will continue to decline.
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This stock photography news site focuses on the business side of photography with a special emphasis on stock photography. Our goal is to help photographers maximize their earnings based on the quality of their work and the commitment they are prepared to make to the trade. The information provided will be applicable to part-timers as well as full time professional photographers. We’ll leave it to others to teach photographers how to take better pictures.
Jim Pickerell launched his career as a photographer in 1963. In 1990 he began publishing a regular newsletter on stock photography. In 1995 the information was made available online as well as in print and was gradually expanded to a daily service.
Click here for Pickerell's full biography.
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