Decline Of Images Requiring Production Planning And Costs

In the not too distant future there will be few, if any, new professional images created that require pre-planning, paying for models, renting locations, building sets, acquiring props, or anything that adds to the cost of producing such images. Currently the costs of producing a large segment of images in demand far exceeds the revenue generated from licensing such images. Producers trying to earn their living from such production will find it necessary to drop out of the market.

Given the low prices, and particularly the reduced frequency of repeat sales, I believe there will come a point when the only new images produced will be amateur snapshots of things and event that happen in front of photographers during their normal daily activities.

Some of the largest and most active production companies like Wavebreakmedia, Rawpixel and maybe Yuri Arcurs will certainly be the last to be affected by such a trend because they already have extremely large collections. As the number of new images of certain subjects declines customers may be forced to use some of the older images from these giant collections. As individual photographers drop out of the market the only image producers left will be the few big production companies. But it is questionable as to whether even these organizations will be able to continue to justify the costs of new production.



As long as unit sales were growing at a significant rate it was possible for a significant number of professional photographers to grow revenue at microstock prices. That growth seems to have stopped. For the last 3 years Shutterstock seems to be stuck at licensing about 43 million images a quarter despite adding huge numbers of new images to its collection. As best I can determine all the other suppliers are experiencing similar flat sales, or seeing declines.

The industry has already reached all the potential customers willing to pay anything for the images they use. Each of these customers uses about the same number of images annually. They are not likely to use more just because more are available. There may be continuing overall growth in the number of images used on the Internet, but the users not already buying image want the images they need for free. They are not willing to pay anything for the images they use.



The industry will not find new buyers except for young people replacing older workers who have retired, or moved on. That doesn’t result in additional sales.

Many of the images customers want to use can be produced by snap shooters who want nothing but recognition. These photographers could care less if it costs them money to get that recognition. That segment of the market may continue forever.

But, there are certain types of imagery that will only be produced by professionals trying to earn at least a portion of their living from their production efforts. At some point these people must stop wasting their time and spending more producing images than they earn. They must move on to some other way to earn enough money in order to cover their living expenses.



It is not easy to define exactly which images fall into this professional category except that if planning time is required to determine what to shoot and organize the shoot and productions costs are involved then that’s a professional shoot. I think such images represent a significant percent of all images licensed.

Customers may be able to get by for a long time just using older generic images, but at some point they may need newer work. At that point there probably won’t be any photographers left willing to produce such work on speculation. Certainly, not for the prices the customer has been paying.
 
Some of the few remaining, successful professionals point out that every industry goes through change. Those that are innovative survive. Those that aren’t go out of business.

But it is hard to define what “successful innovation” would be like in today’s stock photo industry. It would certainly require a more productive workflow, but I think most of the existing survivors have already achieved maximum productivity and are still seeing declining revenue.

The old business model is not working, but it is very hard to identify any likely change or new emerging opportunity that might make the production of stock images a viable business in the future.