Opportunities for Professional Stock Photographers

Posted on 6/19/2009 by Jim Pickerell | Printable Version | Comments (3)

More and more young people aspire to a career in photography. They sell some of their images and believe that, if they work hard, they can be successful. Often, they hope to become full-time stock photographers, so they can shoot what they want, when they want, and eventually achieve fame and fortune. Yet the hard reality is that opportunities for professional stock photographers are in a decline, which will continue in the years ahead.

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Selling Stock is an on-line newsletter that reports on developing trends in the stock photo industry. It is updated at least twice a month. On-line subscribers receive e-mail notification whenever new stories are posted. Archives containing stories going back to late 1995 are fully available to subscribers.

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Copyright © 2009 Jim Pickerell. The above article may not be copied, reproduced, excerpted or distributed in any manner without written permission from the author. All requests should be submitted to Selling Stock at 10319 Westlake Drive, Suite 162, Bethesda, MD 20817, phone 301-461-7627, e-mail: wvz@fpcubgbf.pbz

Jim Pickerell is founder of www.selling-stock.com, an online newsletter that publishes daily. He is also available for personal telephone consultations on pricing and other matters related to stock photography. He occasionally acts as an expert witness on matters related to stock photography. For his current curriculum vitae go to: http://www.jimpickerell.com/Curriculum-Vitae.aspx.

Comments

Jonathan Ross Posted Jun 19, 2009
I completely agree with your statement that the internet is going to slowly leave still behind for motion. We as people love to watch motion for information over still imagery. We can pull strong 50 mg. Tiffs from our Red One shoots so the customer can now have both available for all their needs. This is just one way the business is morphing there will be new changes soon but it is hard to speculate who those changes will benefit the distributors or the creators. There is still a lot to come. Thanks for the info great piece.

Best,
Jonathan Ross

Lanny Ziering Posted Jun 21, 2009
I think the mix between still images and footage will continue to shift toward footage. That said, still images will always hold a significant portion of the market for imagery used by publishers and advertisers. The frozen moment will always be used by those who need to get the attention of viewer and to powerfully tell a story. Imagine a webpage with 4 areas to display imagery and all of them have footage running. If I wanted to get the attention of viewers of that webpage, I'd replace one of those pieces of footage with a gripping still image. I'm willing to bet I'd get more clicks than the other three. Footage will continue to come on strong, but don't underestimate the power of a still image--especially when it's shot by photographers like Jonathan and other great stock shooters.

My 2 Cents.
Lanny Ziering

Bas van Beek Posted Apr 30, 2012

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