Future Planning
Adobe Stock has released
Adobe Stock Creative Insights, a data report revealing information collected from Adobe Analytics on 149+ million U.S. visits and millions of asset uploads to Adobe Stock between January 2019 and September 2020. As recently revealed in
Adobe’s State of Creativity survey, 91% of creatives admit that COVID-19 and nationwide protests have inspired them to incorporate real-world issues into their work, with 87% reevaluating the subject matter of stock imagery in campaigns.
A
Getty Images photographer asked if I could explain how Getty calculates its Premium Access (PA) deals where prices for image use vary widely? He pointed out that on his most recent statement he had a number of PA sales for $0.11 and one for $286.00. The vast majority of PA sales (roughly 60% of all sales) are near the low end, but there are also occasional extreme outliers.
The
good news is that under the new Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act virtually all self-employed freelance photographers should be able to qualify to receive
$600 in federally funded COVID-19 pandemic benefits for up to 13 weeks. In addition, some may also qualify for up to 26 weeks of regular state unemployment.
This program extends coverage to those who ordinarily would not qualify for state unemployment, including the self-employed, independent contractors and gig workers.
It won’t be long until commercial image users, and possibly news outlets, will no longer need photos taken by human photographers. This will particularly be true for photos of people. Every image will be digitally created from existing photos and nothing will have any relevance to reality.
The
“Lean In” concept in business generally suggests the idea of moving forward on an idealized path. Chest out. Chin up. Figuring it out along the way. Watch out, world — here I come.
“Step Back” is more about taking the time to assess the overall business landscape and consider long term risks and potential, and the likelihood of achieving long term goals. After carefully assessing one makes a decision as to whether to aggressively Lean In on the path they have been headed, or make radical adjustment in direction for their long term good. It is time for everyone in the stock photography business to
“Step Back.”
Will Quantum Dots make the next generation of camera technology so much better that it will dramatically separate the quality of the work of professional photographers from those using smartphones and give the professional a new leg up? A story on
thephoblographer.com points out that the Quantum Dot technology is much more efficient than the CMOS technology used today.
Rick Strange, a very successful UK travel photographer with over 45 years experience is closing his
www.worldtravelphotographs.com website after over 4 years of very disappointing sales. Considering the excellent quality of his work, this may be a cautionary tale for any photographer considering trying to market work from a personal website rather than using a stock agency.
Did you know it takes Creatives twice as long to find an image that will work for their project as it did just 4 years ago? This is one of the facts that was uncovered in
Visualsteam’s Annual Survey of Creative Pros. This 35-page report is packed with other information and insights that should help image licensors and image creators as they plan for the future. The report can be purchased for $69.95 by contacting
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The stock agency sales model no longer works for most photographers trying to earn a portion of their living from the images they produce. Prices for the use of photos have declined so dramatically that it no longer makes much sense for professional photographers to spend much time or effort producing stock images on speculation.
Shutterstock has published its eighth annual
2019 Creative Trends Report. This year’s eleven design styles, many of which echo the past in a playful and in a decadent way, predict the top influences for design and visual production in 2019.
This long read outlines the step-by-step changes in the marketing of stock images over the the last 30 to 40 years. It makes clear why the production of stock images is no longer a viable business for most photographers and other image creators. At the end of the article, I have outlined some of the changes I believe need to be made in the relationships between image creators and customers in order to return the business to a profitable occupation for those who produce images.
Many in business believe “The Customer Is Always Right.” The only problem with this is that most customers always want
“more” for “less money.” In the Internet environment, particularly, everything is expected to be FREE – literally. When it comes to satisfying the customer the problem arises in finding a way to cover the cost of producing the product or service. Part of the answer is to find ways to produce more efficiently. Over the years it has been possible to cut costs by providing workers with better tools, expecting more from the workers for less pay or replacing workers entirely by turning production jobs over to machines.
A recent
story by Petapixel got me thinking about where still photography, as a profession, is headed in this world of generosity and free. Nvidia Corporation, a technology company based in Santa Clara, California, designs graphics processing units for the gaming and professional markets. They have recently released software that can create images of people that look completely real -- except the people never existed.
As fewer and fewer stock photographers earn enough from the licensing of their photos to justify continued production, some suggest that instead of letting stock agencies pay them 20% to 30% of the small gross fees collected to use their images, they should sell their images directly to customers. In this way they would get higher prices and keep 100% of what the customer pays.
A professional photographer asked recently “what kind of still images and video clips are being used?” It’s a great question with no good answer. Stock agencies know the answer, but they’re not sharing. Photographers seriously interested in earning money from their stock photo production need detailed and specific information about what customers are buying if they hope to create new images cost effectively. Such information would enable them to focus their efforts on producing more of the subject matter customers regularly want to buy.
Recently I was told by a stock agency that my
Photographer Income Survey Results were not relevant to Specialist Agencies because the results are “rather negative and don’t offer a possible positive call to action.” In the following series of stories I will outline a “Positive Call to Action” for stock agencies.
In July 2018 I did an
analysis of the more than 200 Getty Creative collections to determine how many images had been added to each collection in the almost two years between
August 2016 and June 2018. Overall there was a 37% increase in the number of images added, but there were wide variations in the sources of the growth.
There is very little likelihood that the overall market will grow if the stock photo business continues on its current course. In order to have growth at least four major strategy changes are needed. I see no likelihood that any of these will occur.
Getty Images has just sent out a promotion – probably mostly to photographers – to show
Conceptual Realism. The implication is that customers want more of this type of imagery and photographers should be shooting more of it and supplying it to the agency.
Is Such Imagery Really What Customers Want? I can’t believe that most of what is being shown in this gallery are images that customers are actually licensing for use.
Many in the industry are concerned about the level of Getty Images debt and what that might mean for the future of the company. The following is some general information about the financial status of the company. It is not clear how the debt might affect the future. Getty Images has about $2.367 billion in debt. About $1.8 billion of that is in Term Loans at 4.37%. Back in 2012 they had about $2 billion in Term Loans so in the past six years it appears they have paid down about $200 million of the principal in addition to the annual interest. The terms of these loans is unclear and may vary.
I have created a SurveyMonkey survey in an effort to gather data on the general income ranges of Editorial Still Photographers around the world. Go to this link to respond to the survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PhotogIncomeSurvey Please encourage all editorial still photographers to respond to this survey. The resulting data could be very helpful to photography students, working photographers, the organizations that license rights to use editorial photography and those who purchase editorial photographs.
A multi-year review of Shutterstock download trends going back to Q3 2010 provides some interesting insights into how adding more images to the collection relates to sales growth. (See chart) Back in 2010 Shutterstock had 12.3 million images in its collection and 11.1 total downloads for that quarter. In theory the more choice you offer your customers the more sales you are likely to make. That pretty much held true through 2012 as Shutterstock almost doubled the size of its collection.
Will part-time photographers be able to supply all the future needs of professional photo users? This is one of the most interesting questions facing the stock photo industry today. There is no question that part-time photographers occasionally produce beautiful, creative, exciting images. Sometimes these images are better than anything produced by full-time professionals.
Getty is contacting its RM photographers with non-exclusive or co-exclusive agreements and asking them to convert all their images in the Getty collection to exclusive so Getty will be the only organization that can license rights to use the images. This may be a particularly difficult decision for photographers with co-exclusive arrangements if they typically license a fair number of uses directly to clients annually. All those future sales will be lost.
One has to wonder if Getty does any analysis of their Creative Collection in terms of what sells and what doesn’t. Clearly, as we
reported yesterday, the largest and fastest growing segment of the Getty collection is EyeEM with 4,558,201 RF images. Back in
August 2016 EyeEm had only recently started contributing to Getty Images and had 256,152 images in the collection. They have 17.79 times as many images now as in 2016. At that time Getty had a total of 16,687,710 images in the Creative Collection. That collection has grown 43% in size in two years, but nothing like EyeEm’s 1779% growth.