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Strategies for Successful Stock Photography, Part 5 |
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Written by Richard Weisgrau
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Friday, 17 March 2006 |
 Once upon a time it was the only stock photography model. Over a period of thirty years it became traditional. Then in 1992 a new stock photography model was introduced. Unfavorably, most photographers called the new model Clip Art. Today, it is called Royalty Free. Once legitimized, royalty free forced the renaming of traditional stock to Rights Managed. It is an old model, and one that is under constant pressure from its less expensive competitor, royalty free. Should a photographer participate in rights managed stock when each year it loses more ground to royalty free? Yes, a photographer should.
I have a simple reason for advising a photographer to engage in rights managed stock in spite of the fact that it is losing market share every year. People are buying it. While 60 to 70 percent of all stock sales are reported to be royalty free, rights managed is reported to be generating the same level of revenues as royalty free. So market share and revenue share are different gauges monitoring different statistics.
A common remark in the stock business is that royalty free and rights managed images are generally of the same quality so people only purchase rights managed when the royalty free license does not cover the uses they require. That’s true, but there is another reason that people purchase rights managed stock. When the photograph they want is in a rights managed collection and not in a royalty free collection. That fact provides the strategic approach to participating in rights managed stock.
When you select photographs to be submitted for inclusion in a rights managed collection you ought to do it based upon a knowledge of what kind of images proliferate in royalty free collections. That is not a difficult as it might seem. Consider this. Royalty free photography is being mass-produced by a relatively small number of photographers. They shoot all types of subject matter as long as it can be done in volume. What you don’t generally see in a royalty free collection is imagery that is unique in terms of style, subject, location, event, etc. So if a buyer wants a generic shot of an executive, they abound in royalty free collections. But, if a buyer wants a photograph of a family picnic in Gettysburg National Park he is likely to find it in a rights managed collection.
Another example is from my own experience. I am working on a picture book of people on benches. Once the book is finished, I will put the most unusual photographs into a rights managed stock collection because there are not many photographs of that kind of subject matter in royalty free collections. When I think rights managed I think different. When I think royalty free I think generic. Another example is a photo of a specific place. I have a photograph of Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia, PA. It is a baseball stadium. The shot is from center field and the diamond pulls the eye into the photograph to reveal the filed of players and the spectator full stands. Maybe there is a photograph like it in some royalty free collections, but I doubt that they are of Citizens Bank Park.
Who might license my photograph? Any one who is doing any of the following: a book or article on baseball parks or baseball, a travel story on Philadelphia, a story on security at spectator events, etc. Why my photo instead of a generic ballpark shot from royalty free? Mine is better. It is specific to a location. It is current. And you won’t find many shots like it. In other words, it is different.
Maybe you see a pattern emerging in this series. My previous article in this series focused on rights protected stock, saying it ought to be selected from the most special shots you have. Now I am telling you to select rights managed from the non-generic images you make. I’ll bet you now expect the next article in this series to recommend that you put your generic images into royalty free. Well that is not what I am going to say, so stay tuned.
Go to Part 6
(c) 2006 Richard Weisgrau [contact] [bio]
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 23 March 2006 )
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