An analysis of my photographs would quickly tell you that I shoot photographs and then select some for stock rather than shoot photographs for stock. I was never very good at putting my heart into photographs that were produced just for money. I put my head into the process because I had to earn a living, but I rarely got excited about making those photographs. On the other hand, I do put my head and heart into the photographs I make because I want to make them. Photography for photography’s sake is what I enjoy most, and so, believing that one does best what one enjoys most, my process is simple.

Further influencing my decision is the belief that the probability of making a lot of money shooting stock is unlikely unless I go into the business of producing stock photography, which I won’t do. The falling prices, the growing supply, and the trend that agencies are now beginning to sell more and more wholly owned stock have led me to the conclusion that I have to take charge of my own destiny and not just rely on others to market and sell my stock photography. Taking charge begins with the way I edit. Since I do not shoot for stock, the most important part of my operation is editing my photographs with an eye to what might be a good rights protected or rights managed image. I know that a rights protected image could also have a life in a rights managed image collection, but that the opposite is not true. An image that is best in rights managed is unlikely to be attractive to a rights protected buyer, because good rights managed images tend to be more generic and less conceptual.  I edit with that premise in mind.

While editing (all done digitally) I code my selects into rights protected and rights managed groupings. There are always many, many more in the rights managed group. The photographs in the rights protected group are almost always iconic images.  Next, I begin a careful edit of the two groups. I edit ruthlessly, accepting only about ten percent of the photographs as suitable for submission to a rights managed stock agency. The benefit of that kind of editing is that I get a high percentage accepted by the agency’s editor, usually in the range of forty to fifty percent. I believe that it is counterproductive to send a liberally edited selection of images to a stock agency editor because you are forcing them to do work that you ought to be doing, culling your work down to the best you have to offer. A good agency doesn’t want your second best photographs. If you feel you have to move them into stock, find a royalty free agency that will accept them and dump them there. Personally, I just file mine away, probably never again to be seen.

While I have not done this yet, I am planning to review my images rejected by my agency for a decision as to whether or not I want to consider marketing them through a service that will allow me to upload my choice of images to their marketing and distribution service. In other words, my rejected best work might still have life, and there are online services that will allow me to profit from those rejects, if they do have additional life. But remember, I am talking about rejects that I selected from my best work, and then that were not accepted by my agency. I am not talking about my seconds, photographs that I myself have determined to be less than my best. I can’t see a reason to sell MY rejects.  From my experience, gained personally and from learning of the experiences of others, I believe that a photographer with 100 first-rate images in stock will make more than a photographer with 1,000 second-rate images in stock. I learn and act from experience.

Another thing I won’t do is to place similar photographs to those selected by my agency into a competing service. In a way, I’d just be competing with myself by doing so. This policy also is related to the way I market rights protected stock, the topic of my next article in this series. I target market my rights protected images, which I alone license, to prospective users. I also provide them with the name of my agency where they can obtain non-exclusive rights to some of my images. I wouldn’t want those prospects to see the same or similar images of a subject on two sites so I will keep the work for each site different. Why don’t I want the to see the same subject matter on more than one site? Simply because I want to create the impression that my work is special, and that even those images which are generic enough to fit into a variety of applications are not simply mass produced and mass marketed. I am trying to differentiate myself by making the prospective user see my work as different from that of others. I do that by keeping every aspect of my presentation of my work looking selective and special. That is why I am still pondering whether or not to have more than one online marketing service.

In summary, my strategy is to have only my best images for licensing online, and to increase my licensing sales by co-marketing my work with my agency. That co-marketing is done when I refer my rights protected prospects to my agency’s rights managed website. Because I see myself as co-marketing with my rights managed agency, I will not license rights managed stock through an agency for less than 50% of the sale. My co-marketing effort has an expense attached to it. That expense makes it foolish for me to co-market without a greater reward than the 40% that many agencies are now paying.  If you want to increase your stock sales, you have to market your stock photography individually. Market individually means you have to avoid an agency that does not allow a search under the photographer’s name. You are your photography.

More to come..............

Go to Part 10

(c) 2006 Richard Weisgrau [contact] [bio]