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Written by Jim Hunter, Editor-in-Chief/Chief of Operations
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Thursday, 04 May 2006 |
“Creative thinking may mean simply the realization that there's no particular virtue in doing things the way they always have been done”- Rudolf Flesch
As we all know, the stock photography market is rapidly changing. Every day seems to bring new challenges especially for those who depend on continuing royalties from their stock images.
The current trend at many stock distributors is towards more "wholly owned" content. A number of stock distributors are increasing their wholly owned content either by setting up production in house, buying images outright from some of their contributors, as well as purchasing images from a whole new crop of production houses for royalty free images. It has been suggested that within the next few years, fifty-percent of the images licensed by distributors will be wholly owned. Though it is still too early tell, the figure could be much higher as more distributors move to wholly owned content to increase their bottom lines.
In today’s market, many photographers as well as the distributors
seem to be moving away from what makes a great image and now simply
focus on what sells and the return per image per year. At the same time
many buyers are bemoaning the fact that they can't find new, creative
imagery despite the millions of images available online.
Looking through the numerous stock distributor and portal sites, one
sees a mind numbing similarity of images. The truly creative imagery
seems to be found more on photo-sharing sites like Flickr, ShutterCity,
ALTphotos and others of that type where at least a few photo
researchers and buyers are starting to look for truly creative images.
In fact, photos from Flickr were the basis of a recent Visa ad
campaign. Many truly creative amateurs as well as a number of pros and
industry veterans are using these photo-sharing sites as an additional
showcase for their images.
For example, search on Getty or Corbis for "lifestyle", one of the most
searched for terms at a number of distributors and portals. Then
perform the same search at Flickr and sort by "Most interesting". Most
of the images returned at Corbis and Getty show the same type of over
stylized, over art directed images of over idealized lifestyles
repeated thousands of times. The results from the sites like Flickr
show a much more creative selection of real lifestyles of real people.
If a few of these photo-sharing sites ever were to decide to go into
the stock photo business, the traditional distributors and portals
could find themselves losing a good portion of their current market
shares. As one example, Flickr has over of 2.5 million users and is
growing at around 250,000 users per month. The huge number of photos
online at Flickr would put all of the largest distributors combined to
shame and Flickr is only one of a growing number of such photo-sharing
sites.
"I can always be distracted by love, but eventually I get horny for my creativity."- Gilda Radner © 2006 Jim Hunter, All Rights Reserved Bio Contact
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 17 September 2006 )
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Editors Corner 
