StockPhotographer.info

By Rohn Engh

Keeping up with the times...

Is It Still Called Stock Photography?

A century ago, magazines featured mostly text. Graphics were secondary. Today, it's reversed. If you include advertisements, our periodicals today feature more graphics than text. The new "automated" stock photo services (with Royalty-free photos that offer lower prices for photos), are providing quality generic images to publishers who previously couldn't afford photography as an option. As a result, new markets are now opening up for photographers who produce generic images.

The stock photo industry has finally come around to recognizing a previously largely neglected major marketing principle (one that we actually have been espousing here at PhotoSource International since our beginning). To wit: there's a vast market of photobuyers who are not interested in high-fee, RP ("rights-protected") photos. They simply want an image they can temporarily use, one-time, in one of their low-circulation, limited-readership, publications.

Let me backtrack.

By Rohn Engh

When you are next out on a photographing excursion, begin the habit of asking yourself, "Is it marketable?" before you snap the picture. Gauge whether the piece of film or digital file that you're exposing in your camera has a good chance of resulting in a sale for you.

If it's color: Is it saleable? That is, -is it a picture a photo buyer will need ...not one he already has access to. Will that transparency one day be on a photobuyer’s desk? If it's B&W, will the negative result in many future sales?

One photographer friend said she could not break the habit of snapping pictures of anything and everything on a photo excursion, then trying to make the marketing decisions a week later when the processed film returns. To make the change-over, she placed a label on the back of her camera that read: "Is it marketable?" It took her only two weeks to finally break the habit. The label is now removed. She no longer aims her camera at silhouettes of sea gulls against the setting sun (and other such "classic" shots, that do sell, but that are individually very difficult to market because thousands upon thousands of similar photos are available to photobuyers).

By Rohn Engh

Want To Improve your Photo Sales? Here Are Seven Marketing Mistakes To Avoid.

"Why Do I See Others Photos Published -- Yet Mine Are Better?"

My cousin in Texas told me she wanted to get into stock photography and hoped to start selling to magazine and book publishers. When I visited her a couple of years ago, she brought out an album of her outdoor and travel photography. "People have told me these pictures are as good as the ones they see published in magazines and books. What do you think ?"

"Before I look at the pictures, let me see your marketing methods," I said.

"My what?"

If you are interested in seeing your credit line in national magazines and books, and you can produce excellent images, the following will be helpful to you.

By Rohn Engh

Stick To Your Theme

"I think I'll choose a Pepsi," the lady says in front of the vending machine.

Out comes the soft drink can of her choice.

She makes a choice based on preference (or need) and makes payment for it. Vertical marketing works much in the same way. If you were to open the interior of the machine, you would find that the soft drink cans are all lined up in a vertical row. All soft drinks of one selection are slotted into one vertical column, ready for dispensing.

There's no crossover. The cans must be lined up in the same dispensing vertical row, or they will deliver a wrong selection to the customer.

If you were the serviceman and haphazardly placed the cans in the machine in random positions, the results would be chaotic and unsatisfactory to customers.

By Rohn Engh

No, I don’t mean to incorporate. Instead, take on the image of a corporation. Become a monopoly. Become so photographically powerful that the ‘real’ corporations can’t interfere with your stock photography enterprise. More on this shortly.

First--historically, last-century corporations could offer security to freelancers in the form of enticing contracts. However, history has also shown a corporation can treat the freelancer like a servant. When you are no longer useful to them, they would drop you. Or change the rules when they felt like it. Period.

By Rohn Engh

In the field of editorial photography, photo researchers no longer search for pictures by looking at images (your eyes begin sagging after a while!). Instead, they search first, for words. Rarely do they do a one-word search (they’d receive thousands of hits). They usually use a three or four word search, and sometimes five or six words.

When you attach keywords to each of your images, keep that in mind. Try to anticipate what combination of keywords a photobuyer might use his/her search.

Since text description takes up very little space in a database*, be generous in your use of words to describe each image. Also, remember to include colloquial descriptions: In California it’s a “carpet,” in Wisconsin, it’s a “rug.” In Alabama the word is “flying;” in New Jersey it’s “aviation.”

By Rohn Engh

Here is a quick mini-course on how you can take marketable stock photos.

Your best teachers are the markets themselves: magazines, textbooks, websites, books, posters, and so on. Let these markets show you what they want. Analyze their image content and style.

You'll find they consistently feature images with these primary elements:

1. Background is uncluttered.

2. Reasonably close up.

3. Bold in design, poster-like.

4. When people are in the pictures, which is 90% of the time, they are shown pictured involved in meaningful activities or dialog.

By Rohn Engh

In other words, which photos sell and which don’t?

From our experience, there are certain indicators that point to “good sellers,” and to those that won't fare too well.

A major element concerns subject matter and its relation to “supply and demand.” You might have a wonderful picture of a hot air balloon, but if the photobuyer has 10,000 such pictures to choose from, the law of probability for a sale is not on your side. The same goes for a photo of a sea gull, a covered bridge, a fireworks display, or a little child happily eating birthday cake. Supply and Demand.

Next, let's consider the technical aspect of your photo. A first place winner in an art photography contest does not automatically qualify as a “good seller.” For example, that wonderful photo of a child eating a piece of cake, complete with all the joy in the world easy to read in the child’s eyes, might not be a good seller if the lighting is poor, or there’s camera shake, or the resolution is poor.

By Rohn Engh

Did you know you are a member of the largest stock photo agency in the world? Photobuyers have quickly learned to check this “agency” out first – before turning to any other stock photo agency.

When buyers seek a specific-content, hard-to-find image, they know not to turn to Getty, Corbis, Jupiter, et al. These agencies do a great job serving up generic and standard pictures, but for real-life specific action and location images, buyers know to go to this other “agency.”

While the familiar large stock agencies have been laboring to keyword their images for access to Internet searches, they’re woefully behind the precision and extensive nature of the keywording being done by many independent photographers.

Getty, Corbis, Jupiter, et al have not been keeping up. And none of them is the largest stock agency in the world. They represent only a small fraction of the number of stock photos that reside in the files of the Internet’s worldwide database of photographers.

The largest stock agency is the Internet + Search Engines + You. Increasing numbers of photobuyers are finding out they can easily locate the source of the exact photo they need by simply using a search engine such as Google, and typing in several specific words describing the photo they need. *

By Rohn Engh

As an editorial photographer, in most cases you do not need a model release. “Photographer's Market," almost every listing says, "Model release required." Can you submit photos without a release even if they say it is required? Would the photos still be considered for print? -William Schledd

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A: William, your question is very legitimate, and very familiar. The rule of thumb is that editorial usage (book and magazine illustration) does not require a model release; but advertising, promotion, endorsement usage always require a model release. It's understandable why there is confusion, when in spite of this, so many editorial photo editors in the Photographer's Market directory say that they need a model release.

First, it helps to understand it from the photo editor's point of view. (Photographer's Market is published by Writer's Digest, the same company that publishes my two books, "Sell and ReSell Your Photos," and "sellphotos.com.")