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Mr. Stock Smarty Pants tells what to do with all your travel and landscape imagery
You’ve undoubtedly been wandering around for weeks now, muttering to yourself: I wonder how the heck Mr. Stock Smarty Pants has been weathering this nasty economic downturn that I’ve heard so much about? Your concern is greatly appreciated, and MSSP wants to assure all of his loyal readers that he’s doing just fine, thank you. Oh, sure, the recession has caused him to tighten his belt just a bit: he’s had to temporarily discontinue stocking his cabinet with single-malt Scotches and switch to Dewar’s, and instead of three weeks on the Riviera in August, he’s prudently decided to cut back to just fourteen days on the French coast. But, MSSP remains generally optimistic about the state of the economy, and why shouldn’t he? He was wise enough to unload his Getty Images stock near its high of ninety five bucks a share back in the fall of 2005 instead of the puny $34 each sucker…uh, shareholder received when the company’s sale to Hellman & Friedman closed a few days ago! Hey, they don’t call him Mr. Stock SMARTY Pants for nuthin’!
In this installment of MSSP’s musings, he attempts to straighten out a very nice, but terminally naïve, lady:
Dear Mr. Stock Smarty Pants:
I read your column in About The Image religiously. Prior to reading your writings, I really didn’t know that such a thing as “stock photography” even existed. My first ex-husband turned me on to photography about two decades ago (the only good thing I got out of the marriage!) but even though I’ve been taking pictures for over 20 years, I’ve never sold any as stock images. I have amassed something like 15,000 pix in that time, most of which are in the form of transparencies. It never occurred to me when I was taking them that someone might actually pay me money to use them! But, I recently paid my taxes for 2007, and I could really use some extra dough since I’m not one of the super-rich 2% of Americans who received those tax cuts Mr. Bush so generously provided. Mr. Stock Smarty Pants, you’re the expert on this stuff: I’ve taken all these pictures (many of which I guess would fall into the categories of “travel” and “nature”), and I think a lot of them are pretty damn good, so how can I start to make some money from them?
Sincerely yours,
Drowning in Pictures (and debt)
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Dear Drowning:
While I appreciate the fact that you consume my columns “religiously” MSSP is a bit sensitive to such characterizations due to that recent nasty business in Thailand in which yours truly was accused (falsely, of course) of leading a spiritual cult in which young ladies of above-average physical attractiveness were recruited to serve my every need. First of all, it was not a “cult”; second, those girls were legitimate employees; and finally, I am very thankful that the time-honored tradition of bribery is still alive and well in that part of the world.
But, I digress…
First of all, you used a very revealing word when you described the method you had used in compiling your little stockpile of pictures. You said that you’ve been “taking” pictures for many years.
Drowning, there is a vast, vast difference between “taking pictures” and “making salable stock photographs.” And, in fact, this is the crucial difference between the photographers who eventually achieve a reasonable degree of success in this business compared to those who strike out (and the latter, I’m afraid, comprise the vast majority).
“Taking pictures” implies to me a haphazard, unstructured “I’ll-take-what-I-can-get” approach to capturing images that is common to snapshooters and amateurs. It also implies a lack of control on the part of the photographer: you’ll go out, and if you happen upon something interesting, you’ll shoot it. This is fun, easy and the way Kodak used to sell millions upon millions of rolls of film. It is not, however, how “real” stock photographers go about their business. By taking the approach you describe, you cede control of the photographic elements to the environment in which you immerse yourself, and if those elements (like the stars) just happen to align themselves in such a way that they look like a “good” photograph, you snap it. If not, you go home empty-handed.
That is most decidedly not a strategy for success for stock shooters.
Unless you’re shooting photojournalism, or certain types of editorial material, it is critical that you think in terms of “making,” not “taking,” salable stock images. This means that you have to actually plan what it is you’re going to photograph, you have to have a really good understanding of what types of images you intend to create, you must have thought out what the potential markets are for these images, and you must be the one who is in control of the shoot. In so doing, you will “make” (not just take!) images that have a fair chance of being sold in the stock picture marketplace.
Sound like a lot of work? It is! But who told you that making or selling stock images was going to be easy? Not Mr. Stock Smarty Pants, that’s for sure.
The methodology that I’ve described is all part and parcel of “thinking like a stock photographer” and it’s why you would be very lucky indeed if even a small percentage of your existing archive has any value as stock photos. I’m not trying to be negative or a wet blanket, just realistic. As you admitted, you weren’t even thinking about picture buyers when you shot your images, so how likely is it that they are the correct format (more verticals than horizontals, because that happens to be the shape of most printed pages), or that they contain negative space that stock picture buyers can use for dropping in a headline, text or even another image, or that they are model released (try selling even ONE non-released photo to a commercial stock buyer; if you do, lemme know, ‘cause it’ll be a first in recorded history), or that you avoided shooting any readily visible logos or trademarked corporate identities? My guess is that the odds are about the same as my chances of having lunch with the Pope the next time I’m in Rome…slim to none.
The last point that I want to make is that the vast majority of your pictures are apparently in the categories of “travel” and “nature.” You know, Drowning, you’d really have to work long and hard to create pictures in two subject sectors that are any more saturated with existing images than those two! In other words, unless your pictures are extraordinarily well done, or totally unique due to their hard-to-come-by subject matter or your exceptional shooting style, the chances are pretty good that all you have are duplicates of material that’s already readily available in the marketplace, whether from stock agencies or directly from other shooters. Again, success in stock is no accident: you have to research markets and figure out where the “holes” are that you can fill.
But take heart, Drowning: you are not alone. I hear from people all the time who are sitting on caches of photographs and they, too, are wondering if they’re sitting on a little gold mine. Ninety nine out of a hundred times they aren’t. But, it’s never too late to change your ways. If you truly love taking photographs, buy want to get serious about making money from the pictures you create in the future, you can educate yourself about what it takes to make it in stock. Attend seminars like the ones at PhotoPlus in New York every fall…join professional organizations like the American Society of Picture Professionals…subscribe to magazines like PDN…and read everything you can get your hands on about the business of stock photography. Or, if that’s just too laborious for you, keep doing what you’re doing and drop all of your images into microstock. Why, within a year or two you could make…who knows…seven or eight dollars!
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Mr. Stock Smarty Pants, a stealthy figure within the worldwide professional picture marketplace as well as the alleged mastermind behind a highly successful though legally dubious network dealing in ancient artifacts from Third World countries, answers your questions about the business side of stock photography every other Monday (or whenever the mood strikes him) on About The Image. Although MSSP travels the globe constantly (thus avoiding a number of extradition directives as well as several court-ordered paternity tests), your question regarding anything about the stock photo business will be forwarded to him and, so long as Mr. Stock Smarty Pants is within reach of an Internet café, he will consider responding to you in an upcoming edition of About The Image. E-mail your questions to: . Oh, and MSSP categorically denies any affiliation whatsoever with the company called Stock Answers™ LLC.
Posted in: Features, Mr. Stock Smarty Pants, Photographers
