Funny Animal Pictures and Lessons Learned

This funny picture of a cat with a canary feather in its mouth started a huge additional source of revenue for me.

Funny Animal Pictures: A Cat and a Canary Feather
My Animal Antics series of funny animal pictures began with my image of a cat with one yellow canary feather protruding from his smiling face (click here to see a sampling of the Animal Antics series of images). I originally created the image as a stock photo, but before I submitted it I was invited to exhibit at the Sausalito Art Festival (way back when it was unusual to be using Photoshop). Someone had advised me to bring some un-matted 8x10 prints in addition to the larger matted and framed fine art prints. The first day of the festival I sold all 8 of the Cat & Canary prints. I went home that night and printed up a dozen more…and the next day I sold all of them.

Greeting Cards and Anthropomorphic Pets
I realized at that point that I had an image that really clicked with the public. As I thought about it, it occurred to me that perhaps the image should be a greeting card. I made an appointment with one of the art directors, Collette Kulak, at Portal Publications. I showed her a few of my anthropomorphic animal images, including, or course, the cat and the canary. I then suggested that perhaps, with Portal’s help, I could be the animal equivalent of Anne Geddes, who was enormously popular with her images of babies in flowers, pea pods and so forth. Kind of a bold statement in retrospect!


Exclusivity and Higher Royalty Rates
Collette, to my everlasting amazement, agreed with me! We started off with four images and added a few more each quarter. After about two years I was beginning to wonder if all the work I was putting into those images was worth it. Then suddenly one quarter I got a royalty check of about $6,000.00. After that things just took off. The cards became so popular that Portal offered me a higher royalty to be exclusive with them, and soon I was Portal’s best selling card artist. I held that position until Portal was purchased by a venture capital company and slowly carved up until nothing was left.

Funny Cats, Camaraderie, and Gratifying Work
I am now in the process of reviving the line with new distributors. The cards are doing well and I am excited to see a comeback taking shape. I thoroughly enjoy working with the pets and the process of creating funny cat photos and humorous dog images. I also enjoy the camaraderie of working with a team, something that rarely happens in my stock photography. One other aspect of this undertaking that is gratifying: I receive a ton of e-mail from people who just plain get a kick out of the cards.


Coffee Mugs, T-shirts and…Barbecue Aprons!
In addition, I am making these images available at CafePress for a variety of imprinted products including coffee mugs, mouse pads, T-shirts (for both people and pets), water bottles, and yes, barbecue aprons! If you check out the site you can see all the various items. This is all part of my process of diversification, of seeking out ways to reach as wide an audience as possible for existing images, images that I think of as income-producing assets.

Gift Books, Christmas Ornaments, and Lessons Learned
To date the Animal Antics pictures have been used (exclusive of CafePress) for figurines, picture frames, Christmas Ornaments, Gift books (printed in seven languages), checks, Purses and Tote Bags, Vet reminder cards, calendars, and, well, I can’t even remember all the products! The gift books had a good run (Andrews McMeel published three of them), the greeting cards still sell like gangbusters, and everything else kind of fizzled after varying degrees of modest success. In all of these efforts I have learned a few things.

Get An Advance
I have learned that you should always get an advance (so when, if for whatever reason you don’t get paid, at least you have something). An advance isn’t just money in your pocket, it is an indication of the faith, and effort, that a publisher/distributor has in the product. Not only that, but at least you have something if the client ends up running into their own financial problems…a lesson I learned all to well when I provided the images for a Calendar without requiring and advance. The calendars were printed and sold, the company changed hands, sold off its calendar division and disappeared. I pursued the matter briefly but realized it was going to probably require more legal fees and time than was worth the effort.


Take The Royalty
If you believe in your images and the product, and are offered a choice of royalties or a flat fee, take the royalties. If that original cat and canary image had been licensed through a stock agency as a greeting card I would have received several hundred dollars. With royalties I have earned over $6,000.00.


Be Stingy With Your Rights
I have learned that you should make sure that whoever is distributing the products has a good record for that kind of product. A company that is great at distributing greeting cards may be terrible at selling calendars. Do your research before giving up rights.


Explore Your Options
In the environment we photographers currently find ourselves in it is important to take the same kind of advice any good investment counselor would make: diversify. There are many ways to diversify and some of them might just end up being your main gig! Explore your options. Start looking around you at all the ways photography is used. In what ways are images like the ones you make being used? Diversify, make good business decisions, and your images can work for you for in a lot of ways and for a long, long time.

Stampeding Elephant Newsweek Cover Photo

Newsweek used one of my stock photos of elephants for its March 1st Issue cover.

Newsweek Elephant Stampede Cover Photo
Just found out that one of my Getty Images, a herd of stampeding elephants, is on the March 1st Cover of Newsweek. Fame for a week! What is really amazing to me, and what continues to amaze me, is how easily the market can accommodate multiple uses of an image. Had it not been for Charlie Holland, and a couple of others who pointed it out to me, I would never have known the image was a Newsweek cover.

Stampeding Long Horn Cattle and a Need To Get Out More
I have images that have been used hundreds and hundreds of times and have never seen them in use! A couple of months ago Time used one of my elephant images in a spread…never did see a copy of that! Another “stampede” image, a herd of stampeding longhorn cattle, has been licensed more times than I can count; yet I have never actually seen it used. Amazingly, it is very rare that I ever see any of my photos in use. It has only been about a half-dozen times over twenty plus years that I have actually just “happened” on one of my stock photos being used. Maybe I need to get out more!


The Devil, The National Enquirer and Maxim
A photo of me as the devil was used in the National Inquirer…and no I didn’t see it while standing in line at the grocery store…someone else did and alerted me to it. The same image was once also used by Maxim magazine. I set a pretty high standard with my self-portrait! In another case in which someone else alerted me to the use of one of my images, a shot of a fisherman on Inle Lake, in Myanmar, was used on the paperback copy of Amy Tan’s Saving Fish From Drowning. The publisher used an image shot by my friend and colleague Nevada Wier (great blog by the way), for the hardcover version. Oh well….


A New York Street Artist
I do remember one time when I personally saw one of my photos being used. I was perusing a sidewalk gallery in New York where street artists were selling their wares. One of them was selling photo prints, including one of my silly animal images. Close inspection revealed it to be a rather poor color copy of one of the greeting cards. I chose not to pursue the matter.

A Lighthouse In A Storm and Success
Another time I was photographing an executive for an annual report. He wasn’t being exactly cooperative, until I pointed out that the poster on his wall, a shot of a lighthouse in a storm in a "Success" poster, was one of my photographs. He must have really liked that poster because his whole attitude changed and suddenly he couldn’t have been any more cooperative!


Image Over Use and Micro Stock
It is with the above in mind that I rarely, make that never, worry about an image being over-used. Of course, over-used is better than over-emulated (using a “nice” word there). One thing that would make me crazy if I were in micro stock would be the option people have of seeing which images are best sellers. I don’t think that is good for the company, for stock shooters, or for clients. It has to have some limiting factor on the diversity of a collection. But I digress. I think I will go back to enjoy my brief pleasure at seeing one of my photos on the cover of Newsweek!

Oh, one more thing, here is my Public Service Announcement of the week (and one I heartedly endorse):

Involved in stock photography?
Please take the 2010 SAA stock survey at

http://j.mp/SAA2010survey

results will be collated and published

Teamwork, Challenge and a Dramatic Stock Photo

Quad Sculling, four people rowing a boat, demonstrates teamwork, adversity, challenge and risk in this "impossible" stock photo.
Timeless Photos and Long Term Success
This image of Quad Sculling (in sculling a light boat is powered by people using two oars each…quad sculling refers to such a boat with four people) is exactly the kind of image I most enjoy creating. It has a strong, but flexible, message or concept. It has drama and interest and even humor (as in “Yeah, right”). The photograph is on the ragged edge of believability…is it real or not? And finally, the photo is timeless, something I think is tremendously important for long-term success in the stock imagery business.


Teamwork, Challenge and the Impossible
Sculling has always been a strong metaphor for teamwork, and as such has been used countless times as a stock image. This version still speaks of teamwork, but takes it a couple of steps further. This is teamwork in the face of risk, challenge, adversity and perhaps even the impossible. I can’t help but think that an appropriate headline might be “Sometimes even teamwork isn’t enough”. Come to think of it, this image might be hitting a little close to home for us photographers!


Old Concepts, Shot In New and Different Ways
As I have mentioned before, old concepts, illustrated in new and different ways, with a strong message pertinent to the marketplace, tend to do well. This image represents any efforts being attempted by a team, but with huge challenges and an uncertain outcome at best. It could be the government attempting to deal with the recession, or a sales team overmatched by competition, or any number of other situations in which an entity, be it corporation, government or organization, is faced with huge obstacles. For example, I could see this being an editorial image about the government attempting health care reform!


Extra Ideas
This image is also a great example of how I work these days. I come up with an idea that I want to illustrate, and then build a more comprehensive shoot around that first idea. In this case I knew I needed four models (to replace the people I had originally photographed in the boat, two of whom were just kids). Then I went over my comprehensive list of ideas to see which other ones were waiting for me to shoot models in-studio in order to finish. I came up with 17 ideas. I knew that I would not be able to complete the photography for that many, but I wanted to make sure that I had extra ideas in case one or more of my planned ones just weren’t working out. As it turned out, I managed to get the raw materials shot for about eleven of the ideas.


Four Models, A Boat, and Three Waves
In my studio I set up the lighting to match that from the original sculling shoot. Since I had shot the boat from a bridge I stood on a ladder to get the correct perspective. I printed out an 11x17 print of the boat and kept it with me on the ladder. I then shot each model and compared the LCD image with the print to make sure I cam at least reasonably close to the poses that would work. Before letting the models go I also did a quick cut and paste in Photoshop just to make sure things lined up right.
I put this image together using four model shots, the boat, and three shots of waves taken from atop a bluff in the Marin Headlands on a day with particularly large swells. I crafted it in such a way that it can easily crop as a horizontal for, say, magazine spreads, or vertically for a magazine cover. There is also plenty of room for headlines and body copy, though the texture of the water might be a bit busy for that. Total Photoshop time was about six hours.


A Rights Managed Image
While the concept of teamwork is one that is always in hot demand, as are such themes as risk, challenge, and adversity, having the rather negative probable outcome as part of the image makes me think that the audience for this photograph will be on the small side. Combine that with the greater-than-ordinary amount of work that goes into such an picture, and I think it would be best served as a Rights Managed image, so that is how I am submitting it. And now I have ten more images to get back to working on!

Guest Blog: A Recently Rounded Perspective on Microstock by Scott Redinger-Libolt

Photographer/art director Scott Redinger-Libolt gets a new perspective on microstock and shares it with us in this guest blog.

A recently rounded perspective on microstock
by Scott Redinger-Libolt

As many of you know, a large part of my income as a photographer is from stock. Other sources include assignment, creative consulting, editing, and retouching. I do not participate in microstock…however, I just had my first experience purchasing it for a client. I must say, I felt very guilty and wanted to share some realizations I had during the experience (hands still clutching the bloody knife).

One of my editing clients is the Green Labor Journal who is a non-profit organization. With a small team of writers and researchers, the journal provides information on a monthly basis including the complex politics of energy, green jobs, green education, union news, and affiliate articles. Their efforts are quite noble and like most righteous organizations, their funds are severely limited.

Needless to say, I bought a photograph from microstock, and it took this first hand experience to awaken me to the broad spectrum of effects caused by this one simple act. The picture was of solar panels being installed by workers on the roof of a commercial building. OK, let’s stop there for a moment. As a photographer, I know what it takes to make a connection with a solar company, secure a model release, and get access to shoot on the roof of a commercial building in this litigious and liability stricken nation. These hurdles alone make for an extremely valuable subject matter in stock due to the scarcity of coverage. This particular image, a very nice shot I might add, has further value due to the attention and growth in the “Green” and “Solar” industries…a perfect combination of supply and demand.

Like many stock photographers, I’ve been asked by most agencies to shoot green energy and had lightly started some research last year. The time and travel involved with producing this content has factored into my inadequate coverage of the subject. Having seen and bought another photographer’s end result for less than $5 has given me reason for pause. Based on the downloads of this particular image, and from what I know about average purchase price, file size, etc…I calculate that this one image will make the photographer about $600-800 in the first year. Not bad on a single image, but you can’t calculate RPI on a single image without knowing how many images were shot that day and how many of them don’t sell as well or at all…and, of course, the tapering lifespan is a factor. Given my experience in RM & RF, I believe this particular image could be making nearly double this amount per year in either of these licensing models. But I don’t want to dwell on this too much because my enlightenment was of a bigger picture …pun not intended.

When I joined Green Labor Journal as a freelance photo editor, I had also hoped that one day I would be shooting editorial pictures of the green workforce and attribute my skills to a noble cause. But as I clicked “Buy” on this microstock image and made this well-deserving client aware of this outlet for extremely cheap content, I saw my personal assignment hopes evaporate before my eyes. Oh… and all while my skills as a photo editor were being commended. By now my head is twisting in ways it had not before been twisted and…I had to write this entry for the pursuit of John’s blogging efforts in trying to make sense of it all.

Wait… there is a moral to the story. Non-profit organizations would not be able to function if it were not for inexpensive content outlets. We are seeing a resurgence in countless aspects of activism in our nation right now, and it is our duty as caring individuals to participate in noble movements. Both, government-subsidized as well as publicly funded not-for-profit organizations, have increased by drastic numbers in the last few years…and remarkably so, in the face of adverse economic situations. The budgets of these organizations have played a big part in the evolution (or de-evolution) of discounting content. I don’t feel good about microstock undermining my stock revenue as well as my assignment possibilities…however, to quote Spock, “It is illogical to dwell in circumstances beyond your control”. We can even see an opportunity here in creating mid-level priced and microstock content that specifically targets the needs of non-profit organizations who wouldn’t be buying RM or RF anyway. Bang…that was the car door slamming as I race with my camera to the closest field of genetically-altered wheat.

To inquire about Scott’s creative consulting and photography, drop him a line on his website: www.redinger-libolt.com

Shannon Fagan, Photographer and Stock Artists Alliance President

Shannon Fagan photographed this young girl in New Mexico, and found a print of it in China (see interview for details).Photo ©Shannon Fagan

Shannon, I know you as a top stock shooter and as President of Stock Artists Alliance. I also know that you have done many large produced shoots both here and abroad. You have won a raft of awards from Communication Arts Photography Annual to PDN to Print and even to the Addys. Can you fill us in on your background, how you came to be a photographer and how stock came to be your focus?

Thanks for such a nice introduction John. I’m at the ten-year point in my career and it’s been a decade’s worth of introspection these past few months. Our industry is rapidly evolving into unprecedented territory. I took a seat recently in attendance at multiple key industry conferences: Media Bistro’s User Generated Content Conferences in San Jose and New York, the Picture Archive Council of America’s Conferences in Chicago and Miami, the Photo Plus Expo in New York, and the Society of Digital Agency’s Conference in New York. I’m soon en route to The Professional Photographers of America’s ImagingUSA convention in Nashville. It’s an honor to share my observations from this collective experience with your audience. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned this past year, when you’re an industry President during a recession, and during a sea change in media content sourcing; everyone seeks an active opinion. You and I won’t fail to deliver here J

I concentrated in photography during a college degree filled with academics and art/photography courses at the University of Memphis. I had key mentors such as art photographer Larry McPherson, sculptor Greely Myatt, and painter Richard Knowles. Prior to that, my high school senior year included explorations of creative independent thinking speared on by a Fulbright exchange educator Luc Weegels from Amsterdam. Collectively, these persons taught me everything that I needed to know about process, about being prolific, and about being a professional. I took internships in New York City summer after summer, and when I graduated in 1999, I was ready to begin my waking dream of combining creativity with business. I loved photography, and I loved art, but I knew that it was necessary to earn a living in turn. Stock photography was a natural component and I was quickly being presented with multiple contract opportunities.


What agencies carry your work and do you also license images yourself?

I’m with nearly every major collection for stock photography internationally. It reads as a who’s who list of image aggregators, including microstock as a recent addition to the mix.

I currently not involved in direct licensing. It’s not that I don’t believe in this manner of distribution, as there are some very worthy proponents in this area of selling. I’m an admirer of the collections of Jim Erickson and Saxon Holt for example. Both have fantastic business models, niche content, and established clientele. This is very smart for the type of businesses that they have found themselves involved in.

If price is the “holy grail” of our industry, then completing direct licensing is both a business and a lifestyle choice. I have chosen to coordinate the logistics of travel to photograph, and to run the daily business operations. I’m also the creative director and technician. Completing direct sales and marketing would take a major expense and commitment initiative on my part. I’ve chosen to focus my energies elsewhere, and it’s partially a choice of reducing my overhead and remaining flexible to changes in our industry in the years to come. When you commit your business to direct licensing, you must first acknowledge the necessary means financially, the time logistically, and the support infrastructure long term. Your primary goal is to drive adequate sales traffic to offset these startup and yearly costs.

Direct licensing sure sounds popular these days, especially with the availability of a simple Google search for images. In my experience, image creators must be level headed and understand that a bulk core percentage of stock image buyers just want “a photo”, “any photo”, and they are not willing to wait for a return phone call, nor able to pay consistently more than the going market price. Direct licensing really works for collections that cannot be obtained elsewhere, and for which have established clientele already interacting with the niche-oriented photographer/s. Current agency contributor contracts do not allow for direct licensing by the contributor. One must understand that taking on direct licensing means taking on a level of business commitment long term with a separate offering unseen in agencies.

Tell us a bit about SAA, this new merger, and why we photographers should join.

The Stock Artists Alliance is the world’s only trade organization devoted to stock imagery licensing. It is now merged with the world’s largest photographic organization, The Professional Photographers of America. We choose to join forces in a consolidation of opportunity to provide the Alliance of Visual Artists (PPA’s umbrella organization) with an unparalleled level of stock expertise. They provided us with access to top legal experts, some of the best benefit packages for photographic members worldwide, and a service orientation that goes unmatched. This combination of forces will bring SAA members offers of equipment insurance, health benefit packages, seminars for business training, their own dedicated AVA/PPA Imaging USA conference, and a membership services department dedicated to their individual needs. We have an SAA dedicated publication, Keywords, and a dedicated email forum uniquely designed to address ongoing debates in the stock photography industry. We initiated a twitter stream this year and Facebook presence. We’re the only trade organization that addresses stock concerns directly with top agency owners and creative staff. It’s a prime membership to include as part of one’s business planning and daily operation. I encourage your readers to join in and participate in the discussion.

Micro stock has exploded onto the scene, but seems to be reaching a maturation point, at least for many of the top micro producers who are for the first time seeing their earnings level off. Do you have any thoughts on the future of micro stock?

User generated content is hot, and for microstock, it is being created professionally by photographers amongst us. To some degree, it is an oxymoron to call professional microstock content “user-generated”. Earnings are leveling off because of an oversupply in nearly every channel of imagery internationally. Free imagery isn’t seeing a leveling off in earnings however (I’m being a bit tongue and cheek here!), and it is becoming a new competitor as users provide talent in trade for exposure.

I have a great respect for microstock. Microstock photographers are some of the most business savvy in our industry. Its history is a classic self made commercial art success story that is a reminder to nearly all of us who started out in art school with dreams of being professional photographers. The future of microstock is a repetition of other classic branding stories. There will be stratification of the offering by quality and price, and price itself should continue to rise, albeit slowly. It will continue to eat away at traditional pricing for imagery that is inherently the same or can be obtained at lower prices.

I’d look at the airline industry in terms of where it goes from here. There are top tier airline carriers with limited routes, but their clientele is small, particularly in a recession with a tightening of budgets globally for the next couple years. There are mid tier fliers and they take the bulk of traffic with great expanse. There are low cost competitors, with perhaps no frills, but great service. Passengers “dressing up” today for any international flight in business class, let alone coach, has become a thing of the past. Expecting complimentary dinner service has also permanently changed. This goes to say that flying as an art of travel isn’t special anymore and we might take note of that with the following.

I’m going to take a lot of flack for saying this next statement, but I do feel that what we do as an industry for commercial photography is not any more insular than the B2B businesses hiring us. Expect media in the coming years that is generally less driven by quality and creative invigoration, and more driven by price and availability. I appreciate this New York Times article by technology visionary Jaron Lanier, and audio interview. Making a portrait of Lanier was my first-ever editorial portrait assignment. I shot Kodak negative film with a Pentax 67 camera and delivered contact sheets to Fortune Magazine. It’s an understatement to say that our manner of business has changed dramatically since that time, and it was uniquely resonant to me to read about it Lanier’s book “You are Not a Gadget”.

Look at the airline industry and how tickets are bought and sold. Where did the travel agents go? Availability will be the next self-fulfilling prophecy in commercial art. Desktop publishing software took out the printing industry. Rights managed creativity was cherished because that was what was prolifically available. This table turned and then went to Royalty Free. It is now microstock.

We are reading online newspapers proliferated with cell phone images. We are watching television commercials shot with low-end cameras to be made to look “user-generated”. We want to create our own content. We want to be individually famous for 15 minutes. Apple and Facebook are on this trend line. Do not expect to bend the wants of the consuming public globally. Microstock listened to that, intelligently. In fact, it helped to develop it as a self-fulfillment to what was an anticipated global desire, just as Apple’s iPod did with portable mp3 music at a low cost. Follow your heart and combine it with your creative and business intelligence. You do not necessarily have to be a microstock photographer to succeed. You do need to be positioned with where the marketplace is going.

Royalty Free images have certainly been suffering from the glut of such imagery available. As photographers, our response to declining revenue from that glut is to produce more imagery. Do you see any way out of that vicious circle?

I take a lot of direction from comments made by Jeff Howe, author of the book "Crowdsourcing", when he addressed the User Generated Content Conference in New York. Howe said "photography is the canary in the coal mine, with inexpensive cameras, easy editing, and internet access. The threat to photography is a continued downward price pressure due to natural pressures of supply and demand." We are not seeing a decrease in the interest to provide image content online, rather, it is exponentially growing.

I believe the vicious circle may be starting to slow. However, ironically, it’s not because there isn’t a desire to have it continue by the content creators. Photographers love to shoot. I objectively project, and assess in observation, that it is slowing because those that create the content can no longer afford to create it in the quantities that they did in the past. This is because revenues are being choked by distributed offerings at lower price points, ‘free’ being one of them. To maintain continued investment, one needs a steady revenue of encouragement. The big question yet to be determined is what is the tipping point for contributors to earn a living vs. returns on investment that they are experiencing this year and next?

The next question to follow is one that we have witnessed play out for the past two years already. I ask this analytically. What happened to all of the motivational mechanisms for an agency to support its self-funding contributors with art direction support, production help, imagery training, and regular meetings to keep the buzz of energy alive? What happened to mentorship? The signal to seasoned contributors and seasoned agency staff, if you read between the lines, is that the image licensing industry is confused, financially struggling, and veterans are necessarily expendable. This is a market condition at this time, and for small business owners operating as full time professional photographers, generally energy begets energy. Leadership is becoming a rarer commodity as images commoditize.

As traditional contributors find other paths that are more lucrative and more rewarding, will crowd sourcing or new professional or semi-professional photographers be able to take their place? My gut tells me yes, but my business sense tells me no. Shooting stock independently, as a professional, takes years of experience and innovation cultivation. Agencies have laid-off numerous instigators of creative direction, i.e. their salaried art directors and editors. There are now more laid off professionals in this area than there are available positions for them to be assimilated into. They must and will migrate to other professions, commercial art not necessarily to be one of them. This is a dot com era bust for the stock photo industry. There could be two upcoming changes in our traditional industry: increases in royalty percentages to core contributors to encourage participation, and/or ‘perk’ programs to initiate veterans. Major microstock agencies are already doing this with their regular contributors whose canister levels or selling levels are high. I’d take note of that. It’s quite impressive on their part. It’s one of the reasons we are not hearing of professionals in the user generated fields jump ship to more traditional lines of selling.

Microstock has a different need than Rights Managed. Contributors all have the same need. They need to be cultivated if to be retained over time. When the industry was on the growing upswing, cultivation was high via agency staff support, regular agency meetings, and the like. Now, we are witnessing a downswing. What goes up, yes, does come down. Ask veteran assignment photographers about their career changes over time. Being a freelance commercial artist is not a protected, tenured, salaried position, and agencies will see changes to “who” is providing the content. It is highly unlikely that the stock photographer of tomorrow is being actively cultivated by today’s agency staff in a manner that retains long-term relationships. Imagine for a moment, the start up fixed overhead costs associated with ingesting new contributors on a self-funded traditional scale. Veterans of today will slow submissions, retire, and move to new industries. It’s happening in 2009, and I agree with what was explored at the UGCX in New York – this will be the year that it all changed. This opens up a new era in stock photography. Flickr and iReporter might be a good model for the future of content in years to come, and if we’ve seen self-fulfilling prophecies of the past, I cannot help but see that what’s available is what will be bought. It’s not that the model that currently exists is invalid. It continues to work. I’m pointing to where we’ll be in 2-5 years. Everyone agrees that licensing content on the web is due for a change. Now that average prices to produce the content exceed what the content sells for, one knows that the current model is broken.


How do you feel about the future of Rights Managed stock photography?

You, John, have been a voice of reason for rights managed this year and you’ve shared with your readers some really wonderful insight. Rights Managed imagery continues to carve out a stable future and strategy. It is an ingredient to a successful business if the contributor enjoys shooting it and is interested in creating the types of unique content needed in this area. Personally, Rights Managed has been my best success for creative imagery and personal artistic development for my entire career. It may not have trained me in the logistics of a diverse offering and building my business to a new revenue level for re-investment elsewhere, but it was a crucial component of my shooting and will continue to be.

One thing I find mildly distressing is Getty’s current fixation on Flickr. I have even heard that some Getty photographers have started putting images through flickr instead of Photographer’s Choice (Getty’s pay-to-play option) to avoid the PC charges and perhaps get a better acceptance rate. How do you see flickr’s role in the larger picture of the stock photo industry?

Flickr highlights just how much a contributor now must ‘play the system’ and not just create award-winning imagery alone. I would go so far as to say that distribution of imagery is more important than what the imagery is itself. Jaron Lanier’s book also addresses this important truism of Web 2.0. This has created the vicious circle that we talked about above. It encourages imagery to be commoditized. This is just simply a business condition at this time. It does not show any signs of letting up any time soon, so my advice is as follows: As a contributing creative commercial artist you have a responsibility to your business (to your models, your crew, your future hires) to stay in operation. They rely upon you as a market maker. Flickr is leveling the playing field, yet again, to the barriers of entry to license imagery globally. If you assess that it is worth your business’ time to channel distribution via Flickr, I would vote to try it. One must look at the amount of time it takes to participate in licensing via this manner. Flickr was not designed as a place to house professionals’ full time portfolios, and yet, in evolution, it has tested that. It’s a tool. Use it as such if it fulfills a need that you have. The industry will eventually adapt around that, just like it did around the digitalization of photography.

There are an increasing number of options to detect copyright infringement of images, such as PicScout and Tin Eye, to name just a couple. Do you think that there will be a shift away from so much piracy?

I’m in Beijing at the moment, and I just got off the Skype phone with PicScout’s CEO Offir Gutelzon. I was shocked to learn that in the United States, where intellectual property has reportedly the highest degree of enforcement, that 85% of all online imagery being used is pirated. 85%! These are PicScout’s numbers talking here, and if it’s 85% in the US, how much more could it be in other countries throughout the world? I was informed that in China it is estimated that all major stock agency licensing accounts for only 40% of imagery use in the marketplace there. The other 60% is pirated. If that’s the case, then China is doing better than the United States! Take that!

This is such a difficult discussion to be had because many companies project what the infringement percentages are, but no one can ever truly know. The best we can do is educate and make available offerings that allow an easy license to avoid the theft of imagery online. User habits are in line with human nature and the tendency is that if you give someone an inch, they’ll take a mile. That’s a tough act to follow when enforcing legal use of intellectual property licensing online. You can read this two ways. Give people an easy manner to license, and they’ll do so. Give people an easy way to steal imagery unchecked, and well, they’ll do that too.

For many of us these are tough times in the stock photography business, yet there are more people buying stock images than ever. In fact, it is easier than ever to break into the stock photo business, though I think harder than ever to make a good living at it. Can you share your thoughts on the changes that are rampant in our industry and what strategies you are using to deal with those changes?

I’ve touched upon several of these above. One of my favorite podcasts of the past year was from Stanford’s Technology Ventures Program lecture series. Scott Kriens, President and CEO of Juniper Networks said, “there is an inverse relationship to the amount of credit that one takes for success, and how useful the information is that they provide.”

This has been a year in which to do personal introspection and self-assessment as to what lifestyle one wants to have as a photographer. I’m not the only one thinking this, but I might be the only one saying it. Earning a full time living from the profession in the future is clearly under pressure. For the analysts amongst us, we’ve seen it coming for several years. Trade organizations are shifting. Photography publications are shifting. Trade conferences and seminars are shifting.

Ironically, education and validity to the medium of photography remains rooted to the dream that one magazine assignment, or one substantial award will lead to a lifetime career of success. That system started shifting in the early 1990’s. To expect a bounce return to normalcy, pre-recession, would be naïve to suggest. I would not want to be a leader who shares a lack of objectivity, and often, in our media, unfortunately, being objective and pragmatic is viewed as pessimism. The overly zealous, and those with a lack of regard to current needs in our industry, will fundamentally be weeded out.

It is wise to test new technologies, but timing is everything. As returns on shoot days for self-funded stock imagery push themselves into years instead of months, this industry is more and more about entrepreneurship than it is about being an artist. It always has been when you investigate the personalities who are at the top. Follow your heart. I’ve said this several times because this is the best advice that any successful person in any career field ever gave me. If that is in photography, you will always be at the top of your game. Following your heart means recognizing what you are most interested in and what you inherently are good at. I am most proud of photographs that I have made, not because they won awards, but because they touched those around me in a way that I could not have done had I not held a camera in hand. This career is about connection. I love what I do because I can connect people together.

Do you see social media as essential to success as a photographer in the coming years?

It depends on how it is used. Social media is a very potential waste of time. Uh oh, did I say that out loud!? And yet, I love being a participant on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and whatever comes next. It is, no doubt a distraction to my core work, but I can’t help myself because I love being ‘in the know’. That is what makes the abilities of the Internet and mobile communications so successful within the context of social media. It is transforming where we get our trusted sources of news and, in turn, visual content. Humans are social animals and we gravitate to community. We are at a time when the medium, well, perhaps the context, of what constitutes ‘being’ a photographer is changing. The beauty of this is that all photo enthusiasts can share these changes and thought processes via the readily available accesses of social media. Facebook alone has become a massive self-promotion tool for the creative field. I daily get invitations to personal fan pages, networking events, or group integrations. Isn’t it ironic at just how much cutting through the noise of social media mimics the same manner in which stratification of our own licensing industry is undertaking? Irony or not, yes, I believe that social media is a critical component of being a small business in the coming years, but it’s because it’s always has been. We used to just call it ‘networking’.

Are you employing social media, and if so, how?

I’m actively involved with Facebook and Twitter and I just joined QQ and RenRen in China! These mediums are quintessential ways to learn about my colleagues and my friends’ interests and happenings’ globally. From a business perspective, as a photographer always seeking a great idea on which to expand upon, the medium of social networking is a quick means to disseminate and obtain what I like to call ‘whereabouts’. My friends post their needs or interests and I respond. I post mine as well, and a network of sourced information hits my ‘in’ box. It’s the random aspect, filtered, that makes these networks so successful. They naturally filter themselves and provide me with creativity and contacts. Just as any project, the more you put into them, the more you obtain back out.

OK, a bit more about your photography…where do you get your ideas from?

My best ideas come from personal and direct observation. I know that’s a fairly simple straightforward answer, but it’s becoming more and more true as the internet homogenizes us. I never achieved success by direct copies of others’ works, nor their opinions. Be willing to stand out on your own, no matter your work, no matter your ‘take’. This alone is being a success, and today, with all that we’ve talked about above, it is so much more critical than it was just five years ago. Yes, it’s all been done before. Our planet has been Google-d. Therein lies the biggest threat to our creative industry in the years to come. We will suffer from a lack of thought innovation, not technical innovation. There will be a perceived need to not create when there is so much free and available content online at the click of a button. Your ideas as a commercial artist will need to speak to both; what sells, and what sells artistry. The latter will become more rare.

What do you enjoy shooting the most?

Ha! Well, I enjoy a challenge. The more limiting the idea, the more mundane, the more logistically intensive, the more creative it is. Send me your “boring” projects. I’ve had just as much fun shooting a “business handshake” as I have had traveling to shoot throughout Beijing or British Columbia. It’s about the mindset in place when tackling a challenge. I’ll admit, I tend to bore too easily and am on a constant search for a new unchartered adventure.

Can you share a favorite image of yours with us and perhaps a bit about how the picture came to be?

I’ll share a favorite image of Getty Images’ Beijing office. It is one that I was so proud to see hanging as inspiration above the sales staff when I arrived to a meeting there last week. I traveled to Santa Fe, NM in 2003 for a commercial assignment and returned months later to complete personal work. I photographed a young girl in a tiara peering through a star shaped magic wand in her grandmother’s living room. She was glowing with pride and at the same time, all dressed up, acting in a manner of sticky silliness that makes us all feel like a kid inside. It could have been shot anywhere. I did it in New Mexico because I developed a relationship of trust with those that I had been working with there. Remember when I said that the most important aspect of photography for me is connection? I have connected this moment, totally initiated on my own behalf with a family who had never modeled before, to an agency sales team 7000 miles away working in the world’s fastest growing economy. I take pride in this. Send me your impossible projects. There’s no such thing as impossible in my repertoire.

Any words of wisdom or advice that you would like to leave us with?

Again, follow your heart, and most importantly, don’t ever take ‘no’ for an answer. If you do these two things well, you’ll always have a career in visual imagery. You’ll also do yourself a favor, because, you’ll always be great at what you do. No recession or unemployment statistic can belittle that. People love people with energy and those are the only people that I want working on my team. They’re the only people that I can afford. Don’t agonize with bitterness over these adjustments that we’re seeing in our industry. Embrace them with the complacency that as shifting occurs; opportunities open up for movement into other new challenging needs in our economy. One of my key art mentors once told me during a drawing exercise, “You are not a slave to the still life laid out before you.” As photographers, we are illustrators to the elements of life that we rearrange with our lighting and design, retouching, and communication. Seek your best opportunity in this. Others will follow.

To see more of Shannon's work: http://www.shannonfagan.com

Photography And The Future: Advice For The Road Ahead

The road ahead for stock photographers lies under storm clouds, but are those rays of optimsim and future success awaiting us?

I have compiled the advice offered to photographers from the photographers, CEOs, agency owners, art directors, designers, photo researchers and others who I have interviewed over the last year:

Jack Hollingsworth, Stock Photographer, Blend Images Co-Founder, Social Media & Photography Consultant
The money is in getting the photography in front of the consumer.

Marc Romanelli, Stock Photographer (Stills And Motion)
I choose to shoot what I know, shoot what feels right, diversify by shooting motion, as well as stills, finding new agencies that want to build their collections quickly as Workbook did, loading them up with images but not forgetting the "girl that brought you to the dance" in the first place...that would be your bread and butter agency. In my case that agency is Getty.

Ellen Boughn, Stock Industry Consultant and Pundit
Think of your business as a multi-layered cake. Get your work into all the layers of the business. DEVELOP a specialty and be the best at it in the world. Even photographers on microstock sites need to build their brands within the site in order to get maximum downloads.

Colin Anderson, Stock and Assignment Photographer and Co-Founder, Blend Images
Shoot work that is unique and hard to copy, and keep expenses down to a minimum.

Jonathan Ross, Stock Photographer and Co-Founder, Blend Images
I would say keep costs down. Don’t buy that new camera this year unless it makes you more money. Research is a bigger part of the game, more then ever before. Do your homework and get your ducks in a row before you spend your money on a shoot. Invest in R & D and try to stay true to your vision instead of just copying what you see working for others or that you have already shot yourself. Most of all have as much fun as possible, that always brings the largest rewards, financially and personally.

Rick Becker-Leckrone, Stock Shooter, Co-Founder & CEO Blend Images stock agency
One thing is especially important to keep in mind – now is not the time for a shotgun approach to production. The last decade was about creating massive amounts of RF imagery. Now there’s too much similar content. RM has been underserved with new imagery, but it’s a relatively small market. Micro is interesting, but a lot of hard work and not completely clear one can generate the same returns as in traditional stock. (Yes, some do, but very few.) Chill out in 2009. Figure out what you’re truly good at shooting, figure out what the market is missing and make fewer, but better targeted content. Don’t count the success of your 2009 in the number of images you produce.

Shalom Ormsby, Assignment and Stock Shooter Stills And Motion, Co-Founder Blend Images
A short story, since I’ve been so long-winded. At the end of a talk the Dalai Lama was giving about true happiness, he was asked what was the happiest day of his life. The Dalai Lama smiled and said softly, “That would be today.” May today be the happiest day of your life.


Tom Joyce, Owner/Creative Director Creativewerks
Do whatever you do with great passion and make it as perfect as you can. Then let go of it and grab a beer.


Lanny Ziering, CEO SuperStock, Co-Founder Blend Images
Talk to people who buy pictures, find out what they want, go and shoot it.

Trevor Lush, Stock and Assignment Photographer
I see me moving away from the high-volume work I've been doing in the past, towards a much more targeted approach. Fewer images with more added value.

Patty Meyers, Owner, Bloodhound Stock Photo Research
I find more and more art buyers are going to these alternative sites for innovative work. Basically, my advice is to get your images out to as many traditional and alternative image sources as possible, watch the trends and keep your work contemporary, and try and find a niche which needs filled. That and find a partner with a real job.

Inti St. Clair, Assignment and Stock Stills and Video
Shoot what you love. There is not a lot that’s easy about being a pro photographer, and the sad reality is that very little time is spent actually shooting, but as long as you’re loving it, it’s all worth while.

Collette Kulak, Art Director, Marian Heath Greeting Cards
Shoot what you love. There is not a lot that’s easy about being a pro photographer, and the sad reality is that very little time is spent actually shooting, but as long as you’re loving it, it’s all worth while.

Tom Grill, Stock Shooter, Agency Owner (Tetra), Blend Co-Founder
With declining RPI’s it’s becoming more difficult to earn a substantial living from stock photography. Now is a good time to honestly access your talents and resources relative to what it will take to make a go in the tougher times ahead. Follow the old stock market adage of getting out when the market is high and jumping in when the market is low. NOW – in this time of severe economic downturn -- is the time to buy stocks in the stock market as well as pour images into the stock photo market.

Lance Lee, Stock and Assignment Photographer, Mentor, Entrepreneur
For our stock photography projects, I'm encouraging our photographers and production team to work as if they are working in a film production. The process is pretty much the same - creative story telling translated into pictures.

Dan Heller, Stock Photographer And Stock Industry Analyst
Photographers are going to have to get behind initiatives that encourage openness, distribution, and wider-scale adoption of intellectual property. This is the one and only path that will help bring order to the chaos of images on the Internet. And with that comes ranking and prioritization, much like how Google ranks websites.
And when that happens, “quality” images will percolate to the top, and reward those photographers who truly are better than others. If one assumes that most “pros” are better photographers than consumers, the only way pros’ images will be found and licensed by buyers of any sort, will be when there are business incentives for companies to build those technology solutions.

Sarah Fix, Creative Director, Blend Images
A photographer’s greatest assets are their creativity and ability to speak to the market. What is your creative advantage? What do you do better than most?
There is always opportunity during challenging times. Right now in our industry there are fewer images being created, fewer shoots with higher production value, social networking is making it easier to give and receive information, the rights managed licensing model is in need of new content, motion is gaining momentum with affordable cameras that capture both stills and motion – how do you plan on taking advantage of this moment? Adapt as the market changes.

Jeremy Woodhouse, Stock Photographer and Educator (Photography Workshops), Blend Images Co-Founder
Take time to get grounded in a location, check out the bookstores, post card racks, see where the “hot spots” are and work around them. Look for new ideas; introduce some of your own technique/style into a location. Use the light, not only the edge of the daylight but even midday light can work, especially with HDR. You can beat the contrast big time. Revisit the same locations several times in different light.

John Feingersh, Stock Photographer, Co Founder Blend Images
Hold on, keep your chins up, find those holes in the files and fill them with great imagery.

Charlie Holland, Stock Shooter, Former Director of Photography, Getty Images
Be smart, direct your efforts. Spread your submissions out over collections, over time and over business models. Do not overspend on your productions.

Sarah Golonka, Stock Shooter, Stock Photography Consultant, Art Director/Editor
Keep your head up and look back to help prepare yourself for the future. Be aware of and open to change and work with it vs. against it. Analyze your sales history and draw your own conclusions as to why your images did and did not sell, then apply that information to your future shoots. Keep taking creative risks and stick to shooting what you are good at vs. trying to reinvent the wheel.

Trinette Reed And Chris Gramly, Stock and Assignment Stills And Motion (Trinette is a Cofounder of Blend Images)
Trinette: Be open minded and open to change, experiment, use the downturn to focus on what you really want to be doing, stay connected.
Chris: Stay open to the changes and open to learning; don’t pretend to know what you don’t know.

Don Farrall, Stock and Assignment Photographer
I used to counsel photographers about getting into stock and can be credited for bringing a handful of photographers, and even a few illustrators, through the process of securing a contract with Getty; back in the days when that was a Golden ticket. I would have to say that I am much less “Bullish” about it now. These are difficult times to be encouraging, so I suppose I would want to see someone’s work first before I answered that question for them.

Offir Gutelzon, CEO PicScout
Making content available for more marketing applications and promotional use, while selling content as RF, is essential. Photographers should follow your actions, like those you’ve taken that improve rankings on search engines, and promote themselves in new ways, even at the risk of image infringements.

Hope that helps! Look for more interviews in the coming year. BTW, I predict that 2010 is going to be a good year...based on the fact that it rolls off the tongue nicely!

To see the entire interview with any of the above people go to my Interiview Index.

Flying Money: History Of A Best Selling Stock Photo

The first stock photo I ever made with Photoshop, 19 years ago, and still selling!

Flying Money, My First Photoshop Stock Photo
I noticed, when looking through my sales history, that many of my images have a very long life. The above image of flying money, which I named many years ago, Flight of the Greenbacks, is one of those long-lived pictures. It brought in just under $400.00 over the last year. Now $400.00 in a year for a stock photo is hardly what one would call spectacular, hardly worth mentioning, I suppose. But the cool thing about this image earning that amount over the last year, is that I created this image in 1990! This image was, I believe, the first stock photo I ever created in Photoshop.

Hundred Dollar Bills and Wings of Egrets
I photographed the money, a $100.00 bill, with a 4x5 Sinar camera using Ektachrome 4x5 transparency film. The wings came from a 35mm slide of an Egret in flight that I had photographed for part of a housing project brochure. I photographed the Egret using either Ektachrome or Kodachrome slide film, I don't remember which. The cloudy sky image was also from a 35mm slide. I had all the transparencies scanned on a drum scanner at a separation house. It cost me a hefty $110.00 a scan, and each scan was transferred to me via SyQuest disk.

Photoshop 1.0 And A Macintosh II
I used Photoshop 1.0 for the digital work on a Macintosh II. My machine had a whopping 32 megs of Ram and a un-calibrated 13 inch monitor. In Photoshop, back then, there were no layers, there was no history, there were no layer masks and there wasn't even a pen tool to create clipping paths (at least at don't remember one). It took me two full days to create this image, and probably a third day of just cleaning up edges. Trying to get things perfect was the difficult part. Well, that and the fact that everything took forever to do! Rotating a 30 megabyte file took over half-an-hour, and since all you could see during the duration was a bounding box, accuracy was non-existent! I don't even like remembering it. Finally, I had to deliver the image to Tony Stone Images (this was before Getty Images existed) as a 4x5 transparency output from a film recorder.

$15,000.00, Fifteen Years, And A Time Magazine Cover
Though the earnings of this image have dropped considerably, way back in the day, it earned some good money. I would guess my total returns for this image is in the neighborhood of $15,000.00. Another interesting point is that it took fifteen years from the time I created it for it to show up on the cover of Time Magazine. The people at Time isolated the flying money and added in a face to illustrate an article on what they called "The Great Retirement Rip Off".

Photoshop, Progress Bars and 3D Programs
In the early nineties I was constantly being told that you couldn't use Photoshop to do professional level work. I just smiled and went back to watching that progress bar. Actually, I should say several progress bars. You could be much more efficient with two or three machines. I remember once using the "radial>zoom>blur" filter on a photograph in an operation that took 19+ hours to finish, then it didn't look very good so I did the old "command-z". I suppose there are those out there (Colin Anderson, Shalom Ormsby and Phil Banko, for example?) who now experience those same situations doing high-end work with 3D programs.

Income Producing Assets
Every time I set about to make a stock photo, I am trying to create an image with that kind of staying power. In the well-known investment book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki advocates investing your money in “income producing assets”. That is how I view my stock photos, as income producing assets. I am investing my time, my money and my ideas in stock photo assets. I don’t know about you, but I find it very reassuring that those assets can still, even in these years of industry turbulence, have a long and healthy life.

SEO: Opening Doors For Stock And Assignment Photography

 The song and dance of getting photography assignments vrs. optimizing your web site for both assignment and stock photos.

Stock And Assignments
I think about stock photos all the time, but every once-in-a-while I think about assignments. There are a lot of good things about assignments; Money, fresh ideas, subsidized stock, the camaraderie of working with bright, motivated people, did I mention money?  But there are some downsides too. They take a lot of time. There is pressure. There is having to do things that you don't want to be doing. There is the stress of working with idiots (or at least people who think differently than you do).  And, oh yes, there is getting the assignments, the song and dance routine that all of us working pros know so well!

Time, Energy And Money
Those of you who are in the assignment world know of what I am speaking. There is constantly putting books together, putting time, energy and money into figuring out the coolest look, compiling prospect lists, shooting for the book, taking out ads in source books, shipping portfolios, keeping track of portfolios and so forth. Then there are the estimates. It can take an enormous amount of time and effort to put together good, accurate estimates. Unless you are truly exceptional a lot of those estimates will turn out to be, well, if not a waste of time at least a less than optimal use of your time.

Books Open Doors
But like I said, assignments can be good. The last assignment I did brought in $130,000.00 after expenses. I would be open to more of those, particularly because I didn't spend any time seeking that assignment. It just came to me. It came to me because I had written a book on Photoshop (Adobe Masterclass: Photoshop Compositing With John Lund). They say you don't make money off of books, but books open doors for you. I didn't make appreciable money in royalties from my book, but my client said that they hired me because of it. That book opened many doors for me and some of them were quite rewarding!

Art Directors, Art Buyers, And Designers Looking For Me
So I am OK with assignments, when they come, and if they are right for me. But I have no desire to jump through hoops to get them. I prefer to put my energy into my stock photography. Part of that stock effort includes SEO to get more eyeballs onto my images. But effective SEO will bring more than just stock clients. Art directors, art buyers, designers and others who are looking for a photographer with the look and style that I offer will find me. These people will be looking for me as opposed to me struggling to find them and get their attention. How cool is that? Just last week a licensing agent contacted me, all excited about the work I am doing, and exclaimed, “It was so easy to find you!”  It has been a year of heavy SEO now, but it is starting to work.

SEO Opens Doors
Good SEO is like that book. It opens doors. In the short time I have been working on optimizing my site I have had a surprising number of opportunities come my way. Some of them include a contract with a wall décor company, negotiations underway for a line of greeting cards, and a possible calendar deal. I have also executed one assignment and turned a couple of others down.  There is no doubt in my mind that this is just the tip of the iceberg. I believe that it will probably be another year before my SEO really kicks in…at least in a big way. I am totally confident that I will look back and be truly glad that I put the time and effort into making my site come up early in appropriate searches.

To Stop Photo Theft, The Best Defense Is A Good Offense

My "Animal Antics" funny animal pictures, such as these two bulldogs sumo wrestling, are my most infringed upon images.
Appropriated Images And Lost Opportunities
Sometimes it makes me a little crazy when I do a Google search for my images and find image after image appropriated with no reference to me at all.  The vast majority of these infringements are not worth chasing after, but they still annoy the heck out of me. I also can't help but wonder how all of these pictures, that I have worked so hard to create, being loose on the internet without my name represents a "dilution" or at least a lost opportunity in regards to my personal branding. But what to do? How can I defend against such image theft?

Minor Infractions And An Unhappy Ego
I few times I have tried to request that offenders take down my pictures, but the amount of time I have to invest in that is kind of ridiculous. When I complained to flickr about an infringement what they required of me to get them to take action, well, I looked at for a moment and said “aw the hell with it!”  Same deal with Squidoo, or innumerable other cases of bloggers and such making use of my photos; minor infractions with a lot of hassle to get my images taken down. Most of these cases of my purloined imagery hold absolutely no opportunity for any monetary gain, so it might just be a case of my unhappy ego, or as mentioned above, a dilution or loss of branding opportunity.

The Best Defense Is A Good Offense
It has taken awhile, but I have come up with a defense strategy. In this case it is a return to the old maxim that "The Best Defense Is A Good Offense". That strategy is to get my images up as quickly as possible in any and all searches that might return them in the results, and to have my name on those images.  I put that name up as ©johnlund.com.  That way people know the images are copyrighted, and if they have half a brain (I might be generous here) they can find me to license the images, or at least ask for my permission. Recently I have had several examples of people tracking me down because they did see my images used somewhere and did have that credit line on them, so I know, that at least to some degree, that process can work.

SEO, Name And Copyright, And Personal Branding
I have already wholeheartedly committed to SEO and getting my images seen, but this adds just that much more incentive to do so. People only steal the images if they find them, therefore I want them to see my images first with my copyright and name clearly on them. That way there is a much higher probability that I will benefit at least in some way, and that outright theft will be lower. Years ago a friend and I created a company to distribute training films.  Our first film was titled "The Ten Billion Dollar Rip Off". It was a video to show to store employees detailing the damage of employee theft and the various repercussions.  Apparently, just showing that video to employees, significantly reduced employee theft.  Having your name and copyright notice on an image is a step in that direction. I don’t think it will stop non-commercial picture pilfering (love that phrase), but it will at least increase my name awareness, my personal branding, if you will, and will contribute to deterring commercial use of unauthorized images.

Doom, Gloom And Rays of Hope In The Photo World

Picture of Vultures Circling in a concept photo of Doom and Gloom

Lighthouse in a storm, a classic stock photo of hope and guidance
Doom, Gloom And A Vast Sea Of Images
I have just spent several hours exploring flickr. My first reaction was one of gloom and doom. There are some insanely great photos, some truly creative photography, and there is a LOT of it! But there are also a lot of ho hum pictures as well. It is interesting to see my emotional state swing from one extreme to the other while perusing that vast sea of images. Sometimes it seems as if there is so much talent, and so many wonderful photos out there that my future as a stock photographer is doomed. But then, every once-in-a-while, I realize that I have been going through a whole lot of images that are, at best, average. In addition, many of the truly wonderful photos I am seeing on flickr do not necessarily solve the visual needs of those who license photography.

Hope For The Future
I do see hope for the future here. I see an opportunity in creating images that do fill those visual needs of businesses everywhere, and in making it easy for buyers to find those images. I wish there was an easy solution for providing "personal use" licenses for the masses to use in all those non-commercial ways that pop up, from personalized computer desktops to homework assignments. I believe that is part of the long-term solution for the new "Glory Days of Stock".

Money To Spend And Stock Agencies
Right now, I think that, for better or worse, most of the money to be made is still in the hands of the stock agencies. The vast majority of people with money to spend on photography are still going to stock agencies. There are the occasional stories of shooters who are flourishing in stock photography without the use of stock agencies (Dan Heller and Jim Erickson are two who come to mind with very different approaches), but for most of us the agencies still offer the eyeballs (eyeballs with dollars) and the administration and logistics that are very difficult to handle either when you are just starting out or when you don't have or don't want a staff, particularly if you are dealing, as I am, with a lot of Rights Managed imagery.

Be Proactive And Pay Attention
While I am still doing quite well at stock, my revenues have certainly dipped, and I am definitely concerned and seeking ways that I can keep my business and lifestyle going in the manner to which I have become accustomed. I do believe it is important to be trying a variety of things, to be very proactive, and to pay very careful attention to what is working and what isn't. To bad it takes so long to find that out! But remember that old saying, "Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained". At least if you are trying different approaches you are moving and if you are moving you can always apply course corrections. If you aren't moving you just might sink.

Creativity, Dedication, And Good Business Practices
Getting back to flickr for a moment, looking at all those images reinforced in me a truth that has existed for the entire length of my thirty-plus years as a professional photographer. That truth is that the photographers who consistently stay at the top of the game are not only creative and dedicated; they are also very good business people. As a matter of fact, some of them are very good business people and not that great at photography!

Flickr, Great Photos And The Business Of Photography
What I take away from my exploration of flickr is that it is much easier to produce great photography than it is to be great at the business of photography. It just may well be that applying your creativity to the business end of the profession will pay off much more handsomely than putting that creativity into the image, though of course, I advocate both. For me, the business of photography means testing the waters, albeit carefully, of new markets. It means tracking sales to help understand what works, without falling into the trap of repetition, and it means paying attention to the big picture which includes everything from generating traffic to understanding what my true costs are.

Passion, Perseverance And Visualization

  Photograph of my own feet in a boat on Inle Lake, Myanmar.  Ahh the life! This is a concept image about success, financial planning and the way forward.  ©johnlund


Delivery Boy, Substitute Teacher And Photography Blogs
Three things you need to have to succeed in photography: passion, perseverance and visualization.  I say that because success in photography, at least for me, has taken a long time. It took me six years before I could quit my secondary jobs (gas station attendant, delivery boy, substitute teacher and landscape laborer) and rely on photography to support me. It took seven years from the time I started seriously shooting stock until I could give up assignment work. And have been working at SEO (and photo blogging) for a year now and am just starting to see real results.  To succeed in photography you have to have perseverance. To keep doing the things you need to do while waiting for that success you need passion.

Strengthen Your Passion And Perseverance
One of my inspirations is Brian Tracy, a motivational speaker and coach. Brian reports that the vast majority of people quit just before success is finally about to arrive. To even set out to become a professional photographer you have to have some passion.  But what can you do to strengthen that passion, to increase that essential perseverance, and to help motivate yourself to actually do all those little things that need to be done to insure success? One way is to practice visualization.

Trips To Exotic Places And A Million Dollars A Year
Picture what you want your life to be like five years from now. Make that picture as clear and detailed as possible. For instance, five years from now I want to be living in my completed (I am living in a fixer-upper) home in Mill Valley. I want to be taking at least two trips to exotic places around the world each year. I want to have stock photo revenue of at least one million dollars each year. I will have a strong community of friends and fellow shooters. I will be in excellent shape (hmmm, I will be sixty-three years old). I will be able to do fifteen pull-ups, fifty consecutive perfect push-ups, and weigh 178 pounds (I can do now do nine pull-ups, forty consecutive push-ups and I weigh 182 pounds). Five years from now I will be selling at least one hundred or more fine-art prints a year (currently at about 12 a year), I will have one thousand more Rights Managed images online and will have a million visitors a year to my web site.  You get the picture, lots of fun detail!

Visualize Your Goals With Detail
By visualizing your goals with detail you make them more real, you give them more passion.  The more real your goals are the more compelling they become. Also, with detailed visualization, you can plan the steps, the individual goals, that are necessary to make that dream a reality. For example, to get one thousand more Rights Managed images online I will have to create two hundred such images a year. Slightly over sixteen images a month, or four images a week. Now there is a concrete goal for me to work on. I know from my past history that it is an ambitious goal, but is reachable. There is something really magical about setting ambitious but reachable goals. It is also essential to set deadlines for those goals. You can always set new deadlines if you miss one, but if you don’t set the deadline to begin with then your goal isn’t really a goal, it is just fantasizing!

Your Ideal Life, Passion And Goals
This brings us back to where we started, to visualization. Visualizing your ideal life in detail enables you to set appropriate goals and makes that future life compelling enough to keep your passion high and give you the perseverance to take the necessary steps to reach each of your goals. Speaking of goals, I have made three Rights Managed images so far this week and I need to complete one more tomorrow to meet my goal!

Interview With Charlie Holland, Former Director Of Photography, Getty Images Los Angeles

Photo ©Seth Joel/Charlie Holland
"An unplanned little picture about conservation taken one day when we had a hand model in the studio"  Charlie Holland.

Can you fill us in on your career path and how you came to be Director of Photography For Getty Images, Los Angeles?
Well, I have a degree in Social Anthropology and African History so my path to Tony Stone was not a straight one. I started as a photo researcher in New York in the late 1970’s – although I should probably start lying about the dates….I worked in magazines and books until Premiere magazine came along and I did five years there then moved on to Universal Studios as a marketing director. After another stint in magazines, I took the job as the DOP of the Los Angeles creative office of Tony Stone, replacing Sarah Stone which of course made me a persona non grata right off the bat with the staff and with the key photographers. I remember being kicked under the table by the creative director, Stephen Mays, when I started to explain my background to a group of leading photographers because he felt that my editorial background would be considered less than appropriate training for a gatekeeper in the stock industry. I thought the stock industry was just getting ready for a big shake up and that Tony Stone, already owned by Getty but not using the name, was going to be a great place to see it from. Well, I was not disappointed.

As Director of Photography for Getty LA, what were your responsibilities?
From the start, the job was to coordinate, direct the creative staff to edit, acquire, design and produce contemporary photography relevant to clients needs, present and future. I went in there with the notion that you should ‘assign’ the photography for the catalog, then the primary sales tool, just like you assigned a magazine. The company had already analyzed their catalog needs but not been systematic about how to get that material. I focused on making every editor an art director, someone who was capable of analyzing every photographers skills and resources, conceptualizing shoots, costing out productions, and recruiting talent to shoot the right material for each catalog or marketing product. It took about three years to get a crack team of 7 art directors in place. Then the company started to give us shoot money to commission work from a bigger pool of photographers - that is photographers who were new to the business and thus unable to burden the cost of production. So I supervised the conceptualization of all the shoots, allocated the resources, and coordinated very large productions to maximize our own production investment and worked closely with our key photographers on their self financed shoots. I pretty much stayed behind the curtain on set. Or in the trailer if we could afford one. The art directors preferred it that way! In fact, once on a huge shoot with three photographers and100 extras, the art director purposely gave me the wrong wavelength for my walkie talkie so I would stay out of his face on set! And no, I didn’t fire him, in fact he ended up getting my job.

You have probably looked at as many images as anyone. For you, what makes for a great stock photo?
Well, it has to be a good picture. But a really good stock photo makes you want to open your mouth and come up with a tag line…it invites copy. Good stock is sort of like good comedy (and good advertising) – there is a moment of truth that you recognize but it is revealed in a moment you might not have conceptualized yourself. It is both obvious and original at the same time.

What qualities make for a great stock photographer?
Now that most creative departments have disappeared it is largely the ability to self assign and self art direct. I think you need to be able to plan a shoot, shoot the predictable shots within that shoot and then have the energy and creativity to see the unexpected as it happens. Also, more than ever, you need to be able to edit for a client and not just for oneself.

The number of images that are available for licensing is mind-boggling. There has been a natural downward pressure on prices. When I look at how I can increase, or even maintain, my stock photography income, the first thing that comes to mind is to make more images…but that is part of the problem. Can you address that apparent conundrum?
Well it is a good idea to up your production but not that simple. Sheer numbers aren’t going to help. Adding variety to your subject matter over the course of your shooting year is important. Making pictures that radically differ from each other during your shoot day. Do your research before you shoot. Expand into different business models to make sure you are reaching as big a market as possible.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing stock shooters right now?
Like you just pointed out - falling prices and a huge oversupply of predictable images. So while the customer base may still be growing the “giant pool of pictures” grows faster.

Where are the biggest opportunities in stock photography?
I think there is still some life in the RM model and new work going into RM must be the right subject matter – i.e. express the right concepts but those ideas must be expressed in an original way both intellectually and photographically. The ‘super shooter’ studios have produced so much ‘stock’ material that the visual vocabulary has become incredibly stale. In the mid 90’s the same thing happened: darts on dart boards meant successful business, Doric columns meant banking, chain links meant strong corporate teamwork etc etc. You as a photographer have to keep your eyes open for the changing symbols of our changing society and in particular the vocabulary of corporate culture.

Do you think direct sales by photographers will become a more important piece of the puzzle?
Yes, I do. But it is still difficult and very costly to have a website, and to provide all the services a professional buyer expects. You must have someone available to help clients search and negotiate for as many hours a day as possible. That’s a significant overhead. But on the other hand, I have already heard about stock requests being sent out by twitter to an art buyers photographer base. It seems art buyers might be getting overwhelmed by the sheer volume of material, exhausted by the samey-ness and are going back to directly contacting photographers. I think there will be other ways of making the material available direct to the client through improved google search engines for instance, but I am not sure exactly how yet! I think you are being very smart building traffic onto your site.

It is said that motion is the fastest growing segment of stock imagery. Would you recommend that still shooters look into motion?
Everyone should look into motion. My nephew went straight from stills to flipbook stills i.e. stop motion action movies made on his point and shoot camera to the video function of his mother’s camera. He is 10. But beware there is a big learning curve and don’t be fooled into thinking that affecting a ’funky style’ will hide all the mistakes on your learning curve. And don’t think that you are going to be able to earn much money with just your canon 5d. There is a lot more equipment you are going to need to make that camera stable and functional. You can’t even do a talking head without conquering the audio skills as well.

Rights Ready was Getty’s attempt to make licensing of RM imagery simpler and easier. What went wrong?
Frankly, you make Right Managed licensing easier by making rights managed licensing easier not by creating another licensing model to confuse and confound.


Do you think RM licensing needs to be made simpler to expand the market for it?
My answer, yes and no. For heaven’s sakes, how hard is it to know what you are going to use a picture for? If you as a client can answer that, then you can use any pricing model to find out how much that will cost you. If clients say they want it to be simpler it is probably a way of saying that they want it cheaper!

How do you decide whether an image belongs in RF or RM?
I used to be able to expound on this one ad nauseam, Now I just used a basic rule of thumb – an image I could see carrying an advertisement: RM. An image that is good for editorial or is purely a point picture, a substitute for a graphic, meaningless but decorative, is RF. I know some agencies are telling their photographers that they need RF pictures with higher production value, more models, more unusual treatments but it boils down to predictable, easy to keyword, subject matter. Or as I used to call it, visual Esperanto.

What roles will RM, RF and Micro have?
I think micro will kill RF before it kills RM. Two years ago everyone at Getty was saying you should get into Micro and my feeling was why bother when I am already getting .14c sales in RF? I don’t think many people can pull off a business on the scale of Yuri Arcurs because the ROI through microstock is so low that the scale of production and sales volume has to be vast to generate significant returns.

Do you have any suggestions for how to research where and what the “holes” in an agency’s collection are?
It just takes patience. I search by keyword, then delve into the details of the keywording and try combinations. Use keyword that you find in the latest business/management books. Be up to date on the jargon of corporate culture. If I have a location and am planning a shoot I list the keywords I would like to attach to a shot and then search by those and then alter aspects of my shoot brief to maximize my exposure in a clients search result. I also have an unfair advantage in searching through the Getty imagery in as much as I can assess the age of an image by its number and I am familiar with their search order results weighting. So I can search –as if I was a professional – and ‘see’ quite quickly when that category of imagery was last refreshed.


Do you think stock photography is still a viable career for photographers?
No, and I never did even when I entered the business in 1997. At the time there were a hand full of very astute professional stock photographers who had trusted the guidance of their stock agents and invested huge amounts of money into their shoots for the business. I believe their investments paid off handsomely. They had a lot of skin in the game by the late 1990s. But when I recruited photographers I always advised them to consider this a secondary source of income and not to give up their day jobs, to consider $500 or $10,000 a month a gift and not a pay check or entitlement.

You work with your husband, Photographer Seth Joel. Can you share with us the approach you two have to the stock photography industry?
Cut down production expenses. Keep a consistent stream of imagery flowing. Change it up, shoot safe for half the day and then take a risk – try something new. Make sure your images are available over as many platforms as you can. Travel. Have fun doing it.

Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of stock photography?
I practice doing my own bagging every time I go to Trader Joes...secretly hoping the manager notices how good I am at it just in case....

What advice would you give a young shooter just starting out?
I teach a course in contemporary stock photography at Art Center in Pasadena so I deal with this one all the time. Essentially I say if you have a web site you are in the stock industry – you could get a call today from an art buyer wanting to license one of your images so make sure they are model released, copyrighted and you know how to price and license an image. Or you could see an image of yours being used on a website and you need to know how to get paid appropriately for that use. Then why don’t you increase the odds of that call coming in by adding more copyrighted, model released images to your web site so that all your expenses and efforts in marketing and self promotion could be paid off by one of those calls/sales. I try to teach the young photographers how to make those pictures, within the context of their own taste and style, and to make those pictures commercially relevant for contemporary advertising. There is no point just shooting random material and uploading it into a public access stock site like Shutterstock. Don’t bother for the $50 a month. Be smart, show good stuff on your website, do some good test shoots with resale value and commercial content then get a contract with one of the good third party provider companies and let them distribute your material through other aggregators over multiple platform.

How about advice for some of us veterans?
Be smart, direct your efforts. Spread your submissions out over collections, over time and over business models. Do not overspend on your productions.

Do you have a favorite stock image that you and Seth have created that you can share with us?
Hand and polar bear-See picture above.

Are there any other thoughts you would like to leave us with?
Yes, like you, it struck me it might be time for a new Tony Stone collection. A tightly edited collection of imagery for high-end advertising. But that depends on the health of the print advertising market. It is not cost effective to develop and edit a collection for web use – firstly the fees aren’t there and secondly – well lets just ask everyone - have you ever seen a good ad on the web?
Or maybe art buyers will be looking for individual freelance photo editors to sift good material out of the massive volume of images available on the www. Sounds like the 1980’s to me. And they will probably pay the same $ per hour rate as they did then too!

Charlie Holland and Seth Joel's work can be seen here: http://www.sethjoel.com

Ask And Ye Shall Receive...Why Not?

And Wonderful Idea And A Book
A number of years ago I was interviewed, as an early adopter of Photoshop, as part of a book on Adobe. When the book came out the writer sent me a copy. It was beautiful and I phoned her up to congratulate her. I then asked her what her next project was. She replied that she didn’t know yet. I suggested that she write a book on me…and she said that was a wonderful idea! A year later my book on Photoshop (Adobe Masterclass: Photoshop Compositing with John Lund) came out.

Would You Model For Me?
A few days ago I had just boarded a plan back from New York when a very attractive young woman sat down next to me. After a very brief conversation I asked her if she would model for me (I always cringe when I ask that…). She agreed and two days later we were shooting. The first image from that shoot can be seen above.

Photo Shoots of Operations And Physical Therapy
Three times I have asked surgeons if I can either have my operation photographed, or if I can use their facilities to stage a shoot in. Amazingly enough that has resulted in two actual still photo shoots of operations on me (including a video in which a mesh is installed beneath my abdominal muscles) and an extensive shoot in a physical therapy facility virtually for free (OK, the operation did cost me $10,000.00).

Tony Stone And A Career In Stock Photography
Way back before the beginning of time I once asked Tony Stone if he would loan me enough money to buy a powerful computer so that I could create cool stock photos for him (his company, Tony Stone Images, was the company purchased by Jonathan Klein and Mark Getty and turned into Getty Images).  Amazingly enough Tony said yes and my career in stock photography took off.  Of course, the answer isn’t always yes. I would like to point out I first asked the owner of another stock agency for the money to buy the computer, but he declined.  Silly man!

The Most Important Question
In yet another ancient and audacious act of asking, I approached the owner of a photo lab (remember those?) if he would loan me $5,000.00 to purchase a Beta copy of a program called Live Picture. Back then Live Picture had layers and a liquefy filter as well as “history” and Photoshop did not. He loaned me the money, I bought Live Picture and for quite a few years was able to work far more efficiently for certain tasks than I could with Photoshop. In fact, the very first job I did with Live Picture, that I could not do with Photoshop, netted me a not-too-paltry $11,000.00 profit! Of course, Live Picture lost the battle to Photoshop and there are few people left who even remember it. Oh well….
Perhaps the most important question of all, though, is one to ask your self. That question is:Why not?