08.12.09
Friend or Foe?
The world of stock photography has changed dramatically over the past 10 years, with the growth of the mega-libraries, introduction of royalty-free images and the drop in commissioned stock. But it has been the development of the microstock market that has most concerned professional stock photographers, as they have seen prices and returns tumble. As always, we like to hear both sides of the story. So, we asked Adam Riggs, the American president and CFO of international agency Shutterstock, to state the case for the defence.
His views will be controversial to some, so make sure you let us know what you think at:
feedback@professionalphotographer.co.uk
Microstock is a combination of the stock photography market and a micro payment. It means exactly what it sounds like. It used to be that the stock photo market didn’t lend itself to micropayment or inexpensive, affordable photography – but now it does. From the photographer’s point of view, I think that microstock has been hugely positive; providing them with a whole new customer base that did not exist before. These are a group of buyers that could not afford to pay the previously much higher prices. The market has expanded greatly for photographers.From the customer’s point of view, there has in the past five years or so, become a much larger selection of photography available to them. Customers were previously quite limited in the number of photographers’ perspectives they could get on a subject. They would have to go to one of a handful of stock agencies and, depending on the subject matter, pick from one of a handful of photographers who specialised in that subject. There really wasn’t a huge selection when you got down to it.
Now, of course that’s not true; there are millions of high-quality, affordable photographs to choose from. I think that the overwhelming majority of photographers are happy with the opportunity to sell their work on an international platform. We have translated our site and have customer support people speaking 10 different languages. Photographers really appreciate that. They are not always good at marketing their work, but they are good at producing great work. So by partnering with us, they are able to let us handle the marketing and display, and they can concentrate on what they do best – shooting good photography or making great digital art. I don’t believe that microstock is devaluing or destroying the photographic industry.We get letters all the time from people thanking us for making it possible for them to realise their dream and sell their work – and they consider themselves professional. So it really depends on what you mean by professional. If you mean people who were previously earning their primary living from photography and are not able to do that anymore, I would say that certain trends have all acted together to bring down the price of photography – no one company is responsible for them. A whole slew of things happened all at once. One was that digital cameras became inexpensive; so inexpensive that anyone with a few hundred pounds could afford to buy a camera that could create professional-quality images. The other thing that happened was that internet bandwidth became so affordable that it became a distribution platform for large files. So it’s true that these things have brought the price down by increasing supply, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
A lot of customers can now afford to buy photography who couldn’t afford it before. If you were a professional and you were used to selling one photo a day for £100, and now you can sell 100 photos a day for a £1 each, you should view that as an equally good result. I think that some people can’t because they want to believe there work is worth£100, not 100 x £1. But information and intellectual property are so easily displayed now that, from a customer’s point of view, it’s great. It can be positive in other ways as well.
For example, if professional photographers have been working successfully with an agent and have a strong, niche distribution in a certain market, they can still sell through us under a different name, or the same name. They can sell images that maybe aren’t appropriate for their other agency, or maybe their agency specialises only in sport, for example. Photographers can test out new models, new subjects, new locations. Just because somebody was making money before as a professional photographer, doesn’t mean they are able to sell anything they want any time they want through that previous channel. Really, it’s all about enjoying multiple streams of income and distribution with different agencies, as long as you aren’t breaking anyone’s terms. We pride ourselves on being an extremely photographer-friendly agency. They can sell their work through other agencies at the same time as us and remove their work from our site at any time, without asking. I say that’s one of the biggest differences between us and other agencies: a lot of the time they want to protect their franchise by having exclusivity over their photographers. Provided they are allowed to, it’s really in their best interests to test as many different distribution channels as possible.
We have a huge global customer base of people who never bought photography before they found us. Everybody uses microstock imagery, from major international conglomorates, to independent graphic designers and creative professionals who are working for outside clients. It used to be that you had to pay a few hundred dollars to get a good-looking image. Now, you can spend a few dollars to get a great image. They can afford to refresh photos instead of having images in a brochure look stale or having a designer use the same CD of images they bought years ago.
Because Shutterstock sells royalty-free photography, it means that when photographers upload their content to us to try to sell on their behalf, they understand what our rights of use are. So they have control, as they have time to look at those rights and get comfortable with them. If somebody said: ‘I don’t want my image used on a website’, they don’t have to sell for us, that’s their choice. But the power of the royalty-free contract combined with the internet platform is that there is a broad use list and a pretty narrow prohibition list, and it’s there for everyone to see. Most customers who come to our site know what they want an image for, check the contract to see if it’s OK, then download the image, and there is no negotiation. That’s what allows us to scale up the volume; we’re not having numerous conversations with each buyer prior to the purchase. You could sell exclusivity for a higher price if you knew that the image hadn’t been sold before, but that’s not something we offer customers. Our view is it’s not necessarily a friendly policy to tell photographers they’re not allowed to sell their content anywhere else. Photographers earn a commission every time one of their images is downloaded.
I think that consolidation within the industry is a reflection of changes in the industry’s core technology: advances in camera technology, band width delivery and image editing software have all contributed to a blurring of the lines between professional photographers and amateurs. Microstock takes advantage of these changes to tap into the enormous potential of an emerging group of photographers. Shutterstock’s plan is to continue to find the most innovative ways to offer the highest quality images and footage subscription products at affordable prices. It has made it this far by listening to the needs of subscribers and photographers and constantly adapting according to their feedback. In our experience, this is the best way to succeed in an industry that is evolving so quickly.
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