John: Elaine, I’ve been at the forefront of the stock world for as long as I can remember. I first met you in the late eighties. I owned After Image, the first stock agency to do my business. I sold After-Image to Tony Stone. Since that time, you have expanded your expertise in many ways. Can you keep up with this range of experience?
Eileen: One of my earliest memories of you, John, is of bringing Sarah Stone into your office in San Francisco in the late 1980s. You had a mini Mac and you just started playing around with Photoshop. I remember you asking me if I knew where you could get some pictures of watches to put in your pictures. Free or cheap stock photos… So you were on the cutting edge of needing microstock and you didn’t know it. neither am I.
Since those days I’ve worked at Corbis as Executive Editor, I was the first employee at Artville Image Group after it was bought out by Image Bank, part of the initial team that started Workbookstock, I was the first employee at UpperCut Images and he had a very attractive resume. Unsatisfactory job at SuperStock. Since 2006, she has worked as a sole proprietor providing appraisal services (evaluating future revenue streams from stock photography groups), as an expert witness and advisor on general photography issues at Dreamstime (microstock) and for emerging and established individual photographers. Currently I’m writing a book based on over 100 blogs I’ve written on Dreamstime.
I’ve gone from royalty management to royalty free to microstock. I guess you could say I’ve seen it all.
John: Years ago, I heard Tony Stone give a speech where he said “One day a huge meteorite is going to hit the Earth and photographic imagery as we know it will cease to exist.” Is this meteor approaching? Could it be Micro?
Eileen: Instead of a big meteor hitting and exploding the world, destroying photographs, as Tony knew it before he left the industry, change is more like benign growth. As it gets bigger and bigger, it becomes invasive and can be just as deadly as a malignant tumor.
The industry has made the mistake of creating too many of the same images over and over again. This is because rather than nurturing photographers with a vision to combine both art and commerce to produce unique images within standard sellable themes, they let creative decisions be driven by past sales results and creative research based on the same sources. The result is a plethora of images that all look the same. I like to call them image de jour…everyone runs out and picks up the same style and theme with the same look on the same day, it seems.
I think one of the reasons for microstock’s massive growth apart from price is that users can find unique images. Now that the big production companies are putting out the same old, old but “new” pictures at very large volumes, the same problem can appear there.
John: I hear predictions that Google is the ultimate mechanism for stock search, and that one day all searches will be done on Google Image Search…even including agency groups. Can you comment on that?
Elaine: I don’t know the answer. What I do know is that Google taught all of us how to search. We no longer search for anything with just a word or two. The vast amount of information on the web forces us to be more specific in our search terms and use more words in our search. This knowledge extends to how we search for images. I think that photographers who have groups on specific topics and who have implemented best practices in terms of SEO may find that they can make more money selling stock directly than a stock company in the near future.
Today I’m excited about the possibility that we may be at the intersection of technology and user behavior that will soon enable photographers to license their existing images.
John: I’ve heard estimates that the non-traditional stock imaging market, made up of those who buy and/or license images outside of the traditional stock imaging infrastructure, is as large as $20 billion annually. Even if this market, consisting of mom-and-pop companies needing an image for a newspaper ad, students needing an image for a homework assignment, or a church group needing an image for a flyer, is only a small fraction of that size, still. Huge market. Maybe those buyers will end up on the Micro site, or maybe, with a Google search, they might end up on the Photographer site. Do you think this is a market segment worth pursuing by individual photographers? What is the size of this market in your opinion?
Eileen: I don’t agree with the $20 billion figure. Is that Dan Heller? I think he is and when I read his reasoning (I may not remember it correctly so Dan doesn’t get on your high horse!) I felt like he was wrong. Right now I’d recommend photographers with general kits of average quality… well admit it… there is always average in every field… putting this work into microstock. I don’t feel comfortable recommending trying to reach the world of users from high school blogger to church site via direct sales unless the workflow is completely seamless. However, I don’t think most professional photographers will want to deal with the traffic that opening the doors completely would cause. Pricing expectations are so low that they may find themselves constantly responding to emails and phone calls regarding a license fee reduction. The goal should be to have a certain type of work in microstock, other types in a group or license managed by high end rights directly.
I actually recommend posting some of the photos on Flickr under Creative Commons copyright. I have some compelling research that shows that for some, this is a way to build a reputation and actually make money. I hope to be able to present this and some other information about unusual places to license photos at a symposium in the fall at PhotoExpo.
John: To be able to effectively monetize those and other markets as individuals, outside of traditional agencies, photographers will need tools, especially web tools, to handle the distribution of their images, handle licensing and sales, and track abuse. One possible solution to this need is ImageSpan. Do you know if ImageSpan could be a viable solution, and do you know of any other solution on the horizon?
Elaine: ImageSpan just announced version 2.0. I got an early preview by the ImageSpan staff and was very impressed. They seem to have thought of everything. Of course, photographers must still do the marketing themselves to drive traffic to the site but the services offered by Imagespan are SEO sensitive.
John: Traditional shooters fear the demise of the industry because of the micro. Small shooters are beginning to feel the emptiness of their world with the entry of traditional shooters into the Micro. Do you think traditional shooters should be in the macro? Do you think that entry of traditional shooters into Micro Stock will “corrupt” them to Micro shooters?
Elaine: I think it’s a mistake for traditional RM/RF shooters to put high production value images into a microstock. It is very difficult to reinvest in an expensive photo session even if the resulting photos are on multiple microstock sites. Plus if higher paying customers can get the same items on a micro, why should they pay more? Now the toothpaste is out of the tube and there is no going back. Simple, clean images in all popular genres work very well on micros and that’s where they belong.
John: How do you see the stock industry two years from now? Five years from now?
Elaine: More direct sales. in five years? Perhaps the only stock companies are those that add value by searching the web for the best work within the genre…. Back to image research services.
John: What advice would you give to any shooter who wants to make a living in these turbulent times?
Elaine: Think of your business as a layered cake. Get your business across all layers of the business. Develop a specialty and become the best in the world at it. Even photographers on microstock sites need to build their brand within the site in order to get maximum downloads.
John: Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
Elaine: Buy my book to be released by Watson Guptill (Random House) next year.