Creativeprose: Microstock Photo Agencies — What Do You Think?
In the July 24, 2007, creativeprose newsletter, I praised iStockphoto for maintaining its contributor payment structure instead of slicing the contributors’ slice of the money pie ever smaller.
I invited you to let me know your thoughts on the subject, and did you ever! The differing opinions were a treat to read. Below, I’ve included all of the responses for which I received permission to publish. To add your opinion, simply look for the voxbox icon on the left-hand side of this page and click “Respond to this article.”
Sue Adams
It’s a good thing – very good. There are thousands of small business clients who simply cannot afford $250 for a stock photo for a one-time ad or a postcard or one-time use in an email blast. Satan? I think not. Call it reality therapy.
Randy Brandon
Selling any stock photo for less than it costs to produce them is thievery by any and all of the stock photo agencies that do it, period.
How the entire stock photo industry has been all be destroyed by the few mega-stock agencies; (i.e., Corbis and Getty) is well documented. These large agencies have all but totally purchased all but a very few small agencies, and basically turned the economics of an entire industry on its head. The economic model of the industry now is that the agencies make all of the money, and the creatives who actually do the real work have been consigned to accepting the virtual crumbs for all of their hard work.
The bean counters, and corporate left brainers have won, and my only hope is that they will all have their own special level of hell reserved for their future.
David Brugge
It’s unfair to professional photographers worldwide that the age of digital cameras and digital distribution has cut so deeply into their livelihood. Much in the same way that it was unfair that desktop publishing software and postscript image setters cut into the livelihood of typesetters, and design and layout programs took a bite out of the pocketbook of graphic designers. But the toothpaste is out of the tube and there’s no putting it back. Professional photographers have a clear choice. The can find niche or specialty markets for their work the way typesetters had to do, or, like graphic designers, set their work high enough above the din that clients can clearly see what they are paying for. As for iStockphoto’s increasing revenue by increasing prices, I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. iStockphoto is a single player in what looks to be a very large field. As they continue to take microsteps towards a “living wage” for their contributors, there is always someone else waiting to fill the gap that they leave.
Brad Cathey
Background: 29 years in the design biz (I’ve seen it all: hot type, waxers, Scitex, 4.77Mz PCs, Intel Macs).
Back in the day, when PhotoDisc was nearly the first on the block with digital stock, we were paying $19.95 a piece. After they sold to Getty, we saw those prices rise 10x to 15x that. Stock photos again got too expensive for our non-profits.
Then iStockphoto arrives to set us all free (granted, quality suffered in many of the images), but suddenly we were back in the business of incorporating photos back into our work.
Purists don’t like the notion of micropayment. Maybe they think we need to hire assignment photographs, pay thousands, fight over usage rights, etc (big overstatement, probably). But clients are willing to except less quality for less money. Just look at what “desktop publishing” did to typography. But the clients don’t care about kerning tables and beautiful “color” because they don’t have to wait overnight for the type fairies, and it’s way cheaper.
iStockphoto takes care of its contributors. Story: I have a cousin (single mom) who is a very good amateur photographer who made $1200 last month selling on iStock.
Design is all about compromise (at least if you’re doing for clients). And iStockphoto, and those like it, is part of that balance. I welcome it, and at the same time love my assignment photographer…when I can afford him.
Gail Dorsett
If not for iStock I would have to get by with clipart out of old books. Not everyone, including my clients, can afford $65 and up for one photo or whatever the going rate for illustrations is these days elsewhere. iStock and others like it are lifesavers for the little guy. Gail in Houston
Hal Fisher
What’s not to like with istockphoto? If you have ever sent a rush layout to a client and had it quickly approved only to find out that the high rez costs of the shot you used are way over the budget… you’ll come to appreciate istockphoto!
Brian Heim
I work for a non-pro?t and, as much as I’d love to use the overall superior stock that I ?nd on sites like Veer, we just couldn’t afford it. The same goes for many of my freelance clients. If I went with the more expensive sites, it could almost double the cost of the work I do for them. And THEN the most likely outcome is that they’ll ditch my services entirely and just have someone throw together something in Word using Windows Clipart.
It’s not a black or white issue, and people should try for quality in design and photography when they can afford it. But I love that there are options available for when I’m designing an invitation for a fundraiser or birthday party without breaking the bank.
Gary Holmes
Micropayment stock sites are here to stay. New sites launch every day. As you can see they are in demand. Most images are fresh and high quality. iStock photographers will even create new images for designers at no extra cost. The larger established stock sites got stuffy, stale and greedy with their offerings. The micro stock sites have come and filled a necessary niche.
Also, as an independent designer I like the network and camaraderie offered by istock.
Tim Kramer
I couldn’t possibly be without iStockphoto. As a single person print collateral and web designer, purchasing 6 months or a year of one of the big stock photo agencies is not possible. In fact, I have always considered big agencies to be the spawn of Satan. They are priced so outrageously and obscenely that they themselves have forced the birth of the micro-payment sites.
Henry Long
We deal exclusively with non-profits. Before iStock, we invested thousands in royalty free stock photo CDs. We usually only used 20% or so of the photos on a CD. With iStock, we have a much larger variety to choose from, we can purchase only what we use, and the quality is getting better all the time. I hope they are the forerunner of what is to come.
Jim McKnight
Some shoppers want to buy at Walmart just as some clients want the designer to use a free image from the Internet for low budget projects. Those of us who work for non-profits and small businesses have a hard time convincing our client that a $200 image will really make their brochure any better. At least iStockphoto gives us some inexpensive choices. I use it frequently and am amazed at the quality and variety of the images at those prices.
Is it fair to the photographer/creative who sells their work cheaply? No, but it does provide some often needed exposure for future work.
Steve Marston
In last week’s newsletter, you said, “iStockphoto makes more money by raising its product prices, the people who create those products benefit at the same rate.” Yeah, right. Your boat floats 80% higher and mine floats 20% higher on MY work? “Benefit at the same rate” is only true if you think the 80/20 split is fair in the first place. I think that ratio sucks, and wouldn’t sell any of my work where someone else gets 4 times and much for my work as I do. I’d rather give it away! “Actual credits are going up about 8%.” What crap! If rates went from 20% to 21.6% that would be true.
Oregon photographer, name withheld by request
I have been a professional stock photographer since 1993, mostly tourism and destination stuff, however I have done a lot of other photography to make a buck as they say. The age if digital and ability to produce images for next to nothing compared to the price of slide film and processing a few years back allow people to shoot like a machine gun. You can produce 500 images for the price of charging the batteries on your camera. This is one aspect of shooting for micro sites but not what I feel is the main reason.
I feel just about everyone with a camera has the wish to be a professional or be considered a professional and being able to tell everyone you ever knew or were related to that you actually sold a picture somehow makes you feel you have reached the status of a professional photographer. The price you were paid matters not, it is the feeling that if a person purchased one of your images then for sure you are now a “pro”. A case in point, on one of the sites I read in a forum a man asked if he could be considered a professional photographer because they allowed him to post some images on the site for sale. The other issue is these so called “wanna be” photographers have no idea that the images are worth real money and in my estimation do not realize the true value of a photograph in today’s market. So many of the images produced are pure junk and have zero value but some are also pretty good and produced by a person that has some skills. To sum it up, perhaps these micro stock shooters feel their recognition as a professional photographer has arrived with a sale of 75 cents or at least fame and glory is just around the corner. It requires a whole lot of work and experience to produce a good photograph and it pleases me that there are still organizations that are aware of this and willing to pay a decent price to a photographer for an image. My feeling is that the 600 gazillion digital shooters (notice I did not say photographers) and a zillion micro sites have had a major impact on stock photography and not sure where it will end up or how traditional photographers shooting stock will fare in years to come but the old adage of “don’t quit your day job” comes to mind.
Lauri Proulx
I have been using istock.com for the last 3-4 years to purchase photos and illustrations for my projects at work. I have even entertained the thought of joining and putting my wares on display for sale (I am also a photographer as well as a graphic designer for most of my company’s print projects). I absolutely LOVE istock. I am able to purchase quality images for an inexpensive price and I have never been disappointed.
Although I liked the price structure earlier on, even at $1.30 per credit, it is still a deal. And that the creators make money on every sale as well, what a bonus!
Name withheld upon request
Despite my respect for an artist’s right to profit fairly from their
work, I think RM photos are highway robbery and most RF photos are
almost bearable. iStockphoto has been a boon to my business,
eliminating the sticker shock my clients get from other online photo
suppliers. It’s nice to know exactly what the artist is earning. I
wonder sometimes how much Getty gives the creator of a photo I’m
charged $1500 to use.
Anthony Taylor
Spawn of Satan? Absolutely not! Indeed, I view it as the nectar of the gods. The photo resource business has, in my opinion, been a manipulative, uncreative and greedy purveyor of talented artist’s hard work. The former benefiting far more than the latter. I don’t own a hat, but I’m considering going out to buy one, for the single purpose of being able to take it off to the founders of iStockPhoto.
Vincent J. Tecchio
I work at a firm that is between small and midsize and I freelance for clients mostly on a smaller scale [under $15M annual revenue] and these sites are a crucial way I help provide real value to my clients – both internal and freelance. Often it is a huge step for smaller clients to have recognized the fact that they need a designer and – even more shockingly – that good design can help impact their business, rather than “just look pretty”. The problem is they do not translate this very well into resource acquisition. They think paying a freelancer’s rate should include everything – even all the pretty images in that trifold or 10 page media kit. Going back to a small client – who just made the jump to hiring a professional – with several thousand dollars in image requests will go over about as well as a lead balloon.
All that to say: microstock sites provide quality images for a reasonable fee. There will always be a place for commissioned, rights-managed, and higher-priced RF photography, but making quality art accessible to those clients without the budgets of the Fortune 500 is part of commercial equality and I thank and appreciate each photographer who has shared just one image with the design community.
Kathy Dannel Vitcak
I have a small graphic design business…but I have BIG ideas. Before iStockphoto.com, 123rtf.com and the like, I was forced to scrounge around like a dumpster diving rat to find legal CDs for sale on eBay or, if I got lucky, on sale through the catalogs. This really cut into my creativity, not to mention, all that time wasted dumpster diving!
So, I cheered, applauded and dusted my clothes of all the dumpster refuse and joined the ranks of the REAL pros when iStockphoto began.
I bless them, I thank them and I do not mind one bit when the prices rise a bit!
Kenny Walters
As a photographer, I have to say that microstock companies have eroded the quality and replaced it with sheer content; the dumbing down of the stock industry, if you will. Many if not most of the suppliers are not and never were in the business of producing images, and consequently, they have made life for those who are, difficult at best and sometimes simply no longer viable as a business model. Microstock has definitely been a great disadvantage for photography in general.
I’m one of the hybrids who began shooting things for my design clients many years ago when I couldn’t find it in the traditional agency stock houses, especially at the trad agency price points. Who wanted to pay $250. for a shot of an electrical outlet?
When “desktop publishing” and the Mac blew the industry wide open, designers unwittingly feared for their livlihoods, but it revolutionized design and the market for professional design didn’t dry up. Photography lagged behind in technology, but digital is changing that. Both are visual businesses, but talent is talent. The established photographers will still find a demand for their product. True, the gap is very wide in price points between microstocks and traditional agencies but niches are being filled on both ends. The middle price point is still wide open and a small price increase in microstock has yet to come close to straddle the middle ground.
So my $25,000 collection of RF CDs from the agencies has been collecting dust. If I needed to buy an image from one of the traditional agencies I would. There is obviously a market for microstock or it wouldn’t have continued to grow at such an exponential rate. Many designers found themselves with a budget dilemma and a digital camera in their hands. For others, microstock was a great resource.
It isn’t about age (I have a 31 year career as a pro designer), it’s about forward thinking and change. That will happen whether you decide to ride or not.
Before the photographers started getting the shaft, we designers were (being shafted) by everyone and their “executive assistants” who were handed the dreaded microsoft publisher and told to create something pretty. I miss the days of commissioning photographs (and illustrations) for every job that I worked on, or buying from Tony Stone Images, when I can, I do. But, even the clients know about iStock and some ask for me to look there first for images. Sometimes I know that an image will enhance the job that I am working on and the client does not have it in their budget to spend more, and I opt for these images.
As a designer with 15 years of experience, I can certainly understand the frustration of highly qualified professional photographers who feel their business slipping away at the hands of photo agencies relying largely on amateurs to supply their image products. These days I find myself competing with every soccer mom and t-shirt shop in the area for logos and other design projects. The soccer moms and recent grads can undercut my prices because they’re doing it as a hobby or only really need beer money. The t-shirt shops can charge a mere $150 for a “logo” because they’re going to make the bulk of their money selling the shirts. The result is lots of crappy logos that don’t serve the myriad needs required of a professional identity system. But, the clients really cannot tell the difference between the service provided by the amateurs and the service I provide until they see the final results. Creative professionals are seeing their careers compromised by the empowering of amateurs in this digital age, there’s no getting around it. But I, too, have made frequent use of Istock for the same reason most others do. Most of my clients have minimal funds allocated to marketing. There’s no way I can sell the client on a single photo that costs as much as the printing for 5000 brochures. If not for Istock, the only photos I’d be designing with would be those I took myself.
As a publisher, I do not want random images, I need strict relevance. iStock rarely has the kind of image which offers editorial relevance, the bulk of contributions copy the style of what Corbis called ‘Bizpix’ two or three years ago, and what used to appear – predictably – on RF CDs and the first stock websites. Some of the photography is excellent and breaks that mould. Getty is creaming it off by offering those iStockers an upgrade to different ‘Rights Ready’ areas of the Getty org, where their images command fees in the tens to low three-figure prices for non-time-limited, non-use-limited download.
I am a magazine publisher, a past ad design and PR agency owner, and a professional photographer – qualified in journalism in 1974, and in photography in 1979, both by industry not college routes. The gap between 1974 and 1979 was when I was outlawed from journalism for daring to use a camera (union demarcation) and had to go freelance, but was unable to join a professional photographic body as I was also a journalist and thus not full-time. All that nonsense is behind us. The arrival of microstock is a similar scene – a change. We are in the middle of it now. I don’t buy microstock stuff as generally it makes me laugh, it’s too obvious. But the same goes for some high RM stock as well!
I do sell stock through Alamy, and I might well make more overall through iStockphoto, but I would rather sell 10 uses with bylines in national newspapers, ad campaigns and books for $2000 than 10,000 anonymous uses for $2000.
David
This forum on microstock raises a lot of issues common to all creatives. As a designer with 15 years of experience, I can certainly understand the frustration of highly qualified professional photographers who feel their business slipping away at the hands of photo agencies relying largely on amateurs to supply their image products. But it’s not just photographers feeling the pinch. These days I find myself competing with every soccer mom, t-shirt shop and designer wannabe with a copy of PhotoShop or CorelDraw.
The result is lots of crappy logos and other design that don’t serve the clients’ needs, and a constant struggle on the part of professional designers or photographers to justify our prices to potential clients. The problem is that the clients really cannot tell the difference between what is provided by the amateurs and the services provided by professionals like myself until they see the final results. To be honest, I can see it from the client’s perspective. Last week the client talked with someone who claimed to be a designer and was quoted a low-ball price. I can’t fault the client for wondering if my work is really going to be $750 better than the work that will be provided by the “designer” he talked with last week.
Often, an expert is someone who simply knows 5% more than you do about a given topic. But, if a client knows nothing about logo design, then a “designer” who knows 5% more than the client still doesn’t know enough to do a competent job. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve talked to people who think they’ve bought a logo, when what they’ve really purchased is a web-quality graphic or t-shirt artwork, and it won’t work in print, or small on a business card, or big on a billboard, or in b&w in a newspaper ad, etc. Just a short distance from my office is a multi-million dollar waterfront condo development that was sold an unchanged piece of CorelDraw clipart as a logo. They think they bought a logo, but I know their “logo” is a piece of clipart that has been used by thousands of other people.
Many creative professionals, particularly the small shops with smaller or medium-sized clients, are seeing their careers compromised by the empowering of amateurs in this digital age, there’s no getting around it. The software manufacturers contribute to the problem with their insistent “you can do it yourself” marketing campaigns. I feel for the professional photographers, but they’re coming late to an issue that designers and illustrators have been struggling with for years. I must admit that I, too, have made frequent use of Istock for the same reason most others do. Many of my clients have minimal funds allocated to marketing. There’s no way I can sell the client on a single photo that costs as much as the total printing bill for 5000 brochures. If not for Istock, the only photos I’d be designing with would be those I took myself. I’m now able to routinely design with photography for the first time since I left the corporate world. And it’s wonderful.
I’m not sure what the answer is. In many ways, it seems like we’re in a race to the bottom. The trend in the design business, and apparently photography now too, seems to be that creatives are working harder and harder to make the same money, and a person can only do that for so long. Personally, I’m looking into ways to re-purpose my skill set and begin slowly transitioning away from serving clients.
From “designer’s dirty little secret” to “professional photographer’s nightmare”, microstock has come a long way in a very short time. This can be scary as a traditional stock photographer but it was inevitable for this new price-point to pop up …much like when Royalty Free put the whammy on Rights Managed. Still, we survived by making our RM pictures better or by mastering the quality vs. quantity of RF. Photographers must again raise the bar if they want longevity from RM & RF sales. However, the trouble is that most stock photographers can’t produce a quality shoot with good models, crew, styling, etc… and expect to profit in microstock at the current revenue per image. Even with royalties from a great shoot online at the big agencies, it takes a year just to pay expenses with hopes to profit in the next. By year 3, the photographs have started their decline as they submerge below the flood of new images. In microstock, the numbers of images entering the market is staggeringly higher. As it becomes harder to find imagery, I only hope agencies will put less emphasis on quantity and more on simply having “the right images” in the collection.
Yes, microstock fills a ‘sad but true’ need in the advertising industry. As I’ve read in many of the posts, microstock images are filling holes where before the designer would have declined the job or not used imagery at all. These designers are finding a new life and as they become more successful, their budgets will rise, clients get bigger, and they will be able to partake in other licensing models …helping the industry grow as a whole.
It benefits the entire industry for microstock to slowly go through a few more price increases and hopefully they can raise the photographer royalties as well. Photographers and designers alike don’t want clients to get too accustom to low budgets. The creative process must be respected.
I’m always a little miffed after buying a bunch of credits on iStockPhoto’s site, only to have them raise their charges. But after bruising my fist on my desk and pouring another cup of coffee, it’s important to consider this issue with a little perspective:
I work as art director for a magazine. We have a small staff of three (an editor, a circulation manager, and myself), so I serve both as the designer and as photo editor. Currently, I have over 350 professional and commercial photographers who respond to my photo calls and send in bi-monthly submissions for consideration. I do my best to pay them fairly for each image (we’re a state agency, non-profit publication, so payments range from $80 to $300 per image).
Since our magazine is very issue-oriented and journalistic in nature, I don’t always get in just the right image from our photographers, and so I find myself browsing the thumbnails of iStockPhoto to supplement. In iStockPhoto world, I’m finding photographers (some of them outstanding artists) who are willing to share their images for literally pennies, and I view their passion and their generosity as a great service and asset to the visual design world.
In my previous job, I remember spending $300 to $500 for a 100-image photodisc, and feeling lucky if I was able to use five of those images on a project. So from an end-user perspective, iStockPhoto is a great blessing to graphic artists, especially those with limited budgets.
I like to support local businesses, and shop with companies who are progressive, responsible, and good to their employees. The fact that iStockPhoto is incrementally increasing value and payments to their contributors is the right thing to do, and makes them a good company to do business with, in my book.
Micropayment stock sites are not taking away business from the commercial photographers I work with. I’m still willing to pay them fairly, and keep them in business. The stock sites are simply another resource when I don’t get what I’m looking for from my photographer pool.
Are micropayment stock sites the spawn of satan? Hell no. So I have to pay a little more for images every once in a while. It’s still just pennies, and the value I receive from these businesses is well worth the bruised fist.