Taking Stock
June 20th, 2008
This one might not win me any friends out there - so let me say in advance that I know it’s rather biased, and I’m willing to just be just plain wrong on this. It’s just a rant and I’ll feel better for getting it out. So if you’re looking for wisdom move along. But…
I’m not much a fan of micro stock photography. I think there’s something fundamentally flawed about it. While some photographers make a living with it, the vast majority seem simply to live on fumes and hope. Something about the idea of intentionally putting my images out there for people to buy for a couple bucks - or less - and then use them for who knows what - I dunno, it’s not for me. So I feel a particular sense of irony when I read this on the Photopreneur site:
PhotoShelter’s VP Marketing told us during a recent conference call.
“Everything is dated, especially in the category of diversity,” added Emily Hickey, VP Products. “The majority are cheesy, too staged, too stocky and not authentic.” That’s quite an indictment but it’s based on a new survey of over 20,000 photo buyers just conducted by PhotoShelter. More than 700 art directors, creative directors, designers, photo editors and art buyers replied — and delivered some withering criticism of the state of the stock industry. In each of the categories of Healthcare, Multicultural/Diversity, Seniors, Technology & Products, Interior Décor, and Eco-Friendly, more than 80 percent of buyers expressed dissatisfaction with the images on offer. The photos were too similar, they complained, unnatural and too posed. Even the photos available in Business Situations & Settings were given a thumbs-down by 72 percent of the survey’s respondents.
So people want to continue to pay pennies on the dollar what a photograph costs to make, but they want selection and quality too? I know there are some excellent photographers doing stock, and I applaud them for it - it just seems like an exercise in masochism to me. But as long as photographers are willing to sell images to people who will only pay a few dollars for them, we’re breeding these clients ourselves. We made this monster ourselves and their sense of entitlement is fostered by our willingness to give it away for nothing.
This isn’t a shot against stock-shooters, it’s a lament that micro stock clients have become, as we should have expected them to, whining cry-babies with no sense of reality or respect for the photographers who produce the work. Still, the blame lies with us - if we hadn’t sold to the lowest bidder in the first place….
This thinking is not exclusive to the micro-stock world, it permeates the photography world. It’s one thing for an amateur to take work for next to nothing - you have to pay your dues - but for professing professionals to take the easy way out, to low-ball quotes and undercut the next guy because “I have to make a living,” is monumentally short-sighted and a good bet that they won’t make it for the long haul and will be found one day, sadly, working a day job and wondering why they couldn’t make it as a photographer. It’s a basic rule of business: to make a profit you take the actual cost of doing business and you charge MORE than that. Not less. Not the same as.
I love what I do and I want to see other people doing what they love to do, not shooting themselves in the foot and making it impossible to charge fair-market prices, that’s all. There’s plenty of work out there for all of us, so long as we don’t glut the market with cheap or crappy product. Simple supply and demand, folks.
Ok, the rant’s over and the comments are open. Agree? Disagree? Just do it nicely. And remember, I already admitted this was a potentially unbalanced emotionally-driven reaction-piece, so you were warned.