[Leica] In and outs of stock photography?

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

Stephen Gandy offered:
Subject: Re: [Leica] In and outs of stock photography?


> stock results depend upon your subject matter, your rep, your images,
> personal popularity with the buyers, your stock agency, the moon phase, 
> and
> which way the wind is blowing, among other things.<,,

These days it's not the lucrative profession as everybody and their brother 
think it is, certainly not like it once was.  Usually the sales split is 50% 
... 50% agency and photographer. But the amalgamation of many agencies in 
the past half dozen years has changed the rules and the spit is becoming 
more like 60% agency.... 40% photog.

Then sales of "Royalty Free" material where the agency sells a CD with a 
large number of images and client pays a set fee for the CD. Therefore the 
sale value of each image on the CD drops considerably because the 
photographer is no longer being paid on a "fee per use" And may only receive 
pennies for an image.

In other words, the rights for use of an image can be sold and photog earns 
$13,500 for one time use for two years licensing. The same picture 2 years 
later maybe re-licensed to the same client for half that amount or go back 
into open market & sold for use in an AV slide presentation for $75.00! 
Another client for $100.00. So it varies considerably. And of course if it 
goes out as royalty free you might as well kiss it good by as a major income 
earning image.

The whole market rides on use of image and rights the client buys which 
determines whether you make money or not. These days it's not as lucrative 
as it once was. Yep depending on subject and numbers of photographs, "slides 
or digital images" a stock agency has on file of your work determines 
whether you make grand sums or little.

And if you consider going into stock the only way to turn very good money is 
to forget shooting anything else but stock, period. 29 days a week. It sure 
isn't a 9-5 job or a few hours after your regular job or profession. Not to 
forget ..... you pay all costs for any shoot and location you go to. 
"BEFORE" the pictures are selected by agency editors. Those at MASTERFILE 
are the toughest editing mother's on earth! I mean, you don't make any 
excuse about why it isn't perfect  ... even if you may believe it's the 
greatest picture you've ever taken in your life! If they think it wont sell 
nor a market for it....  "hello what don't you understand..... "it didn't 
make the cut!"

And if they are selected, may sit there for a year or more waiting to be 
sold.  Or years!!!! :-(

It's possible to make $250,000 or more a year as the share of your stock 
sales. But to do that, you must have hundreds, if not thousands of images on 
file for the buying agencies to choose from. The killer in some cases is the 
costs up front before you get a dime, so it's not a frivolous decision to go 
into shooting stock.

And for those who've read the "photo mag articles" at making money from 
shooting stock and some of the wild things of... "do what you love to do 
taking pictures of exotic locations and people while making thousands and 
thousands of dollars from your part time photography!!" etc etc etc.  Quite 
frankly is "bull huffle!"

Maybe one in many many thousands get's away with this only because they have 
immense income reserve to "play at being a stock photographer." But today's 
economic world isn't as fluffy and simple as it was 25-30 years ago where 
stock was the big time thing.

let's put it this way.......................... "Don't quit your day job 
just yet!"

ted













However, this may vary as Stephen says.