What is our art worth?
I was recently pointed to a discussion on the Alamy forum that mentioned a post of mine on whether selling an Alamy image on microstock sites was a good idea. It is actually a very respectful discussion bearing in mind some of the tensions between those that think that the microstock sites have ruined photography and those that think that is just an old fashioned view and it would have happened anyway. But reading the various comments made me think of two distinct articles I could write and this is the first. The second one is here.
This first one – what is our art worth? I chose that title with my tongue in my cheek as you can seriously question whether what we do is art and I think that is the root of the question. The Shutterstock debacle is the big news in the industry with the 40% – 50% reduction in subscription earnings for many contributors. I don’t want to dwell too much on that here, but it does tie into part of the Alamy discussion. I see regular posts from people saying one of two things – my photographs are worth more than the 38c I will get on a microstock site. Often they will say that they save their best images for Alamy where they might get earnings of $100 or more from one sale of that image rather than the 38c on other sites. In the discussions on the Shutterstock forum about their payment changes, the most common comment (and I read most of them!) was that 10c was a ridiculous price for their image – they had spent $1000s on equipment and no way would they be able to take the high quality shots they envisaged for 10c.
An artist painting a canvas has one shot at earning money from that work (ignoring prints for now). So it is very clear that the price that someone will pay for the canvas is the value that they (or other collectors) put on the work of that artist. If collector was only willing to throw a 10c coin in the artists direction for the work you would truly think they were saying it was meaningless rubbish. However we, as photographers (or illustrators) are not selling our work. We are not selling it for 10c, we are licensing it for a specific use. We might think the licensing rules are too broad, that the agencies don’t police that in any way (the personal licenses that Alex Rotenberg reports on Alamy fall into that category), but we are not limited in how many licenses we issue for each image. One, ten, a million – it is all the same to us.
The fact that these images above (and the video for goodness sake) have been “sold” for 2c does not value my work at 2c. I don’t even think this set of earnings values the same work in any artistic way:
I actually don’t feel any inner desire to have my artistic work valued in any way by the stock agencies I license it through – it doesn’t mean anything to me to see these 2c sales or the $20 sale of the same thing on Alamy. As stock photographers, we should think of this as a business with one overriding objective – we need to do whatever we can to maximize the earnings of our portfolio. Not maximize individual licenses, not put the images where they will get the most money per “sale” – just try to work out the best way to license them through the various channels to maximize our earnings each year.
We can look for artistic plaudits through our sales of images as Fine Art Prints. I must admit that I get a warm feeling to learn that someone thinks enough of my photographs to pay good money to print them and put them on their wall. So restrict your artistic feelings to fine art sales and keep your business hat on for stock agencies.
Of course, maximizing your income is not necessarily easy as that Alamy discussion was concluding. So that will have to be the subject of my next article!
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
These are good points. iStock has been a good earner for me despite the occasional 0.02c image, but that’s because they are better at selling higher priced licenses. Alamy not so much. I don’t think they ever sell commercial licenses. All my sales there seem to be editorial usage, even RF images that sell don’t seem to go for advertisement. I could be wrong.
https://alessandra-rc.pixels.com/
An interesting and informative take on this. I’m just getting into stock and coming at it from a somewhat different perspective I guess. I’ve been lucky enough to sell my photographic art in galleries for some time now. Like you, I very much enjoy the fact that some people like my work it enough to hang on their walls. I feel the same about portraiture, even though the client has a built-in incentive to buy it.
I decided to start with stock in order to find a use for the many, many images that would never warrant a place on someone’s wall. Even having that goal, I find myself gravitating toward rights managed, exclusive use agencies like Archangel and Getty, rather than RF micro stock. It is all a lot of work….key wording alone is enough to drive me screaming into the hills. I just can’t seem to warm up to doing all the work required to post thousands and thousands of images…. in the hopes of netting a fraction of what I get in galleries or even through rights managed. I’m kind of up in the air on how to proceed with Alamy. Still pondering if I should go the exclusive route with them, or save those images for other RM agencies. I will try some RF uploads there though Wirestock and see what transpires.
Hi Cole
You have some great photos there – getting that one in the coffee shop with model released people would be a sure seller! I’m going to write about some of the things you are thinking in the next article. I just need to get it clear in my mind before I put virtual pen to paper. Just a couple of comments though. I think RM is pretty much on its death bed. I thought Getty had now scrapped it and given people the choice of moving to RF or not having their images visible and I know people (Alex Rotenberg for instance) who put a lot of effort into submitting his best shots exclusively to Robert Harding with very poor results. He is doing well with Archangel for book covers though. I’ve not heard great things about Wirestock either – I’ve never been convinced that people who are just keywording for you put the minimum effort into it to give it a chance of a sale. I doubt they will ever keyword as well as you would yourself. But that is just an opinion. But the thing to consider is – why are you doing it? To make the maximum income for minimum effort or to get the satisfaction of someone paying $600 for the license to one of your image (every blue moon…)
Steve
Hi Steve ,
I’ve tried Wirestock and I have not been impressed . As you said why should you trust someone to put minimum effort into keywording when your keywords are what get your pictures sold. When they described a shopping cart as a metal cage and keyworded on that basis and did not keyword a retaining wall picture properly I gave up. Sales are also disappointing and in no way track sales on my portfolio.
The 5th paragraph of your article says it all as to what stock photography is and the ultimate aim is to maximize the value of what we generate from our portfolios. I’d rather get 100 25 cent sales of a picture than wait for 2 years and sell the same picture on Alamy for $20 if it ever happens . This is why I sell on Istock. Despite all the 2 and 3 cent sales a high percentage are actually high value sales. The end result is that my average revenue per download on Istock is higher than Shutterstock even before they brought their new commission policy into effect.
Yes, I’ve heard that from people that have tried Wirestock, but it is all anecdotal for me, so far. I would extend my statement of what stock photography is all about – you are trying to maximize your earnings from a portfolio with the minimum effort. That last bit is important in deciding how best to approach agencies.
Steve
Good points Steve. Although, I’m not sure I’d agree that RM is on its deathbed. If I were to speculate, I’d probably go in the direction of RM becoming even more selective….limited photographers and highly selective (unique) libraries of images. The next tier down would be “exclusive” RF (which seems to be a growing), and then regular microstock.
Thanks for the link on Archangel book covers….a reiteration of what I’ve learned so far but some very helpful tips nonetheless.
The jury is still out on Wirestock for me. They were fast and accurate with the first set of test shots I uploaded to them, but I’ve had a few images in “processing” for over a week now. We’ll see if they respond to my query about that. I hope they work out…but not counting on it. Since I’ve so few images uploaded anywhere at this juncture, I thought they’d be better for those agencies with a tiered pay scale, since they are likely to be at top of the tier and I’d be at the bottom on my own.
Hi Steve:
Good discussion as usual. I never anticipated making lots of money from stock photography. I have many pretty good images on my hard drive and prior to stock, they would just sit there until someone said: “So…you’ve been to Portugal? Can I see some of your photographs?” and then I would show them some of my work.
I wanted to share my shots and good work with the world with the possibility of earning some money. I was lucky enough to have one of my images featured in an online article from Travel an Leisure and when I saw it, it was very gratifying. At that point it really didn’t matter how much they paid for that image.
Of course when someone visits FAA and purchases one of my pictures, like you, I have a sense of satisfaction. I am not in the same boat as many as this is not a source of income I am depending upon and it is not tied to my vocation.
I happen to think that some of my pictures are worth a lot because I hiked all day to get to a location in the bitter cold and happened to capture a rainbow right after a storm high in the mountains. That doesn’t mean that others will think the same of that capture.
For heavens sake people only stay on a web page for a few seconds when they are just looking at pictures (rather than reading an article). Just think about going through a magazine and how fast we turn the pages even when we are just looking for the pictures unless, of course, we are captivated by the content of the article. I know photographers probably spend more time looking at pictures carefully, but even at that I don’t think we dwell on them a lot unless we are looking for a specific reason.
So…my pictures are worth a lot TO ME because they are part of my life’s experience. I enjoy knowing that someone has chosen one of my photos out of the millions available regardless of price. I wouldn’t say it is exactly like Sally Field’s often misquoted: ” You like me, you really like me”, but I think you get the point!
Thanks Jeff – very helpful addition to the discussion. I also have that feeling about difficult to achieve shots – they must be more valuable (or worthy) because it was so hard to get the shot. Of course, most viewers don’t care, but it is important to note the personal worth of an image which is far more important than a monetary value. What is key is to not assume that any sale at any value is assigning any real worth to the image – people just want to use it for their specific need, that’s all.
Steve