NEW PARADIGM SHIFTS IN STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY - PART II (Continued) BACKGROUND A Little History: 15 years ago, before Getty, Corbis and their predecessors started to buy up and consolidate stock photo agencies into large conglomerates, stock photographers used fall into two types:
2. Those that had their images divided among several agencies
http://www.photodesign-coelfen.de/agencies.php Some of her work is distributed exclusively through three international stock agencies: Masterfile, The Anthony Blake Photo Library, and Age Fotostock. (Having select images exclusively represented by a large international agency can be very profitable.) But she also has many non-exclusive images with Alamy, My Loupe, The Stock Solution, and Acclaim Images (and many of these images are the same images on all four marketplaces). Digital has brought changes to how stock photography is marketed. Not only has digital photography decreased actual image production costs (no film and processing costs), but it has dramatically reduced image duplication and distribution costs. In the "old" days, a photographer had two choices for making duplicate images for multiple agency distribution:
Digital image file duplication not only is almost without cost (except for hard drive space or media storage costs), convenient (the click of a mouse), but each duplicate is identical in quality to the original, rather than losing quality with each duplicate generation. Increased photographer responsibilities: Despite these advances and opportunities, the digital stock photographer has had increased responsibilities heaped upon them. Unless the photographer is able to place his/her images with one of the larger international agencies, they will be required to not only supply digital images, captions and descriptions, but they must become the editors of their own work and provide keywords for each image they submit to the agency or marketplace. Editing: In the "old" days, an agency provided want lists of subjects for their photographers to shoot which the agency's clients had often requested or marketing research indicated would be the future hot sellers. Photographers would submit their images, and editors would choose the best images. Images were categorized in filing cabinets, and sent out to clients. As the photo researchers within the agency became acquainted with the photographer's work they would pull more of that photographer's images for each client submission, thus increasing the chances the photographer's work would be chosen by the client. Today, there are fewer "agency" relationships, except with the larger marketplaces, like Getty, Corbis and Masterfile (a large international Canadian agency). Most online marketplaces like Alamy.com, expect the photographer to provide quality, pre-edited images, but photographers, who are sometimes too close to their own images, find it hard to reject or jury out images which are inferior in technical quality, image composition or lacking in subject matter that is appealing to buyers. Keywording: The main way (and sometimes the only way) buyers find online stock images is by searching on keywords the photographer has established for each image. For people who are visually oriented, keywording can be a difficult task. While many photographers are gifted in producing stunning images, some suffer a brain freeze when asked to describe those same images with words that others can relate to! Finding the right words, however, can be the "key" to marketing success. For this reason, some photographers use others to help them in this task, where two or more brains, working together, can often be many times more effective than one. Others will employ the use of keywording software: http://www.keywordcompiler.com/ http://www.a2zkeywording.com/ ...or outsource services: http://www.keywords-to-go.com/ - Run by stock industry veteran Paul Henning http://www.Keywording.com/ - Used by many stock photo agencies http://www.KeywordCompiler.com/services/ - the same people that sell the software, but will do it for you for as little as $1.00 per image. MyLoupe.ocm and TSSphoto.com provide some good online advice about keywording: http://myloupe.com/start/keywording.php Digital image requirements: In order to submit images to Alamy and the four other online marketplaces we feature in this article, you need to have at least a 6 megapixel digital camera (or quality scans from film, at least this size). These cameras produce images about 3000 x 2000 pixels, or 18MB TIFF files. This size file is necessary for the minimum "high-resolution" quality. Digital cameras capturing 8-17 MP have an advantage in this market. While the majority of sales fall into the lower resolution categories (18MB or smaller), there is an increasing trend toward larger image files (super high-resolution of 30+MB, 50MB and even 70MB) that can support double page spreads and posters. Initial submissions: Alamy requires an initial submission of a dozen high-resolution images on a CD. The four online marketplaces featured in this article typically require a low-resolution submission of about 10 images via email attachment or from a portfolio already on a Web site. If the subject matter and quality pass inspection, the potential contributor is then asked to upload about 10 high-resolution, JPEG compressed images to the Web site's server. These are inspected for quality, along with correct caption and keyword formating/content. Once the contributor passes this initial inspection, most online marketplaces only do spot checks on future submissions to insure that quality control is maintained. Submitting high-resolution images: Alamy.com has contributors supply flattened, 24-bit RBG TIFF images on CDs or DVDs. The images are then JPEG compressed by the Alamy staff and uploaded at the various resolution options onto their Web server for purchase and download by clients. The four online marketplaces featured in this article require the images to be JPEG compressed and uploaded online by the photographer. Compression quality ranges from a Photoshop "9" to "12" quality (each marketplace has their own guidelines). Each online marketplace has their own online methods for uploading. All have a Web browser gateway allowing from one to several images (batch processing) to be uploaded at a time. Caption and keyword fields can be edited online, and can also be populated with the image's IPTC data. Some of the online marketplaces have alternate uploading provisions for contributors who either have a slow Internet connection, or who want the company to do the uploading for them from a CD or DVD. However, most of the online marketplaces discourage company-assisted uploads with delays or additional charges, or both. This is due to the additional man power needed to complete these submissions.
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