returned yesterday evening from a 4-day birthday celebration in New York City.Despite being in the Big Apple well over a hundred times since my very first visit there almost four decades ago, the vast majority of those trips to NYC were business–related, thus making this one particularly enjoyable as it was solely for the purpose of having fun.And, the common thread bookending the trip was John Lennon, commencing with viewing the “John Lennon: The New York City Years” exhibition at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex in SoHo and concluding with a pilgrimage to The Dakota and Strawberry Fields on the Upper West Side on my last day in Manhattan.Wandering among the hand-written lyrics, instruments, videos, clothes and many other artifacts at the Annex show, it struck me how powerful a cultural figure Lennon remains almost 30 years after his tragic death.One reason for this was the sheer force of Lennon’s personality: he could be a liar, a cad and mockingly cruel, yet simultaneously quick-witted, charming and incessantly creative.Although he certainly wasn’t a stock photographer, Lennon’s life reminds us that making art – any type of art - ain’t easy and demands 100% commitment.It can be frustrating, exhausting and just plain hard labor, which is why you must have the drive and determination to work through all of that in order to profit from its rewards.Success in stock photography – commercial art – demands many things, including that “hard work” aspect, but also a total commitment to consistently reaching deep within yourself in order to push your creative vision to the next level.This is what separates the people at the top from everyone else: lots of people work hard but never reach the pinnacle of their industry or profession. No, the ones who rise to the highest level are the ones who are unafraid to take chances, refuse to take “no” for an answer, and chart their own course when others tell them they’re heading in the wrong direction.Leader or follower...which do you want to be? Stock photography has lots and lots of followers churning out me-too imagery.John Lennon wouldn’t stand for it.He was always “on”, always seeking out new creative influences and stimuli, moving back and forth from drawing to writing to composing to performing, never sitting still and never being satisfied with the status quo.He couldn’t read music and as both a guitarist and pianist he was just average, and yet John Lennon exemplifies how creative vision – that special ability to turn imagination into something concrete that no one has ever heard or seen before – can make the world sit up and take notice.
f you’ve visited this page before, then you already now that I am fascinated by the future implications of e-book readers such as Amazon’s Kindle (see the 12 August blog below).The possibilities for bringing these devices to the mass consumer market are mind-boggling enough, but perhaps even more so is this number: 68 million.That, according to an article on Bloomberg News by Joseph Galante, is the number of potential customers for e-book readers in the education sector (primary & secondary schools as well as college-level institutions). Wow! I have absolutely no doubt that, due to their portability, affordability and related applications e-books will be used extensively by my son when he starts college in four years.However, I’m now revising my thinking on what he will use to actually view these e-textbooks.Consider this: you can already get a Kindle app for your iPhone.And, you can pick up a pretty powerful little Netbook for $199.So why, pray tell, would I want to spend even MORE than a Netbook or iPhone to buy a device that reads books and…well, that’s it? Here’s my guess: all of this movement toward convergence of technological devices will, in fact, find its home in the Netbook of the near future.It will be a computer…and a webcam…and a phone…and an MP3 player…and an e-book reader, all in one device weighing in at a pound or two.No, you won’t be able to slip it in your pocket, but it will be so versatile and powerful and relatively cheap that you won’t care (plus, there’ll be a whole new market created for trendy carrying-cases which will replace the ubiquitous backpack among students).For stock photographers, of course, this whole e-book trend is tantalizing in that 68 million students will be looking at much, much more than just text on whatever sort of screen they end up with.There will be lots and lots of illustrations (both photos and art), not to mention footage (so start learning to shoot video NOW!) as well as hyperlinks to web pages.We’ll have to change our mindset on the image seller side, of course, as volume will replace preciousness in pricing (you’ll sell a B I G batch of images for a little bit per picture, but the aggregate revenue will exceed what you make in the current mode of selling a few pictures for more $$$ on a per-transaction basis).We are just now at the very genesis of the greatest revolution in publishing since Guttenberg and desktop software came along, so buckle up, because the next few years are going to be one hell of a ride.
think that we often forget that we are living, as Paul Simon sang, “in the age of miracles.”Having just seen the movie “Pirate Radio” (very entertaining and a killer soundtrack!) I was reminded of just how crude media was back when I was a kid: we had a black-and-white TV and radio…that was IT! Fifty years – half a century – later, the world is connected in ways that, when I was growing up, seemed only possible in science fiction.And, as you read this there are visionaries out there on the verge of taking us to the Next Big Thing.One of those seers of a world where convergence is taken to its logical conclusion is Pranav Mistry, an MIT PhD student who we almost underrate by calling him a “genius.” As computers and other digital devices become more and more ingrained in our lifestyles, Mistry asks: why can’t humans physically converge with the world of data? Click here to see an astounding video of some of the things Mistry’s working on, and you’ll probably be as awestruck as I am about a future that will most likely resemble the “Matrix” far more than it will resemble my Ozzie & Harriet childhood.
Who Knew???
30 September 2009
A
m I the last person on the planet to know that there is an online comic strip about a duck who’s a photographer???I just got turned on to “What The Duck” a few days ago by Julie Starks, one of the students in my stock photography class at UWM.Turns out WTD has been around since 2006! Aaron Johnson, WTD’s creator, has put together an amusing website that includes offering merchandise (a What The Duck plush toy is yours for just fifteen bucks!), signed prints of the strip, pictures of and links to WTD fans and, of course, an archive of the strip itself.Some of the strips are quite funny, others less so, but it’s definitely worth checking out on a regular basis, especially since there’s a lot of stuff that only photographers will really “get” (to get you started, check out these from the 2008-09 archive: 532, 535 and 543).Plus, how many other photography comic strips ARE there, anyway? Enjoy!
K, see if there’s anything here you can relate to: Big Corporate Giant (BCG), which is one of a very small handful of companies that dominate a decades-old industry, signs artists to onerous contracts.Said company pays its artists as little as possible.Why? Because it can.The artists bitch and moan about it but feel powerless to do anything because Big Corporate Giant seemingly holds all the cards.That is, until one day when one of BCG’s artists takes a good, long look around at the world of 2009 and says, “Enough!” The renegade artist proceeds to make its own distribution deals (formerly the province of Big Corporate Giant, of course) for its artistic output as well as selling directly over the Internet to its potential customers, and lives happily ever-after.An urban myth? Fairy tale? Pipedream? No, it’s the new reality for one of the world’s most popular bands, Pearl Jam, and the analogy for photographers is obvious: if you’re sick and tired of being nickeled and dimed by stock agencies that, in their unending generosity, offer you royalties on your picture sales of 30%, 20% or even as little as 15%, there ‘s another way.Companies like the BCG aren’t going to change: they are corporate entities aiming to maximize their profits.As a capitalist, I say there’s nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that things have gotten totally out-of-whack and the balance of power (as well as revenue) has been tipped far too heavily in favor of those agencies.But given that they now hold that power and aren’t likely to relinquish any of it, it is up to YOU to change and seek alternatives.You’re lucky because stock photography is one of the few “products” that can actually be both viewed AND purchased almost instantaneously on the Net: you can buy a book, CD or electric drill over the web, but you can’t have them until the UPS man pulls up to your house.Not so with stock image files.And, of course, the Net gives you previously unprecedented access to a global audience of potential customers.Now, it certainly helps if you already have the stature within the stock industry equivalent to someone like Pearl Jam in the music business.Direct selling requires a serious commitment to setting up the proper infrastructure and subsequent marketing. But I think that today EVERY photographer, at whatever level, has to seriously consider direct selling to customers as at least one component of their business plan, and if not now, at some point in their evolution as a successful stock shooter.The Big Corporate Giants are never going to put your interests first, but with the tools available to photographers today, those of you with the desire, resources and guts to chart your own course can join Eddie Vedder in saying, “Enough!”
oday is a day of celebration! It’s my dad’s 91st birthday…but you’re probably more interested in the 40th birthday of en entity slightly better known on a global basis than my dear old dad.I’m referring, of course, to the Internet, which was born in a lab at UCLA forty years ago today.And, I think we’d all have to admit that, like my dad, the net is looking pretty good for its age! And remember, professor Len Kleinrock and his team only had in mind sharing scientific information among a very small group of scientists when they launched the Internet forty years; it’s only in the last two decades that the net’s been colonized and dominated by the commercial sector and thus become ubiquitous in our lives almost everywhere on the planet.Just ten years ago stock picture agencies were STILL sending out transparencies and using Fed Ex; today, that concept is as quant as taking a stagecopach cross-country.The rate of change in our society, and specifically in the professional picture industry, has quickened at a dizzying speed.And, as with any form of evolution, some photographers and picture agencies have changed with the times and prospered while others simply couldn’t move quickly enough to adapt and have fallen by the wayside.The way the net has come to dominate everything about our lives is a bit scary: we now rely upon it for everything from checking movie times to figuring out how to drive to Boston…getting recipes and learning about the War of 1812 for a class at school…as a source of news as well as entertainment.For those of us in the stock photo business it has opened up global markets, provided a means for creating e-commerced mega-agencies, and for the first time made it possible to reach beyond traditional professional markets to tap into the billions of consumers who potentially might need/want a picture for a blog, mobile phone or term paper.It’s not all good news, of course: the cost of doing business for photographers and agencies has risen exponentially, the heightened commoditization of stock sold via the net has often devalued pricing, and if your server goes “down” you’re at least temporarily out of business.Nonetheless, I believe that the benefits of the Internet, from a stock picture business perspective,far outweigh the detriments and make this a much more interesting, dynamic and potentially lucrative pursuit than back in analog days.So, happy birthday to you, dear Internet…and to you too, Donald S. Henning!
re textbooks the next species destined for extinction? If you’re a betting person, place your money on the fact that textbooks as we have known them will indeed be a relic of the past before too much longer, and I say “Thank goodness!”Textbooks are an expensive drag on every school district’s budget, they’re static by nature (once it’s on the printed page, it’s etched in stone with no opportunities for changes or updating), and damn heavy to lug around.Outside of being mostly in color rather than black and white, 2009’s textbook is still about as boring and uninspiring as the ones I used when I was a kid back in the Stoned Age (yes, it was the 60s!).I have long believed that future kids will simply use something like a laptop or Kindle to open up their Digitexts (or whatever they’ll be called) to view course material that will not only include traditional text and still photos but also video clips, animations, hyperlinks to useful drill-down-deeper online information and even music to make learning a far more engaging process than we could ever imagine back when we were in school.Now, of course, all of this future-gazing (which, by the way, is supported by a terrific recent NY Times article by Tamar Lewin) has many in the stock picture industry nervous as hell.Textbooks represent a huge market for today’s stock photographers and agencies since, to their credit, textbooks today make extremely liberal use of photographs.All of those spot uses, chapter openers and full-bleed covers represent a significant piece of change in today’s stock marketplace.So, does my vision of a sunny Digitext future mean that the good times will be over for editorial stock sales? I doubt it (though people in our industry seem to love to wallow in gloom-and-doom, end-of-days scenarios).Ours is a dynamic industry in which “change” is definitely the order of the day and the smart folks have changed right along with it.The digital future of textbooks actually may open up all sorts of additional opportunities for selling both stock stills and motion.Much like the changes that royalty free and microstock have brought to stock, this may mean that on a transactional level each individual sale will be smaller than today’s license for use on the printed page, but this could be more than made up for in volume, with the sheer number of graphical elements used in Digitexts far exceeding what’s possible in a traditional printed textbook.Whatever it’s effect on our stock image industry, I can’t wait for the day when kids have tools that actually get them excited about the process of learning rather than sending them off to Snoozeland.
omeday we will most likely look back on the past decade similarly to how I occasionally reminisce with my friends: “Remember when we were seniors in high school and gas was 19 cents a gallon for regular?” Just as those seem to be the days when everything was cheap (a brand-new Fiat 124 convertible sports car for only three thousand bucks!!! Gimme a half a dozen!), the period we may now be on the verge of exiting shall henceforth be known as “The Time When It All (or ALMOST all) Was Free.”All WHAT, you’re probably asking.Well, all that Internet content, of course! How on earth did we end up with this…THING…that has all of this mind-lowing music, news, videos, blogs, shopping and far more of everything than anyone really needs…and almost all of it is there for the taking! Ah, yes, we shall look back upon it fondly, this Golden Era of the Digital Age.And I urge you to enjoy it while you can, because the writing surely is on the wall.First was the e-mail I received a few days ago from Pandora, one of the all-time cool websites if you like music (and if you don’t, just go away, OK?).They’re very sorry, it explained, but they now have to limit how much free music they dole out, but they’d be happy to continue to give us all we want…for a small fee, of course.Then came the news today that good old Rupert Murdoch, he of Wall St. Journal ownership as well as a vast empire of other media, has mandated that his minions figure out a way to charge for the online content that his papers have previously put online for free, and that they do so pronto (as in by next June).Oh, the horror! Meanwhile, of course, every other media baron is going to be keeping a hawk’s eye on Murdoch to see how/if he can pull this off so that they, too, can jump in and finally make some cash back from all their previously money-sucking cyber ventures.Mark my words, it’s going to parrot the airline industry: you know how that works…as soon as one of ‘em comes up with a brilliant idea like charging passengers to check a bag or use the lavatory (what’s next? “That will be $15 for the use of the floatation device, sir, exact cash only, please, as we’ll be hitting the water momentarily”), all the rest of the sheep jump onboard and do the same thing.Newspapers and magazines are all hemorrhaging readership and thus, ultimately, advertising revenue, so I’m sure they’re scratching their heads in corporate meetings and asking things like, “Uh, why, exactly, are we giving away our content on that silly little iPhone app?” And, if Murdoch can actually figure out a viable way to get the unwashed masses to pony up for their reading, before too long thereafter we’re all going to be nostalgically saying, “Wow, wasn’t that great when you could get all that cool stuff for NUTHIN’?” Oh, and there’s an interesting lesson here for the stock picture industry as well.Right now, due to recessionary pressures as well as the reckless pricing of some picture agencies, we have become engaged in a process of conditioning art buyers to expect across-the-board, steep discounting on every stock image purchase they make.The overall effect of this, if it continues over time, will be to erode the pricing structure for stock to such a serious degree that nobody – creators AND distributors – will still be in business, at least at the professional level.This process is reversible if the perpetrators smarten up soon, but if not, we will be facing the very same conundrum that the newspaper industry is facing: once you have established a customer mind-set of expecting something for free, or at a vastly reduced price, it’s a herculean and often hopeless task to then turn around and convince them to pay a premium price for the same thing.
Two guys with new iPhones!
The Joys of Convergence
3 July 2009
I
tried to resist….I really did.Oh, sure, it was often a humbling experience: I’d show up at some picture industry event and all my friends and colleagues would be constantly checking their Blackberries or iPhones, reassuring both themselves and me of how important they were.They’d be tapping away on their tiny little keyboards, staying up-to-the-minute and never out of reach of their boss.Or, they’d be checking on which restaurant they’d be eating at that evening, or maybe getting a quick game score, or perhaps playing a quick round of Tetris.How pathetic (and expensive!), I thought: what’s so smart about being addicted to a “smart phone”? I took pride in whipping out my humble little Samsung Sync and making it clear to anyone who wanted to know that I most definitely did not “text” and had absolutely no desire for all of the other bells and whistles that my thirty-nine dollar mobile lacked.It was the same sort of reverse-snobbery that leads people to drive a 14-year old scratch-and-dent clunker and actually claim that they enjoy it.And then it happened.With my son about to “graduate” from 8th grade (back when I was in school, of course, when 8th grade ended they just said “See you next year” and tossed you out the door) my search for the perfect gift focused on giving him his first-ever mobile phone.And, with all of the marketing smarts that we’ve come to expect from Apple, what should happen to be coinciding with graduation day but a brand new version of their iconic iPhone, the 3GS.Being a dutiful dad, I was compelled to check it out at my local AT&T store and…it was love at first sight.Oh, my: twice the power and half the price of the “old” iPhone? OK, those practical considerations initially caught my attention.But it was more, so much more, that hooked me.It was…sex.That’s right: this wasn’t some toy for kids, it was an adults-only siren song.I knew – instantly – that on the fateful day the following week when the unwashed masses could actually carry these new gadgets home in their hot little hands that I’d be buying two, not just one of them: one for El Kid, and another for me.This, of course, was no rational decision (though I can certainly justify its alleged positive effects on my productivity and organizational tools)…this was no “I think I like really her, but we should date for a few months and analyze our potential compatibility before I ask her to marry me” sort of thing…it was pure, unadulterated, let’s-have-a-torrid-one-night-stand kind of techno-lust.That shape! The colorful little icons! The 50,000 apps! The way the view switches from vertical to horizontal when you turn it on end! The tactile pleasure of the touch-screen! Not only was it the most elegant little device I had held since purchasing my beloved iPod, it was the very embodiment of The Future: the convergence of gadgets, tools and capabilities into one single, beautifully-designed device in which the “phone” in the iPhone is actually secondary to all the other functions it performs (It’s a camera! It’s your scheduler! It’s the Internet! It’s all things to all people!).And thus, there we were, my son and I, at 6:30 in the morning on the day the 3GS went on sale, waiting with somewhat bleary eyes for the doors to technological nirvana to be thrown open.Less than an hour later we had them…they were ours…and it was good…very, VERY good.
recently returned from Dresden, Germany where the annual European-hosted CEPIC conference on stock imagery took place.I met with stock agents from all corners of the world and there was one word that came up over and over again: “prices.”Our industry, of course, is not immune from the sort of recession-induced pricing pressures that you see in most industries today.Buying a car? They’re practically giving them away due to the lack of demand and high inventories.Got cash? You can pick up a really nice house at a bargain price.How about a vacation? Hotels will negotiate prices just to get warm bodies into their rooms.And, of course, there is the constant onslaught of sales, sales and more sales at every place from Target to Kohl’s, from Best Buy to Walmart.The “discount culture” has become all-pervasive, with every business establishment in America now bearing more and more resemblance to the bazaar in Tangier as patrons fight to save every last dime and demand reductions from list, rack or even already discounted rates.In Germany I was representing the interests of three different Stock Answers® clients, the common thread among them being the production and sale of royalty free images.I often draw the “retail analogy” when describing how RF works: an RF image is sold on the basis of purchased file size, at a fixed price, and then belongs to the buyer for almost any use in the future.However, unlike purveyors of retail products like Nike, Sony or Toyota, RF faces a threat not from more or less equal competitors but from its own low-ball offspring, microstock.Micro is simply really, REALLY cheap RF.And, the mistake that some stock agents are making is to try to compete with micro on the basis of price.That is a battle that is doomed from the start: how do you induce a buyer to purchase an image for a few hundred dollars when they have their mind already set on paying $5? I am convinced that there are several agents out there who have embarked on a race to the bottom in their misguided strategy of playing on microstock’s turf.Yes, in recessionary times some degree of rational flexibility in pricing is a useful, short-term strategy.Across-the-board discounting, however, erodes the entire pricing structure and is the start of a death spiral from which recovery is unlikely.Have these agents forgotten the fact that, at every art buyers panel I’ve ever sat in on, price is one of the least important factors in why customers choose a particular image? Of course, image distributors haven’t always been helped by the creators of RF imagery, who have produced far too many unimaginative, me-too images that aren’t special enough to warrant their significantly higher prices compared to micro.There’s probably a place in the world for all of the current stock licensing models, including microstock, but you never win any game where you’re forced to play by your opponents’ rules AND on their field.Instead, you beat the competition by leveling that playing field, which in this case means differentiation: by the quality of your product, by the service you provide and by the uniqueness of your product.It’s probably the uniqueness factor where RF has failed to adequately insulate itself from some microimagery and if RF is to have a future, that’s where the battle will be won or lost.Only a fool would pay $400 for something he could get for five bucks, so RF creators had damn well better put their emphasis on creating the sorts of imagery that is unattainable in microstock.
K, OK…my little sabbatical from the blog is officially over, at least until I decide to take another one.This time around I want to direct you to a brief but terrific video courtesy of the folks at ADWEEK magazine and their online site.It’s an interview with Dan Wieden, co-founded of the legendary Portland advertising and communications company Wieden + Kennedy, and shot at the recent Clio Awards event in Las Vegas at which Wieden received a prestigious Lifetime Achievement award.You probably know Wieden + Kennedy best for their groundbreaking work for Nike: the swoosh…”just do it” (don’t miss the companion video on the same webpage of Wieden discussing how he came up with that classic tag line!)…Air Jordan.There’s much, much more to their story, of course, but while it’s fun to review all the great work that the agency has created over the years, what’s really important is the message that comes through loud and clear in the Wieden interview, which really boils down to: don’t be afraid to take chances.It’s a valuable lesson for us all in both our personal and business lives, and it has certainly served Dan Wieden quite well.We often talk about thinking “out of the box” but are we really willing to step closer to the edge? The risk factor increases proportionally, of course, the closer to the edge you venture, but so do the potential rewards.As stock photographers, you have a daunting task: in a market already saturated with imagery, how do you come up with a different take on cliché concepts? And yet, that IS the challenge.The best selling stock shots invariable are recreations and updates of concepts that have been around for decades but are visually and stylistically reinterpreted for today’s market.So, push yourself: try a new shooting style, a new lens or a different model than the one you usually like to work with.If you’re a studio shooter, go on location and vice versa.Buy some new props.Work alone instead of with an assistant.Get down on the ground or up on a ladder.Comfort and routine are the enemy of creativity, so keep it fresh and make it fun and exciting as you “just do it.”
This Is Really Cool...Uh, Frigid, Actually!
6 April 2009
T
oday we take a little break from the nuts and bolts of stock photography so that I can turn you on to something really fascinating (not that stock isn’t, of course!).During my workout earlier today, I watched a “CBS Sunday Morning” show I had DVRed a couple of weeks ago (and if you aren’t familiar with the show, it’s a terrific “magazine format” show that always covers a gamut of subjects from personalities to science, politics to movies, and just plain quirky stuff; it airs from 8 until 9:30 every Sunday morning.If you’re like me and really treasure that Sunday morning sleep, just set your VCR or DVR for later playback).Among this edition’s features was coverage of a project called “Extreme Ice Survey” and one of the primary drivers of this endeavor is Boulder, Colorado photographer James Balog.He and his colleagues have been documenting the effects of climate change on glaciers by installing cameras in remote locations where, through the use of time-lapse photography, they can graphically show how, over time, we are losing these icy masses at a rather astounding rate of speed (as they pointed out during the show, the term “glacial speed” has taken on a whole new meaning).PBS already aired a special on the IES project on March 24, but if you check with your local station perhaps they’ll be repeating it.Or, you can buy a DVD of the PBS program at the EIS website store.But even if you have no desire to acquire the DVD, you really have to visit the website because there are so many fascinating things to see and read there, including pictures of the installed cameras and stories about how they went about securing them, terrific photo galleries and even insightful tips on how to reduce your own carbon footprint.As I said at the outset, this has nothing whatsoever to do with stock photography…but…it certainly raises the question: what are YOU doing with your photography besides using it to make a living (and, of course, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that!)? Balog is obviously deeply committed to a project related to climate change and the environment.What issues are important to YOU? Could you act upon them by coming up with some sort of photography project? Can you use your skills…your knowledge…your vision to further a cause that you take to heart, whatever it might be? Or, could you assist OTHER folks in trying to change or document the world through photography? Pictures are a powerful tool, and it’s worth considering how you might put that tool to work from time to time for something other than strictly commercial purposes.
n the great scheme of all the nasty, toxic things happening on a daily basis in the global economy, a corporate acquisition in our little stock photo industry is about as noteworthy as McDonald’s adding yet another item to their Dollar Menu; in other words, it’s hardly even worth a mention in the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal.Our business sector is tiny, but it turns out that’s exactly why the recent takeover of Jupiterimages by The Dark Side, while almost totally unremarkable to the outside world, has such devastating repercussions for anyone associated with this crazy business.And, if you think the word “devastating” is a bit too strong, I could substitute “discouraging” or even “depressing.”This acquisition was wrong for a whole bunch of reasons, none of which, of course, could stop The Dark Side from making yet another conquest.Reason #1: photographers now have one less option for representation of their work.The potential universe of agencies of any significant size that can/will sell a photographer’s stock has dwindled dramatically over the past decade and a half.With their options thus limited, photographers often seem to have little choice but to surrender to the siren song of The Dark Side and, once they’re ensnared, when The Dark Side tells them to jump, they can only ask, “How high?” Thus, the middleman will now have an even stronger position from which to demand an ever-increasing share of the sales booty from picture sales while the individuals doing the real work of creating compelling stock imagery struggle to survive on ever-thinner margins.Reason #2: monopolies are un-American; in this country, we allegedly believe in healthy, competitive markets.Nonetheless, with the purchase of Jupiterimages The Dark Side now owns something like half of the entire global marketplace for stock with after-acquisition annual revenue in excess of $1 billion.The #2 agency in the world, Corbis, logs in at a comparatively meager $250 million or so, and it’s a looooong way down to #3 (the spot formerly held by Jupiterimages).Apparently this fact escaped the FTC’s notice during their cursory review of the Jupiterimages deal since they chose to give it a green light. Reason #3: supposedly, this is the era of personalization, customization and infinite choice thanks to the internet.Sorry, art buyers, but your choices just shrank.Maybe you liked Jupiter’s kind of spunky, upstart attitude.That will now give way to the corporate-speak which is The Dark Side.Or, maybe you really liked that special, always-helpful Jupiter sales rep who could always bail you out of a tight deadline.Sorry again: s/he is now out of a job, since The Dark Side’s purge put almost the entire Jupiterimages staff out on the street.Reason #4: Big companies, like big government, basically suck.Do you actually LIKE doing business with Time Warner? AT&T? The IRS? Have you EVER gotten the impression that these were touchy-feely outfits that truly cared about you and weren’t just trying to gouge you? Did you ever get put on hold by one of them for, say, 45 minutes while they endlessly played some phony-baloney sales pitch backed by “smooth jazz” into your ear and told you how much they valued your call? C’mon, we loathe those types of outfits and wouldn’t do business with them at all if we didn’t have to.Reason #5: you don’t really need MORE reasons, do you? But, since I always try to find the positives in any negative situation, I’m willing to state that there actually are two upbeat aspects to this deal: Jupiterimages was a mismanaged mishmash that was slowly but surely sliding into bankruptcy; with The Dark Side rescuing them from the brink (and, by the way, picking them up for a firesale price of $96 million, or almost 30% less than the bonuses recently paid out to AIG executives) that’s no longer a possibility.And, due to The Dark Side’s bulging cash vault, all of the photographers and image partners that would have been stiffed in a Jupiter bankruptcy action are all apparently actually receiving their Jupiter royalty payments.But in the end, it still remains a dark day for the picture industry, with only the Dark Side itself profiting.
o matter what your political leanings might be, you have to admit that what’s going on right now in Washington makes for great theater.In his appearance before a joint session of Congress last night President Barack Obama basically threw down the gauntlet and challenged the assembled pols to either get on the change train or risk being left behind at the station.In no uncertain terms he made it clear that “business as usual” was no longer going to be the accepted norm.Wow! Telling this to an assemblage of politicians who cherish their seniority system, their Congressional perks and the pitiful history of challengers defeating incumbents takes some real guts.If I’m a Senator with my duly elected butt parked in a cushy leather chair, why the hell do I want to upset the applecart? Because change is good? For the sake of my country? Because I was elected to do what’s right for all the people?Forget it! But there goes Obama, dragging ‘em out of their comfort zones kicking and screaming.As a stock photographer, the changes you may have to embrace aren’t going to change the way this country does its business but they may be just as daunting to you in their own way.For two decades now the picture industry has been roiled by new technology, mergers and acquisitions, the introduction of entirely new licensing models and an influx of both new sellers and creators of stock imagery.The “change train” in stock over the past 20 years has borne more of a resemblance to a bullet train than the old steam-powered locomotive that formerly drove this business.Some photographers have been quick to get their tickets punched and jump on board, while others have resisted.Royalty free stock, for example, is now virtually “the establishment” in stock rather than the revolutionary interloper we saw it as when the 1990s dawned.And yet, even now some photographers continue to rail against RF: for example, in his very readable and entertaining new book “Remember The Joy” veteran stock shooter Bill Bachmann says that “RF and Microstock devalue the entire process and give ALL the benefit to the buyer, certainly not the photographer.”While I appreciate Bill’s passionate desire to see photographers appropriately rewarded with both respect and remuneration for their hard work, I can tell you that a couple of my photographer clients who net well over $1 million a year from their RF sales feel neither devalued nor insulted and are more than happy to see those big, fat royalty checks appear in their mailboxes.The point is that with the stock picture industry still in a state of flux and the global economy experiencing serious contraction and realignment, change IS the order of the day and you have to keep your eyes and your mind open to anything.One of the keys to success in any business is the ability to recognize and exploit “opportunity” and you can’t do that if you’re dogmatic.Sitting back and merely being responsive, reacting to changes as they hit you and then trying to figure out how to respond, is not a recipe for success, nor does it let you control your own destiny.On the other hand, you can proactively anticipate change and figure out what you can do tomorrow to grow your business that you didn’t do yesterday.By doing so, you can claim a seat on the change train.Make sure it’s a window seat, so that you can wave goodbye to the folks with their feet still stuck to the platform floor as you speed out of the station and into the sunrise of new opportunities.
o you find yourself asking the same question I do day after day when you open up your morning newspaper? In what has now become something of a “Groundhog Day” kind of ritual, I am now mumbling “How much worse can it get?” on a daily basis.I mean, has anybody read any GOOD news lately? Boy, talk about starting the day off on the wrong foot! The only growth area in this country’s economy right now belongs to whichever pharmaceutical manufacturers are churning out anti-depressants.And, despite all of the other news (you know, the accounts of murder, mayhem and general hysteria on a global basis) what’s probably most disturbing to me are the reports on our failed domestic economy, as this has serious long-term consequences for all of us, and yet most of us are absolutely helpless in affecting how this plays out.Here’s the latest cheery news from General Motors, for example: three months ago they sacked over 5,000 salaried workers.Now, they are planning on laying off another 10,000 folks from their global operations (with a fair number getting the ax right here at home, of course) before 2009 mercifully comes to an end.That’s a combined 15,000 + people. It’s as if you told every single adult in a town like Gallup, New Mexico: “Uh, sorry, but as of today you’re all unemployed.”Where the heck are all these folks going to go? What are they going to do for gainful employment? How are they going to buy food, put gas in their cars or pay rent? It’s scary, but here’s a real nightmare: what if they all start taking pictures? Yeah, that’s right…STOCK PICTURES!!! Everyone has a digital camera now or a cell phone that captures images (have you noticed that at every Obama speech, for example, when they show the crowd all you see is a mass of tiny, glowing monitors attached to outstretched arms as they try to snap a bit of history).Well…what if all of these newly unemployed folks, desperate for some sort of livelihood, say to themselves, “Hey, Aunt Martha always said I took pretty nice pictures.Now that I’ve got all this time on my hands, maybe I’ll just go out and snap more of ‘em and put them on one of those “microstock” websites I’ve read about.”Oh, THE HORROR….a veritable tsunami of crowd-sourcing, digital clicking hordes flooding iStock, Fotolia and the rest with batches upon batches of newly uploaded junk.I can see it now: a veritable run on copies of every last copy of “Photographer’s Market” that decimates Amazon.com’s warehoused stock.Soon, you’ll have photographers on every corner, framing images and backing up into…other photographers! Sure, the resulting glut of images will bring the already pitiful micro prices down to something like 4¢ each, but for some that will still be more than they’d make picking up cans and turning them in for recycling.
Be afraid…be VERY afraid.And cross your fingers, as well as any other available appendages, that the Obama economic stimulus plans work as they’re intended.
less you’re living in the Helix Nebula, you’re well aware of the fact that this Sunday is that most hallowed of days in America, Super Sunday.Far more eagerly anticipated than Christmas (at least by the network selling advertising time), far more hyped than the next WWF pay-per-view event on DirecTV, and generally (though not last year) far less compelling of an actual game than most, the Super Bowl is an unofficial American holiday, sporting event, party and revenue-generator all rolled up into one.This edition, the 43rd in the series (for those of you, like me, unable to decipher Roman numerals above “X”), features the classic underdog story (Arizona), the precocious young coach story (Pittsburgh) and the superstar-at-halftime story (The Boss!), all of which will play out in between ads costing $3 million per 30-second spot.It’ll be the usual suspects flogging their wares at us: Coke, Bud, GoDaddy, etc.But you know who’s the smartest one of them all? Why, my very own hometown brewery, located just a stone’s throw away from Stock Answers™ World Headquarters, Miller.That’s right, the boys who make High Life sat around one day and said, “OK, Super Bowl…great place for us to advertise.Now…how do we not just advertise but get noticed?” The answer: any fool with $3 million could buy an ad, but nobody in their right mind would run an ad that runs for just one second…would they? Naw, nobody would do that…unless they were willing to take a risk, defy conventional wisdom and think waaaaay outside the box.The result has been that Miller has already garnered far more FREE word-of-mouth advertising and both on-air and online publicity than they probably dared to hope for.No mater how cute, clever, funny or touchingly sentimental the ads may be that we’ll see during the game, none of them will achieve the audience penetration Miller has already gained before the game even kicks off! What does this have to do with you? Just this: there are too damn many stock photos out there.That’s right, I said it…there are TOO MANY stock photos in the marketplace for you to have a prayer of making significant money.Unless…unless you’re willing to be bold in your thinking, creative in your execution, and tremendously smart in your image distribution/marketing.A one second commercial? You’d have to be crazy…crazy like the proverbial fox.What can you do in stock that will be the equivalent of a 1-second Super Bowl ad? How can you interpret a classic stock concept in a way that nobody else has? What’s it going to take for you to really push your creativity, right up to and perhaps even over the edge? Don’t misinterpret that last question: I’m not saying that you have to use wild colors, psychedelic lighting and soft-focus black and white to stand out from the crowd.This isn’t about gimmicks, it’s about originality in thinking.When I was a shooter we used to joke about snapping the “Cokin Creativity Filter” onto the lens.Well, there is no silver bullet, and you may have to really rack your brain to find the visual solutions that will separate your stock shots from the unwashed masses.Hey, here’s an idea; How about having your own personal creative round table? Why put all the pressure on yourself? Bring together a small group of friends who do NOT work in the photography business.Uncork a couple of bottles of wine and start brainstorming with them.Ask them how THEY would interpret a particular stock concept and see what they come up with.The beauty of this is that, unlike those of us who look at stock images every day, these folks will have no preconceptions and truly will be thinking out of the traditional “stock box.”Even if 98% of their ideas are crap, that 2% that sticks just might be the equivalent of the 1-second commercial!
P.S. I love Big Ben, but…go Cards! Prediction: Arizona 27, Pittsburgh 21.
Breaking News: Stock Agency Sold to Someone Other Than THEM!
22 January 2009
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y now you may have heard that SuperStock, the Jacksonville, FL picture agency that had been in bankruptcy proceedings, has been sold.At a time when companies left and right in this country are going out of business, seriously downsizing or merging with other distressed ventures, the sale of a tiny stock image library in Florida for $2.85 million may not be exactly front page news for The Wall Street Journal, but in our somewhat insular little industry it’s a fairly big deal for a number of noteworthy reasons.First of all, SuperStock is one of the few remaining “general subject” stock agencies of any significant size with roots back in the Golden Era of stock that’s still in business (does anyone remember Westlight? The image Bank? The Stock Market?).Secondly, it was purchased by a consortium of three companies (Blend Images, Rubberball Productions and Glow Images), all of whom are perceived as being more photographer-friendly and less corporate than You-Know-Who. Finally, SuperStock is an independent agency, meaning that it’s not owned/dominated/controlled by the Usual Suspects.This last point is absolutely crucial in an industry which has been irreparably changed and, in my opinion, negatively influenced by the monolithic and continually broadening power of a couple of mega-agencies.The consolidation of influence and market share by Getty and Corbis has reduced choices for picture buyers and squeezed image producers for their very last nickels and dimes in the form of contracts that only a Jersey mobster can truly appreciate.It’s refreshing, then, to see one of the “good guys” manage to emerge from a potentially fatal ending to a new day made possible by an acquisition by somebody who’s NEITHER Getty or Corbis.Now, make no mistake about it: the new owners of SuperStock face some pretty daunting challenges and it’s going to take some really savvy moves to restore SuperStock to solvency.Further, and perhaps most troubling, it remains to be seen whether image producers who are owed well over a million bucks in back royalties will ever see a dime of their money.But, if the concept of “competition” still resonates and you see it as a good, if somewhat antiquated thing for the stock picture industry, then we all have to send along our positive thoughts to the resuscitated SuperStock and pull for its new owners to demonstrate their wisdom and business acumen by making it once again a player in an industry sorely in need of serious challengers.
Certainty, Can’t-Misses and Inevitability 14 January 2009
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ertain things are true, and always will be true, right? Like the fact that the Indianapolis Colts, New England Patriots, New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys are the crème de la crème and will dominate the NFL playoffs…right? Uh, no.The Cowboys and Patriots didn’t even make the show, Indy lost in the first round, and the well-rested New York Giants get to continue their regimen of r & r into the off-season, effective as of last Sunday’s debacle in the Meadowlands (which, by the way, probably sounds like an idyllic spot in the scenic countryside to those of you who’ve never been there, when in fact it’s just a mass of concrete surrounded by more concrete in the form of expressways.It’s about as scenic as the “good side” of Gary, Indiana).You’re not into sports? Fine, let’s change channels to “Economics.” Tom Saler is a very down-to-earth author and columnist who covers financial matters.In his column of 12 January, Saler had this to say about economists who are prognosticating a new bull market that will, they say, kick in this summer: “This seems to be the consensus view, which automatically makes it suspect.There is nothing about the current environment that looks or feels even remotely normal.” What do these observations from extremely divergent fields of endeavor have to do with you and stock photography? Just this: Conventional wisdom should always be looked at somewhat askance, and if you let the commonly accepted tenets of any discipline stand in your way, then you deserve to fail.Here are a few of the unquestioned certainties of stock photography that you may feel free to ignore on a regular basis: “No one’s making any money in stock photography these days” (Really? Gee, don’t tell that to a couple of my clients who happen to be showing a lot of black, not red, ink on their bottom lines); “You’ll never make any money doing microstock” (don’t tell that to Yuri Arcurs over in Denmark, who’s laughing all the way to the bank); “If you’re not with Getty you might as well just quit shooting stock, since everybody buys from them (unfortunately, this one DOES have a few kernels of truth to it but, as always, it’s not the whole story: Getty Images may control as much as half the world market for stock image sales, but that still leaves the OTHER half for you to cash in on); “Royalty free is dead” (I guess that’s why Image Source, Tetra Images, Design Pics, PhotoAlto, Blend and all the other RF producers are now out of business, huh?); “You’ll never make any money just taking pictures” (that’s your mother talking, and you know you have to ignore her!); “Editorial picture prices are non-negotiable” (you would not last more than 5 seconds in a Middle Eastern bazaar if you buy into this adage); “Everything worth shooting’s already been shot” (maybe…but it hasn’t been shot by YOU, and how do we know what that might look like?); and “All stock shots look fake” (oh, like assigned advertising shots are REAL? Gimme a break! But think of it like a movie: when you’re sitting in a theater, you know you’re in a seat, in a large room with other people, that you’re looking at a massive screen, and that if the film breaks, the story comes to a screeching halt.The key is that the audience suspends disbelief and gets so caught up in the story as it unfolds that they completely forget about the surrounding reality.Your job as a stock shooter is similar to the filmmaker’s: to make images that have enough “reality” and believability to them that people will suspend their disbelief, coupled with the visual expression of a concept or message that’s so strong that the question of “is it live or is it Memorex” never even occurs to the viewer.
ell, here’s some cheery news: according to this morning’s local newspaper, if you liked 2008, you’re gonna love 2009: “From Washington and Wall Street to the internal forecasts at Wisconsin Energy Corp., economists uniformly expect 2009 to be worse.” Wow! Can I just crawl back under the covers and hide for, say, 10 or 12 months??? Talk about dis-motivation! Well, we’re all just going to have to see how this thing plays out.It’s bigger than any of us, but what’s under your control, of course, is how you respond to the situation. You’re a stock photographer, so you have to figure out how you can actually benefit from this mess.Let’s see…if the economy is still going to suck for at least another year, that means stock shots that illustrate various facets of the down economy will keep right on selling for quite some time.This isn’t benefiting from other peoples’ misery (well, maybe a little!), it’s doing what any smart stock shooter does, which is thinking like a stock image buyer.What sorts of concepts and stories are they illustrating? For inspiration, you might start out by looking back at some of the iconographic images created during the Great Depression (hmmm…what about re-creating some of them with updated clothing, environments, etc.?).My guess is that you couldn’t go too far wrong in your stock production with image subjects/concepts like: home foreclosures; layoffs and unemployment; bankrupt businesses; shaky banks; lack or retail sales; more people than ever applying for social services; job re-training; former Yuppies now out of work; people enjoying home entertainment rather than going out; “economic stimulus”; the real estate market bust; retirees who are broke because their 401(k) went belly-up; the process of getting a mortgage (good luck!); the credit crunch.These are all ideas crying out for great stock photographic illustration, so don’t waste time wringing your hands about things that are beyond your control, get shooting! Changing times call for changing imagery, and the same-old, same-old shots of happy, shiny people really don’t quite cut it when the happiness quotient is at an all-time low.The successful stock shooters are always ahead of the curve and not only anticipate trends but capitalize on them by having relevant imagery already in the marketplace when the trends crest.
Are You Part of the Problem, Or Part of the Solution?
30 December 2008
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‘ve written in a previous blog about how photographers tend to be gizmo freaks: we treasure our sexy little iPhones, our ultra-thin laptops, our digital this and digital that.Problem is, what do you do with your “old” gizmo when you replace it with a newer, shinier, sexier, more powerful version? If you’re like 88% of Americans, you simply toss the old machine in the trash.WRONG! Or, maybe you’re at least somewhat enlightened and you send your outdated gizmos out to pasture via a recycler.ALSO WRONG! Well, who knew? I sure didn’t until I read a terrific article on the subject in the Houston Chronicle.I urge you to read the Chronicle’s report, but if you’re really pressed for time, here’s the bottom line: besides the good stuff, the innards on all of our electronic toys also contain a whole bunch of bad, potentially lethal stuff.Tossing ‘em in the garbage is the worst alternative of all, since these things hardly qualify as biodegradable.And, most recyclers actually ship our old electronics off to Third World countries where the crude extraction techniques that are employed in pulling out the valuable innards also result in poisoning the atmosphere with potent toxins.Ah, but there is hope! Seek out a recycler who has agreed to process old gizmos responsibly.It’s easy: just go to the website of the Electronics TakeBack Coalition.There, you’ll find a US map.Click on your state and bingo! you’ll get a list of “e-steward” recyclers.It’s a little more work than just tossing your outdated gear in the garbage cart, but well worth the effort.
his morning I happened to flip on one of the classical stations on XMradio, the satellite-transmission service that recently merged with its only competitor, Sirius Radio.They were playing some really nice selections from a CD (remember those?) called “Baroque Christmas,” which got me to thinking: yeah, that’s probably where far too many people are this Christmas season: broke.A recession, record unemployment, a deficit number that ends in countless zeroes, banks collapsing, former blue-chip companies begging for tax-payer bailouts and bridge loans…hey, happy holidays, pal! Not that any of this has prevented the airing of obnoxious holiday ads for such things as Lexus automobiles (who the hell is giving their spouse a $40K car this year???) and three-hundred dollar game consoles.There’s a lot of pressure to spend, spend and then spend some more…in fact, these days it seems like it’s your patriotic duty to spend: hey, slacker, are you a good American or one of those godless commies? Then get out there and BUY something, citizen, and do it NOW! Although I retired from the production side of photography almost 20 years ago now, my consulting work involves daily contact with photographers, many of whom are clients, so it’s not too hard to discern that some things never change.There were always photographers who seemed to be in the picture business primarily because they were gadget freaks.There was a always a new lens, new camera body, new remote lighting control, or some other object of desire singing its siren song to these folks, who were only too willing to part with their cash in order to be an early adopter.It’s worse now: not only do you have to acquire camera and lighting gear in order to be a pro, you also need computers, hard drives, memory cards, software, monitors, iPhones…ay, carumba! The cost of entry to even start at the bottom as a shooter these days is considerably greater than it was in the days when you could hang out your shingle and claim to be a professional photographer even though all you had was a body, a couple of lenses and a few pieces of lighting gear.And, the temptation to spend money on equipment is enhanced by the fact that there is ALWAYS a newer version of software…a bigger monitor…more memory capability…or some other must-have feature on the newest and shiniest version of whatever it is that you already have.So, make sure you’re always making good business decisions when you’re thinking of forking out your cash: do I REALLY need this, or do I just WANT it? How will this (fill-in-the-blank) help me to produce more or better stock images? Is this thing significantly better than what I already have? Do I really need the new features the manufacture says I have to have? If you haven’t done so in the past, get in the habit of making a yearly budget for your stock picture business.This doesn’t have to be very complex, and all you need is a spreadsheet program like Excel to do it (or, paper and pencil…yes, old technology still works just fine!).Under “Expenses” make sure you have a line for “Photo Equipment” or “Computer Equipment” or “Capital Investments,” or all of these, and then assign projected expenses to the proper group.And here’s the most important part: once you set a budget, stick to it! Sure, you’ll go to Photo Expo in October and be tempted by all the new gizmos, but if you don’t want to go for baroque, you’ll keep your budget commitments and end the year profitably, which just might ensure happy holidays next year.
very year one of the trade mags for the advertising and design community does their “Color Preview” issue in which they clue in their audience to what the hot future trends are in color usage.You know: one year earth tones are in, the next year they’re “out,” one year “limeade” is the hot new color in fashion, the next year no one would be caught dead in it, etc.Here’s my own personal prediction, and you can tell people you read it here at Stock Answers™ first: green.Wow…brilliant, eh? There’s more: not only will green be THE color of the year in 2009, it will be THE color for years to come afterward.The environmental movement that started back in the 1960s has finally arrived in that middle ground known as the “mainstream.”Environmental awareness is no longer a hot-button issue just for granola-munching freakos, it’s being embraced by everyone from corporate America to the new Prez.So OK, my prognostication may not fall under the banner of “brilliance” but it IS something that you, Mr. or Ms. Stock Shooter, need to be paying attention to; in fact, if you’re just starting to pay attention to it, you’re already behind the curve! With “going green” now the flavor-of-the-month, you can bet that images that illustrate environmental subjects and issues will be hot sellers…not just now, but for years to come because we are really just at ground zero on this whole process of conversion from energy gluttony and environmental poisoning to something a bit more enlightened.Think of all the issues and ideas related to energy conservation, environmental clean-up and pollution and you’ll have yourself a tasty little shootlist.To get you started, here are some random thoughts of subject matter or concepts that will undoubtedly generate stock sales: lightbulbs (replacing the old type with the new energy-efficient ones); the whole family recycling together; workers replacing their blue collar jobs with green collar careers; auto transportation (gas guzzling SUVs vs. Smart cars); foreign oil and renewable sources (like windfarms); installing solar panels on homes and buildings; protesting dirty coal; school children on a field trip to a pristine field of wildflowers; Arabs going broke as demand for their oil dries up; global warming; bicycle commuters; etc.You get the idea, now get with it!
Don Corleone had Tom Hagen; You Have…?
3 December 2008
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ell, it’s official: the U.S. economy is in recession.As a matter of fact, The Powers That Be now say that we’ve actually been in a recession throughout 2008…wow, who knew? Actually, most everybody knew, especially when gas was over four bucks a gallon and you had to decide between groceries and putting petrol in your tank.As professional creatives, stock photographers are in an especially vulnerable position due to the fact that the vast majority are also independent businesspeople.On the one hand that’s a real plus: you can make decisions, choosing to zig rather than zag, on a moment’s notice, without having to consult with a boss or go through a committee to reach a conclusion.However, it also means that sometimes you are trying to make good decisions in a vacuum.Being a self-employed shooter can be pretty lonely.If you were in the mob, you’d have a consigliere, but since you’re just a humble stock photographer, you need your own personal advisory board.Who should be on this board of counselors? Well, start with the obvious paid gunslingers: your attorney, your CPA and you banker.These are all people who you pay for their professional expertise and most business people strike up pretty close relationships with the people who fill these positions as the years go on.They should be the type of people who, when you’re facing a tough business decision, you feel comfortable enough with that you don’t hesitate to pick up the phone and ask for their advice.In addition to these professionals, you should have three or four other people as advisors who are NOT paid by you, but whose judgment and creativity you respect and trust.This doesn’t have to be formal, and in fact it probably shouldn’t be.It can be fairly loose, but it’s something you definitely SHOULD do.Don’t get other photographers involved, or for that matter anyone from the picture industry.Why? Because what you want are people with totally fresh perspectives.If they’re from other fields, they’ll provide the kind of out-of-the-box thinking you need.So, perhaps you know somebody who runs a small manufacturing company, as well as a sales manager for a car dealership.Maybe you know somebody who’s in the administration at a university, and somebody else who runs the business side of a local hospital.Disparate endeavors, to be sure, but guess what you’ll find? In many cases they face problems at least somewhat similar to your own because, in the end, business is business.So, get your informal advisory board together two or three times a year.Treat ‘em to breakfast or dinner at a nice place (not a Denny’s, a NICE place; these folks are giving you their time and expertise, so give ‘em a good meal in pleasant surroundings) where you can have a quiet conversation, not a noisy juke joint.Fill them in on what you’re doing, talk about your future plans, throw out any business problems you’re encountering, and then sit back and get their feedback.It doesn’t matter that none of them can take anything more sophisticated than a snapshot…you’re seeking BUSINESS guidance, not pointers on how to light a scene on location!
Jimi Plays (Wood)Stock
2 January 2008
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imi Hendrix would have been one hell of a great stock photographer.This occurred to me the other day when I welcomed a first time visitor to Stock Answers™ World Headquarters in the WashingtonHeights neighborhood of Milwaukee.I was showing her around our sumptuous quarters and giving a little background on some of the artwork that adorns the walls.We arrived at one of my very favorites: a photograph of Jimi Hendrix which was given to me a few years ago by my friend, the very talented and affable Brit music photographer David Redfern.Since my visitor was only 10 years old when Jimi died, I had to explain who he was and what he was all about.She was particularly taken with his clothing: elaborate, soft, flowing garments, colorful and flamboyant to the max.I remember a high school classmate who was lucky enough to witness Jimi’s first-ever show in Milwaukee in the spring of 1968 describing him as looking “like a rich Indian.”“What made Jimi so special,” I said to my guest, “was that he didn’t play the guitar or look like anybody or anything that preceded him.”We talk a lot about “out of the box” thinking these days, and in music no one personified that concept better in the 1960s than Jimi Hendrix.As a stock photographer, you face the constant challenge of being either a leader or a follower.Do you look at what everybody else is doing and then decide what you’re going to create, or do you chart your own course without caring a whole lot what the rest of the pack is up to? Do you want to help set a trend or merely follow one? Are you a risk taker? Make no mistake about it: leading the charge IS filled with potential risk (refer back to Mr. Hendrix, who lead the charge in electric guitar but was dead at the tender age of just 27).However, “doing what everybody else is doing” has its own inherent risks: that you’ll always be playing catch-up, that you will produce nothing that rises above the level of mediocre and that your stock picture income will reflect your unwillingness to go boldly where no stock shooter has gone before.There are truckloads of cookie-cutter stock shots already in the marketplace.What can you do differently? How can you interpret a concept in a way that will make someone sit up and take notice? Have you developed a style that helps differentiate you from the great unwashed masses? Maybe you don’t have to be in the very forefront of the avant garde to succeed in stock, but you’d best not be too close to the rear, either.
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