Posted under Stock Photography
WHAT IS STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY
by Heather Shimmin
Overview
Stock photography is everywhere. When you’re thumbing through a magazine, driving past a billboard, or surfing the net, chances are what you’re looking at is a stock image.
The images that companies use in their media campaigns are acquired by either hiring a photographer to shoot it or buying a pre-existing image. The latter is stock photography.
You can shoot just about anything and call it stock photography. A few examples of potential subjects and uses for stock are:
A toothpaste company needs an image of two kids brushing their teeth in their pajamas for their ad campaign.
A car company wants a cheering crowd for its billboard.
A music magazine is looking for a backstage shot of Keith Richards.
An image of a woman in a bikini glistening in the sun appears on the direct mailer of a local travel agency.
A newspaper uses a picture of empty pill bottles against a white background in a story on rising drug costs.
Just about any topic you can think of can be shot and used as stock photography – bottles of wine, a basket of fruit, a lawnmower cutting grass, a bride throwing her bouquet at a wedding, a little league game, wilted flowers, changing a diaper, smoking a cigarette – it’s limitless.
There are no hard rules regarding the aesthetics of stock photography, but there are rules and regulations regarding image quality. Things such as minimum camera pixels and image size will vary from company to company within the industry, albeit, things like good composition, lighting, and overall image quality are pretty universal.
The differences between stock and other types of photography
The differences between stock photography and other types of photography is that stock is not photo journalistic in nature. Its purpose isn’t to document something, record an event, be framed and hung on a wall, or put in a museum. The goal of stock photography is to be as visually appealing as possible. Stock is supposed to be pretty. It’s also got to be sell-able. With that in mind, the more experienced stock photographers know that the images which sell the most are the ones which tell a story, are conceptional, or are embedded with a marketing message. These are the types of images which can be used in ad campaigns or publications.
Who are the Buyers?
Stock photography is roughly a $2 billion industry. The types of buyers include:
Advertising Agencies
Magazines
Publishing Houses (fiction, non-fiction, textbook)
Corporations (in-house communications departments etc.)
Websites
Blogs
Non-Profit Organizations
Government Agencies
Graphic Designers
How much do buyers pay?
Buyers are not actually purchasing the photograph, rather, they are purchasing the right to use the photograph. How much they pay depends on the size of the image, the geographic area (local, national, international), the medium (print, web), number of times it will be used (number of brochures printed, for example), and the duration. A company may pay $50 to use an image on their website, and a magazine may pay between $150 and $500 for an image to run once in their publication. Some companies could pay over $50,000 for the rights to use an image.
What’s the difference between a $5 image and a $500 one?
You might be thinking to yourself, why in the world would someone pay $50k for an image when they can get something on iStockphoto for $5? and what’s the difference? The biggest factor in price differentiation is whether the image is Rights Managed or Royalty Free, the two classifications of licensing options.
Rights Managed is what the name implies – the rights to use the image are managed or limited by the photographer. The more you want to use the image, the more you’re going to pay for it. You are also paying for the uniqueness of that image. Rights Managed images are controlled and limited by the number of times it can be bought and used. Companies will buy a Rights Managed image because far fewer people will be using that specific image. A company can also request exclusivity (which would be the case in the $50,000 example mentioned earlier), in which they are the only ones with the rights to use that image.
Royalty Free means that there is no royalty fee. The buyer pays for the photo once and then he is free to use it as many times as he wishes. The benefits of buying Royalty Free images are cost and flexibility. A one-time fee is paid to the photographer (anywhere from $1 to $1000) and the company can use it for all its media needs, as many times as it wants, for as long as it wants.
The biggest con in using this type of image is that the buyer has no control of who else can use this image, damaging if the buyer wants this particular image to be associated with his company or product.
What qualifications do you need to shoot stock?
An imagination
A good camera
Basic Photography skills
The ability to educate yourself in photography, aesthetics, the stock industry, related topics
The motivation to get out there and shoot and to follow through by submitting your work
Why would a photographer shoot stock?
When shooting stock photography, the photographer does not have a specific client in mind (nor does he have a paying client which is footing for the production costs). He doesn’t even know if a magazine or stock photography company will buy the images. So why would he do it?
The greatest advantage to shooting stock, from a photographer’s perspective, is flexibility: flexible time schedule, locale, and subject matter. The photographer is at liberty to shoot what he wants, when he wants, and where he wants. He also can continue to make money on an image repeatedly. I’m still making money from images I shot five years ago.
There are some downsides to being a stock photographer: it’s competitive, the market is saturated, the photographer doesn’t know if the images will sell, and he has to pay for the shoot upfront.
