Am I Killing the Photography Industry?
Are photographers such as myself killing the photography industry?
I follow numerous photography industry related blogs with my RSS reader. It seems that at least once a week I read an article about how "part-time", "hobbyist" and "micro-stock" photographers are killing the photography industry. One particular quote I read recently on the Black Star Rising blog gives an example of what I am talking about:
"Feel free, by all means, to make beautiful nature images, photograph protests in your home town, or do a nice portrait of a family friend. However, if you have any respect for other creatives -- and to tangentially ensure their longevity -- your action of taking $50 for an assignment that should have been $500, or giving away photographs for access to the limited locations that are credential positions, is detrimental to your fellow creatives, and those whose work you admire." (full text)
Though I do plenty of work for pay, my main source of income is in the real estate industry. Since I don't make my full-time living as a photographer, should I not be charging at all? If I shoot a wedding for $500, am I damaging the business of the photographer who's packages start at $3,000?
Another point that many "real" professional photographers make on a regular basis is that microstock websites such as iStockphoto.com are killing the industry. Their point is that selling images for as little as a dollar apiece via these websites is hurting the industry by devaluing photography in general. I strongly disagree with this view. I believe that the microstock sites have opened up professional photography to a whole segment of the population that previously either didn't use photos in their designs or who illegally stole images from the internet. These designers can't afford to spend $100 on up per image, but will readily pay a few dollars for a photo.
I believe we are witnessing a transformation in the photography industry brought on by technological advances in camera equipment and internet delivery. We can either embrace this change, or sit back and watch it pass on by.
What do you think? Are part-time and hobbyist photographers hurting the industry? Or, is this a natural metamorphosis brought on by the advances in technology and communication?
Canon 5D, Canon 24-105 f/4L lens - 1/60 second, f/9, ISO 100
Labels: stock
11 Comments:
I'm a freelance photographer, so I am naturally a bit torn on this issue, but I think that with digital cameras came instant feedback, and low cost shooting.
These two factors have created a society where many, many more people are shooting than ever before, and even if a small percentage of those new shooters take good photos, the number of good photographers available has increased.
With this increased supply of good photographers the cost of hiring one goes down. Many buyers are probably willing to get 80% of a great photo for only 20% of the cost.
The excellent photographers can still sell their services to clients who demand the best, and are willing to pay for it.
Maybe the days of the well paid moderately skilled freelancer are over, or maybe they just have to change the business from the inside to create new sources of income.
I just wish I knew what they are.
As a freelance WRITER, I guess I should take issue with Black Star Rising publishing articles on the internet.
I looked them up in multiple writer's markets and they're not listed. They don't offer submission guidelines, contract stipulations, or prices structures on their website. So they must use in-house writers, but given that they don't charge readers for the articles and they don't seem to pay for the the writer's work from advertising revenue, I can't imagine they pay their staff writers (a.k.a., "bloggers") an accetable wage based on industry standards.
Freelance writers are paid for writing articles, and when armatures or part-timers (even if they are full-time photographers) pen articles without accepting contracts or higher wages for their written words, they're destroying the writing and publishing industries. How dare Black Star Rising even think about providing written information they didn't pay a freelancer or staff writer hundreds or thousands of dollars for. With so many writers giving away their written words, the publishing industry is toast!
If you can't tell, I'm laying it on to make a point. It sounds ridiculous in this context, right? How different is this from photography? (I could have used E-bay as an example. Oh, how many flee markets, used car dealers, and secondhand stores could make the same argument.)
This is just how it is, and if a photographer can't find a way to make more money in a changing society, there's a good chance Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" will sweep the shutterbug out of the marketplace.
Thanks Joshua and Bryan for the well written comments.
@ Joshua: You bring up great points that I wish I had included in my amateurishly written text, thank you.
@ Bryan: I never thought about the relevance to freelance writing. Thanks for the insight.
As a Pro I'd say that what worries me most is not the increased competition from amateurs or weekend pros.
Its the way that the amateur with little knowledge of the industry they are stepping into are being ripped off left right and centre by corporate business and greedy publishers.
Its one thing making pretty pictures - a whole different ball game is selling them into a saturated marketplace, pricing them realistically and keeping hold of the rights you have by law as a creative (such as copyright etc).
I'm putting together a resources and photography business tutorial site to help out aspiring pros and amateurs who are now coming across wily publishers and businesses that see their work as free, cheap and easy to get.
http://www.thephotographybiz.com
Most amateur photographers I know do it for the love of photography, not the money. But we'd be foolish to think that these same people wouldn't like to make decent money to invest in new gear or take more holidays.
While they are being ripped off and selling stock for $1 a throw that isn't going to happen very fast!
iStock and its clones aren't going away anytime soon and yes, they haver opened up the stock imagery marketplace to low end designers and small clients.
But with that shift in the market comes the wolves of big business that are realising that they can take the unwary amateur for a ride and get images for next to nothing.
Its a free market economy we live in. If someone wants to spend $20k on gear then sell their images for $1 then that's their choice.
It will never be mine. I don't think people realise how much money publishers and business spend on ad buying. It can run to thousands of dollars. When our images are a big part of that ad why shouldn't we be compensated for the added value we give?
Try calling up your local mag and asking to place a full page ad for $10......let them laugh and then ask if now you've bought the ad-space, can you place an ad each month for evermore for no extra payment?
Guess what the answer will be?! :)
PP
A better question and one i intend to write about at obiscoito.com is the idea that publication of imagery on the internet is changing how people shoot photos. Photoshop, and quick publication is changing(not in a bad way, just differnet) how people take photos. I'm starting to see trends when looking at other photographers, and i"m wondering aloud if we are unconciously changing the idea of "professional imagery"....
Yes us amatuers are putting pressure on pros in ways we never could have before. But what does that mean for the images?
This is the same worn out argument that's been going on since at least the dawn of the industrial revolution. Bottom line is technological shifts do happen and people have to, and by and large do, adapt to those changes. It may be a gunsmith having to deal with mass produced weapons and interchangeable parts, a cotton processor being displaced by Whitney's Cotton Gin, a carriage manufacturer seeing the rise of automobiles, printing craftsmen being replaced by secretaries with PageMaker and a LaserJet printer or professional photographers seeing their market being shrunk by soccer moms with digital cameras. On the other hand, even as the craft changes, so does the market. It could be argued that there's a larger market for printed material now with DTP than there ever was before, but it is a different market. I suspect the photography market will end up being similar; a much changed but larger market overall. Like all disruptive changes of the past, there will be some who will embrace, adapt and succeed and some who will resist and fail. Just don't take it too personally and remember the only people who like change are babies with dirty diapers.
PP wrote: Try calling up your local mag and asking to place a full page ad for $10
Why? Just setup an AdSense account with Google and get a whole lot better targeting of your ad money with better feedback to finely craft your marketing campaign. There's a lot of magazines which have gone out of business because they tried to continue with the old ad business model. Who's got the last laugh?
This whole discussion could also be applied to the music industry. There are a lot more people making CDs now than ever before. The big labels are also having a lot of problems adapting.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. We just need to learn from history and do our best to be one of the successful adapters and not one of the extinct dinosaurs.
I was debating for a while of whether or not I should get into shooting for microstock and decided against it. It's obvious that with the exception of the top 1-3 percent, the rest of the people are hardly making any money when you consider the amount of time they have to put into shooting for microstock. Rich - you ask yourself that question - the amount of hours you spend a month shooting for stock, post processing, uploading images, tagging it all, maintaining your portfolio and divide that by your monthly income. Is it really worth it?
I also agree with the previous poster that getting 10-20% commission for your images is a ripoff. Stock agency has done nothing for you, yet they take 80-90% of the profit. Is that fair?
I cannot say what microstock is doing to the industry as I think it's too early to tell. But personally, I have no interest in microstock, as its purely business, for both the agency and the photographer. I can earn cash more easily through other means, and perhaps enjoy it more than shooting for the corporate machine.
The bottom line - to me photography is first and foremost an art, and microstock certainly doesn't fit that category.
More great comments. Thanks so much for the thought that's going into these.
@Ivan: Am I feeding the corporate machine? Yes. I believe the same can be said for posting images on ANY of the big photo-sharing sites. Did Yahoo buy Flickr to advance the art of photography or as an investment in hope to grow the bottom line?
Since I enjoy shooting stock so much, I haven't really done the math of calculating time versus return. I will say this though - with the 30% commission (not 10-20% as you stated) I receive on my iStock sales, I will be making my September house payment solely from August's revenue :)
You've brought up some very valid points there rich, so has everyone else here, and I think the only true answer is just to wait and see. From the point of a freelancer just starting out, I've seen how many people simply settle for less than they could be, its really easy to do, when you start out you take lots of pictures of lots of people and things and everything around you, soon people start noticing and ask for you to take some pictures for this or that and soon you have lots of people that you know that you've done 'free' photography for. There's choices to make at this point, do you start charging all your friends and risk losing them, or do you continue to take some free pictures and start trying to charge others, or just stay a hobbiest photographer for the rest of your life?
For me personally, I've noticed that the best photographers still get a huge amount of notice, and the 'good' hobbiest still don't get that much work. Theres still a large gap between good and best, and that I think is what will keep the art of it alive. All the commercialization does is cut out the mediocre and the middle ground. I think in this sense it actually helps the art of photography and creates two separate and distinct fields of work, the art and high-paid commercial work, and the world of stock photography.
Paul Rohde
Rich --
The key to your response is that you're enjoying it, and that's all that matters. I know that stock photography doesn't fit my photography style, so I don't shoot it. Doing it just for money would be stupid because I can make more money doing other activities, but if you're enjoying it than whatever you make per hour doesn't matter.
Ivan
Well..for example...
Now I just make my own ice and keep my food cold in a refrigerator.
I hardly ever call the ice man anymore...
or the lamplighter...
I think you know what I'm saying.
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