I’ve been told on several occasions — most recently by an editor at the Washington Post — that I ought to submit some of my 2,000 Flickr photos (and others) to a stock photo agency. And recently I was approached by Lee of the Stockphoto Pro site to sign up for a 20 to 30 percent share of revenues from any of my photos that they license.
So I asked two photographer friends — Thomas Hawk of Zooomr and Scott Beale of Laughing Squid — whether they could recommend any stock photo outfits to work with.
But first, what’s the rule with stock photos? Thomas says there are two types of stock photography: editorial and creative.
“Think of editorial as news/magazines/fine art, etc. If you shoot someone and the photo is used for editorial purposes, no model release is needed.
“Think of creative as an advertisement. If someone wants to buy the photo for an advertisement, then a model release is needed — doesn’t matter if the person is famous or not.” He also cautioned that you might also need a location release if you shoot an identifiable business such as The Grand Lake Theater.
Here’s a model release form that I put up on Ourmedia’s Learning Center last year, and here’s another Learning Center article about legal release waivers.
Tom considers
20-30% payouts as “a ripoff,” and wrote an impassioned piece last summer about Why Corbis’ New SnapVillage Stock Photography Agency is a Bad Deal for Photographers, though Zooomr is not yet in a position to serve as a people-powered stock photo agency.
Tom and Scott singled out Photoshelter as one of the best photo agency options for photographers. It took a lot of clicking around to find out how much Photoshelter gives to photographers: 70 percent of each sale, which sounds perfect. Here’s an article in PopPhoto.com about the site’s launch last September. I just registered on the site. Tom added that Alamy also has a good reputation.
Scott also does something quite smart: On his Flickr photos, he attaches a Creative Commons license, but also instructs anyone who reuses it to credit him in a certain way.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
I’ve been in the business a long time (sell side) and caution one to not overly prioritize royalty percentage (though 20-30% is not ideal) nor be overly swayed by “photographer freindly/focused” agencies (although it is a good thing). The issues to consider are as follows: Consider the nature of clients buying imagery on a given site; will that market want the type of content contained in your imagery. Using terms that would apply to your imagery, search for images on the various sites you’re considering. Consider if your images will fill a vital nitch of that site or if your entering into the most saturated content of that site. Consider the nature of your shooting and what type of relationship you expect. Are you looking for creative input for new speculative shoots or are you looking to “simply” market your existing archive. Also be aware that if you are really considering investing energy, time and money into your “stock” business, consider working with various agencies who each complement the images you’d provide. Though traditionally photographers signed exclusively with one agent, that is no longer the case. I would also recommend that you test several “micro-stock” agencies to test the market for your images. Yes, micro-stock is a very low-$ sale (though has the potential for volume), but represents a low barrier to entry and could be a quick way to learn sellability of your images for such a venue or even broader market.
Jeff’s comments are well considered and balanced. I concur that there is now a large array of opportunities for people to sell their photos online. Only the best photographers with very large portfolios will find direct representation at the large agencies, but microstock agencies, PhotoShelter and Alamy have low barriers to entry. Microstock in particular is ideal for finding your feet as the volume of sales in high so you get immediate feedback. A good average on microstock is $1 – $2 per photos per month, though that an average and the range is very wide. If you sell extremely well, then you can consider the other options. If not, then microstock is the ideal place to learn as there’s lots of feedback and community support in the forums, both within the agencies and independent forums and blogs.
-Lee