Tag Archives: Stock Photography

Stock Photography: Just Say No?

By DSLRBlog Editors | Published May 26, 2006

It seems Ken Rockwell has an itch he has to scratch about Stock Photography

Call me a naysayer, but this doesn’t seem like a way to make money. I’ve always made money by differentiating myself. Stock is the antithesis of differentiation. Say “NO!” all you want to royalty-free websites like istockphoto.com and the royalty-free discs of several years ago, but so long as enough photographers say YES! to submitting to these folks that will set the market price. This is exactly why I’m too chicken to mess with stock: enough others submit their work for nothing, so no one is going to pay me any more.

When I worked for a marketing agency there were quite a few occasions where stock photography was used but that tended towards those projects where the budget was low, deadlines were tight and the picture requirement was very generic. Other than the top stock libraries like Getty that have some real top photographers on their books, I think the stock photography that Ken is so against is the domain of the “$10 template” website hack, they are not his market anyway.

It is tempting to think I could make a passive income from stock photos but I can’t see me getting up the enthusiasm to take photographs JUST to submit to a library. If someone was to come along and ask to purchase rights to use a picture that would be a completely different proposition.

Having said that, there is a lot of people making money and having fun. Don’t knock it till you have tried it, I just might give it a go.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Share on TumblrSubmit to StumbleUponSave on Delicious
Posted in News and Commentary, Photography Business, Stock Photography, Stock Photography Agencies | Also tagged , 2 Comments

Flickr as Stock Photography Library update

By DSLRBlog Editors | Published May 22, 2006

Recall I wondered what was stopping Flickr adding stock photo features? It seems people better equipped to debate the issue have already been thinking about it …

Will Flickr Enter The Commercial Stock Photography Business?

Flickr/Yahoo recently announced in the category Product/General Management two new interesting vacancies for a Product Manager A and a Product Manager B, which raises the question if Flickr will enter the commercial stock photo market in the not too distant future, with selected and rights cleared images of its huge image library.

I hadn’t thought about things like model releases, and all that legal stuff, but I am sure if companies are making a profit selling stock photography with far less technical savvy, legal support or investment as Flickr then the boys from Flickr/Yahoo! could crack it.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Share on TumblrSubmit to StumbleUponSave on Delicious
Posted in News and Commentary, Online Photography Community, Photography Business, Stock Photography, Stock Photography Agencies | Also tagged , Leave a comment

Flickr, Why Not Stock Photography?

By DSLRBlog Editors | Published May 15, 2006

Thomas Hawk makes a good point about Flickr image search being way better than that from Google or Yahoo!

Does Middle America know to go to Flickr and do a search for birthdaycake and then to change the view to sort by interestingness to get some kick ass photos of birthday cakes for the homemade card that you are going to make for Aunt Betty? (beachycat, that’s a kick ass photo of those candles). Of course not. But they do know to go to Yahoo! image search and type in Birthday Cake and find an image. And they do know that if all of the photos of Birthday cakes on Yahoo Image Search suck (which they all do by the way) that they can go to Google Image Search and search for birthday cakes there (and they still suck).

BUT, he goes on to say he thought about creating his own Web2.0 stock photography company. Here’s the thing, we have one right there in Flickr, you don’t need another company. Flickr just need to add that functionality to their own system.

At present there is a large, tagged, ranked database of great photography. IP rights are applied at varying degrees. How hard would it be to add another layer where you can mark an image so you can only get full size if you pay for it? Family; tick, Friends; tick; Customer; tick. Also it wouldn’t be too tricky to have an option where other sizes are watermarked even.

Many of the people I talk to who use Flickr have the images on Alemy, etc. There could be some mega revenue in there, why are they focussing on the consumer aspects when they could commercialise the images for those who want it?

Flickr could be a kick-ass stock photography library.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Share on TumblrSubmit to StumbleUponSave on Delicious
Posted in News and Commentary, Online Photography Community, Stock Photography | Also tagged , Leave a comment