Posts Tagged ‘Stock Photography’
Getting your Photos on the Web – Free but not so Easy – Part 2
Alexander Nevsky in Snow
The Alexander Nevsky Memorial Cathedral Church in Sofia has been a good seller for me.
It’s one of the most famous buildings in the Balkans and it’s best to try to get a slightly different image.
Maybe that’s why I’ve found that snow scenes have done well.
I’m in the happy position that I live within easy walking distance of this fine building and so I can photograph it in all seasons by day and by night, in outline and in detail.
As Stock Photography is partly a numbers game it means I can easily build up a large set of different images of this great church.
The general economic climate and the various changes in the stock photo industry mean that I’m going to write a slightly different blog than I meant to, but I still think that I’m on theme.
It’s for you to judge.
Just as I was planning more chat about the business of stock photography, and how to have a web presence, it turns out that for many individuals and companies it’s actually the end of the business of stock photography and the end of their web presence.
Those of you who have followed my blog for some time will have seen that the link I used to have to Photoshelter has gone because Photoshelter, at least as a stock photo agency, is no more.
I received the news the other day from Alamy, as an Alamy contributor, that Alamy are reducing the photographer’s percentage.
The reason they give is to generate more money to break into the United States market.
And if we look at the USA market, what is happening?
Corbis is still there. Luckily, it seems to have great financial backing but as far as I know, is not exactly a money spinner.
Getty, the big player – its business model so much criticized by Photoshelter, has taken over Jupiter images for a mere $96 m dollars.
Now $96 m. dollars may not be small change to you and me but it seems that somewhere there’s money to be made in the stock photo business.
And only yesterday Digital Railroad posted on their site:
“October 28, 2008
To our valued Members and Partners:
We deeply regret to inform you that Digital Railroad (DRR) has shut down.
On October 15th we reported that the company had reduced its staff and was aggressively pursuing additional financing and/or a strategic partner. Unfortunately, those efforts were unsuccessful. Therefore Digital Railroad has been forced to close all operations.
Digital Railroad has attracted a loyal set of customers and partners, and we regret this unfortunate outcome. Without sufficient long-term financial support, the business had become unsustainable.
Thank you for allowing us to serve the photographic community these past few years.”
So what’s to be done?
Well I have some ideas and just for the moment I’m going to continue with how to build a web presence which might be even more important in these troubled times.
Interestingly enough I recently revisited Dan Heller’s site and found some interesting comments there which reinforce the point I made about photographers and web designers:
“If you get beyond your own technical skills or interests, then you might want to outsource the job to a web designer. But buyer beware: this path comes with some risks”
I suggest you read his comments here
Now I’m not going to suggest to everyone that you do what Dan did and learn everything yourself but I do still want to emphasize that however much you want to work with an expert professional like a web-designer, it’s still a good idea to have some idea of how to do things, if only to ask the right questions.
You’ll see that this Blog is hosted on WordPress.
It’s taken me a long time and lot of thinking to make this decision, and things are changing all the time.
I’ll comment on my reasons for choosing a blogging platform and some other online matters in my next post.
By the way, so far my images have been straightforward stock photos but I do try to explore other outlets for sales and so for the next few blogs I’m going to showcase some of my photos available for sale on ImageKind
It’s the Business that Counts
Dandelion Clock
Some time ago I promised to come back to what you might call the non photographic aspects of photography – particularly Stock Photography.
Perhaps looking at some of the wider issue such as a workflow involving computers and computer programmes, storage and websites, Stock Agencies and so on.
As this is a photo site I decided when writing this sort of post that a good idea might be to start with a picture of a successful Stock Photo and then go on to the post theme.
This post starts with a photo of a Dandelion Clock.
I’ve taken hundreds of dandelion photos over the years but this one shows the influence of digital imaging techniques.
It’s a studio shot taken using electronic flash against a black velvet background.
I used my sensor cleaning blower to puff a little and loosen a couple of spores as I took the picture.
Later I made several layers and created a pattern based on repeating the individual spores.
No point in pretending that this is a straight shot – nevertheless the final image matched very closely the image in my mind’s eye.
And so to the “business” side of Stock Photography.
This was originally inspired by a comment from a reader called Mary – I responded to her personally but it seems to me that her query opens up a number of interesting avenues that I have had to encounter over the years.
One of the main problems is the ever changing nature of photographic practice in a digital age.
I think it’s fair to say that this comment is pretty vague – the expression “sites available” is a bit confusing, perhaps it’s webhosts.
Anyway, I thought it was worth looking into a bit more.
First of all, I think it’s certainly helpful for a photographer to have web presence but exactly what sort needs a bit of thinking about.
If you want to have a presence of your own, you’re going to need to host it somewhere.
So, next time let’s have a look at some hosting options
Replacing People You Don’t Want
Oops! I thought I’d arranged for this post to go out in the middle of my holiday! It didn’t. Still, don’t worry, Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
In my last post I emphasized how important it is that people in a stock photograph should be either:
Not be recognizable
or
Have signed a model release.
The reason, as I said, is that photographs with recognizable people in them cannot be used for commercial purposes such as advertising.
In my photo “a stroll through the park” we removed the two men strolling by using a rub out and replace technique.
Now we are still left with the man sitting on the bench, It’s clear from the blow up that he is recognizable.
We have a number of options:
We can crop the picture to exclude the recognizable figure – this will not work in every case and will always alter the composition and reduce the picture area.
We can use copy and clone techniques to eliminate the figure altogether – this needs some skill and will, of course, alter the composition and content of the picture.
We can replace the recognizable figure with information which will be acceptable from the legal/commercial point of view.
The key to this approach is to have a collection of faces and figures which can be used legally.
One source is pictures of friends, family and other model released pictures – we can shoot a whole variety of these especially for this purpose.
Another source is royalty free pictures with the appropriate rights. These are widely available and need not be large or high resolution.
For this image I have used a royalty free image obtained from the disc provided with Steve Caplin’s must read book “How to Cheat at Photoshop”.
The final, corrected image, depends on two procedures:
First – replace the original head with an appropriate model released/licenced head.
Next – as a finishing touch, select appropriate items of clothing and change important features such as shape or colour. Here I have selected the blue clothes and changed them to green.
The final image is no longer recognizable as the original figure, but the basic information and composition of the picture is preserved.
This is a post in haste as I’m off for a family holiday. See you when I’m back.
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