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8 Steps To Becoming A Published Photographer
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Trend Notes
What does it take to be a worker hired by
a stock photo agency?
A recent ad in the ASPP (American Association on Picture Professionals)* listed these elements as essential:
The ideal candidate for the Imaging Specialist position will possess:
--Professional-level Photoshop CS skills (a must).
-- Professional-level knowledge of color theory, color reproduction, color correction and image manipulation.
-- College Degree preferred.
-- Bachelor¹s degree, associate degree or equivalent on-the-job work experience in high-volume digital image processing, tracking, archiving and cataloging.
-- Knowledge of Microsoft Office (a must), other production/database software knowledge helpful.
-- Must have very good color visualization abilities and great attention to detail.
-- Ability to work independently and follow specific production guidelines.
-- Excellent record-keeping skills.
-- Good communication skills; not afraid to ask questions to ensure work is completed accurately and with artistic vision.
-- Ability to maintain color calibration requirements on equipment.
-- Experience in troubleshooting and maintaining PC computers.
-- Experience with servers and computer networks.
-- Team player with a "whatever-it-takes" attitude.
http://www.aspp.com/howtojoin.lasso
Welcome
to PhotoAim.com. Here's where you'll find information
about stock photography, editorial stock photography,
specialized photography, stock agencies, mini-stock
agencies, selling pictures, and social photography.
Future Stock 2011
It is morning and as you finish your breakfast, in October of the year 2011, you click on your "daily revenue" feature on your keypad.
"My! That's a nice surprise," you exclaim. "But of course garden publishers are preparing for their year 2012 brochures, magazine articles, calendars and catalogs."
You are a gardening enthusiast and specialize in vegetables. Before you go off to your job as a biologist at a nearby college, you are examining your stock photo sales made last night while you were sleeping. Fourteen sales for a total of $307.16. That beats yesterday's sales of $215 for seven sales.
"I wonder if that company in Buenos Aires is still interested in the three dozen seedling shots I emailed them last week," you wonder to yourself just as the fax line rings. You watch as the machine curls out an order totaling $1,700 US. Not bad for 24 hours' "work."
You have been engaged in this kind of stock photo marketing for the past five years. You have developed a database of photos in an area (gardening) that you have special interest in and abundant knowledge about. You are not only a serious amateur gardener, but you also teach horticulture.
About five years ago, you began building a massive file, 10,000 photos now, capturing all aspects of vegetable gardening, from seed to mature plant. You researched the biological and common name of each plant you photographed. Because you live in the southwest desert area of the U.S., many of your images are unique to that part of the country. You have recorded the stages of various plants' growth, various insects that plague different plants, the resulting harm, and in some cases the effects of diseased plants on animals or people who eat them.
Your photobuyers, a select group of 42 photobuyers and researchers on your master list, call you by first name and you call them collect whenever you wish. You have become an important resource to them. You also deal with outside buyers. Every now and then you get an occasional one-time sale from a buyer who has used the Internet to locate you and your email address. A children's book publisher bought one of your beanstalk images, an advertising agency bought a tomato plant growth sequence for a pharmaceutical ad, and a close-up of a ladybug was used on a drug company's advertisement for a salve for freckles. But for the most part, your checks come from within your 42 mainstays who are prompt with their photo requests, and who know you do good work and provide accurate captioning.
WHEN IT ALL STARTED
And how did this system of acquiring that "just right" photo at an inexpensive fee all start? It was born of the revolution in e-commerce marketing at the turn of the century; inspired by the Napster music outburst back in 2001. Internet entrepreneurs realized that if you injected some democracy into music buying, more people could enjoy music at a lower cost to the consumer. And if you applied evolving Internet search methods, photo researchers and photobuyers, using the same basic technology, could use more illustrations because they were easier to find. A final advantage was micro-payments, a system of tracking multiple volume sales and controlling the bookkeeping through subscription services that provide royalty tracking and payments schemes, ensuring that the photos purchased didn't leak out onto the wider Web landscape.
In the first decade of the 2000's, the world of stock photography distribution changed. No longer did massive stock agencies, based on previous century technology, control the commerce. Photobuyers armed with Web search know-how, aimed their high-speed computers and bandwidth directly at individual photographers who were able to supply the highly specific images they were looking for. Everyone from school children to major book publishers, from TV documentary production companies to major advertising agencies, were customers.
What made the difference? There were several factors. Digital cameras that could produce high-resolution images became affordable. Speedy phone lines could transmit images for preview with immediacy. Web search engines became more sophisticated. Photographers began building deep selections of specific subject matter that they were expert in and enjoyed photographing. Business software for stock photographers emerged that made bookkeeping and accounting chores more bearable. Disk storage became cheap and dependable. Digital-only printing plants became the norm rather than the exception. Picture security systems became useable. Copyright protection laws were revised and brought into the new millennium. Magazines and book publishers focussed more on theme publishing, rather than producing "across the board" subject material. Photobuyers and researchers became more versatile in Web technology and more expert in the select special interest area of their readers.
BLOWING IN THE WIND
What caused the demise of the large stock photo agency as we know it today? All of the above, of course, but the main factor was that, being a centralized organization, the massive stock agency was too monolithic to be able to act swiftly when a buyer needed a picture. In the past, the massive stock agency was convenient because all the images were housed in a central supermarket-style location. But the emergence of the Web destroyed this advantage. Photobuyers could now go directly to the supplier-the photographer - rather than through a bureaucratic middleman system.
In addition, if the buyer needed a recent photo of school children in France, or a skyline of a particular city in California, the image from the stock agency might be 4 to 5 years old. A query to a California photographer living in the exact city or to a Parisian schoolteacher-amateur photographer, could produce current results in less than 24-hours.
We emerged into an era where film-produced images became artifacts and were seen in 'antique' exhibits, and film photographers came to be revered as artists who mastered archaic darkroom techniques to provide museum-quality prints. Digital photography became the norm. Not only did the automatic controls on digital cameras allow persons with a sensitive eye for imagery to produce fine quality images, but photo editing software allowed them to enhance the pictures for additional creative treatment.
When we look back on the turn of the century, our grandchildren will admire those early photographers who spent lonely hours in darkness to produce memorable film images of the world around us. The turn of the century will also be known in photography circles as the era when photography lost the shackles of cumbersome roll film and odorous darkroom chemicals. It will be known as the revolution that gave pictures back to the people and eliminated greedy photo pricing and limited distribution of those images.
Thanks to the photography of yesteryear, we were able to perceive a limited view of our planet. The new era of photography will be boundless in its energy to provide us with a more comprehensive knowledge of our world.
Rohn Engh is director of PhotoSource International and publisher of PhotoStockNotes. Pine Lake Farm, Osceola, WI 54020 USA Email: info@photosource.com Fax: 1 715 248 7394
Web site: www.photosource.com
STARTING OUT. Break into photography
by taking an online photo course. This website maintains it
will help you avoid the usual pitfalls of beginners in photography.
Designed for all ages.
COPYRIGHT POSITION STATEMENT
(Publishers please take note.)
Our PHOTOLETTER subscribers consistently supply professional-quality photographs to the publishing industry. These pictures are provided on a rental basis. They are not provided on an all-rights, work-for-hire basis, which would conflict with both the letter and the spirit of the new Copyright Law enacted into force on January 1, 1978. We urge our subscribers not to endorse checks or sign agreements (`work for hire') which would imply that rights to a picture are transferred to the publisher (or person making the assignment.) Such rights are transferred only through special agreement and substantial compensation.
Advance Notes: How long has stock photography been around? You might say since 1852, according to Andrea de Polo, Marketing Director at Alinari, Italy's oldest stock photo agency. PhotoStockNotes interviewed him about the company's past and future in the digital era.
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PSN: You are the oldest picture library in Italy, maybe the world. When did ALINARI start?
A: Alinari is indeed the world's oldest photographic archive still in activity. It was established in 1852 in downtown Florence, Italy, by the Alinari Brothers.
PSN: Who are your target customers?
A: Before the opening of the Alinari website, the main clients were photographers, stock agencies, libraries, editors and publishers, professors and historians, students, universities from around the world. Today, thanks to the Alinari online picture database (bilingual with 150,000 images today and 400,000 by the year 2003) our customers are also press people, journalists, and other business users that need content around the clock.
PSN: How many photographers does ALINARI represent?
A: About 300 main photographers from around the world.
PSN: What's in your files?
A: The archive preserves over 2,000,000 glass plates negatives, slides, and film negatives. This is one of the largest photographic holdings in the world. We have over 1,500,000 vintage photographs from around the world made from the beginning of photography (1839) until today. The Alinari archive includes various photographic processes, including Albumen Prints, Salt Paper Prints, Ambrotypes, Daguerreotypes, Gelatin Silver, Photogravure, Collodion, Cyanotype, etc.
PSN: What size are the photos and how are they delivered (mail, in person, etc.)?
A: Before the opening of our Alinari online business (year 2000), Alinari was selling its pictures mostly as slide copies, and they were delivered by express mail; the picture inquiries were coming to Alinari by fax or by phone. Today, with the Alinari B2E (http://edu.alinari.it) and B2B sites (http://business.alinari.it), the images can be purchased and downloaded online, or can be sent on CD-ROM, DVD or, again, as slide copies.
PSN: Are many of your customers outside Italy?
A: Yes, in fact the most important clients come from Europe and the U.S.
PSN: What is the range of your sales today (geographical)?
A: About 50% from Europe, 40% from North America and Canada, and 10% from the rest of the world.
PSN: What is your annual dollar (revenue) volume today?
A: About $1,500,000 USD.
PSN: How many persons are employed by your agency?
A: Between full-time and part-time, over 60 people.
COST OF TRAVEL OVERSEAS is always prohibitive for the stock photographer
just starting out. One way to skirt around this problem is to become a
Travel Agent.
