The Online Photographer

Jim,
Yes, I'm actually glad there are others to share the work. I've done two weddings, and they're HARD.

Mike

I think the point is a little different.
Most part of microstock contributors are amateurs (pro-guys as Yuri Arcurs are exceptions not the rule!), they upload their images just for the pleasure of gaining some little money doing something they love. They don't count the time and the money they invest in this thing. If the contributors would be only professional microstock would be just a little phenomenon with very little influence on the stock market. The real winning idea for the first microstock agency was understanding that there were a lot of non-pro photographers out there ready to work for free, or almost...

You think you're going to sell books? Horsehockey, mate, that's MY business. I want a worldwide monopoly on written language. You want something to read, you buy some of MINE.

All the rest of you bastards using written language are just taking wealth out of my coffers.

which obviously should contain a whole lot of red, white, and blue

Really? She looks maybe German to me, and with a bike (certainly not a stereotypically American thing to do). I thought the ribbons in this picture might have a lot of black, red and yellow... unless you were thinking she's Dutch?

"The gnashing of teeth I'm reading from traditional usage-dependent stock photographers about microstock" is about as useful as a wagon wheel manufacturer complaining about the coming of the car.

Times change and sometimes pursuits that once earned people good money die off and that particular source of income changes to another.

An earlier post on this debate suggested that if photographers wanted microstock to go away, they should stop sending in their images. Given that the queue just to have an image reviewed at istock is now approaching 70,000; I'd suggest that is not happening.

And is anyone seriously suggesting the image in question to the original debate (the jar of coins)is really worth much more than $135.00?

I guess where I come down on the whole thing is that if you provide a valuable enough service to people, then they'll pay you for what you provide; but if they can get the same value for cheaper elsewhere, then they probably will.

In general, I agree with you, although I think it's more accurate to state that a buyer merely needs to perceive that they're paying less for the same value in order to justify the switch from a high-price provider to a low-price one, and whether they actually are or are not is largely irrelevant.

Understandably, many high-price providers perceive the issue here is one of low-price providers "unfairly" undercutting their prices, when maybe the issue is really that they are not doing a very good job of educating potential customers as to how the value of a photo should be measured or explaining why their photos provide more value than those offered by their low-price competitors.

If they can't or won't do this, then why shouldn't their customers leave them for a lower-price alternative?

"I thought the ribbons in this picture might have a lot of black, red and yellow... unless you were thinking she's Dutch?"

Ricardo,
Black and white leaves all that up to the imagination....

I once said something like "all photographs should be black and white" and a naturalist / wildlife photographer stepped in and said nope, not in my field, and he reeled off a list of birds and animals that had to be in color if you wanted to identify them properly. I bought that argument. Also wouldn't want to have to bet what colors those ribbons were....

Also, some people are actually good with color.

Mike

Sorry to burst your bubble here Mike, but if you where the only photographer allowed in the world, there'd be some guy in China (or Anaheim), doing life-portraits-while-you-wait-in-REAL-oil-paints for $39.99, tax included, freight extra. Not casting aspersions on your abilties, just saying that nature (and capitalism) abhors a vacuum.

"I always thought Eugene Atget was the first stock photographer."

John,
Good one, good one.

Mike

One must be careful with comparing the microstock issue with outsourcing. Outsourcing is about the fact that workers cannot move freely across borders as easily as employers.

Microstock and the devaluation of photography services is a by-product of the fact that the various tools available today (digital cameras, photography websites, etc.) have made it much easier for more people to produce higher quality work. However, the quality demands of clients have not increased similarly.

"*My dog would be famous."

Think about the cats.
NL

Phill nails it:

"Times change and sometimes pursuits that once earned people good money die off and that particular source of income changes to another."

Give people something they want and they'll pay you. But be prepared to discover that what they wanted wasn't "candles" but "light". There's nothing noble about complaining that your business plan is now a poor one.

I find it rather simple, if you want good pay for good work offer something nobody else offers. It's called personality, the complete opposite of stock.

Why should pros have any qualms over technically talented amateurs earning a few bucks on the side for competent if non-descript stock photos? There's loads of small, medium, and even big companies out there in need of impersonal, boring photography to damage their brand - I am happy not to cater to them. I'd rather have my name attached to something I can be proud of, take and sell images [not just photos].

And then pros can makee a lot of money, too, via microstock, handing over their duds.

Dennis,
The point being what Dierk said.

Mike

I used to contribute to three microstocks for yucks: Fotolia; a small independent Canadian-only site; and a third one I can't remember. I used a 4 mpix Canon G3 in those days. Photos sold for a dollar or so and I got 25 or 50 cents or something per sale. Having no previous experience in professional photo work, I didn't know that I was doing was the work of Satan. I thought that average everyday low-MP pics of nothing important was worth about a buck to the builders of low-volume web sites looking for visuals. I belong to a couple of not-for-profit volunteer organizations whose budget for a small photo on a brochure is about a buck or two, no more than that. I thought that was the market. Those clients will never hire a pro photographer. I thought that's what microstock was for.

I sold a couple of hundred photos (not different photos necessarily) and never reached the minimum payout threshold. When people started to contribute 6 and then 10 MP photos to those sites, some of obvious high production value, I thought it was a good time to get out, there's something wrong here. Putting that kind of effort with expensive equipment for trivial payouts didn't make sense to me. There can't be more than a handful of people making money at it. The aggregators of those photos, the microstocks themselves, are probably doing okay though.

I can understand that this situation rubs folks the wrong way. I used to write software for a living; now, that's outsourced overseas. That's what happens when you globalize economies--wages go down for the average joe, and salaries go up for CEOs. It has worked out that way because the rules of the system were set up to work that way. That is not a statement of a belief in malicious conspiracy, far from it, only that systems evolve in ways that benefit someone, and sometimes it's not you.

There are millions of digicams around and the internet is here and is cheap so that the cost of distribution of those pics is trivially low. And a lot of those pics taken by amateurs are good.

Mentioning Red and 1950's Stock brings to mind Ozzie Sweet. As a kid I believe his influence was evey where.

Cheers,
Birrrrrrr....

It's about time we had a "Fair Trade" microstock agency--something where photographers get paid more than a measly 20% of sales. If I had the capital I'd start one today, and if the numbers worked out I'd love to see the take-home ratio flipped to where photographers take home 80% and the agency takes home 20%, not the other way around. Microstock obviously fills a market need for cheap photography, but it shouldn't be at the expense of the photographers.

Craig wrote: I'm sure there is an example, but I can't think of a single instance when the people fighting progress were able to prevail.

Well...the Republicans in the US have done a pretty good job of preventing the creation of a Public Health plan for the past 60 years or so.

Just sayin'...