What Stock Buyers Want . . .

By Pat Hunt
Special to the Stock Asylum
May 22, 2006

© 2006 Pat Hunt


It's enough to make your head spin.

Stock photography business models change, mature, and grow faster than anyone can keep up with. It makes the mid-90s concern for royalty-free CDs seem like ancient history.

The latest dramatic iteration has been the creation of micropayment sites, charging as low as $1 to $3 to license a stock image. This followed the subscription sites, where clients pay one set fee for a period of months to access thousands of images.

Photographers earn as little as $0.20 per download in these new systems. Image license buyers like advertising agencies and textbook companies use these windfalls, to access more volume and fight downward pressure on budgets.

A survey of image users garnered some interesting information about what Internet image sites are preferred, and what purchasing budgets will look like in the coming year.

Asked if they were actually licensing fewer individual images this year because they are accessing volume imagery on subscription sites, the response was often “no.”

“Not at all." said an employee of Smith-Winchester Advertising. "Sites like Getty or Index Stock have made it economical to subscribe to six month or one year plans. If I have a large project where I know I will be ordering a lot of photos, and those photos are not extremely specific, I’ll go to one of the subscription plans to save money. If it’s a one-off, then I’ll go where I can get the best looking image.”

Scholastic claims it only uses subscription sites when budgets are low or when multiple images will be used on one page. Barnes & Noble is not able to find appropriate images for their editorial book covers and interiors in subscription sites. A textbook freelancer claims that most of the companies she works for don’t use stock photos from subscriptions.

Weekly Reader, on the other hand, says it licenses 10 percent to 15 percent fewer images because of subscription sites while Avocet Communications says it uses fewer individually-licensed images because of high prices.

“Rights Managed photos tend to be so expensive that we could easily jump on a plane and fly across the country to take the photo ourselves for a cheaper price," said an Avocet image buyer.

It would seem over the last year that Getty Images has held firm on pricing and that royalty-free prices have crept up at nearly every distributor.

What does this do for the “free” image exchange sites?

This group of image buyers claimed about two-to-one that “free” is not their cup of tea. As one client said: “If I find a good image fast, it’ll never be cheap.”

On the other hand, Christina Micek, a freelance researcher, who has written about Google Image Search says, “Since Google Image Search has become more popular, some sources are allowing free use of images in exchange for what I refer to as ‘bragging rights’. This is still rare, and too time consuming. More often than not, the content providers who give imagery away freely are mostly scientists who have had their research and all data acquisitions paid for by Universities and (other) grants.”

Jones and Bartlett Publishers sometimes actively seeks public domain or free imagery, but this is because their needs are sometimes not met by stock agencies or because the pricing is too high, said a researcher.

Almost everyone claims to be the victim of internal pressures to cut costs. One ad agency claims their clients want to bring costs down while the cost of stock imagery goes up. In-house photography using digital equipment is sometimes the answer.

The publishing companies also express relief that they can negotiate special agreements with stock distributors and say they produce more of their own photo shoots. The pressure to reduce costs often centers on certain editorial projects such as those involving work by new authors.

What will happen in the next twelve months? Will everybody be spending more or less?

The response was about equally divided between those who will spend more or and those planning to spend about the same amount. Few are scaling back. Some ad agencies expect to spend 10 percent to 15 percent more.

Scholastic says they may reduce the number of images used in a layout - from two per page to one per page, or from six to four in a spread. Also some are finding it cheaper to use their own photographers.

Fodor’s travel books said it will use more images on both covers and interiors. Wiley Publishing will offer a new book series, increasing its needs by ten to 20 percent. Barnes and Noble expects to spend more because of volume production increases and not because of pricing demands.

An employee at Bartlett Publishing says, “We are spending less on photography per project, but due to the consistent increase in the amount of textbooks we are publishing each year, we are technically spending more overall.”

How will low-priced image collections on the market affect their businesses in the future?

“Not much,” is an typical response. Many companies have leaned toward using royalty-free imagery for years anyway, and many still demand quality or must pay to get the unique images they need.

As an employee at one textbook company said, “Until ethnicity requirements are answered, more reality shots provided (less obviously staged imagery), and regions are generic enough, I will turn to imagery outside these collections.” These companies lament that many collections contain images better suited for commercial and advertising uses.

Another buyer added that, “The lower priced image collections allow us to save money on ‘fill’ images and pay more for the difficult to locate images.” Photographers are encouraged to focus on hard to find imagery instead of imagery that is easy to shoot and plentiful, this buyer said.

What are some of these image needs that clients struggle to find? The responses vary:

High quality lifestyle for pharmaceutical use.

Portraits of sweet looking kids, classroom activity shots, world events, travel and history.

Fresh, realistic kids and teens in everyday situations, news, health, career development and science.

Colorful and clear travel images.

Health, science, public safety, nursing, criminal justice, and computer science.

Photos from Spanish, French, Italian and German speaking countries.

Quotes from the survey about image needs:

“For textbook companies, the image must illustrate the point of the text, and that takes first priority. Second priority is quality, but we will not throw out quality unless content is impossible to find.”

“Calendars require very high quality scans of slides or very good captures. Having said that, I’ve been able to successfully take small digital captures (4”x6” at 300dpi) and interpolate upwards to 14”x12” with no visible sign of image degradation . . . . This depends on a quality chip to begin with, and a file that hasn’t been 'jpeg'd' to death.”

So, where are all of these images coming from? Each company listed their low cost and high cost favorites.

For low-cost shopping, some searchers focused on Index Open, iStockphoto, Rubber Ball, Photo Spin, Photos.com and Clipart.com.

After these low-end choices, the list graduates to the familiar –– Getty and Corbis, along with Masterfile, Index Stock, Alamy, Jupiter Images, Superstock, and age fotostock. Also on the list were Picture Quest, Associated Press, eStock, Creatas, Agpix, IBID, National Geographic, Boeing, Veer, Photo Researchers, Bridgeman Art Library, Visuals Unlimited, Photo Edit, and Image Works. It should be noted that some of these brands are part of larger companies.

Jones and Bartlett put it best: “We prefer to work with agencies that not only have a large collection, but pride themselves on excellent customer service, price negotiation and quick, efficient turnaround time.”

Smith-Winchester Advertising is at: http://www.smith-winchester.com.

Avocet Communications is at: http://www.avocetcommunications.com.

Scholastic Publishing is at: http://www.scholastic.com.

Weekly Reader Publishing is at: http://www.weeklyreader.com.

Simon & Schuster is at: http://www.simonandschuster.com.

Jones and Bartlett is at: http://www.jbpub.com.

Fodor’s Travel Books is at: http://www.fodors.com.

John Wiley Publishing is at: http://www.wiley.com.

Christina Micek Research is at: http://photodemon@hotmail.com.

Barnes & Noble Publishing is at: http://www.bnpub.com/photo.