Micro-Distributors Shine on New SA Listing . . .

Stock Asylum Staff Report
June 14, 2005

On the surface, it may look like recent stock industry consolidations have left photography buyers with very few options. But a closer look reveals a growing phenomenon that, with time, could blossom into a vital new marketplace for imagery.

Like speakeasies during prohibition, hundreds of "micro-distributors," many representing just a single photographer, have popped up in obscure corners of the web.

Together, suppliers with 20 or less image-producers represent a large and growing source of fresh stock, much of it high quality work by seasoned professionals like Peter B. Kaplan, Jay Maisel, Penny Gentieu, Frans Lanting and Seth Resnick. Other offerings display work by talented art photographers, nature shooters, and specialists with concentrated collections of single-subject work.

Unfortunately, tapping into these scattered sources can take incredible amounts of time, which is one reason the Stock Asylum created a keyworded directory of rights-managed stock pages from all kinds of web sites. Though not limited to micro-distributors, the new directory gives significant exposure to quality work from small suppliers. It debuts in the current Stock Asylum edition. ( Click here to access. )

This is more than just a listing of web sites. It represents a major effort to catalog pages of actual stock imagery within the web sites of photographers and distributors. The project debuts with over 500 pages containing tens of thousands of images.

From business meetings to animals, geishas to nuclear weapons, New York to the Cotswolds of England, image buyers will find work in all the categories they search at major distributors every day. And, importantly, many of these images have very modest usage histories when compared to those on the big web sites.

Though small image suppliers always existed, the current trend clearly exceeds anything seen before. It is the result of a number of other trends within stock photography.

Industry consolidations, like Corbis’ recent acquisition of zefa and Getty Images’ purchase of Photonica West, have severely reduced the number of high-profile libraries in which photographers can place commercial and editorial photography. The remaining large libraries offer contracts to fewer photographers and select fewer images from shooters who do have contracts.

At the same time, marketing necessities have forced many small suppliers into numerous “sub-agency” agreements, sometimes with distributors competing in the same geographic regions. With extra hands in the pie, photographers' percentages of licensing revenues can become almost miniscule -- in some cases, as low as 12.5 percent.

These factors , along with the emergence of affordable software for keyworded image searches, create a situation ripe for experimentation.

And much experimenting is going on.

When The Stock Asylum began its directory project, it expected to catalog about 200 web pages for the debut. SA has already cataloged more than twice that number without exhausting its first list of potentially appropriate web sites. Expect in excess of 1,000 cataloged pages before the end of the summer.

“I think having your own web site is part of what you do to solve the stock photography puzzle,” says aerial photographer Cameron Davidson. “But, it’s not the be all and end all at this point.”

Davidson also supplies images to Getty and Workbookstock. Most of his stock revenues come from these traditional suppliers and he says he may soon add another stock company to the mix.

Still, AerialStock.com, Davidson’s web site, has an impressive collection of images. Subjects range from the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and Washington DC to landscapes and natural disasters.

The photographer says that, after two-and-a-half years and a change in web hosting companies to IPNstock, he is making monthly image sales from his own web site.

( Through IPNstock, photographers and small distributors have their own web sites, but the sites are joined together so buyers have the option of searching all affiliated collections. IPN is owned by VNU Business Media, publisher of numerous trade magazines, including Adweek and PDN -- aka, Photo District News. )

Davidson says recent results have been sufficiently positive for him to consider marketing his site by direct mail.

Similarly, Hilary Skirboll, web director of Halo Images, says her company has seen monthly image sales since going live last February -- this despite spending little on advertising.

Halo is an offshoot of St. Louis-based Ferguson and Katzman Photography, an assignment photo business specializing in artistic photography. The online catalog includes some 4,000 images, mostly the work of three photographers.

Skirbol said Halo has mostly been successful selling to consumer book publishers, which often choose conceptual images to illustrate complex ideas expressed in books.

She knows monthly sales will not make the company a success, but adds that, “Actually we have been pretty happy. We knew from the start that we were going to be in this for the long haul.”

Davidson agrees that winning over large numbers of buyers will take time.

“It’s very easy for art directors and art buyers to just go to Getty, Corbis, Alamy or Workbookstock and look over a lot of images,” Davidson noted. I think there is going to be a long education curve before these people really start to consider smaller companies.”

But, working with a company like IPNstock gives him hope that more buyers can be won over. “I kind of feel that it is a stronger way to go -- that they have the money behind them to get this thing right.”

Aerialstock can be found at: http://www.aerialstock.com

Halo Images can be found at: http://www.haloimages.com