Stock photography for photographers, are you robbing yourself?

Michael wrote on Sunday 6 January 2019 at 11:26  | reply

Clear.

I am still curious what your posted photos are earning you now, since you no longer post new photos. It still won't be super generous, but it will be recurring passive income, with no hours / work required anymore.

Donald Willemsen wrote on Tuesday 8 January 2019 at 10:39  | reply

I completely agree with Wilmar. It isn't worth the effort, because the stock companies are making the big profits. In addition, the photos also have to meet a number of requirements with regard to, for example, colour saturation, etc. If a photo does not meet them, the photo is not accepted. If you really want to make serious money from photos, then you should start a stock company yourself. Wilmar points it out himself: average annual turnover €3,100. You can't live on that, let alone cover your costs.

Well, the distribution between the photographer's income and the stock agency's is skewed, but luckily I can make a living from it!

If exposure doesn't work to get assignments, then how do you get assignments when you don't have a network through which you can get assignments?

How is it nowadays with paid assignments?
In Belgium you had/have to comply with the establishment law: with a diploma or certificate, and a business management certificate (accounting), you can get a VAT number. Only then are you officially allowed to start working, and earn money with your photos. (and pay taxes and social security contributions :-( )

@ Donald Willemsen I think I do stand out with underwater portrait photography, but charging a fair price isn't easy when you can't find anyone willing to pay it. Hence my question: How do you get assignments? I regularly post photos on fb, but no assignments come from that

Donald Willemsen wrote on Tuesday 8 January 2019 at 17:01  | reply

@Erika is there sufficient demand for your kind of photography? Find an already
established photographer to work with, who also does underwater photography.

@Mieke: Taking photos is indeed super fun If you are an amateur photographer and have taken a few nice photos during your vacation, then I can imagine it would be fun to see if you can sell those photos through a stock agency. Usually, these are beautiful but fairly generic images: photos of, for example, a sunset, the Eiffel Tower, a beautiful landscape, a close-up of a flower, etc.

But there are also photographers who take stock photos because they think (or hope) that it is a good business model for them. They seek out situations that the average private individual does not encounter, in order to take stock photos. Those photos can subsequently be purchased by large commercial companies from a stock agency for a few euros. Those photographers fatten the stock agencies, shortchange themselves, and ruin the market for (semi-)professional photographers.

@ Wilmar Thank you so much for responding so extensively to my question! And also for taking the time to look at my website. You hit the nail right on the head regarding my target audience. It never occurred to me to show my portfolio to commercial parties and I have no idea where to start then. But I expect that with some searching on the internet I should be able to find quite a few commercial parties who might be interested in my photography. So thank you so much for the tip. I can definitely do something with that!

Furthermore, I completely agree with you regarding stock photography. I also tried that for years and it yields very little for the hours you invest in it. I thought it was just me. So it's nice to read that others have had the same experience.

I have done a lot of free work, for exposure and to build my portfolio, but I'm really fed up with it now. Hence my question. It's really nice that there are people like you and Donald who take the trouble to respond to it.

Curious which stock agency is somewhat acceptable for submitting photos?

@John: Me too

@August: those 3100 Euros per year do need to be put into the necessary context: it is an average over a period of 16 years, during which I had to upload approximately 42,000 stock photos. The uploaded photos are only a selection, I took many more photos. So it is not the case that I casually took a handful of beautiful pictures during my holiday. I invested an enormous amount of time in it, and money in equipment.

Travel photography is still a very enjoyable hobby for me, but I no longer do it with the illusion that I can recoup the cost of my trip through stock sales. These days I prefer to post my photos on my travel photography website (
www.reisfotografie.com ) or print them on canvas for home or for friends. I find that a much more enjoyable way to spend my free time than trying to get stock photos sold.

tinus10 wrote on Thursday 15 August 2019 at 16:23  | reply

The liberalization and commercialization of our society and economy have killed off a number of professions. Photography is one of them.

In the past, before the digital age, I also had images in an image bank. Among other things, postcards were made from them. That was fun. Especially because photography was still seen as a profession back then.

I understand that someone with a sole proprietorship does not have the financial means to purchase expensive photographic material for a website. In that case, I have no problem with them buying an image for a few Euros and placing it on their site.

But they are not the only ones who use them. Companies that actually could (and should) pay for them also use them.

The professional photographer has been completely strangled in this market.

I myself had an account with Shutterstock. I removed all my images from the site and closed my account. After uploading 450 images and making 1USD in revenue after a month, I quickly had enough. Better to turn back halfway than to get completely lost.

Because before you know it, you have invested so much time in it that you start to think it would be a shame to stop. And then you are trapped in the spiral. By then you have thousands of images in the image bank and to keep it going you have to keep uploading, otherwise all the effort will have been for nothing.

I recently watched a program about a Bolivian who is harvesting salt tiles on the salt flats. Hard work in extreme conditions.

That Bolivian gets 0.25 dollar cents per salt tile. He can harvest several dozen to hundreds per day.

As a stock photographer at Shutterstock, I scored 1 usd this month! 4 images of mine were sold.

I think I might emigrate to Bolivia!