Advance Noter:Scanning through dozens of off-target images can be time-consuming and eye-wearying, not to mention frustrating.
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In the Google search bar, type a phrase or several words that best describes the picture you’re looking for. Then type a space and then the word photosource. And click.
You’ll arrive at the PhotoSourceBANK. Your selection will appear (in text) on a page with the name and contact info of a photographer whose files include coverage of the subject matter you request. Contact the photographer to receive a lightbox selection of target images for you to review for consideration. Or, if the photographer is also a member of PhotoSourceGROUP, an icon will appear, that when you click on it will take you to an immediate view of the target photo or photos, ready for downloading.
Welcome
to PhotoBuyersChoice.com. Here's where you'll
find information about locating photos, photo research, dealing with photographers, using the internet, royalty free photos, and finding social photography.
The New Way
New Generation Media is a phrase we in the industry of buying and selling stock photos will hear more and more in the coming decade. Where'd it come from? It's a response to the increasing ways we can transmit information in today's hi-tech world.
The good news: these evolving forms of image creation and image delivery have created new markets. As a photo researcher you should be aware of what's ahead....not only relevant to the traditional print media: magazines, books, textbooks, and catalogs, but also the exploding electronic media -- the communication companies utilizing television, video processing, CDs, and new concepts like digital video, cell phones, desktop image delivery, screen-touch educational tools, and on-demand picture retrieval.
Many of the latter elements are already in wide use, with the rapidly increasing familiarity of photobuyers and photographers with the marketing and delivery advantages of the Internet.
Classic commercial stock photography (the familiar scenics and generalized "situation" shots) as we've known it over the past decades will continue to be in demand, but the overwhelming supply of these generalized stock shots, available now on CDs and from generic discount sources on-line, will diminish their uniqueness, value -- and price tag.
The New Generation Media market is so vast that it utilizes what has come to be known as "micromarketing," the ability to isolate specialized markets and respond to them efficiently.
Micromarkets are specialized (niche) markets.
To survive in the New Generation Media, freelance photo researchers will become specialists themselves. The rules haven't changed, only the target. The demand by photobuyers for content-specific images will spur the new generation media photographers and photo researchers to focus on specific subject areas they specialize in, and then service markets whose needs match those areas. The generalist (the classic photo researcher) will fade.
Specialized Needs
In the new media, you will deal more on a personalized basis with photo suppliers, whose collections of photos match your specialized needs.
Thanks to the digital revolution, disputes, lost or damaged images, legal suits, will be rare. Your relationship with your photo suppliers will be worthwhile. Each new photographer you find in your paticular theme areas of interest will have a deep selection and variety of images. You will maintain a working relationship for an average of ten to twelve years with this photographer.
I've described the new generation photo suppliers who are beginning today to change their marketing system from broad-based to narrow-based. Because media today is becoming more and more narrow in its focus--each market targeting to a different narrow segment of the customer base out there--content needs, e.g. text, sound, pictures, are following the same pattern.
No longer can a product appeal to a wide audience. Instead, an advertiser or publisher selects a particular segment of that audience as their target. As a photobuyer of images, if the theme of your publishing house matches a photo suppliers collection-you have made a match.
The new generation media, thanks to computers, the internet, and sophisticated database technology, will appeal to consumers of special interest: medicine, education, agriculture, transportation; and not only the broad spectrum of each of these areas but special interests within these categories. Medicine, for example, separates into a multitude of disciplines like nursing, surgery, pediatrics, etc. And pediatrics breaks down into areas of infancy, child care, childhood diseases, etc.
New media conduits like CDs, micropaymant sites, Interactive TV, and even cell phones will require highly specific images -- to target their particular highly specific audiences.
Generic pictures (scenics, landscapes, general-situation scenes) will continue to adorn the walls of your office -- but you will be signing checks for content-specific images.
In the new generation of picture acquisition -- you'll be buying more in volume -- dozens of images at a time.
Because most publishers produce their products (magazines, books, video and educational programming pieces, etc.) in a "theme line" -- you will seek out photo suppliers who meld easily into your production chain.
Rohn Engh is director of PhotoSource International and publisher of the weekly PhotoStockNotes. Pine Lake Farm, 1910 35th Road, Osceola, WI 54020 USA Email: info@photosource.com Fax: 1 715 248 7394
Web site: www.photosource.com
Business
Notepad
STOCK PHOTO AGENCIES
can be an outlet for some of your pictures. Do agencies object to you marketing your own pictures when they also represent you? No, not the established ones. They encourage you to also market on your own. They want to share the sales with you, and also to share the setbacks. They know that a photographer who markets pictures on his/her own will understands the pitfalls (and glories) of selling ... Full
Story
The 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 home based
travel agent. Make money from home as an independent travel
agent and see the world at a discount! Get details from this
informative eBook.
WORK: THE WORLD IN PHOTOGRAPHS
edited by Ferdinand Protzman. http://www.photosourcefolio.com /bookstoreone.htm#0792262042. Editorial photographers often include the working man or woman. Here’s a book that can serve as a blueprint of how to make photos of workers.
National Geographic has published a massive photography book featuring images – made by many of the world’s best photographers – that captures the world at work and give a fascinating fresh perspective on the universal theme. The book features nearly 190 photographs spanning some 150 years, from photography’s early decades in the 19th century to the first years of the new millenium. The images, many of which have never before been published, have been culled from National Geographic’s archive and other important collections. (ISBN 0-7922-6204-2; Aug. 29, 2006; $35.)
Advance Notes: The Digital Age has flattened the stock photo world to a stage where photo research has become ever more efficient, photo delivery has become lightning fast, and the individual editorial stock photographer now has more leverage than ever. What, though, has really changed?
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Now that the stock photo industry has Google et al on its side, it’s very easy for a photobuyer to flex their researching muscles and come up with a picture that just a decade ago would have been nearly impossible to find -- let alone license -- in an appropriate amount of time.
If you review publications from the last century, you’ll notice photobuyers leaned toward making-do with easy-to-locate pictures (generic) that they slapped in the layout, and then moved on to the next project. Today’s sophisticated reader expects more. The search engines today, based on search of text descriptions of images, provide avenues for researchers to find more specific pictures; “best” pictures instead of second best.
The result: happy researchers and happy photobuyers.
Check out www.photosource.com/bank and you’ll see how individual photographers are getting aboard this new ‘text-centric’ way of providing images to stock buyers.
With the new technology, “editorial stock photography” needs haven’t changed. What has changed for the editorial stock world is the delivery of pictures (speedy!), the absence of worries about losing a transparency, and a new work flow.
Most editorial buyers prefer highly specific pictures when they can locate them. Such images make their productions, periodicals, magazine articles, textbooks, more unique, and more appealing to their readers. If a photo researcher can find an image that is not generic (i.e. everyone is using it) but rather, specifically matches the writing content of the project, they are successful at their job.
Any photographer these days who has a deep selection of images in a specific category, is a very important resource to a target group of photobuyers out there whose “publishing themes” focus on that category. These buyers’ monthly budgets for photography can range from $20,000 per month to $90,000 per month.
No, the basics haven’t changed. Photographers can continue to find a home in today’s editorial stock photography field if they continue to photograph subject areas that please them and match the subject focus of specific publishing houses and magazines; and researchers now have better tools to locate these pictures.
Rohn Engh is director of PhotoSource International and publisher of PhotoStockNotes. Pine Lake Farm, 1910 35th Road, Osceola, WI 54020 USA. Telephone: 1 800 624 0266 Fax: 1 715 248 7394. Web site: www.photosource.com/products
Of
Interest
HOME OFFICE PERKS . . .
KNOWING THE ROPES
TO PUT MONEY IN YOUR POCKET
Advance Notes: If you’re self-employed, you’re eligible for specific tax deductions that can, in effect, “give yourself a raise.” There are many tax deductions you can claim that relate right to the place you probably do much of your work, your home. Here are some tips from the book, “422 Tax Deductions,” by Bernard Kamoroff, C.P.A.
The IRS accepts that a “home” office can be in a house, apartment, loft, condominium, trailer, mobile home, or boat. The term also includes any separate structure that is part of your residence, such as a garage or barn. You can deduct the expenses directly related to your home office, such as utilities, insurance, property taxes, etc. You must, however, meet certain requirements for your home work space to qualify as a “home office,” and be eligible for these deductions. (See below).
The home-office rules apply to sole proprietors, partners, and owners of an S corporation. The ... Full
Story
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.
BETTER VIDEOS COMING Canon, Nikon video-shooting SLR cameras ready for action
Two new SLRs can now shoot high-definition video, taking advantage of
the superior lenses (much better than video cameras,
way better than point-and-shoots) available for SLRs.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2008-10-01-slr-video_N.htm?csp=34
HOW DO THEY DO IT? Yuri Arcurs - Microstock Entrepreneur - Not content with an
annual microstock income of US$1.3 million and being the top selling microstock photographer, Yuri Arcurs is creating a microstock empire. Here's a summary of his new entrepreneurial activities.
http://www.microstockdiaries.com/meet-the-new-yuri-arcurs-microstock-entrepreneur.html
WHO SAID PHOTOGRAPHERS CAN’T WRITE? History in the Buffer - David Burnett, photojournalist, wrote this piece about his experience "in the buffer" covering the election night in Chicago. A remarkable diary of his election night experience.
http://werejustsayin.blogspot.com/2008/11/history-in-buffer.html
TAKEAWAY: When TIME Magazine made “the computer” the Man of the Year, they sent David Burnett to Pine Lake Farm to photograph me and my new Radio Shack TRS-80 Model II. You can see the picture TIME used at:
http://www.photosource.com/rohntime
