All businesses have struggled from a long and deep global recession, and stock imaging is no different. To exacerbate the challenge, the imaging industry has been faced with business model changes affected by new technologies, low cost micro pricing and the growing focus on mixed media. In spite of this confusion, there was a definite sense of optimism and opportunity surrounding all of the weekend’s activities. A few top leaders in the industry offer their perspectives and projection for the future.
Tetra Images
Tom Grill is the owner of Tetra Images and Stock Photo America. He is always positive about the industry that has been so good to him over the years, and chooses to look at the current changes with the attitude of, “Glass half full” He says, “As long as there is some water in the glass, I’m going to be drinking it! I’m staying in the deep end of the pool. What keeps me positive is that somebody is going to buy pictures.” Tom coaches that the market will change, but businesses have to adapt along with it. He recalls that ten years ago, when Comstock was sold to Jupiter, it was doing $10 Million dollars a year with only 15 thousand images. Today there are companies with millions of images on the internet that aren’t making that much revenue. A lot has changed.
On the economy of the imaging industry, Tom goes on to say, “I always look at it like a forest fire. As bad as that might be, it cleans the forest out. I think that’s what is happening here. The industry was in big need of a forest fire.” Last fall he told his staff that they would have to produce more and better images, and that they would sell for less money. It was a tall task to prepare, but they took the recession head on and have had a very successful year.
Stock Photos America is Tom’s new enterprise. He says it’s an Agency, not a distribution network. It will have RM, RF, editorial and a micro division. Colorfully, he states, “You get lost in the funny farm trying to find a specific topic. What needs to happen is a splintering off to specific topics. Stock Photos America will be an aggregator for just America - the people, the places, the icons and the culture.” The company’s launch is January, 2010, and Tom says, “We are bullish on it so I know it’s going to be good.”
Getty Images
Jamie DiVenere is the Director of Creative Services for Footage at Getty Images. Jamie states that you cannot focus too heavily on one category of imagery if you are to have a healthy library. “You have to offer a wide variety of subjects and refresh that constantly.” Some of their many areas of content include, but are not limited to: Aerials, Worldwide Locations, Lifestyles, Business, Industry, Healthcare, Wildlife, Nature and Science & Technology.
Getty Images accepts content from a global contributor base and offers art direction for shoots in North America and Europe. However, Jamie notes, “We have made strides in Asia and Latin America in the last few years as we see ample market growth there for stock footage.”As far as creating cross media from combining footage with similar still imagery, they have currently seen an uptick in contributors shooting both media because the technology has changed and the costs of production have been reduced in some areas. Recouping the expenses from these shoots is not a short term investment. On average it could take 1.5 years to 2 years to get the money back. This is not a hard rule, but an average, according to Jamie. The key is to keep an eye on the market and shoot a wide variety of subjects. “Clients do not want to see the same thing over and over again. The best producers are always trying to be better than their last shoot, learning from their mistakes and successes.”
Jamie quotes, “We bring in content through a variety of ways which include:
- Collaborating with the filmmaker to shoot content that is self financed. Sometimes an art director will work short arm (on set) or long arm (creative feedback via e-mail or phone).
- Support a Director who is wanting to build their reel content. We generally get our most creative, unexpected content this way. The filmmaker can cut their own spec spot and also use the content to license through stock.
- Sign those contributors who have content already shot. Basically mining the content which they have rights to.
- Working with our image partners like Discovery, Universal and others to bring in fresh new content from their programs and films.
From these comments and projections, it’s easy to see why the top players in the industry will remain at the top of their game. They always look to the future, seek opportunities, and put themselves in charge of change management. We are long past the era of dictating a market to the customer, and going forward, these companies will pave the way for customer centric relations and better technology.
Rubberball
Alan Bailey is a Co-Founder and still photographer for Rubberball. He says they have just recently shifted from primarily being a production company to dealing with third party content providers, and have pushed to get all their content out into distribution channels. “We have 20 thousand images to get out and that will bring our collection up to about 50 thousand RF images and about 4 thousand RM images.” RM is the most recent focus for their still imagery. It covers their traditional lifestyle subjects, including business and medical, but has a little less commercial feel than the RF. Rubberball is working on a tight budget because production costs of $50 per image are no longer economical for the industry.
At present they have no plans to enter the micro market. Alan feels, “Once the mass of images gets large enough, pros will stop putting their work there, because the cost of production does not get a return.” He feels that customers have been educated to compromise and seek a cheap price, so the market will never go back to high rates for those images. The only direction forward is to create a better image with a higher production value, so it can’t be found anywhere else. He feels the same is true for footage.
In footage, high production value defines as shooting on the Red camera, which is not generally affordable. In a high end production, pros pick the best talent, and the best wardrobe. The barriers to entry are much greater because there’s a certain level of expertise required. For this kind of investment, Rubberball requires a one year turn around on revenue, or they are not interested in the production. Producing footage requires a lot of research to discover where the gaps in image inventory are.
Concerning the future, Alan says we have been at a tipping point where micro has come in at a time of recession. Some companies aren’t even advertising anymore. However people will always be buying pictures. In two years, micro will still be strong and will fill the space of the old RF. His advice – “Wait for the oversupply to flush out and just keep shooting pictures.”
Masterfile
Geoff Cannon is the Executive Vice President of Masterfile, and Tomas Speight is Senior Vice President at Masterfile. Many stock agencies today offer huge numbers of images for clients to choose from, including Masterfile with an inventory of 2.7 million images that continues to grow. The challenge for any client is to be able to find the one image that is right for their project quickly and efficiently, out of the millions on the website. As Tomas notes, “This is where we think we can offer something different. We have an interface called Endless Media where we display content in what we believe to be a way that facilitates attaining better results more quickly.” It is a cinematic display of the search results in three horizontally scrollable rows. It allows the user to stream rapidly through many images on a dynamic viewing screen.
Clients have a choice of both the size and the aspect ratio of the thumbnails displayed, and can use up to four lightboxes simultaneously. When an image is enlarged, Masterfile’s SimSearch offers a separately scrollable row of images that are similar to the enlarged image. Using a second search, new keywords can be entered to refine the SimSearch results and find images that are related to the keyword entered, at the same time having a similar visual style and appearance to the enlargement. One can even search for visually matching images of thematic complements or opposites. “A key benefit of Endless Media is that you never get lost. Backwards and forwards arrows let you move quickly through all the enlargements from your current session. The View History feature allows you to view thumbnails of your enlargements from searches you did yesterday, last week or last month.” explains Geoff. The system is so unique that it is patent pending.
Comment on this article at www.twitter.com/mactribe
(Pat Hunt is a writer and workshop leader for the stock photo industry, and Managing Director of Huntstock.com in Boston, a lifestyle image production company.)
Image Credits In Order: Tom Grill, Getty Images, Rubberball, Masterfile.
All Rights Reserved. Used by kind permission.
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