Cameras

Photography: ToastyKen

Photographers have felt the effects of outsourcing in surprising ways. Back in the glory days of photojournalism, shelling out thousands of dollars to ship a photographer to a war zone might have been considered as much a part of a news magazine?s expenses as typewriter ribbon, shoe leather and lengthy bar tabs. Today, with subscriptions falling, advertisers turning to the Web, and perfectly good local photographers with top-of-the range equipment available in locations from Afghanistan to Zambia, it makes little sense for a publication to pay a foreign photographer?s per diems, let alone the plane fare. When the war in Iraq was at its hottest, many of the images that appeared in the world?s top news publications were shot by local photographers who were working for the wires. But how has geography affected other aspects of photography, and are the price differences something that smart photographers can take advantage of?

Clearly, the differences in the cost of living around the world offer plenty of advantages for clients. When Grazia, a style magazine originally from Italy, opened its ninth edition in India in April 2008, local assignment and fashion photographers should have been rejoicing. They now had an opportunity to shoot for a prestigious magazine that valued images and would pay a professional rate. The reality though was slightly different.

Major Magazine Publishers See Local Photographers as Cheap Labor

To judge by an ad placed on Lightstalkers.org by the magazine?s photo editor, Natasha Hemrajani, Grazia appears to have seen its location on the sub-continent as a chance to tap into some particularly cheap labor. The magazine was looking for a photographer in Kerala to take a portrait of a Yoga teacher for one of its first editions. The budget for the shoot was 2,000 rupees. That?s about $50.

The request caused a bit of a storm and to her credit, Natasha, a freelance photographer herself, did sound embarrassed to be making it:

?[F]or some reason we?ve been asked to launch on a ridiculously low budget and shoots come to my department pre-expensed,? she wrote. ?[I]f this doesn?t work out we?ll have to run with images sent to us by the subject herself but I?m hoping that there?s someone out there who?ll do shoot for us at this price.?

It?s possible that she got lucky. The average income in India is about $66 per month so $50 for a day?s shooting (minus expenses) might not look like such a bad deal ? at least to the magazine. But for a local photographer who?s still had to buy several thousand dollars? worth of camera equipment, it would make more sense to stay in bed.

Or turn to wedding photography, where prices can be more comparable with other parts of the world. At least one Indian photography firm is offering shoots that range in price from 20,000 rupees to as much as a million rupees. $500 might sound like a bargain rate for a wedding shoot, but it?s likely that most customers are taking packages that are much higher. Frank Chen, a photographer based in Shanghai, for example, charges 20,000 yuan for a typical wedding package. At around $3,000, that?s roughly equivalent to the amount typically paid in the United States. (Although if he were in the United States, it?s possible that Frank, a particularly experienced wedding specialist, might be able to charge more.)

It?s likely that other photographers ? those who don?t speak English, don?t advertise on the Internet, and who target only local markets made up of people with average incomes ? are charging a great deal less. It is clear though that for some photographers it is possible to charge a rate that?s close to the amount earned in richer parts of the world. Whether they actually get those rates as frequently though, is a different question.

Who Cares Where the Stock Photographer Is?

The situation looks a little rosier for stock photographers. While the prices of rights-managed images are set in part according to the location in which the image will be used, in practice, the region appears to have little effect on the fee. Changing the area in fotoQuote, for example, software that generates Rights-Managed quotes according to the industry standard, has far less effect on the price than changing the usage. EnviroSEA, a photography organization that promotes the work of photographers in Southeast Asia, charges up to $149 for prints of its members? images and uses fotoQuote to generate its fees, rejecting any image priced under $49. Even its royalty-free images start at $69 for a 500 pixel ?Web? image and rise to $289 for an ?original size? photo. There are plenty of microstock photographers in places more expensive than Thailand who would like to be earning sales prices like these.

But EnviroSEA?s approach makes sense. When it comes to buying images, clients don?t care where the photographer who produced it lives. They only care whether the photo can do the job they want and whether it?s worth the price that?s being asked.

The effect of geography on photography then is mixed. For clients, the presence of a professional close to the location of a shoot can have a dramatic effect on the expenses involved in getting the picture. Natasha Hemrajani wasn?t just looking for a photographer in India; she wanted one in Kerala who could reach the subject of the shoot without incurring more than ten or twenty dollars? worth of expenses. But the price of the equipment alone means that there?s a limit to how low photographers can cut their prices even in parts of the world with low incomes.

On the other hand, when it comes to selling pre-made items such as stock images on a global market, the location of the photographer has little effect. If a buyer in London or New York is willing to pay several hundred dollars to use an image, he doesn?t look at the photographer?s bio to see where he is. He just pays the fee and takes the picture? and uses it on the other side of the world.

Correction: The original post incorrectly described Amit Bhargava as the photo editor who posted Grazia?s ad. He is not a photo editor at that magazine nor, he says, would he ?offer or work for such a ridiculous amount.? Our apologies to Amit.

Photography: apes_abroad

Photography is usually a pretty lonely craft. It?s often just you, your camera and the setting sun? or a wedding reception full of half-drunk guests.Crowdsourcing might be important if you run a microstock agency or sell paparazzi photos, but for most photographers, who plan and shoot their images alone, it can?t offer much.

Or can it?

More Eyes in the Market
One of the biggest benefits of crowds is that they can spot business opportunities for you. Put a photographic series on your website or Flickr page showing rainforest life in Sarawak, for example, and you can expect not just views and compliments but also suggestions on where to publish it.

That?s more likely to happen if you ask.

Every time you upload an image that you?d like to sell and put it in front of lots of people, ask your viewers if they know an outlet that might buy it. The more views you get, the more likely you are to land realistic suggestions from people with the right contacts and specific market knowledge.

And other members of the crowd will then be able to weigh in and tell you if it?s a good suggestion.

More Objective Eyes than Yours
When it comes to judging the quality ? and marketability ? of those photos though, your opinion isn?t always the best. You?ll often be too busy remembering how you shot them and what they mean to you to understand the effect the images have on someone seeing them for the first time.

Your viewers are more objective. If you ask them which they think are the most sellable images on your site, you might well be surprised? and save time trying to sell a favorite shot that would have few takers.

Improve your Photos
Crowds aren?t just capable of giving your photos a quick thumbs up or thumbs down. They can also tell you what it would take to make your shots better.

You have to be careful here. Ask someone how to improve anything and you?ll always get an answer ? whether the advice is good or not. That?s where crowdsourcing really comes into its own. If one person tells you that you should have upped the f-stop, for example, you don?t have to listen.

If twenty people tell you that, they might be onto something, and you could be on your way to a better photo.

Find Subjects, Scenes and More?
So the masses can help you to track down markets and make improvements. But they can also help you to identify people and places to shoot. If you want to know where to photograph surfers, sandcastles or sailboats, the best places to look aren?t maps and guidebooks. They?re forums where people who take these sorts of photos like to hang out.

Again, you won?t just be getting advice from one person. You?ll be getting tips and reactions from lots of people, helping you to filter out the worst and focus on the best.

Know the Law
So far, we?ve discussed how crowds can help photographers find markets, understand and improve their images, and track down subjects. They can also solve problems.

Photography today can be a complicated process. Forums are full of photographers describing how they were hassled by security guards who didn?t want them shooting their buildings or by policemen who told them they were breaking the law for carrying a camera. It?s hard to find one photographer with experience in every aspect of photography law. But photographers? combined knowledge can give them a pretty powerful weapon against people who want to put their hands over the lens.

It might not have been around for long, but crowdsourcing has already had a massive effect on photography. The stock photo market has been changed by it and sites like Flickr have become knowledge-sharing sites as much as photo-sharing sites.

Photography might be a lonely art, but with the clever use of crowds, a lot of knowledge can go a very long way.

Got a photography business idea? Test it on crowds at Cambrian House or Spigit and tell us how you get on.

Digital imaging changed everything. The darkroom turned into a Mac, rolls of film capable of holding no more than 36 pictures became plastic rectangles capable of holding  hundreds of shots, image selection began to take place immediately after the shoot, photographs could be delivered to clients at the click of a button, and deadlines became tighter than ever.

And of course, new sales channels opened up, allowing anyone with a camera and talent to put their work in front of buyers, revolutionizing the world of commercial photography.

So what happens now?

It would be nice to believe that after the upheavals of recent years, we can all take a breather, get used to the new ways of working and spend our time figuring out how to make the most of them. But life doesn?t work that way. The photography world is still changing. Smaller microstock sites like DigitalRailroad and LuckyOliver have found that selling images at a buck a piece isn?t as easy as it looks. Larger firms like PhotoShelter have discovered that buyers don?t always know what they want ? or don?t buy what they say they like. And there?s still plenty of room for improvement in image searching, display and purchasing.

Consolidating Three Million Images

One new trend then might be seen in BrightQube. Launched in 2007 and headed by Lee Corkran, a former professional photographer who has also worked for Digital Railroad, the service has few images of its own. Instead, it consolidates more than three million stock photos from more than 40 different companies, including Corbis, Jupiter Image?s Comstock and Getty?s Stockbyte as well as many independent niched firms such as GoGo Images and Photo India.

For buyers who don?t want to flip from site to site while looking for images, that already makes BrightQube a useful portal. But the service also stands out in the way that it displays search results. Instead of offering page after page of images, ordered usually according to a secret recipe of keyword relevance, views and downloads, BrightQube presents what it calls a ?Dynamic Mosaic? interface ? a giant, automatic-loading, animated wall of thumbnails which buyers can navigate with their arrow keys or a navigational grid, zooming in on the images that look the most promising. According to Lee, the system, which looks like a two-dimensional version of PicLens, allows customers to search ?hundreds of times faster than on other sites.?

Images are initially ordered by keywords, with the most relevant photographs placed in the middle of the mosaic, but buyers can then choose to order the images by price or size.

[P]hotographers working with collections large and small can be assured their images will appear on a single, equitable page of search results, in front of buyers? eyes, giving every picture a fighting chance to be found, seen and sold,? Lee told us.

But first, photographers have to get their images onto the wall, and that?s where things can get a little tricky. In a May interview with SocalTech, Lee indicated that the company was experimenting with adding user-generated content and that a private beta would be available in early fall. When we asked him in mid-November whether independent photographers could submit their images to the site though, Lee merely said:

?Not at the moment, but we are looking into this feature in the future.?

The Back Door to the Mosaic Wall

In the  meantime, photographers will have to use some indirect routes. While some of the companies from which BrightQube sources its images have the kind of acceptance standards that could block non-professionals, BrightQube does divide its inventory into two collections. ?Everyday? images are microstock photos sourced from Dreamstime; ?professional? images come from everyone else. The lack of exclusivity in microstock means that the service offers photos from just one low-cost royalty-free site: buyers looking for ?everyday? photos would likely end up looking at a wall made up of identical photos.

The easiest way for a photographer to get their photos onto BrightQube?s wall then will be to submit them to Dreamstime, giving the company an important advantage if the service takes off. It would also help to make sure that the photos show the right subjects. According to Lee, the  most popular keywords currently being sought by buyers are ?woman,? ?couple,? ?young,? ?business? and ?wildlife? ? broad enough categories to suit most photographers.

The remaining question then is whether the service will take off. One of the reasons put forward by Allen Murabayashi, CEO of PhotoShelter, to explain the collapse of his company?s stock division was the subscription model that locked buyers into companies that they?ve used in the past; changing sources in the middle of a month risked a financial penalty. That?s still a challenge that BrightQube will have to overcome. At the moment, they?re not sharing their sales figures though so it?s impossible to gauge how well they?re doing that.

Even if BrightQube itself doesn?t turn out to be the future of stock photography though, it?s likely that future will include faster searching, a neater display? and the consolidation of stock libraries.