The Tanager Blog

Back in February, I took a chance and applied to a start-up stock photography agency known as The PhotoShelter Collection. Most agencies don’t accept part-time photographers, but this one was different, and they had a photographer-first model: 70% of sales went to the photog, which is largely unheard of in the industry.

Back then, I was a passionate amateur who uploaded to Flickr a bunch. I didn’t expect to get accepted. They took me in. Of the 10 images I submitted, 9 were accepted. I was suddenly a “stock photographer.”

Well, in title only. Are you a stock photographer if you never sell anything? As of this morning, 36 of my images had been added to a lightbox (a pool of photos for consideration), 5 had been downloaded as comps (a low-res file that’s placed in a layout to give it the old ‘hmmmmm’) and 1 had been added to a shopping cart (but was never bought).

So it is with a great deal of sadness that I found out tonight that PhotoShelter is closing its agency. What is left is the Personal Archive, a storage site where you can sell stock and print images…you just have to do all the marketing yourself.

I have a total of 496 images on Photoshelter and only 30 GB to transfer over to the archive (which I dropped $129 to get). I’d estimate that I’ve spent upwards of 65 to 80 hours these past few months uploading, keywording, captioning and uploading model releases for my portfolio. Much of that work has gone to waste.

I did, however, have the glee of seeing the below image featured on their home page for two months.

As generic as this shot is, it’s marketable. It was lightboxed 4 times.

As sad as this news is, the opportunity has been completely worth it for the following ways:

1. It was a huge confidence boost. Right or wrong, I told myself “an agency out of New York thinks my photos are good enough to be represented.” That day in February this year was one of the most fulfilling professionally that I’ve had.
2. I learned a tremendous amount about what is marketable and what is not. I now know a great deal about model releases and conditions in which they are needed.
3. I refined my niche as a photographer more.
4. I became a better photographer. Two months after being accepted, we went to Italy. I wouldn’t have shot Italy the way I did had I not been a semi-pro stock photographer on a mission. It made the trip even more rewarding and fun, and as a result, showed me that — when it comes to photography — business and pleasure do mix well.

So, with that, I’m in the hunt. I’ll have to first transfer as many files as I can from the PhotoShelter Collection (the agency) to the Personal Archive (the last part of PhotoShelter that is still open). That will at least preserve my keywords and give those files “bulletproof storage.” From there, I’ll have to shop around for a few new agencies (this time, I’ll be diversifying). Alamy and Jupiter have my eye as the big dogs. I may check out Cutcaster, Digital Railroad and Aurora Photos as well. I’d go for Lonely Planet, but they have demands that only a professional travel photographer could handle. Besides, Adobe tried to branch into this crowded market and they failed. LP hasn’t updated its home page photo in a year. They’re probably dying, too.

What’s the cause of all this. Check out Vincent Laforet’s blog. It explains it better than I could. Bottom line, with the explosion of digital photography and photo sharing websites, images have become real cheap. Photo buyers will look for the goods on Flickr and see if they can get files for free. After that, they go to iStock where they can get them for $1. Good luck making a living as a photographer with that kind of climate. PhotoShelter was charging anywhere from $75 to $5,000 per image depending on the license.

Oh, and according to Vincent, Corbis laid off 10% of its workforce today. A dark day for the photo business for sure.

Anyone got a wedding they need shot?