Why is it that so many professional photographers seem to be having such a difficult time at the moment?

Why is it that so many professional photographers seem to be having such a difficult time at the moment? It isn’t just the economic crisis that seems to have been triggered by the banks, as many editorial photographers at least have been under increasing financial pressure over the past ten years.

Many have blamed digital imaging, but that is not really true either, although without question the ‘digital revolution’ for want of a better expression has certainly been a trigger. There are many myths about digital photography, not least being how easy it makes taking good quality photographs, and how cheap it makes photography. The former is of course nonsense, as the skill required in taking a good picture has not changed since the day of Fox Talbot.

Even though we now have auto-focus, auto-exposure; the taking of a high quality photograph still lies in the hands of the camera-user (photographer), and no amount of automation can determine the exact moment to press the shutter or the framing of the image. (Even with the fastest of motor drives, and greatest of luck, the choice element is still with the photographer).

Many people think that good exposure and sharpness denotes good photography - which is of course nonsense. These are merely, (and there are exceptions), the most basic, taken-for-granted requirements. All good photographs should be well exposed and well-focussed, all digital imaging has done is remove the mystique of the darkroom, and replaced it with the joys of the computer. Because in this day and age, even our children are taught to use computers, the familiarity with PCs has given so many people the false illusion that comfort in using a keyboard is the same as actual knowledge and skill. How many times has ‘John’ in ‘I.T.’ been given the job of producing photographs based on nothing more than the misconception that proficiency with computers is the same as thirty years professional experience with a camera?

Despite so few of us being real masters of colour management (and I include myself in this), the entire population now truly believes that the mere ownership of a digital camera makes one a photographer, with the acquired skills of thirty years professional photographic experience.

Even those people who really should know better, the editors who so often are those most directly involved in selecting imagery have been sucked into this idea that it is all now so easy. Easy then becomes synonymous with cheap. Remember when the travelling editorial photographer had to use those Hassleblad drum scanners, and the horrendous price they cost. We were all (newspaper photographers) told that without them we would not get any work, only those who invested in the equipment. Hundreds of us, (thousands), spent (perhaps) £20,000 even then. The papers saved a lot of production time and effort, and yes we got 'wire fees' but probably not enough to quite balance the extra cost of the equipment, and the papers were 'quids in' as we say in the UK.

The next big step (1992?) was to ‘Macs’ and ‘Coolscans’. Thousands of us got sucked into this one. Something like £5,000 to buy an Apple-Macintosh laptop - mine was a 180c, a Nikon Coolscan and ‘Codex’ modem, plus the software to make everything work. No tuition, all skills acquired on the job. This equipment was the minimum required for the sole trader working on his/her own. We produced 4-megabyte files that would be laughed at now, but they did sell well for newspapers, and was the base of an income for many of us for maybe seven years. But this kit had to be upgraded, three times during the next few years and the increased costs were rarely fully recoverable, and within a couple of years, the newspaper clients that had insisted we buy all this still slashed the fees they were prepared to pay for all this extra digital work. The Sun started it and the rest of Fleet Street followed suit, and I am sure there was a similar progression in the US and other market places. The papers saved a huge amount in equipment costs, not to mention manpower, as the images were supplied already digitised, and in many cases practically ready to use bar perhaps a simple digital conversion.

Once so many of us were 'mobile' and able to produce and send imagery almost immediately the papers began to trim the numbers of photographers being commissioned to cover events. Why send your 'own staffer' on commission when you could get regular submissions from the local guy? As this progressed, it became why take stuff in from the 'local photographers', when you could get material in from the regional agency. Which today has become why use any agency when we can get the stuff on the PA feed, which we pay for on subscription?

From a situation where each paper (probably) directly or indirectly employed two or three hundred photographers, we now have papers directly employing five or six with maybe a similar number on contract and possibly using the occasional regional freelance for those 'special' stories too far to send their own guy/gal. Multiply this by the more than a dozen national daily and Sunday newspapers and one can see how our marketplace has changed. No doubt the scenario is repeated in the States, Europe and elsewhere.

These skilled photographers no longer getting work from the national press are doing what? Some (many) have left the industry altogether, but those who remain are working in ways that enable them to earn a crust. Many produce stock. It isn't all amateurs that the professional full-time stock producer is now competing with, but skilled professionals moving over from other parts of the industry.

As for the latter suggestion that digital photography is cheaper, well anyone who is caught in the trap of upgrading, whether it be cameras, computers or software knows that this to be a serious error. Back in 1980s, I had Canon A-1s and F1s that lasted what ten years? In fact they never needed actual replacement, but I chose to go down the EOS1 route in 1990. The EOS-1 was a wonderful camera, but cost more than three times that of either of its predecessors (£1500), just buying two was a huge investment. True these cameras also lasted me until I was market led into going digital thirteen years later, but the difference in price from a conventional body to an electronic one has set a trend which has not slowed down. Whilst in £s and pence terms the price of cameras may seem to have stabilised, market requirements (and the lack of longetivity of the bodies themselves) have meant that they need upgrading perhaps as often as biannually. Each body far more expensive than the F1s of yesteryear.

And then one has to take on board the cost of the computer kit that makes all the imagery work. That first 180c Macintosh laptop was £3,500, Photoshop, £500+. Whilst today's computers are no question cheaper, their operating life seems to be no more than two years. More cost in both machine and software.

In 1994 I worked out my operating costs including overheads, running a separate office and working on a 48 week working year, four day operating week, (one day in the office), and my running costs were £50 per day. This included replacement equipment, servicing, car, phone everything. I did the same exercise in 2006 and came up with a figure of £105. In the twelve years between the two calculations my overheads and operating costs had doubled, whilst the commission fees paid by newspaper clients had remained static. Worse than this the expenses paid by those clients had fallen dramatically.

I did the same exercise last year and my overheads have reduced slightly to £95. I now work from home, have an older vehicle, etc.

Whilst I am fortunate in that some of the excellent lenses I purchased back in 1990 are still serving me well, like every other professional I am forced to upgrade camera bodies, computers and software at least every three years. If I don't, I remain less competitive in a market where there is now more competition than ever before.

As a photographer I have had to reinvent my business many times, and in today’s difficult economic climate that is an absolute essential. I am continually examining the services I provide and the markets within which I provide it. I no longer supply to newspapers (95% of my work in 1994), but my main selling point remains personal service and quality.

If my Unique Selling Point (USP) were price, then there would always be someone prepared to take me on. Providing a better service, makes my clients loyal, and despite the difficult times helps provide a regular income.

I no longer do sport either, something which I was heavily involved in from the mid seventies until the end of the last century; that market has died for all but the persistent few who have made themselves an unassailable niche (it can still be done). Sheer quality will always win through, although due to the nonsense thinking in the current market place which places (in so many cases) price above quality, (‘Never mind the quality, feel the width’), one still has to work hard and be diligent, and not expect the earning power of even fifteen years ago.

The myth that digital, has made processing unnecessary is a difficult one as well, as many operators out there do none at all, and even more clients accept this, which is shocking. Gone are the days when film could be given to a specialist processor and a while later prints are produced which the client paid for (all the processing costs). Now, the photographer does that processing – what we need all that expensive hardware and software for. Even with my limited knowledge of colour management I spend between 100% and 400% longer digitally producing the files that my camera produces before I am prepared to give them to a client, than I do actually taking the photographs themselves, it is as much my diligence to processing and editing my images that makes me a quality photographer. This sort of thing is difficult for non-photographers to take on board. I have had many editors simply refuse to believe that this work is needed. What clients deem unnecessary they simply refuse to pay for. These are the clients who want to employ a photographer by the hour and receive a CD of JPEG images totally unedited after the job. Known as ‘Dump and Run’, there are many less professional photographers who simply see this as the way a photographic business is run. No wonder the marketplace thinks that photography is cheap, and why in so many cases the photographs we see in print are so poor quality. Since when did ‘Good enough’ become a marketing strategy for professional photographers?

The days when our collection of stock (our stock library) was for most of us seen as our pensions have gone, (this was a huge shock to me), but photography is not dead. There are more images used today than ever before. The marketplace has changed and we simply have to change with it. It doesn't mean that we have to lower our prices or our service, or quality, but rather that we have to adapt our rather unique services to fit in with client requirements. It also means we have to be evangelists, for quality, colour management and service.

With everyone else chasing prices down to the bottom, there comes a point in every market place when low price simply isn't enough, and clients start asking for something better - quality. The trick for most of us will be to survive until that pendulum swings our way. That means we have to keep our wits about us! :-)

Pete Jenkins

www.petejenkins.co.uk
www.onlinepictureproof.com/petejenkins
www.photographerspro.eu/pete_jenkins/
http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=842175

Member of: The National Union of Journalists

Alamy and the subscription feed...

Alamy Contributor blog http://www.alamy.com/blog/contributor/default.aspx

UK newspaper revenue declining rapidly

http://www.alamy.com/Blog/contributor/archive/2009/03/18/4426.aspx

UK newspapers - message 2

http://www.alamy.com/Blog/contributor/archive/2009/03/19/4540.aspx

Clarification regarding RM images and UK newspapers

http://www.alamy.com/Blog/contributor/archive/2009/03/20/4611.aspx

The management of the Alamy portal have been busy this week again, and regrettably once again demonstrated that they are not as in touch with their contributing photographers s they would like to be.

James West the youthful and go getting CEO of the portal made an announcement at the end of the working day on the 18^th March telling his suppliers (the contributing photographers),

“We have seen some dramatic declines with some of our newspaper customers this quarter, ranging from 30% to 70% down year on year. I would like to share some thoughts with you on how we can reverse this trend.”

As it turns out (as one reads on) not so much sharing thoughts as advising that Alamy are now going to supply newspapers via a subscription feed:

“Broadly speaking any subscription offering needs to be priced at or below the total expenditure for the previous year for an unlimited number of downloads. Wherever possible we will allocate revenue to contributors based on usage, but in some cases we may have to divide up the revenue based on downloads. It is hard to judge in advance what impact this will have on the average price per image for this market. At one end of the scale prices will remain at or slightly below 2008 prices, whereas at the other end prices might fall by up to 50% or perhaps even more. My expectation is that we will see a mixture of both.”

As can be imagined the contributing photographers to the Alamy portal were less than impressed. What James did not make clear was that the subscription model is great for the newspaper – fixed costs and cheap imagery – a front page splash cost the same as a 1” square headshot on page 34, and the more they use the cheaper theses pics become. Alamy is doing this so James tells us:

“Alamy is the only large supplier of imagery not offering a subscription scheme to newspapers and we are being squeezed out of this market by offerings from our largest competitors.”

What James omits is the affect on photographer returns. Some of the larger agencies already run these feeds to newspapers, and the returns to photographers are as low as pence per use. These are the competitors that James wants Alamy to run against head to head, and match their pricing presumably.

Photographer Homer Sykes says on the Alamy Blog.

“At Getty when they were selling my work on subscription (without my permission) I was getting as little as $2.57 per image. I have now removed my images and or had them ring fenced in their so-called Premium Archive. Getty still sell images from those ring fenced premium archives to UK newspapers, and no longer am I receiving MicroPayments. UK newspapers will pay for quality. And if they don't, then just forget them. Its an insult to be paid so little for so much.”

Perhaps it would help if we looked at how we got here?

Alamy came out of nowhere at the turn of the century, and has filled a gap in the agency/photolibrary market which has proven very useful for the average editorial professional photographer.

The digital revolution has affected photography both professional and amateur in many ways – some good - some perhaps less so.

In the late 1990s it was clear to many photojournalists where the market was going. Digital imaging was here to stay and was rapidly becoming the new standard, and although there was a transition period when scanned negative material was superior to digital sourced work, cameras were gradually getting better and better.

Many professionals, myself included, were waiting for the affordable camera that would combine the apparent ease and convenience of digital working (the speed with which we could get single images to our newspaper clients was impressive), with the quality that we needed for our non-newspaper client. You can get away with a lot in a black and white 72 dpi image only taking up two or three columns that simply wouldn’t wash with a double page spread in a

glossy magazine.

The first camera that really showed the way was the Nikon D1 (2.7 mega-pixels – 7MB file size). Almost laughable by todays standards, but just about acceptable for most of us back then. By 2003 we were seeing cameras with 6 mega-pixels as standard - 18Mb file size, and these were perfectly capable of servicing the most demanding standard editorial requirements. 6 Mega-pixels was the same standard that the Kodak RFS 2035 film scanner had that cost something like £7,000 in the early 1990s. (I still have one – totally useless to me now of course.

Libraries were in a real quandary. The writing was on the wall. Some saw the future and started scanning their best images like crazy, to build up a quality digital library, others felt that the quality was not there (it wasn’t in 1999), so steadfastly refused to change or adapt, believing that the ultimate quality of transparency film stock would win out.

Well we now know who was right don’t we? Many great agency names of the past simply don’t exist. They either withered away and died, or were bought up by larger concerns, many of those in turn bought up by the giants – Corbis, Getty, Reuters and the Press Association (PA)

Many of the specialists have gone. When I was working as a sports photographer, running my own agency in the 80s and 90s my main competitors within my own speciality of rugby union were seen to be Allsport, Empics and to a lesser degree Action Images. All much bigger concerns than mine, but within my chosen niche our businesses were closer than overall

turnover and number of employees would have suggested. All these agencies have now gone, including my own. Getty bought Allsport, PA - Empics, and Reuters - Action Images. Smaller agencies all over the UK of which there were a great many have simply disappeared.

There are still a few specialists around, mostly dealing with niche subjects, and keen hardworking photographers are still supplying them. However, newspapers as clients have been on a downward spiral ever since the 1980s. As both employers of photographers and users of imagery they have been contracting. Newspapers that boasted 50 (some even more) staffers in 1985, as well as a similar number or more contract freelances, and probably double these

combined figures of allied freelances, now have work for less than 20 regulars, of whom, maybe five will be staff and slightly more on contract.

The work that these many photographers were supplying in the eighties is now, where images are still required, taken from the PA subscription feed, and to a lesser extent from Getty and Reuters feeds as well. These subscriptions feed are basically a fixed price service, where the paper takes whatever it needs from what is made available. Great for the newspaper – known and fixed relatively low price. Great for the Agency, as there is a guaranteed income. Flip side is those freelances caught in supplying the feeds get virtually nothing for images that before the feeds were paying minimums of £50 or £60 and much more for larger sizes and important subject matter.

As pagination decreases, quality declines, the advertising revenue falls away. With less advertising revenue, the cycle continues with pagination dropping, quality falling through the floor, more staff made redundant, fewer freelance contributions required, and lower prices paid, which leads to even lower quality products, which means less adverting…

It is in this climate that Alamy find their income from Newspapers under threat, and falling away, as James intimates monthly.

So what can Alamy do, what should photographers do?

Alamys knee-jerk reaction answer is to attempt to compete with the others already firmly entrenched in providing a subscription feed such as Getty. That is to say the newspaper client pays an agreed fee per period to the agency (Alamy) for a set number of downloads, even unlimited, depending on the agreement. The images are supposed to be taken for immediate use, shouldn’t be stored for any long period and will be available for use in the agreed products. The agreed fee is set, usually low, but means the publication gets cheap imagery for a known fee, and the agency at least knows that it has a guaranteed income. So what is wrong with subscriptions if two of the three parties involved get an acceptable deal?

As is often the case these days it is the original supplier, the creator, the photographer, who loses out. Unique material that may have taken a lot of time and effort to produce is sold for a pittance. A 100 square inch picture on a front cover sells for exactly the same as a one-column headshot on page 34.

Photographers supplying the agencies that Alamy is pitting itself against, who already get sales through the newspaper subscription feed, are reporting extremely poor rates, as little as 54 pence per use.

This is a sample of what one photographer showed me from a recent statement – all these are newspaper subscription payments:

What possible incentive is there for any photographer, who sees his or her work that should be selling for a £60.00 minimum, virtually given away? Many micro sites would pay better than this!

Alamy need to remember what their USP is.

James told us this week:

“most of our customers want us to succeed because they like the speed, simplicity, and choice on Alamy”

“Alamy has a better selection to offer than our competitors.”

“Alamy is already one of the leading suppliers of stock imagery to the UK newspaper market. Alamy’s share of overall usage will likely increase if we do some deals, but not by a huge amount.”

“Most newspapers are reducing the number of pages they print and are moderating their online ambitions due to budget constraints. I don’t envisage that picture usage volumes in UK newspapers will increase significantly over the next couple of years. If anything, they will reduce.”

Chasing reducing returns is plain daft, and does not make economic sense. If the market is reducing, to chase reducing revenues, revenues that you know are getting smaller, by reducing your price is clearly insane. Alamy need to hold its ground. Be the leading supplier. Emphasise and build on the speed, simplicity, and choice on Alamy. Foremost though don’t try and prop up businesses you know are failing. Look for new markets to replace the ones you know you have already lost.

On a positive note, with Alamy introducing a subscription feed, for those who choose to opt out of the scheme, (that will be everyone who understands the math), this could prove to be a boost in income. The newspapers already buy from Alamy because it has material they can’t get easily elsewhere, despite the fact that some agencies supply by subscription feed. So if a newspaper really wants an image they will not be able to get on the subscription feed, they will be forced to either purchase it properly from Alamy as they do now, or better still, have to source the image direct from the photographer and pay the proper rate, as set by the creator.

One sale at a realistic rate could well be worth more than a hundred sales at 54 pence!

(c) 2009 Pete Jenkins