Taking Stock - 0 views
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paul lowe on 25 Jan 09Taking Stock By Angela Wolff Back in the 80s and 90s, "stock" was the name of the game. The economy was good, the market was hungry, and agencies hustled to get their photographers the biggest clients at the best rates. But then came agency consolidation. New contracts were issued, and many photographers felt their "agents" had become vendors, chipping away at prices, demanding higher sales percentages, and leaving their photographers to fend for themselves. Some photographers have become frustrated and have left the stock game altogether. Others have simply decided to take matters into their own hands. Many are collecting fees from images still represented by the big agencies, while cultivating profitable stock models of their own. They have found ways - by creating their own e-commerce sites, by capitalizing on niche specialties, by maintaining hands-on relationships with buyers, or by turning low-profit deals into moneymakers - to make the most of the current stock market. The photographers we talked to all said that, when licensing their own images, they garnered higher fees than agencies would have. Not just higher than the percentage split they'd usually see on their commission statements, but fees higher than what agencies typically charge their clients in the first place. The reason: As the big agencies gobbled up more and more small agencies and subsequently cut their image libraries, they not only offered lower revenues to their photographers, they also gave their clients fewer options and fewer services.