June 24, 2021

The End Of Stock Photography Revisited

Photography was once a wonderful job where you had the freedom to travel and photograph people, cultures, landscapes, still life, mother nature, abstract subjects, food, clouds and everything under the sun.

And through photography the image creators experienced the world first hand, the good, the bad and the ugly. There was respect for the photographer and the photographs created imagery.

Back in the old days film was the golden egg and you had to make images through your inner perception of light and composition, bracketing images under harsh lighting situations. You really had to be careful with your exposures making sure you kept the highlights and shadow details.  Photography was a career, the best career you will every have. You were paid well for the images you made.

In the beginning of stock images photographers were welcomed to send their images to the photo agencies or drop them off in person if they happened to live in the same city as their agency. Back in the 80’s these new breed of agencies split the sales 50/50 and then had photographer meetings where the editors gave the photographers insight on trends, subjects that were becoming popular. These new breed of photo agencies respected the images that all their photographers created. They wanted originality in their photographer’s creations that would sell for a high price.

They respected you and you respected them. But the whole stock photo business slowly became a tidal wave of new and inexperienced photographers giving their images away for peanuts.  

They were conned into believing that a new means to sell your hard earned work was being developed and your images would be put on a disk and sold to companies that needed original subjects to sell their products with, this became the new means of exploiting photographers hard earned photo creations and was called Royalty Free images.

This would be the virus that would eventually undermine a photographers ability to earn a decent living wage through the making of images with meaning and purpose.

And once digital cameras became the leader of making content, film was abandoned and creating photos became taking photos and millions and millions… of eager photographers began blitzing agencies with imagery that was just good enough to be submitted and accepted and as image volume increased and the payment for the efforts of these young men and women photographers slowly over time was reduced. Instead of a 50/50 split it became 60/40 then 70/30 and now it is 80/20 and because of the competition between getty, shutter stock, alamy and adobe, images are given away for free or pennies on the dollars.

The photographers were and are being scammed for their hard earned efforts and volume sales, no matter how small adds up to profit for the investors and the owners of the agencies.

You can’t make a living earning almost nothing and expect to survive in this greedy arena of powerful wealth that is addicted to the exploitation of photographers.  

When you look back at the old days of photography it was based around film, and film was expensive so there wasn’t as many photographers seeking fame and fortune. But digital cameras changed all of that and made everyone a photographer with no need to think and compose your subject by listening to your inner intuition giving you the details needed to make a great image.

Images are a commodity and they are sold cheap because volume in the stock photo industry is the nectar of honey bees moving money up the ladder into the pockets of owners that couldn’t make a decent image if they tried.

A photographer in today’s climate of selfish greed loses his ability to make a decent living doing the only thing that makes him feel part of the world culture.

They give their life to create photographs with purpose, putting their welfare at risk, their determined effort to show the world what is actually happening in all countries across the globe run by dictators, oligarchs that see only a cash cow to be exploited at the expense of the people. These criminals don’t care
who gets hurt as long as they get their fare share of
the loot.

In the past photography was about slowing time down, allowing your inner vision to really see the landscape in front of you and not to ignore the subtleties that were forming that would enhance your image creation.

Nowadays it is a quick click and you're moving on approach to image taking.

When you look deeper into time well spent, when you are really present in the compositional flow with your senses, feeling the connection with the subjects illuminating presence forcing you to dig deeper in the exploration of your own inner mind and the external reality shifting to accept your inner vision, now you are becoming a real photographer.

Reality becomes an illusion if you seek images through shallow constructs that will not inspire anyone looking at your images.

It is easy to create a superficial photo which leads to
mediocrity, a false expression of your true inner abilities.

It is what you bring to the scene before you that will make or brake the illusive vision that is dying to be revealed.

Photography is still a beautiful way to express yourself. Don’t think about the money but your own immersion into the external world full of subjects that need your visual expertise to show others who you are and what is truly happening in this corrupt world of the wealthy oligarchs.