July 25, 2021

Photography Was Once A Wonderful Job

Instead of photography being a means to sell your hard earned unique imagery, your vision of seeing your photos in magazines, ads, travel magazines etc, and receiving fair payment for your hard work, you now send your images to one of the mega agencies, who then sell your images as Royalty Free photographs for they have eliminated Rights Managed imagery as a viable product.

With Rights Managed your image was protected by the contract the magazine, news paper, businesses etc, signed.

RM is too complicated compared to royally free where they have created a automated system, tiers of pricing and the costumer just has to choose his poison and then enter his credit card.

All image creation now is not considered art but a product to be sold in volume just like lettuce, wine or beer.

Rights Managed imagery is too costly to sell and monitor a photographer's sale and protect the image from being exploited for other purposes.

So why not just give the photographers income a lower percentage rate of the take and just sell RF imagery.

And that is the new way forward where the agencies sells images in volume and then gives the image creator next to nothing for his hard won image.

Rights managed has been put on the dusty antique shelf to be looked at but never bought! For the only way to make any money at stock photography now is by allowing buyers supreme control, dictating to the agency what they are willing to pay for an image that used to sell for hundreds, thousands of dollars but now sold in volume giving the photographer pennies on the dollar. Oh don’t worry about the mega agency for they are making big profits on volume sales giving the photographer his $1 sale sinking the artist further into muddy waters of poverty!

Frustration having to join a mega agency that could care less about your background as a photographer for you are paid just like the rest of the run and gun photographers with their sell phones clicking away for there is no time to wait and set up your tripod and compose a unique display of mother nature, these new breed of photogs get a kick out of seeing their images in print and who cares about the money.

Selling your images used to be managed by your photo agency. Now your images are sold by technology. Check a box on the mega site, a multitude of prices will come up, you say yea or nay and the images is sold or not.

The mega agencies now take 80% of the sale and you get 20% of the sale.

I am sure as we move through the upcoming years that will change also. For these wealthy money men and women don’t want the slightest amount of income to go anywhere but in their own back pockets.

Being a photographer for over 40 years I have seen the gambit of good times and bad times. And now there is no other way to describe the pricing structure of images created by the photographer as steering their hard fought creation of images to be sold for pennies on the dollar while the wealthy owners and investors rake in the millions of dollars a month while the photographers starve and shop at Value Village.

Now photography is just another means of profit for the wealthy while the image creators end up scrounging for a living wage. What we have here is an illusion of business, a facade of caring about their photographers but really photographers nowadays are just used and discarded like dirty rags. It is an illusion that these wealthy investors care about the artist, what they demand is a return on their investments from this particular mega agency. They could care less about the measly income of the photographers that make them big time profits through volume sales. They should be thankful their images were accepted in the first place.

This is just like any other business controlled by the wealthy, they don’t care how much these worker ants have to do to capture these magnificent
landscapes and what they had to endure to get the classic image, all they want to know is how much they will make off the backs of these artists!

These men and women should be thanking them, the editors of these mega mouthed symbols of greed for accepting images from snap shooters, phone shooters and camera shooters and the funny thing is that the industry has made photography a simple product to be advertised and sold cheap as if the buyers were watching wall street and saw the cost of a product hitting rock bottom.

When you have excess of a product, photographs, you have two choices lower prices or create packaged deals with news organizations, magazines, sports, medical industry, trade etc.. And this will bring in more income for the photo stock owners, for volume sales will lower the percent the photographer receives.

The new economy of trying to sell your image creation has changed the atmosphere of making images. But this should not stop anyone from making images for personal use, assignment use or agency use.

Pick a subject any subject and begin to study and explore the scene or object to see if this would be worth while to make an image of.

You must create your unique perspective in image creation by making images every day and night.

You have to start somewhere whether it is big or small baby steps. Get up early and get going. Explore your small town seeking imagery that inspires, motivates you to want to make more and more images that are calling you to become a photographer.  

Exploration of a scene is your highway to seeing life in a different way, a more respectful way and with more interest in your reality you want to create.

Photography is power over matter. The ability to stop time, freeze a subject in a scene that will remain still forever.  It has a godlike quality which is the attraction to photography for most people.

The few see photography as a means to express themselves through a visual medium that can change the reality we live in. War photographers are willing to get right into the battle field making images of the terror of violence and the corruption of nations.

We used to rely on our memory to keep the picture in focus but eventually the subject fades and you have lost an important visualization of a family member or friend.

Now with a click of the shutter you have captured the infinity of motion into a 1/4 of a second by pressing a button on your camera at the right moment. These still lives are a good way to study the end result and to understand the elements that were present that made you stop and look and then bond with your subject that made you want to make the photograph. 

By studying the image you will see the flaws of composition and the exposure too dark but this is just what you need to grow and become a better image creator.