[Leica] Stock Sales

[tmanley at gmail.com (Tina Manley)]

Jayanand,

I appreciate what you are saying but I think you are ignoring quality of
life in the business equation.  I was told many years ago that I should
accept the inevitability of royalty free stock and should sign up for
agencies that make bulk sales at 25 cents a photo.  There are photographers
who set up whole studios to do product shots in an assembly line mode to
list their photos with iStock. If I had done that, I would be miserable.  I
might be making more money, but that is not why I take photographs.  I love
what I do and I get paid to do it!   I have been involved in several
documentary projects which is what I really enjoy but those pay nothing.
They make a difference.  I'm working on one now which will end up costing
me more than I will make but it will make a difference.  I sell stock to
pay for those projects.  That makes me happy.  Tom and I live pretty
frugally.  We raise most of our food, do all of our own yard work and
remodeling.  All of our clothes come from Goodwill.  Our cars are 27 and 13
years old. I don't wear jewelry or make-up. We spend what we save on
travel.  After 50 years and 68 countries, we are doing fine and are not
interested at all in reinventing ourselves.

Thanks!

Tina

On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 12:53 PM, Jayanand Govindaraj <jayanand at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Tina, Gerry, Ted
> I do not think most understand when I say you have to think as a
> businessman. A competent businessman is always thinking of survival and
> profits, and accepts that markets evolve, and that the only reality worth
> considering is the state of the marketplace as it is at any point of time,
> and plans and runs his business accordingly. Believe me, what you are
> facing is no different from what any business faces at some point of time
> or the other - disruptive changes are a way of life now. Think Kodak and
> Fuji, and their respective strategies for surviving the sudden collapse in
> their core market, which had remained unchanged in a steady state for 75
> years or so before the apocalypse struck.
>
> It does not matter whether you approve of the "crap" that rolls out of a
> million smartphones or not, that is, unfortunately the reality of the
> market, as is the fact that many are quite happy to sell photos for $2.00
> per use. Reality of the market means you have to accept the fact that high
> margins are a thing of the past in general stock photography, and figure
> out how to make a living in your chosen profession, i.e. photography. There
> are basically four alternatives if you are in stock photography, as I see
> it from the outside - there may be many more niches that I am not aware of
> as I have never really participated in this particular marketplace:
>
> - also start taking "crap" and compete at US$2.00 (or whatever) per use
>
> - develop a niche that does not have many players. As the niche becomes
> crowded, abandon it, and go to the next profitable one (or invent it!).
> This requires a very high degree of flexibility and risk taking ability.
>
> - raise the bar very high on the quality of your photographs, put much less
> for sale, increase prices, and then vigorously market yourself to targeted
> large users of stock. Obviously there is a high cost involved in developing
> a client, there is no such thing as a free lunch in this world.
>
> - get out of stock altogether for greener pastures.
>
> To my mind it is not true that you cannot make a living as a photographer
> anymore. There are many niches where the demand for high quality, high
> margin photography is actually going up - wedding, industrial, fine art,
> medical, fashion, advertising and event photography  are a few that I can
> think of, as I have friends who make a very good living in these niches
> right now. There must be dozens of specialized niches that still give a
> good living, and are hard for the proletariat with their smartphones
> running amok to duplicate.
>
> The fact is that good times are unlikely to return in the general areas of
> photography, and moaning about the smartphone toting millions with derision
> will not change anything. The only way forward is to reinvent ourselves,
> and what we do, as that is the only piece of the jigsaw that we have
> control of.
>
> Incidentally, I really do believe that even getting US$2.00 a month or two
> later is better than getting nothing. A small anecdote - I was talking with
> a major Marwari (Indian equivalent of the Jews) industrialist 30 odd years
> ago, and asked him how his approach to money was different from mine. He
> replied that he was aware that 100 paise made a Rupee (or 100 cents a
> dollar), which I was not aware of. In other words, every little bit adds
> up, and great fortunes are made in increments of the smallest building
> block over time. I never forgot this lesson - it was a real eye opener for
> me at that time, and I think I was lucky to learn this relatively early.
>
> A last thought - most of you would also be using other services where the
> charges have plummeted over the years (telephone charges, brokerage,
> internet, broadband and cable TV charges, travel, etc - the list is
> endless). Would you like those to be hiked up back to what you paid in the
> glory days?
>
> Cheers
> Jayanand
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 7:31 PM, Ted Grant <tedgrant at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> > Jayanand,
> > But that money maybe of nothing more than a mere dollar two today! :-(
> > If you've never earned your income shooting "stock?" I only did that as a
> > time killer as 99.9% of my career was on assignment paid by a client.
> > A much better fashion as it was by the day or on staff.
> > The stock shooters quite often made far more income. But basically living
> > and working dangerously as it was very nearly always a kind of on speck.
> > Today the Iphoners nearly all have a regular job so making money from
> their
> > happy snapping is meaningless.
> > cheers,
> > ted
> >
>
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>



-- 
Tina Manley
www.tinamanley.com
tina-manley.artistwebsites.com
http://www.alamy.com/stock-photography/3B49552F-90A0-4D0A-A11D-2175C937AA91/Tina+Manley.html