Getting your hands on a stock photography is now very simple, one search for ‘stock photograph’ yields a whole host of results. However, it’s worth shopping around not only for the best image, but for the best deal for you and for the photographer.
Thinking of a headline for this post, I was going to write something glib like; 'In stock photography terms, pictures are worth 'credits' or something similarly crap. After finding the above picture on iStockphoto, I'll just stick with the above headline.
The picture by the way, is paid for and is supposed to portray Getty images attitude to stock photography. I don't like Getty very much, if you haven't hadn’t already guessed.
Getty is a company that has been acquiring stock photo libraries in the same way that I eat kebabs (at least one a week and consumed as fast as possible). A company that seems intent on owning, or at least managing every single image on the internet.
I liken Getty Images to the evil galactic Empire of Star Wars fame. Huge and powerful that mercilessly crushes any opposition. Doing what it wants to do with a big beaming fake smile, all under the guise of benevolence.
Agencies have been using stock photography for decades. Twenty years ago it was very, very expensive. You would easily pay a few hundred pounds for one shot and most of the images were controlled by a few big photographic agencies. Not an ideal situation, but it was the norm and most people reluctantly accepted this situation.
In the late nineties, a Canadian chap called Bruce Livingstone tried and failed to make any money from his own collection of images, so he decided to create a website where he would share the pictures free with other designers - iStockphoto was born. Initially it was on a trading basis but in 2000, it changed to allow anyone to download pictures for a small fee and give the opportunity to for photographers to upload their own images and take a cut from any downloads.
On the back of iStockphoto’s success, other 'microstock' agencies formed; offering similar models but all of them were 'cheap' compared to the old days. When I say cheap I mean really cheap; $1 for a single image that might appear globally. No restrictions on its use. If you bought it, you were free to use it as you wished.
Getty's previous 'rights-managed' model was restrictive, (you had to tell them specifically what the image was for, where it was being used) it cost a lot. With all these microstock sites around they couldn't compete.
In 2006 Getty paid $50 million dollars for iStockphoto and it did not take long for it to start hiking up the prices. At the time, one credit equated to $1 and you could get an image big enough to use on a brochure front cover. Now the average cost for a big image is 25 credits. In addition, credits now cost much more. For example, buying a block of 50, each credit will cost $1.72 (£1.09).
In 2011, our front cover image now costs $43 dollars as opposed to the $1 it cost when Bruce set up iStockphoto. It is quite easy though to pay much, much more. Getty introduced tiers where the more professional looking shots would cost more credits. You can pay 200+ credits for some images!
Of course, the photographer now makes more money, but Getty is slowly changing that too. I cannot confirm how much the photographer got in Bruce's day, but I think they only took a minimal fee to cover hosting costs.
The initial base rate Getty gave was 20% but the minimum payout was $100, so they hang on to the photographer’s money for a long time, maybe indefinitely.
This year Getty reduced the base rate to 15% and increased the amount of downloads a photographer had to get before going back to 20%.
Getty has just bought up ‘photolibrary’, which owned six smaller libraries. On the email I received it said, "Why is this happening?" Getty answered with: "to make it simpler for customers".
Really? How very good of you Getty, putting the interests of the consumer first! Having to go to six different small libraries that specialised in certain content really was a chore; lumping all the specialised content in with everything else into the 'Glorious Getty Family' and then charging ten times the price for it really is so much more convenient and beneficial to me!
However, we don't have to play their game, there are alternatives. Really, there are! There are still a few independent microstock sites that sell images for a reasonable amount and don't fleece the photographer.
As a test I searched for the term "Coal power station at night" on iStockphoto, randomly selected an image that looked nice and then searched numerous microstock sites for the same. As a rule, I had to have a good return on the first page of images found.
Below are sites that provided what I asked for, I've not listed the other sites that failed to find any or had images that were too far off the search term.
- Bigstockphoto.com
- Canstockphoto.com
- Fotolia.com
- Crestock.com
- Dreamstime.com
- Featurepics.com
- Mostphotos.com
- Pixmac.com
- Scandinavianstockphoto.com
- Yaymicro.com
- Veer.com
- Cutcaster.com
- Shutterstock.com
All of the above offer single shot downloads. Shutterstock is subscription only but you can buy a five download subscription for £29.
Now, examining the costs for the largest file size each site had available. Where credits are listed, the prices can fluctuate slightly, dependent on how many credits are bought, but for a single image its negligible - I've shown the costs in dollars for consistency:
- iStockphoto.com: 150 credits (about $258)
- Bigstockphoto.com: $10.99
- Canstockphoto.com: $10.00
- Fotolia.com: $6.00
- Crestock.com: $15.00
- Dreamstime: 13 credits (about $18)
- Featurepics.com: $8.00
- Mostphotos.com: $25
- Pixmac.com: $7.60
- Scandinavianstockphoto.com: $5.47
- Yaymicro.com: $14
- Veer.com: $16.12
- Cutcaster.com: $10.50
- Shutterstock.com: Subscription only minimum subscription is 5 images for £29
One thing I did notice is that the same images appear across a few sites, but they are all pretty cheap and the prices don't vary that too much. The one that obviously sticks out is owned by Getty.
Most of the sites offered quite a lot of choice under the search term, outstanding sites were canstockphoto & bigstockphoto. Scandinavianstock didn't fair too well but I included it as it did meet the requirements.
Download a PDF with screen grabs from all the sites
We usually buy iStockphoto blocks 300 at a time, hopefully we'll wean ourselves off what we know and use some of the better alternatives.
There are sites where images are totally free, given willingly by photographers and designers who genuinely want to give something back, unlike Getty's cynical lies.
One such site is Morguefile. (www.morguefile.com) All images are free for commercial use. OK, the choice isn't as staggering as a microstock site but it's free. You can't complain at free. It’s not allowed.
