About 4 years ago I wrote a post where I summarized what I believed was the holy grail of what sold well and what kind of content was in high demand for online stock agencies. I was mainly focused on stock photography (micro stock), and today’s topic will be the same, albeit in an updated version: I know many of you have requested this for quite some time, so here we go.
What is going on available photography throughout the last four years?
We have done some research in regards to what sells in 2012, and you should be aware of some big changes in the industry. Decreasing sales and increasing competition As all active micro stock photographers must have noticed, we have seen a constant decrease in sales in terms of our return per image over the last few years. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to shoot great images and profit from it in the same way as it was 5 or 6 years ago. Many critics have claimed that the micro stock industry is almost entirely devoid of artistic sensitivity, and is instead only concerned with making an easy profit. But surprisingly, this harsh criticism seems to have had a positive effect on the industry as a whole, because although the return per image has decreased a lot, I have also witnessed an interesting tendency: To make sales now, it’s about getting back to the roots of photography.We do the best image retouching service in the world.
More inventive, less processed images, and a more naturalistic style, which I, personally, fully endorse.
It’s great to see some more artistic and natural images making their way up on the “most downloaded” lists as opposed to the more conventional micro stock images that are always overly retouched, overly bright and overly clean. In terms of overall industry image and concept popularity, we are seeing some stars falling while others are on the rise. And we are talking about some really huge stars here. Concepts and image types that used to sell better than anything are becoming less and less interesting for buyers because the market is now saturated with them. Below I have tracked some of the major shifts within 4 well-known micro stock concepts: Lifestyle, business, health and wellness, and spa. 1. Lifestyle Lifestyle images covers the subject matter wherein people are photographed in various aspects and situations from their daily lives, e.g. engaged with their hobbies, working situations, preparing dinner, spending time with their family, etc. All the things that make up what people do in their lives and their choices in how they do them. It is usually depicted in a positive light, and “lifestyle photography” is often synonymous with images of memorable moments of family and personal life: birthdays, a day on the
beach, gazing exposure albums along, playing a game, etc.
However, it’s easy to see that the concept of “lifestyle” has become exceptionally well represented throughout all online stock libraries.
The market is currently flooded with modus vivendi pictures as a result of it’s a simple thought to shoot.
It is easy to go about and easy to compile a good shoot list of images you want to shoot while on set, and you don’t need too many special props for the images to turn out great.
We find that “lifestyle” has become such a very jammed space that solely a number of pictures at intervals this class can sell to any extent further.
Many images are lost in the vast sea of millions of similar-looking lifestyle images, and in order to excel, your images will really need to have something very, very unique about it to make it stand out from what else is out there. Now is the time for good ideas instead of mass production and as a new micro stock photographer, I would stay away from lifestyle. The chance of getting just a tiny part of the action in this area is close to zero. If you look at PeopleImages.com, you’ll see that new lifestyle images are continuously being added to our collection, but you will also see that the shoot dates are older. Almost all of these files are left-over files from the previous years or have been taken from trainee shooting. These are files that are still in the post-production state, and currently we’re slowly but steadily working through the heap of undeveloped, untouched and unkeyworded batches one file at a time. If you look at more recent shoots (check the shoot dates), you’ll no longer find any of the traditional lifestyle concepts depicted. This is an important shift for us, as we are definitely one of the companies considered to be a major lifestyle images provider. Last time I was shooting one of my favorite models, Emma, we opted against redoing the classic lifestyle concepts that we’ve shot with her so many times before, and instead we shot some very unconventional images of her.
Comments