How much is a photo worth? This is not an easy question to answer and in many cases we as photographers have little or no say on what price is placed on a photo sold through a third party. What we do have control over is either play the game and hope for the best or sell directly to the client and work assignments. There really is no easy answer. The advantage of selling through a stock photography agency is their marketing resources. They can reach a world wide audience with a wide variety of pictures for the client to choose from, where we as individual photographers will never have the ability to reach such a vast market nor do we have the image selection to offer a potential buyer. The other choice is assignment work, and the truth is these are hard to come by and in many cases don’t pay well (of course this depends on the type of assignment). What I suggest to photographers who want to make a living or generate a supplemental income from photography are two things, understand the market that will use your genre of photography and two, know what you have invested in creating your pictures and what you have invested in time to get your photos into the market place.
Lokrum Island and Cruise Ship off the coast of Croatia in the Adriatic Sea. This has been a good selling stock image.
I want to focus this post on the investment we as photographers have in creating our images. I think it will open many eyes and I believe those that are serious about making money, it will help you in deciding on a direction for selling your work. Before I dive into this, I want to briefly take a look at business. I think we all can agree that as photographers, we take pride in the product we create with our cameras. Agree, if not than you’re probably not going to do well selling your work. If you’re one of those who take pride in your product then I want to share a tip with you, people and businesses all over the world who might use your picture also take pride in their product or service. Why is this important? Because we are all trying to make a profit or generate venue in a challenging market. When a business produces an advertisement, writes an article, creates a product, etc… they have invested money and lots of it, therefore they have to recoup this investment plus add a mark up. Often, I believe many photographers overlook their investment when selling their photos. If a company chooses to use your photograph to help sell their product, service or deliver their message than they saw something in that photo they felt will do exactly that, sell or at the very least attract a viewers attention. They like your photo, no different than the advertising agency they hired, or the graphic designer, the writer, or the media outlet. That client carefully chooses who and what will be involved in getting the word out about their company, and it all comes with a price tag.
Imagine advertisements, product labels, newspapers, magazines, websites, etc… with no pictures. How well do you think these things would sell? I would guess not very well, in fact online magazines are using many more visuals to tell a story because people are reading less. Pictures help sell and/or capture the attention of an audience. Are your pictures important? You better believe they are.
Costs of Doing Business
Let’s take a look at what we have in invested in creating our photography. The numbers I mention from this point on are real numbers (unless otherwise noted) that I compiled from my own records. I also want to state these numbers can and probably would change depending on the subject and also the outlet in which they are sold. Most of the sales numbers in my case came from Corbis with a much smaller percentage of sales coming from Alamy.
Before I (we) can create a single image I need equipment. This list obviously will vary depending on the photographer. The following is a list of equipment I use on a regular basis with the exception of the Canon 500mm lens.
Camera Equipment: (some of these numbers may be a little conservative, but fairly close)
Canon 5D … $3500, Canon 1D Mark II … $4500, Canon 17-40mm … $680, Canon 24-105mm … $1250, Canon 100-400mm … $1300, Canon 500mm … $5300, Canon 24mm TS … $1050, Canon 1.4 and 2X tele … $325, Canon 550 flash … $300, Gitzo Tripod … $350, Really Right Stuff Ballhead … $500, Camera and lens plates … $400, Camera bag … $250, Memory Cards … $300, Laptop … $3000, Portable Hardrives … $300.
Total Camera Equipment Investment: $23,305
Office Equipment:
Apple G-5 … $4300, Apple 30″ Monitor … $1800, Calibration Software … $300, Adobe Photoshop … $699, Adobe Lightroom … $399, Photo Mechanic … $150, DXO … $299, Nik Software … $399, Wacom Tablet … $250, Multiple External harddrives … $800, Books … $150, Laser Printer … $460.
Total Office Equipment Investment: $10,006.
Items that keep my office running:
Web Hosting … $300, Website Software … $699, Business Stationary … $150, Shipping (stamps, FedEx, etc…) … $500-$600, Continuing Education (workshops, seminars, etc…) … $200 – $800.
Total: $1849. (using the lower numbers) These number do not include utilities, which I did not include because I have a home office, but it is still an expense in itself.
The numbers above will vary from photographer to photographer, but if you are truly wanting to generate income from your photography you need to take a real look at these expenses. The total from the three categories above total $35,150. You might say, “some of these are one time costs”. True to some extent, but you will replace equipment from time to time as new technology is developed or simple ware and tear on the equipment. Computers and hard drives go down and technology changes. Software updates every couple of years, this is also an expense that needs to be taken into consideration. Running the office has its costs. As you can see I already have a pretty good overhead before I create any photos. Now lets take a look at two trips of mine and put these into the factor.
Both examples below are locations I shot several years ago (Thailand 2006 and Croatia 2007). I choose these locations because they have a history on the market and I felt would demonstrate realistic numbers.
Example 1: Thailand
Thailand: The following are true numbers from a photo shoot I did in Thailand.
Income from sales: $7349, sold 23 times
International Flight … $1600, In-country Flights … $163.22, Driver … $873.71, Guide … $387.97, Fuel … $196.58, Lodging … $428.01, Meals … $337.60, Entry Fees … $87.50, Airport taxes … $47.87.
Total : $4122.46 (misc costs not included)
Time invested in processing images:
Thailand produced approximately 1800 raw images. After editing and complete processing I finished up with 280 images.
Editing: 4.5 hours, Processing (raws to tiffs): 6-8 minutes per image equals 28 hours, Writing descriptions and keywording: 3-5 minutes per image equals 14 hours,
Total Time : 46.5 hours (Total time is based on least amount of time per image).
I have only had three photos from my Thailand trip that has generated any money. Depending on the location and popularity of that location this can be typical, some photo shoots generate photos that sell more than others. The other two photos that have sold from this investment generated $1080. of income with 12 sales and the other generated $434.34 from 14 sales.
Breakdown of Thailand expenses and profits: Travel expenses … $4122.46, Income from sales … $8863.34, Profit … $4,740.88
Example 2: Croatia
Now let’s look at another situation with very different results, Croatia.
Income from sales: $872.50, sold 2 times
International flight … $1108.11, Rental car … $317.15, Fuel … $138.71, Lodging $684.96, Meals … $495.18, Entry Fees … $63.36, Parking and tolls … $81.39
Total cost : $2,888.86 (misc costs not included)
Time invested in processing images:
Croatia produced approximately 1500 raw images, after editing and complete processing: 235 images.
Editing … 4 hours, Processing (6-8 minutes per image) … 23.5 hours, Writing descriptions and keywording (3-5 minutes per image) … 11.75 hours.
Total Time : 39.25 hours (Total time is based on least amount of time per image).
The photo shoot in Croatia up to this point has only generated 3 photos that have sold.
The breakdown of expenses and profits from Croatia; Travel expenses … $2888.86, Income from sales … $1394.50, Profit … -$1494.36 (a business loss).
A Business Summary
Doing business is expensive and a risk. As you can see from the two examples from above, I invested a lot of money up front, one turned out profitable and the other did not. Obviously, I have come out ahead more times than not, otherwise I probably would not be writing this post, I’d be at another job doing something other than photography. I learned early on in my career that I had to learn quickly what my overhead was and what kind of return I needed from my photo sales to survive. Every photo shoot I choose was decided based on what I thought was a need in the marketplace. I treated every trip as a business trip and not a vacation. How did I decide where to go? If you recall from a statement above, I said photographers should know the market in which their genre of work would be used. In my case it is travel. I am constantly reading and looking at what travel industry professionals were promoting and predicting to be the next hot travel destination. In many cases my homework payed off and there were certainly other times it didn’t.
Regardless of what you photograph there is overhead. A check from your stock agency isn’t a salary until you deduct your expenses. To close, I would ask those photographers who are sincere about making money, to take a look at your investment and time and evaluate your options, you might be surprised to see what is available to you. It is not important how many photos you sell, what is important is how much you get for the photos that sell. I wish you well in your business pursuit. Until next time, Good Luck.
In my next post on “The Business of Photography” I will suggest where photographers can make some reasonable money with their photography.
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Seo, your right, I am lucky, but keep in mind a couple of things. One, I started a long time ago when the stock photography industry was one where photographers didn’t give their work away. It was looked at as a profession but one that also required a lot of hard work and a little luck. Today, it is an industry that sucks in a lot of photographers who are willing to give their work away for very little return. Today the promises of these agencies to reward photographers with money for their pictures is wishful thinking for most photographers. To truly make money it requires a lot of very hard work and a tremendous amount of luck. We photographers have more power than we think, we just have to say no to the agencies that want to pay us a few cents for our hard work. Unfortunately, it takes a whole lot of photographers to do this and not just a handful. Two, I refuse to play into a business model that has no rewards for my investment, time and talent. I make my share of mistakes but I try to hold them to a minimum. I have never met an accountant, a painter, a plumber, a banker or any other profession, even if it is part time, to simply give their talents away so freely to someone who would financially benefit off of their time and investment. We all have to make our own decisions, I am just trying to help photographers think about their decisions and hopefully give them food for thought. I wish you well and hope we all can survive in this business.
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I do not see a time factor for travel, shooting. Only back end work. Add that in and how much per hour are you gaining. In other words, we are not seeing the complete picture.
Charles, Great question. You’re correct in asking the time spent traveling and taking pictures. Most of my international trips are about two weeks in length. Although it is impossible to think we are going to recoup every minute we are in the field, it is fair, and one I encourage, to value your time and talent creating the photos. I simply want to encourage photographers to think about everything they have invested in their product. This is the way every business works, businesses always consider their overhead when adding the numbers at the end of the day.