Is Stock Photography worthwhile?

Photography can be an expensive hobby.  Not, perhaps, as expensive as in the film days, when every shot from a roll ate money in film and processing costs.  Nowadays I think nothing of coming home from a day's shooting with an SD card with 300, 400 or even more images captured where, pre-digital, it would be one or two rolls of film, 36 shots per roll.  And, I suspect, compared to some, I'm very economical in my shooting.

Of course there's the cost of equipment - but good quality cameras and lenses were never cheap in film days so the hardware side probably balances out.  And the second hand market is always there to reduce the cost.

But cost there is.  Which is surely why so many photographers try to make an income from their photography - and for many that means shooting for stock.

I still remember my first sale on Alamy.  Heuchera 'Chocolate Ruffles' (above) licensed on 27 June 2014 for the princely sum of $32.76, my share being $16.38.  The first of what I hoped would be a flood of sales.  I'd be rich!  I'd been published (though I never did find out where). I'd be a professional photographer!  Fame and Glory would soon be mine!

10 years later and 2757 images licensed (as of 18 February 2024) at least I can say I've been regularly published.  Rich? No - but currently $23,781.22 better off than if my images had just been sitting on my hard drive.  A professional photographer?  Far from it.  Just an ageing amateur with a bit of skill and the ability to curate and accurately keyword and caption my stock images.  Fame and Glory?  My camara probably gets more credit than I do.

So, is stock photography worthwhile?

For me, yes.  I'm old, Maria and I are both pensioners, and shooting for stock gives me the necessary impetus to get out throughout the year and keep myself occupied - though it does get physically harder as I grow older.  The money pays for my equipment and some travel without upsetting our limited household budget.  But, if I was 30 to 50 years younger, knowing what I know now, would I consider it worthwhile?

No.  It simply isn't profitable enough.  I would need to devote ten times the effort I'm currently expending to make even a paltry living.  I'd need to generate far more saleable images, distribute them among multiple agencies, explore other income streams such as print on demand, hyperactively promote myself on social media and become a slave to the work.  The fun would be gone - and all to make marginally more (possibly less) than minimum wage.

There is too much existing photography floating around the stock photo scene to make a good living solely as a stock photographer.  I'll caveat that to say 'except for the favoured few', because there are people who do make a living from their stock work.  But most don't.  And for them, stock photography isn't worthwhile except as a minor side hustle.  And even then, only if you treat it as a business and identify your market before uploading yet another image to whichever stock libraries you're enrolled with.  

Meanwhile I'll plod on with Alamy as my sole agency.  My latest sale dropped in this morning.  Taxus baccata 'Fastigiata' (above), for the grand sum of $7.40, my share being $2.96.  Doesn't sound encouraging?  It's the lowest of the month to date, my other 12 sales generating $178.99 collectively.

I'll take that - but I'll never rely on it continuing indefinitely.

My Alamy experience - part the fifth

Nearing the end of my fourth year with Alamy and it's time for another round up.  I last published details of my experience with Alamy on 26 August 2016 so what's happened in the sixteen months since I last reported sales?

Firstly, a lot more sales.  And with a lot more sales has come increased revenue.  Through distributor sales I've sold in even more countries worldwide.  My Alamy ranking has considerably improved, with the result that I'm getting a lot more views and zooms.  I'm still without a QC failure since I started with Alamy.  And I've had another magazine front cover, my second.  So, the statistics:

• 339 image sales to date
• I sold 97 image licences in 2016 and vastly exceeded that in 2017 by selling 176.
• Total gross sales have now reached $8,985
• 393 submissions without a single QC failure have resulted in 4912 images on sale
• Average CTR over the last rolling year is 1.05, nearly double the Alamy average
• Monthly views have almost doubled, starting in January 2017 and continuing through the year
• Zooms have also increased, both on a monthly basis, and in coverage.  649, 13.2%,  of my images have been zoomed at least once.

Although most of the image sales have been for plant portraits or garden scenes I have sold a few other subjects.  The shot of Newton Ferrers I showed in the last Alamy experience update sold again in 2017, along with a couple of hoverfly shots and a shot of the False Widow spider.  I also sold a shot of the Admiral McBride pub on Plymouth Barbican.  I think the caption sold that - the pub stands on the site of the original Mayflower steps and very few photographers add that.  Here's the shot:

Devon Life is a glossy monthly UK magazine and they used an Autumn colour image of mine from The Garden House for the front cover of their November 2017 issue.  With the path leading in through the Japanese maples in the Acer glade it was obviously what the Art Editor / Designer wanted to fit the cover page text around.  Very satisfying - and quite lucrative.  I could do with a few more of those!

I mentioned in the last update the importance of a good ranking on Alamy to bring your images to the fore in searches.  With the extra sales and increased zooms has come a quite significant increase in rank.  Even so, I was surprised (and delighted) to see 5 of my images on the first search page (100 images) for garden wildlife after a recent rerank.  Given that 1316 pages of results - 131,583 images - come up in a search that's quite impressive.  I could give lots of similar examples of good search positions for my images.  That sort of increased visibility generates sales and, because it extends to all my images, encourages me to take and submit more photos that aren't plants, gardens or insects.  There's no shortage of opportunity in South West England.

2017 was an excellent year for me on Alamy.  It doesn't generate vast amounts of money but my operating costs are low, I'm doing something I thoroughly enjoy, and I'm able to afford my hobby now I'm fully retired.  2018 should be very interesting.

My Alamy experience - part the fourth

31 months in since I uploaded my first four test submissions to Alamy and I think it's time for another update.  The bare facts are:

• 132 image sales to date
• 52 sales in 2015
• 66 so far in 2016
• $3467 in total gross sales
• 252 uploads without a single QC failure
• 3275 images on sale
• 275 different images zoomed since I started with Alamy
• Sales to 12 different countries (excluding UK and Worldwide)
• Average CTR over the last rolling year of 1.42

I no longer worry about passing QC or whether my images are commercially viable.  Although fairly niche as far as content goes the quality is obviously good enough and the images themselves attractive to a wide range of buyers within my niche.  I may not be getting vast amounts of money for each sale but it's satisfying to be paid something for the work and expense that goes into creating files for stock photography.  Having said that, it's perfectly possible to cut down on actual costs. My top selling image (4 sales to date) was photographed 7ft / 2.2m from my back door.

One of the most satisfying aspects is seeing the licensing of an image that's a personal favourite.

Rosa 'Summer Song'

I photographed this cluster of three blooms of Rosa 'Summer Song' in my garden a couple of years ago.  I loved the arrangement of it.  I took a number of different shots but that was the one I uploaded to Alamy.  And, earlier this month, it sold to a distributor client in the Russian Federation.  Ok, I only get 30% of the not very large fee - but it's my first sale in that market and it's one of my favourite shots.  Two for the price of one.

Which brings me to an important point.  One of the things that drives sales is a good Alamy ranking. You achieve that by number and value of sales, by your ratio of zooms to views (CTR) and other factors not known to we contributors.  Suffice it to say, your individual ranking depends on how good you are in attracting buyer interest and then converting that to sales.  The better your ranking the further up the order your images are pushed when the results of a buyer search are presented.  The higher your ranking the more likely are sales.  It's a virtuous spiral.  One kiss of death is to upload masses of the same subject.  They may all look different but, assuming the keywording is similar or even the same, they'll potentially all come up in a search.  If you don't get a zoom your CTR can go way down.  Which impacts your ranking.  Which impacts your sales.  The virtuous spiral becomes a vicious circle.

In my 3275 images I've got about 1800 different subjects.  Oh, I occasionally get caught out.  I've got a lot of different Camellias and Rhododendrons in my portfolio and a customer search just on either of those two keywords can throw up dozens of views.  Fortunately, buyers within my niche tend to go with Latin and cultivar names as their search terms so I'm not penalised that often.  Hence that 1.42 CTR average.

The biggest problem comes with breaking out of the niche.  I upload plant and garden shots and they sell.  It helps that I have my own garden as a resource, I'm a volunteer at one of the best gardens in the UK, and, increasingly, I'm getting invitations to photograph in other gardens.  If I wasn't past pension age I might even be able to make a living at this.  But what I haven't done is sold many of the other shots I've taken and uploaded.  Maybe things are changing.  I've just sold an image I took a few years back of boats mooring on the River Yealm at Newton Ferrers.

That's only my second sale of an image that isn't a plant portrait or garden view.  Maybe it's better to be a specialist!

My Alamy experience - part the first

It was mid January 2014.  For reasons I can't go into in this post I needed validation that my photography was capable of reaching the quality standards required for commercial licensing.  I'd sold a fair few in the past - but only as part of a word and picture package, not on a stand alone basis.  Which got me thinking about the stock photography market.  And, specifically, the UK based macrostock agency, Alamy.

I photograph flowers.  Oh, and insects, local nature, gardens, a bit of landscape and a few other bits and pieces.  So do many other photographers.  With an abundance of images in those categories many stock agencies are very selective about accepting new work.  Alamy have an interesting business model.  They don't judge content and will accept any photographs - providing they meet their clearly defined but stringent Quality Control (QC) standards.

So, rather than just continuing to build an image bank to illustrate future blogposts, books and articles, I decided to see if my increasing collection of images could meet the technical requirements for submission to Alamy and add another outlet for my imagery.  It's been a learning experience.

Your first submission is four images.  No more, no less.  All four are judged and a QC failure for any of them damns your submission.  Which is why the advice on forums and other areas is always to submit four technically perfect but otherwise boring photos.  These were mine:

Apple Blossom

Episyrphus balteatus feeding on Ceratostigma willmottianum

Green form female of Common blue damselfly, Enallagma cyathigerum

Hemerocallis 'Children's Festival'

Two insect macros and two garden plants?  Risky, very risky if one listens to forum advice.  But look at that in another way.  They're representative of the work I'm going to be submitting both now and in the future.  Better to find out they're not good enough at the outset rather than later down the line.

Submitted on January 13th, I got the email notifying me that all four had passed QC on the morning of the 14th.  I was in.

There are a lot of horror stories about Alamy QC on the net.  Failures for tiny technical errors - a missed dust spot, the odd vagrant bit of chromatic aberration, the dreaded soft or lacking definition - and, of course, acceptable and unacceptable cameras.  Their clearly stated policy to reject all images in all batches awaiting QC if any examined image fails.  Pushing to the back of the QC queue should an image fail - with a possible 28 working day wait for notification.

Perfectly reasonable requirements.

Try working to the 6 sigma QC standards commonplace in UK manufacturing industry.  3.4 failures per million to pass - and, of course, perfection is what you always work towards.  And go out of business if you can't meet those standards.  Compared to that stringency Alamy QC requirements are pretty lax.  And completely understandable.  Alamy are putting your pictures in front of a discerning audience.  It does their and your reputation no good if technically substandard work is presented to buyers.  So every image needs careful examination at 100%, pixel by pixel.  Dust bunnies need cloning out.  Chromatic aberration needs dealing with - I use LightRoom for post processing and it's a simple process.  Images should be unsharpened - and that can produce some very soft looking photos.  The point of focus should be spot on the appropriate part of the main subject - eyes for my insects, stamens for the flowers.  The list goes on - but it's all necessary.

And if in doubt, throw it out.  I've discarded many images that, on careful inspection, simply weren't good enough for critical inspection at 100%.  11 uploads and 188 images on sale later I haven't had a QC failure.  But if I do it will be my fault.  My personal QC won't have been good enough.

I'll cover the joys of image management and keywording  - and the terrors of the wait for confirmation that your latest upload batch has passed QC - in the second of what is likely to be an occasional series.