Ceterum Censeo: Pino Granata´s We are not butchers

On his blog Paul Melcher says that the photo industry never has been so healthy.

In the past we never have had stock photo agencies with a turnover of $800 million a year.

In these days photo agencies are sold and bought for $200 million or more. There is a lot of money in the photo industry and that is true.

 

We could say that 60% of the photo business is in the hands of three companies and that the intention of Gary Shenk of Corbis to fire 160 employees is not a sign of healthiness.

Also, when Getty Images is in trouble, this agency doesn´t think twice about firing people.

 

20 years ago my agency was doing really great and once when I was in Paris I visited Magnum Photos, trying to represent them in Italy. At that time a man named James A. Fox was the Editor-in-Chief of the best photo agency ever. He was nice and polite but at the end of our conversation he told me: "We are not butchers".

This is a proposition that everybody in the industry used to repeat with pride. A lot of pride.

 

Now I have a lot of respect for Paul Melcher and I hope that in the future we´ll do something together, but in spite of all the money that undoubtedly is in the photo industry, I see little content.

 

When I look into the magazines, I don´t see great pictures. I don´t hear either of great new shooters. The best pictures I have seen lately are the pictures shot 20 years ago in Iran, the ones of the execution.

Maybe I´m an european socialist dreamer as my friend Chris Ferrone once told me, but I care very little about the millions of dollars of others. I care instead about seeing great pictures.

Pino Granata

 

Pino Granata is the founder of Granata Images. Granata Images is now run by his sons and Pino works as editorial and stock photo consultant. He is been working in this industry since 43 years.

 

Related:

• Ceterum Censeo: Pino Granata´s It's time to react (June 30, 2007)
• Ceterum Censeo: Pino Granata on SnapVillage by Corbis (June 26, 2007)
• Pino Granata: CEPIC - Time for a Change (June 21, 2007)
• Letters from Italy with Pino Granata´s Ceterum censeo: The Stars Look Down (Feb. 23, 2007)
• Letters from Italy: Pino Granata´s Ceterum censeo on Corbis entering the Microstock Business (Feb. 18, 2007)
• Pino Granata: Who is the Dinosaur? (Feb. 06, 2007)
• Sipa Press Founder Goksin Sipahioglu Receives Premier French Order Légion d'honneur - A Comment By Pino Granata (Jan. 26, 2007)
• Pino Granata: Two Worlds Apart (Jan. 10, 2007)
• Picade, The New Photographer-Driven Stock Photo Agency: Forget RF Licensing, Photo Portals and Microstock (Nov. 28, 2006)
• A New Photographic Renaissance, by Pino Granata (Oct. 31, 2006)
• "Just fly in a different direction" (Oct. 10, 2006)
• The Bill Gates Mystery: An Open Letter From Pino Granata To The Founder Of Corbis (Oct. 03, 2006)
• "Is There A Future For Stock Agents?" (Sept. 20, 2006, by Jim Pickerell, Story 873, subscription required).
• Pino Granata: "Is there any future for photographers and agents?" (Sept. 16, 2006)
• Jason Pagan Launches Alternative Photojournalism Agency Anarchy Images (July 18, 2006)

 

Comments

[Ethel]

I think maybe Pino Granata looks for photos where they used to be but no longer are... Great pictures are not in magazines anymore, that's true, but you can see amazing pictures all over the Internet.

In the old days, you sometimes had a chance to see a Magnum photo in a magazine, once in a while. Today, you can see the entire collection in just a few clicks.

However, if Pino Granata still wishes to get a magazine with great pictures, I can only recommend 'OE', a brand new magazine edited by the photographers from l'Oeil Public :

http://www.oeilpublic.com/index.php

There has never been a happier time for picture researchers...

Ethel

[Bryan Zmijewski]

Pino-
I look forward to meeting you sometime. Despite your pessimism, I really think there is a wealth of positive things happening in the industry- I think your view is top down.

The amount of energy and risk taken by new photographers is incredible- it's really enjoyable to be part of this emerging crowd. Most could careless about the Gettyorbisters.

Bryan

[erwin]

Stock photo is bad for the long term as long as agencies using subscription model, such as shutterstock, 123rf, dreastime, consider this:

1. subscription sales are much more destructive for the business as a whole, than microstock in general. Subscriptions enable customers to build large image archives that reduces the need to download photos in the future and thus our (photographers) profit potential.

2. average subscribers only use about 15 - 30% of the full potential of their membership. This means that most pictures in a subscription sell at a 5-6USD price-point in average, giving us (photographers) about 25 cents in commission. A bottom-line commission of about 5 percent. Even if I was totally wrong and every subscriber actually downloaded the double of what I have heard, the commission would still only be 10%.

3. Same price at all size, even 16mp the price same as 1.3mp?

Downsize your image before send to the subscription model agencies.
this link is interesting
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=3278.0

for stock photo future, there is pay per photo and 70% share agency out there...
FeaturePics.com is one of them