Alexander Karst is an old stager in the picture business.
He started his career in 1998 as Web & PR Manager at PhotoDisc where he first met his now partner at Die Bildbeschaffer, Michaela Koch, worked later for Getty Images and Digital Vision, and co-founded Strandperle in 2002.
In 2008 Alexander founded "Die Bildbeschaffer" in Hamburg, again together with Michaela Koch: a new venture which offers the outsourcing of the complete process of buying RM/RF/MS/CC images, rights clearance and pricing as a service to ad agencies and corporates. Now, "Die Bildbeschaffer" not only do the fulfilment – but also do pre- & after-sales jobs: image databases, filling images into the databases, trainings and seminars for all purposes.
As an image buyer, Alexander has been involved from Day One in buying and using microstock. I wanted to know more about Alexander’s buying experience with microstock since the beginning and how it and also his perception about microstock have changed over the years.
Alexander, before we get into the fine-print, how does your typical work day look like? When you get a briefing call from a client ("We need images for this or that purpose"), where do you start to look for images firstly?
To be honest, first of all I start with my customer – because he sometimes already has a picture in his mind – and he knows about the budget he is willing to spend. Of course, mostly there is a big gap between wishes and needs, but with some questions more, I can identify which agency might hold the right image at the right place.
We have too many customers showing up with an expensive image saying "perfect image, but wrong price“ and ask for alternatives – having searched on the wrong site first. If you fall in love with one image, we can hardly change your mind and you will always mourn after the first one... .
Or have you asked me which my favourite search site is? There are some – Getty for its renown keywording; some love Masterfile for the SimSearch – I love Masterfile because I can read a lot of keywords and sometimes I cannot find the right word by my own; Alamy for the broad bandwidth of images and maybe Dreamstime because it shows less images we don’t want to see... .
2.
Do you remember when you first acquired microstock images and for which purpose? Did that already happen before 2006?
I assume yes, I should have bought my first iStockphoto images maybe in 2004. But I truly remember the first images seen on iStockphoto: a full ashtray on the top of the programmer’s desk, lovely impressions of dead pigeons and white images of burning light bubbles, my impression then was that open source programmers wanted to fill databases for their coding & testing needs, and I was happy once I could change my mind and use that stuff. It was an 800 images job for a mosaic.
But maybe I should annotate something: we now talk about microstock as if it was totally new. Please remember 1998, when we at PhotoDisc sold MedRes Single Images for 49 EUR (DM 99,- at that time) and WebRes Images at even lower prices. Sure: it’s not 4 point 9 but 49 – but I remember photographers, libraries, agencies shouting at us the same way – with the same arguments others threw at microstocks when they came up
Of course, there are differences – but we went thru it first
3.
Are you using for your work any microstock subscription images or is it all about single microstock images? If so, which microstock subscription services do you use, and why?
Actually, we don’t do many jobs where subscriptions would help. And those customers using subscriptions sometimes don’t know that they shouldn’t bulk-download for later purposes or should purchase enhanced licences for their usages. Ad agencies need subscriptions in order to have bigger comp files. So, at the end of the day, Thinkstock’s image packs or Shutterstock’s On-Demand subscription are the offers we suggest our customers to buy.
4.
What can you tell us about the price pressure today in your job? Is there any pressure from some customers to look for relatively cheap microstock images only, or is it still about "the best image only for the client" and his project, regardless of the price?
Image buying colleagues of you over at a very large European media company are instructed to search at a special microstock agency for the cheapest images first - if they don’t find there what they need they must search in several free images databases from e.g. industry companies with free product images*.
[*Industry companies with free product/service images are companies from the following industries: food industry (food producing and processing); household goods; travel agencies; national, federal and local travel offices; PR departments, etc., which maintain huge databases with free images; in Germany companies like Dr. Oetker, Toppits, Fieseler Töpfe, Deutsche Geflügel, Deutsche See, Walnuss, Sanella, Kölner Zucker, Diamentmehl, etc.]
We definitely see this price pressure – as always, as usual, as in any other branches, where you talk to the controlling and purchasing departments as well as to the creatives. When the microstocks appeared, customers saw the prices and didn’t get that you only receive a limited license for a buck. We had to explain what a buck is worth and – on the other hand – a high quality and brilliant brochure also needs high quality and brilliant images. You can’t get Yann-Arthus Bertrand at microstock prices – that’s it.
But once a renown RM photographer sells some images to the Tourism Board of – let’s say – Brunei – and others from the same trip to Corbis or places them on Alamy - why shouldn’t we use the free images for a travel brochure? From the same shoot, we might have taken an image he gave to Corbis or Alamy, yes. I mean: it’s not a problem for Corbis or Alamy. It was our good luck having found that free image. Just keep in mind a free image might not cost any license fee but it might cost you a lot of time to find it and to clear the rights – if you get the clearance at all.
Nowadays, we definitely offer searches from cheap to expensive images, knowing that free images are not always easy to use. Until you have final sign-offs from a Flickr photographer, you can suffer a lot. Please count this onto your expenses and you will see that high-priced sources can be cheaper. Same with microstock in the early days – without model releases and some tricky hassles – we understood that micros couldn’t deliver the same service like RM agencies: controlled images, stories, background information and hires files – actually, the clients come to us asking for exactly this service. Rounding this up: We definitely have customers willing to pay the price for an outstanding image and service. Most customers have a good balance between demand and budget. But of course, some try to get everything without paying anything.
On the other hand, there are agencies offering discounts in times when sales are slow. Customers learn that they can save money on this bazaar and they will keep that in mind once the agencies would like to increase prices again.
5.
From your point of view, what were and what are the most important innovations in the microstock market for image buyers like you? What are the most important innovative features for you? Is there a microstock agency which you prefer, and why?
For us, it were not the great innovations, but the smaller steps from one EULA to the other, from one collection review to the next one where we saw the microstocks learning on the job: once a picture without model release was leading to impeachments, not-released images were deleted. Once they discussed what to do with bigger companies purchasing images, they invented the single seat license and started charging extended licenses.
The flow of images within Getty Images is a great spot: from Flickr to Getty, from iStockphoto to Vetta to Getty to Getty RM, Thinkstock in between holding RF images next to iStockphoto at microstock prices – I love to see that the value of an image can change so quickly... . And I saw the news about the new Getty contracts with photographers saying that photographers will not be able to control anymore the licence model of their images and cannot prevent Getty from changing a RM image to Thinkstock if they want.
Dreamstime is one of the portals I personally prefer – because of the big comps, the high volume of identical images to iStockphoto and the low fees for extended licences. When I need a laugh, I go to Shutterstock and look at the translated captions & keywords. But again, I think their on-demand subscription is a very good deal. On the other hand, I wonder what customers think about Shutterstock extracting TIFFs from JPGs after having pushed them to the double size. Or Digital Vision, who in the old days produced 75MB CMYK (US-coated) from MedRes-scans and which are now being sold on Getty re-compiled as RGB.
For some years now, almost every RF brand takes nonsellers out and converts them to low-budget or microstock. I don’t think that an image gets any better by lowering its price. It just makes our life harder because we have to look through all the old images next to new and fresh microstock productions.
Take Thinkstock for example: I really like this platform because it offers some really great RF images for microstock prices (5 packed images for EUR 50.-). OK: for microstock conditions. But with Thinkstock, we did some really great projects like a showroom-decoration with 100 images (80 Getty RF and 20 iStock images) for a total of EUR 14.- per image, including our search and delivery fees.
6.
If you roughly calculate the overall numbers of images which you acquire for your customers within the course of a year, how many are macrostock and how many are microstock images percentagewise? How often do you use microstock? Will you buy more microstock in the future?
It is not that much: every sixth image is microstock. But it surely will increase – because we see great enhancements in the creative quality. And microstock becomes more and more interesting for large enterprises due to features like on-account-payments, company-sub-accounts and the extended licences.
7.
Some microstock agencies have lowered commissions for microstock photographers. Frankly, during your work day, do you usually have any time to notice this? Is it a topic which you discuss with your image buying colleagues? If so, does lowering commissions for microstock photographers in any way influence your buying behaviour at all?
Honestly: do you think a customer who chooses a 20 EUR image over a 2,000 EUR image cares about the photographer? Try explaining to a client why he should pay 500 EUR for a spoon on the table while he can get it for 5 EUR. Can you blame the client? Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
We heard of the lowered commissions – at the same day when we noticed that the same agencies almost doubled their end user prices. And together with the saying from relevant people that the Microstock Business Model cannot be sustainable with yesterday’s pricings, it draws a perfect picture: photographers earn the same or less, the microstock agencies don’t have to close their doors and customers still pay little.
8.
As an image buyer, what are your hopes and wishes how microstock will evolve for you and your colleagues? How do you see the future of microstock as a professional image buyer?
Well, I believe there will always be people who love to show/share their work for free or for little money. And there will always be a demand for it. But I see an increasing flexibility to move images from one license model to another. This trial & error phase might help to grow up: once you learn which image sells best for which price, customers will be able to identify a constant level of quality within each license model. This situation reminds me a little bit of the development of Royalty Free in the first years of this millennium: RF images became more expensive in general and were categorized in three different price schemes, depending on their quality and not on there origin.
9.
Over at iStockphoto, video is the fastest growing part (to be clear: growth potential, not current market size) of their business, with 65% of the video files being exclusive content in November 2010. How often do you get inquiries to search for microstock footage and film clips from your clients, maybe combined with microstock audio? Also, do you get inquiries to look for 3D-images?
Almost never. I was astonished when I saw the combined offers at the Dresden CEPIC venue in 2009. I wondered if these productions will ever come to a break even. Maybe it’s too early for 3D offerings. Once a creative agency experiments with 3D, they want to do it on their own, having fun – not stock. But you see the growing number of collections ready for CGI: with a big market like automotives, you can both create and sell.
10.
In previous years you used very often photo portals like Alamy or Fotofinder for your work. We still have no real microstock portal, and newcomer PixMac went through some hiccups recently. From your point of view, is there a need for such a microstock portal, or not?
I still use and like Alamy and Fotofinder.
Counter question: What about the project Oseeris? 29 microstocks in one search. Give it a try and you will see: the overwhelming part of the microstock imagery is non-exclusive and appears more than once! And don’t forget good old Picturemaxx! In Picturemaxx, we find the same image 14 times, because everybody cross-sells everything. The same with microstocks: a portal might only succeed here if the site filters duplicates. If there is anybody out there offering that filter, please speak up now!
11.
The Infinite Collection from Fotolia and The Agency Collection from Getty/iStockphoto are ways to mix up traditional higher priced pictures and microstock images all together. Frankly: is it useful for you as an image buyer, or does it more appear to you like Last Exit Brooklyn, the desperate attempt of the good old boys connection to participate in the success of microstock by all means?
The Infinite Collection is a clear offer: you see the names of the original RF brand (although Fotolia customers have to learn that these images are priced 100 times higher) – whereas The Agency Collection mixes up different RF brands, wholly owned or not, RF or Microstock. I felt a bit kidded at first. Maybe it’s the last chance for distributors hiding the original collection name (eh? What is a photo credit?) or filename. But that is only my personal impression. A regular customer, not having grown up with the RF brands of the 90s, trusts the Getty Images website and gets a nice image – does he/she care for a brand name?
12.
Given its dominance in the German Markets, where do you get the most of your microstock images from, from a "closed" B2B platform like Picturemaxx or the internet?
The internet. We use the Picturemaxx browser for specific researches. If we need microstocks, we go directly.
13.
Outside of the microstock loony bin, what are in general the most important innovations in the image buyer market for you and - mean question, I know - the most interesting developments in photography today?
First of all, I think the technical development changed our life: starting with php and asp and Ajax of course, not ending at PicScout and the other image retrieval & infringement grabbing services. I am now waiting for a similar easy-to-use service for printed material as well. Google, please help!!!
Generally, I have the impression that copyright issues have increased. Due to the fact that everybody works with photography, people are becoming more aware of their own rights and believe they can make money with it.
I really like TinEye. It´s a great tool to find original sources of images and it gives you an idea how often an image has been used, at least online.
OK, regarding imagery: the standard of CGI-ready agencies like Maground, Goodstock and moofe is pretty good, showing that images are not only JPGs – and the attempt of a lot of photo-reps to create archives with the images of their represented photographers: we need more high class photography out there with central access points like Alamy or PhotoShelter.
The most interesting innovation on the legal field is definitely the Creative Commons initiative: the legal basis for private uploaders and institutions, allowing them to open their archives and allowing picture users to legally use these images. Fingers crossed, uploaders know their responsibilities.
Thanks so far, Alexander!
