A couple rock climbing near the top of Cathedral Ledge. Echo Lake State Park in North Conway, New Hampshire. White Mountains.
This last April I attended the American Society of Picture Professionals’ reinvention weekend in Boston, and the major theme was finding ways for those working in the picture industry to keep working while the landscape of the industry is rapidly changing. Both stock and assignment prices have been deteriorating for years, if not decades, challenging both stock agencies and photographers to change business tactics in order to survive. It’s no secret what is causing the decline in prices – digital technology. To some extent, digital cameras have leveled the playing field on the content creation side of things. More importantly, digital distribution has drastically reduced the cost of selling images. On the stock side of the business, digital distribution (first in the form of royalty-free CDs, then with the advent of microstock) has enabled stock companies to be profitable without charging large rights-managed fees as the administrative costs of managing a large stock library have been drastically reduced due to digital image management and distribution. Lower stock prices have also led to lower assignment fees, both on the commercial and editorial side of the business, though to a greater extent in the editorial world, as newspapers and magazines are downsizing and going out of business.
I’m not a doom and gloom kind of guy, but it’s hard to ignore the trends in the industry. As a nature and adventure photographer and editorial shooter, my big question going into the ASPP conference was this, “Is there a future for the solo nature photographer or photojournalist?” The romantic image of the lone wolf photographer spending weeks in the field funding his or her work through the sale of stock and assignment fees is definitely under assault. After the conference, I got the sense that the answer to my question is “probably not,” though the experts seemed to be unsure how the marketplace will shake out. I’m cautiously optimistic, but I’m pretty sure the “lone wolf” approach is dying out and that the new paradigm is going to be collaboration – with other photographers and creators, with NGOs, with foundations, and so on.
I’ve collaborated with NGOs for most of my career, both for funding and for discovering the conservation stories that are relevant and newsworthy. This collaboration has definitely kept my business afloat during the recession, but it is clear to me that I need to take this idea to a higher level by working with other photographers and other creators to create feature-rich, story-driven multimedia content. This is a big change from how I usually work (I rarely even work with an assistant) but it is a way of working that I’m embracing and excited about.
Why am I excited that this approach can work? Simply because of the success stories that are emerging in the midst of this downturn in the industry. At the ASPP conference, we learned that this collaborative approach is already working from speakers like Brian Storm, whose company MediaStorm is leading the way in partnering photographers with other professionals to create powerful, multi-media stories. If you haven’t yet seen what MediaStorm is creating, then you haven’t seen the future of photojournalism. We also learned about VII, a photo agency where some of the world’s best photojournalists work together to create equally powerful multi-media stories. Both companies use a new model that uses multiple content creators working together to create stories that the big media companies won’t spend the money for. My impression is that no one is getting rich, but these companies are giving photojournalists the opportunity to do what they originally set out to do in their careers – tell important stories. These stories are getting told in new and on non-traditional ways – through print, multi-media, exhibits, etc. Funding these projects requires a new model as well. No longer are the magazines, newspapers, and big news organizations footing the bill. Instead, money comes from a diversity of places: NGOs, foundations, media companies, print sales, book sales, etc. Photographers need to pay attention to this new model. The old way of paying the bills with assignment fees and residual stock income is just getting harder and harder to do.
Conservation photographers like myself should also check out the work of the International League of Conservation Photographers. ILCP is setting the bar very high for collaborative conservation photography projects with their Rapid Assessment Visual Expeditions. These R.A.V.E.s are intense, short-term photo projects where a group of the world’s best nature photographers descend on a location and quickly create a body of work that is used to bring about environmental change. Another collaborative conservation photo project seeing great success is Stephan Widstrand’s Wild Wonders of Europe, and the newly launched Meet Your Neighbours (led by Niall Benvie and Clay Bolt) project seems destined for similar success.
So…if you’re a photographer, are you willing and ready to change?
When I first became a full-time nature and adventure photographer nine years ago, I expected I’d spend most of my time exploring beautiful places and having wilderness “wow” moments most days. I knew I would need to also spend time in the studio running the business side of my career, but I had no idea how all-consuming that could be become. After my first year shooting full-time, I analyzed how I spent my time and realized I had only been out shooting around 50 days in the past year. I was a photographer, yet had taken pictures less than two months out of the year!
Part of the equation was the fact that I was a new dad, but more importantly, I let myself get wrapped up in dealing with the more mundane aspects of the job – marketing, figuring out what my website was about, and at that time, filing and scanning slides. It is so easy to let those things take over, especially when you are first starting out and feeling the pressure of “making it.”
Of course, nine years later, that pressure hasn’t gone away, and is worse in some ways due to the state of the industry and the fact I now have two kids. But…I’m a photographer and to succeed as a photographer I need to be constantly making new pictures and letting my craft evolve. The day to day business stuff is very important, but without the pictures and the craft, it’s a waste of time. Over the past several years, I’ve worked hard to develop efficiencies in my business and hired outside help so that I can get the business stuff done and still take pictures. I now get out and shoot around 120 days/year. I wish it were more, but that seems like a good number to me.
That still leaves about 130 – 150 days when I’m in the studio instead of out shooting, but since I live in New England, about half those days aren’t worth being outside anyway! What I did for a day a few weeks ago is fairly typical:
Signed and matted a print for client coming by.
Met with our accountant to go over 2009 taxes. By the way, he said not to worry too much about owing anything – one upside of a down economy!
Uploaded 280 new images to our Photoshelter site.
Exported a Lightroom catalag with 500 images to a thumb drive which I mailed to my part-time keywording assistant.
Chatted on the phone for half an hour with one of our best conservation clients.
Printed and cut 10 prints for above client for an event they are having later this month in Maine.
Selected images and created a Photoshelter gallery for the 2011 Wilderness Society calendar.
Set up a video shoot for later in the week.
Went to the post office (twice).
Scheduled a personal Lightroom consultation for next month with a former workshop student.
Provided high-res links to a commercial client.
Tweeted, Facebooked, LinkedIn-ed and spent the usual minutes studying my bit.ly results, YouTube counts, and Google Analytics for signs that what I’m doing is making a difference (it is.)
Ate dinner, rode bikes with the kids, put them to bed, and processed and captioned about 30 new images while watching Chuck (House was a rerun.)
Crashed at ten.
Pretty typical day. Glamorous, huh?
Until next time…
-Jerry
Find out more about Jerry at his website, and follow him on Twitter at @jerrymonkman
Editors note: Welcome to Jerry and Marcy Monkman! They will be posting on our blog from time to time, and we are pleased and honored to have them.
Jerry and Marcy Monkman are "EcoPhotographers" featuring distinctive adventure, nature, and travel photography. Known for their conservation work in New England's wild places, the Monkmans have spent the last fifteen years artfully documenting the mountains, forests, and coastlines that define the region.
Onion seedlings in a greenhouse in South Hampton, New Hampshire.
This is the first time in eleven years that I am not working on one or more book projects (I tortured myself with three last year.) I love working on books most of the time, but add in the usual bunch of commissioned photo projects that I do every year, and it’s rare for me to have the time to shoot just because I feel like it. I think this is a problem. Always working under deadlines makes it hard to grow as a photographer. You are less likely to experiment with new techniques, explore new subject matter in depth, or just have fun being a photographer.
I think emerging photographers often create such unique and compelling work because they have yet to be hemmed in by years of running a business and fulfilling the demands of clients. Us veterans need to get back to the freedom of our early days once in a while by regularly tackling personal photo projects. These projects are a a great way to have fun, while stretching your skills to new levels and sometimes unexpected places. Besides giving you a chance to grow creatively, they are an important way to let photo editors and art buyers see what you are interested in, new directions you are exploring, and that you can find new ways to make art and tell stories. It’s sometimes hard to do that with commissioned work, as the client hires you based on what you already do. Sure, you can experiment on those projects too, but you better get it right using tried and true methods first.
Seed flats planted with onion seeds in a greenhouse in South Hampton, New Hampshire.
My wife Marcy and I are members of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) on the New Hampshire Seacoast called Heron Pond Farm. CSA members give the farm capital at the times of the year when they need it most, and the farm pays back its members with fruits and vegetables once a week or every other week during the course of the year. Heron Pond Farm, offers both a summer share, which runs from June through October, and a winter share that pays out from November through March. (By the way there is still room to purchase this year’s summer share if you’re in the area – from our experience, I can tell you that you receive much more value than you pay out.) I’ve decided to make chronicling the work at Heron Pond Farm a personal photo project that I can work on over the course of the year, and beyond. I feel that the CSA movement has benefits on many levels – it strengthens community, it keeps open space from being developed, and it encourages people to eat locally, which reduces carbon emissions. As a personal photography project, it is ideal for me for several reasons: 1) it is different than my usual nature and adventure photography, 2) it has a conservation theme, which is something I am passionate about, 3) it is close to home (about 15 miles) so I can shoot an hour here or there without feeling like it is getting in the way of my “real” work, 4) it is a story I can easily follow long-term and develop a body of work that has meaning and is marketable, and 5) it lets me support people and a business I believe in.
Farmer Greg Balog training tomato plants in a greenhouse in South Hampton, New Hampshire. Heron Pond Farm greenhouse.
I’ve spent 6-8 hours/month so far since January with the Heron Pond Farm crew, and I’m really just getting started photography-wise. While I have photographed farms before, it has typically been from a scenic standpoint, while this project is inspiring me to take a more in-depth approach, learning what’s going on and why, and capturing the course of events from planting to harvest to market. Of course, starting a photography project focusing on a vegetable farm in New Hampshire in January may seem less than ideal, but it has been a great time to get to know the farmers and their crew as well as shoot the farming that happens in the winter in greenhouses. I never understood the extent of winter farming in New Hampshire, and to me that’s a new story that I can pursue. (Plus, the light in a greenhouse has a great diffuse quality, so you can shoot any time of day using natural light. That will end soon as planting moves outside.) What’s nice about working on a story like this as a personal project is that there is no deadline or client, and if I get to the farm and just feel like goofing around with my new lens baby for 3 hours, that’s o.k. The goal for me is to use that time to try new things and techniques and see what happens. If it sucks, who cares? But maybe I’ll figure something out that is pretty cool
A greenhouse at Heron Pond Farm that was damaged by a rain and wind storm in South Hampton, New Hampshire. Thankfully, the plastic sheeting was due to be replaced soon, and the warm weather meant the crops were not lost.
I’m excited to see where this project goes as the weather warms up and I get to spend time out in the fields. I feel like the creative opportunities will get even more inspiring as this story progresses, but I already feel like I’m better off just for having started it. Now I just have to find the time for the other three or four projects swimming around in my head!
Heron Pond Farm Greenhouse – Images by Jerry and Marcy Monkman
Until next time,
-Jerry
You can find out more about the Monkmans at their website, and follow Jerry on Twitter at @jerrymonkman
Is there a future for the solo nature photographer or photojournalist?
Thursday, July 29th, 2010A couple rock climbing near the top of Cathedral Ledge. Echo Lake State Park in North Conway, New Hampshire. White Mountains.
This last April I attended the American Society of Picture Professionals’ reinvention weekend in Boston, and the major theme was finding ways for those working in the picture industry to keep working while the landscape of the industry is rapidly changing. Both stock and assignment prices have been deteriorating for years, if not decades, challenging both stock agencies and photographers to change business tactics in order to survive. It’s no secret what is causing the decline in prices – digital technology. To some extent, digital cameras have leveled the playing field on the content creation side of things. More importantly, digital distribution has drastically reduced the cost of selling images. On the stock side of the business, digital distribution (first in the form of royalty-free CDs, then with the advent of microstock) has enabled stock companies to be profitable without charging large rights-managed fees as the administrative costs of managing a large stock library have been drastically reduced due to digital image management and distribution. Lower stock prices have also led to lower assignment fees, both on the commercial and editorial side of the business, though to a greater extent in the editorial world, as newspapers and magazines are downsizing and going out of business.
I’m not a doom and gloom kind of guy, but it’s hard to ignore the trends in the industry. As a nature and adventure photographer and editorial shooter, my big question going into the ASPP conference was this, “Is there a future for the solo nature photographer or photojournalist?” The romantic image of the lone wolf photographer spending weeks in the field funding his or her work through the sale of stock and assignment fees is definitely under assault. After the conference, I got the sense that the answer to my question is “probably not,” though the experts seemed to be unsure how the marketplace will shake out. I’m cautiously optimistic, but I’m pretty sure the “lone wolf” approach is dying out and that the new paradigm is going to be collaboration – with other photographers and creators, with NGOs, with foundations, and so on.
I’ve collaborated with NGOs for most of my career, both for funding and for discovering the conservation stories that are relevant and newsworthy. This collaboration has definitely kept my business afloat during the recession, but it is clear to me that I need to take this idea to a higher level by working with other photographers and other creators to create feature-rich, story-driven multimedia content. This is a big change from how I usually work (I rarely even work with an assistant) but it is a way of working that I’m embracing and excited about.
Why am I excited that this approach can work? Simply because of the success stories that are emerging in the midst of this downturn in the industry. At the ASPP conference, we learned that this collaborative approach is already working from speakers like Brian Storm, whose company MediaStorm is leading the way in partnering photographers with other professionals to create powerful, multi-media stories. If you haven’t yet seen what MediaStorm is creating, then you haven’t seen the future of photojournalism. We also learned about VII, a photo agency where some of the world’s best photojournalists work together to create equally powerful multi-media stories. Both companies use a new model that uses multiple content creators working together to create stories that the big media companies won’t spend the money for. My impression is that no one is getting rich, but these companies are giving photojournalists the opportunity to do what they originally set out to do in their careers – tell important stories. These stories are getting told in new and on non-traditional ways – through print, multi-media, exhibits, etc. Funding these projects requires a new model as well. No longer are the magazines, newspapers, and big news organizations footing the bill. Instead, money comes from a diversity of places: NGOs, foundations, media companies, print sales, book sales, etc. Photographers need to pay attention to this new model. The old way of paying the bills with assignment fees and residual stock income is just getting harder and harder to do.
Conservation photographers like myself should also check out the work of the International League of Conservation Photographers. ILCP is setting the bar very high for collaborative conservation photography projects with their Rapid Assessment Visual Expeditions. These R.A.V.E.s are intense, short-term photo projects where a group of the world’s best nature photographers descend on a location and quickly create a body of work that is used to bring about environmental change. Another collaborative conservation photo project seeing great success is Stephan Widstrand’s Wild Wonders of Europe, and the newly launched Meet Your Neighbours (led by Niall Benvie and Clay Bolt) project seems destined for similar success.
So…if you’re a photographer, are you willing and ready to change?
Until next time…
-Jerry
Tags: Business of Photography, conservation photography, jerry monkman, mediastorm, multi-media, photography, photography business, photojournalism, vii
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