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.