If you have decided on a career as a freelance photographer your vocation will be marketing and your avocation, or sideline, will be photography. The marketing aspect of a photography business involves identifying potential customers, creating customer interest in the services you offer and building strong customer relationships. It is not unusual for self-employed photographers to spend 80% of their time in the marketing and administrative aspects of their business and 20% actually producing pictures.

Phrases like “it’s not all doom and gloom” pop up often, but those who offer such encouraging analysis are typically in the top tier of the profession. While their experience is certainly real and laudable if not amazing, is it representative enough to be touted as a roadmap to a successful career? Common sense, economics, mathematics and every available source of statistical information says no.

Has the time come to take photojournalism off life-support? For the last thirty-odd years, Neil Burgess, director of NBPictures headquartered in London, has been listening to people talk about, or predict the death of photojournalism. This article, first published on EP/UK, outlines the sorry state of photojournalism today and comes to the conclusion that there is only one thing to do.

U.K. stock-image company Alamy has announced a 24/7 news feed service in May. The service launched in beta, with a full product release coming later in the year.

A large percentage of the still-photo segment of the stock photography business is related to advertising—either licensing images for use in print ads, or licensing them for use in editorial products that are supported to a great extent by ads. The health of the stock photography business is directly related to the health of the print business. To understand what is likely to happen in the still photography business, it is important to have some understanding of advertising trends.

In a letter to its contributors, Corbis has disclosed it will be seeking liquidation of the Sygma business entity in France. The company acquired Sygma in 1999 and has had numerous well-publicized legal and management issues with the former agency’s photographers, staff and assets.

I had already been a still photographer for over 20 years when I started exploring digital video and the motion medium ten years ago. I had built a successful career shooting editorially for magazines like National Geographic Traveler, Smithsonian, Travel & Leisure to name a few, as well as producing annual reports for major corporations.  When digital video hit the scene in the late ‘90’s, I was already starting to feel a slight frustration in trying to tell certain stories with a still camera. I was beginning to think and see in terms of movement and sound.  At the same time, technology was making it possible and affordable with digital video cameras and non-linear editing software for me to use this medium to tell my stories.  The new tools were a means to an end.

From a stock photography point of view, the future is bleak for those trying to sell images for textbook use. This segment of the stock photography business is on what appears to be an irreversible downward spiral.

Is it time to institute a system of floor prices for the use of rights-managed images for editorial purposes? Is there any price so low—$50, $30 or $20—that the image creator would prefer not to make the sale? This article explores this issue and suggests a strategy that could benefit rights managed photographers and agencies alike.

A San Francisco-based photographer recently asked: "There is a lot of speculation about tablets like the Kindle and the iPad possibly leading the way for more image use and therefore a possible boon to stock-photo licensing. Do you have any thoughts on that?"

This story provides links to some of the stories on this site that may be of interest to someone new to the stock photography business, or someone who might to have a brief refresher course on some of the things that have been happening in the last few years. Many of these stories will also give you some idea of developing trends and what the future might hold.

Recently, I started a discussion entitled.“What are the future career opportunities in photography?” on several of the groups on Linkedin. The topic has engendered a lively and interesting discussion, and well worth some time in reviewing. This article contains a few of the highlights of the discussion. More can be found at the following Linkedin Groups: ASMP: American Society of Media Professionals - National; Photography Industry Professionals and Stock Photography Buy and Sell Images.

For those who think that the use of photography in book publishing and for educational purposes will remain the same in this years ahead this story provides some numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau to consider. Significant changes can be expected in the near future.

There is talk about a crisis in journalism, which generally takes the form of angst-ridden journalists, editors and news folk in general asking, “How do we maintain the commercial status quo without which journalism as we know it will be gone?” The question is sincere and extends beyond the fear of losing jobs; there is a genuine concern that the investigative and informative roles of the news media will be lost with a high cost to the civic health of our society. It’s not about finding new ways to do old things, but time to radically rethink our business models by redefining out products, our partners, and our clients. This article is about reinvention and redefining what we do.

More and more still photographers are getting into video because of the appeal of the hybrid still cameras that also shoot video.  Photographers love the visual coming out of these big chip cameras – what’s not to love?  But they quickly find out that if they aren’t just going to be laying visuals down to a music track, they will need to start thinking about their audio – specifically a narrative track or one driven by sound bites from interviews.  I work in the corporate sector, as well as create documentaries, so I do a lot of interviews.  The interviews, along with a scripted voiceover comprise my audio track and drive the story.  

I was in Chicago a couple of weeks ago and stopped by Zacuto.  Zacuto is a business that has made outfitting DSLR cameras for video a specialty.  They have cleverly engineered an assortment of their party add-ons that take these cameras to a higher level.  They have also provided solutions to overcome some of these cameras shortcomings.  Depending on the genre you are working in, documentary work, corporate, indie films or photojournalism will ultimately determine which way you’ll need to “trick” these cameras out.

In looking ahead to 2010 photographers should focus on how they will adapt to the new realities of the photography business. On his blog John Harrington recently argued that microstock has not created new markets for photography, but rather “devastates existing ones.” This plays to the frustration of many professional photographers who have devoted years of education, experience, and capital investment to a trade (dare I say art), where the value of what they produce is suddenly worth a fraction of what it was just a couple years ago. However, there is no denying that microstock has also opened up a market that professional photographers had not addressed previously.

We have done a bad job. A terrible job. If picking a photograph is all about its price and not its quality than we, the photo industry, have made a terrible job at selling our work. Every time an editor, whether  from an ad agency or a magazine decides to use an image because it is cheaper than the others, that means we have all failed to advocate for the real value of photography. We have failed, all of us, Photographers, agents, photo agencies to make the new generation of image buyers see the real value in our images. Thus the current situation.

Photography should be a revolutionary act. It should be a kick in the establishment, the common, the mundane. It has to be an act of revolt against banality and conformity, a powerful explosion of new ideas. It should be as violent to the mind as a thousand thunderstorms. It should rip apart the accepted social fabric . It should denounce, point, accuse and solve. In one frame. It should be a declaration of war to everything we take for granted and accept as obvious.

With all the free information available on the Internet why would or should anyone want to pay for information? Many consumers believe that writers should give away their work in order to build a following of customers who will then pay them for some other product or service they provide. Most would acknowledge that some effort and expense is required on the part of the creator to produce good, useful information, but often that is not deemed to be of any economic value. Photographers tend to supply information on their blogs as a way of getting customers to hire them for assignment work, for paid speaking engagements or as a way of selling a book. The other way to earn revenue is to generate enough traffic to your site that advertisers will pay to surround your information with ads in hopes that some or your popularity will rub off on them. Is giving away information the only way?

A friend who has been on the periphery of the photo industry for decades now works for a company that manages social media and search engine optimization for a variety of clients, including law firms. She said her office mates disagree on what they are allowed to do with pictures they find on news Web sites. She asked: “Are bloggers allowed to illustrate their blog entries with photos they find on news sites, such as a photo of a sinkhole? What are the rules about using editorial images in a blog post?”

Dirck Halstead’s perceptive two-part analysis of the photojournalism business is a must-read for photojournalists or anyone considering this career. It should also be a wake up call for stock and advertising photographers hoping to sell their images for use in print publications.

Traditional stock-photo sellers wonder why there does not seem to be any growth in demand for their product. The 2006 U.S. Census Bureau statistics of U.S. businesses could provide some clues.

This story provides a schedule that is useful when establishing a price for editorial usage. Prices should be based on the size of usage on the page and the circulation of the publication.

If you want to continue to take pictures for a living, it's time to start learning to shoot video. Why? because newspapers and magazines are beginning to move away from print and toward online. Once online offerings have been established, video and sound become more appealing and a better way to communicate editorial information and advertising messages than using stills.