Stock Images - Make Them Work for You

Back in the day, an art director would thumb through a glossy catalogue from a stock image provider and pick an image that might work in their client’s campaign. If they didn’t see exactly what they wanted, they could either hire a photographer or illustrator to make it, or get the aforementioned stock agencies to research other images in their library for a fee. The photographers in their respective stables were the elite, and pricing reflected that.

Enter the Internet age, and most of that has changed. While you will still see the big names and their exclusive arrangements with top-notch photographers, they have been joined online by many others. The consequence of this new competitive arena has, of course, created significant downward pressure on pricing. It has also created a vast increase in choices for buyers of licensed images.

Licensed Images

In most developed countries, when an artist creates an image, the copyright automatically belongs to them. In order for someone else to use that image on their web site or literature, permission must be obtained and a fee agreed upon. In return, the artist provides a license for that use.

Because the type and term of use varies widely, the fees for licensing can be wide-ranging. For example, if you were only printing 5,000 brochures, the license fee for a particular image would be much lower than if that same image was used on the cover of a best-selling romance novel.

The term “licensed” applies to both traditional and royalty-free arrangements (defined later). The difference is that with traditional licensing, the seller generally knows who the customer is and how they are going to use the image. In royalty-free licensing, this relationship doesn’t exist.

Traditional Licensing - Rights-Managed vs. Rights-Protected

Rights-managed images are licensed for a defined end use, and a license fee is determined by the terms of that use. They can be used in either an editorial or commercial context.

In an editorial context, that is, in a newspaper, magazine or television news piece, the artist is not required to gain permission from a person or property owner to use their face or their building (although there have been challenges to this concept). Editorial shots may be photojournalistic in nature (ie. current events) or simply scenes of people and places to support a story.

Commercial use means that the image will be used in advertising or brochures. Because they directly support the sale of a product or service, the fetching price is much higher than for editorial stock. If faces or other recognizable features of a person appear in the image, a model release must be provided by the artist. Why? The end user may be exposed to a lawsuit if they don’t. For commercial shoots, it is generally understood that the model will be paid if they are helping to promote something, even if it’s only for a dollar. In return, a photographer would receive a signed release, a copy of which would be provided to the end user. Similarly, if you want to use someone’s castle in your ad, you’d better make sure the photographer gets a property release.

This is not to say that rights-managed images used for commercial purposes are too scary or expensive for the small business owner to use. Depending on the size of your print run (or magazine circulation), how many countries it will be seen in, or how long an ad will run for, you may be able to score a model-released image for just a couple of hundred dollars.

But what if you find a unique image that you don’t want any other company using during your campaign period? Be prepared to pay 20 to 30% more (given the same run parameters) for the exclusivity. This is called a rights-protected image.

Royalty-Free Licensing

Royalty-free licensing has been the subject of much debate, and has typically been scorned by professional photographers. The end user pays a one-time license fee and has the right to use it however and for as long as they like. Remember, though - releases still apply for commercial use. Some royalty-free image sites have model releases for their entire collection, so they can be used for either commercial or editorial purposes without concern for liability issues.

The royalty-free concept has spawned a new kind of stock image portal referred to as microstock sites. Prices are down to $1 or less per image, a far cry from the $250 and up that traditional licensing typically costs. Quality and creative values can be all over the map, although this can also be said of some sites that sell both traditional and royalty-free. It’s interesting to note that those same big, established stock agencies with their exclusive libraries and high prices are actively buying up the microstock companies.

While buyers salivate over the choice of images they get for chump change, there is a dark side. Consider this - you cannot negotiate exclusivity for royalty-free. This may not matter to the Mom 'n Pop shop looking for something cheap and cheerful for their flyers, but should be a real concern for larger organizations. Stories abound about competitors using the same royalty-free image in their national advertising campaigns!

Summing Up

A caution about any online stock image collection. If, for instance, you search for “Jack Russell Terrier”, the volume of images you’ll have to sift through may be a staggering waste of your time. Narrow down your search by using quotes to indicate an exact phrase, or connect phrases and keywords with Boolean operators such as AND to ensure your results contain all of these attributes. Example "Jack Russell Terrier" AND playing AND water.

So where can you do your online stock image shopping? Here is a small sampling:

Traditional and Royalty-Free:

·         Masterfile

·         Alamy

·         Corbis

·         Getty Images

Microstock:

·         IstockPhotos

·         Fotolia

·         Shutterstock

·         Dreamstime

Photographers and Buyers Negotiate Price:

·         Photographers Direct