Swimmers at Lily Bay, Moosehead Lake, Greenville, ME - just average or a top 5% photo?

Marcy and I have been selling our images as stock photography for about 15 years now.  Most of that stock we sell directly to clients, but we also are represented by a couple of traditional stock photo agencies and we have our images available through some of the newer on-line only agencies.  Predicting which images will sell well is somewhat of a mystery to me as we sell some images that I think of as just average while some of what I consider to be my best images never sell. This just proves to me that appreciating photography is a very subjective exercise.

Before the on-line agencies came into existence, we would send a selection of slides or digital files to our traditional agencies who would then select 50 - 75% of those images to represent.  Of course, I always think everything I send them is worth marketing, but I came to feel good about our acceptance percentage, realizing that some subject matter and style don't always fit an agency's view of what they should be offering (or they already have that subject covered.)  I'm still surprised that some images are chosen over others, but that's human nature I guess.  However, beyond "accepted" or "rejected" there usually isn't any other feedback from the traditional agencies.

On-line agencies (or portals) take varied approaches to adding work to their collections.  For example, Alamy.com, accepts all images submitted once you pass an initial quality test.  Portals like Photographersdirect.com and AGPix.com accept all of your work because you're paying for the space.  The Photoshelter Collection (http://psc.photoshelter.com/) edits submissions much like a traditional agency, only marketing the images that they feel fit their vision for the collection.  However, Photoshelter as well as Photographers Direct take the additional step of ranking photos so that some stand out from others.  Photographers Direct ranks every image on a scale from 5 to 9, with nine representing the top .25% of images submitted with 5 representing the bottom 10%.  The Photoshelter Collection assigns a gold star (Editor's Choice) to those images they find most appealing or most marketable (I'm not sure which.)

With the subjective nature of appreciating photography, I'm not sure if this helps photo buyers or not, but I have a feeling these rankings can certainly both help and hurt a photographer's chance of selling a particular image.  For example, the above image of "Swimmers at Lily Bay" received a ranking of 6 on Photographers Direct which puts it in the bottom 35% of images on the site and makes it ineligible to be added to most submission requests that come through the site because the site owner requires a ranking of 7 or 8 for many submissions.  I'm not sure why the site owner feels compelled to limit our ability to submit images when he or she is charging us for space on the site, but at least the fee is nominal.  On the other hand, that same photo was just chosen as an Editor's Choice for the Photoshelter Collection.  I'm not sure what percentage of photos overall receive this designation, but only around 5% of our photos get the coveted "Gold Star."  Editor's Choice images tend to show up first in image searches so the designation can improve the chances of an image selling.  I can live with the fact that one editor thinks this photo is mediocre while another finds it quite compelling.  As I've mentioned a couple of times now, appreciating photography is a very subjective process.  What's challenging from my perspective is deciding which images to spend the effort working on to send out to these places.  While I try to edit with our agencies' needs in mind, the kind of feedback we get from situations like this one lead me to focus on what our vision of photography is instead, sending out what we think is important and compelling and just letting the chips fall where they may. Hey, that's easier anyway!

Until next time,

-Jerry

        

 

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