LookStat – Microstock Analytics

Most of you have probably seen this walkthrough of the ‘content-aware fill’ in CS5. If not, watch the video – it’s worth it. There’s a section on removing lens flare at the 1:43 mark that is pretty amazing.

I initially thought it might have been a fake given our proximity to April 1, but according to @photoshop on twitter – “Don’t worry folks, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke.” Assuming that it’s real, I’m impressed.

There’s a great discussion on Photoshelter’s blog about this tool and the impact it might have. One the one hand, it’s a boon to retouch and cleanup. On the other hand, it looks really easy to delete a watermark. Jim Goldstein’s comment summed it up best for me:

Technology enables creatives to more quickly realize their vision far more than it inhibits our ability to conduct business. How people leverage their creativity will always be a double edged sword. Creatives and photo pirates will forever use their creativity to achieve their goals. That being said if you’re always looking behind you you’ll never move forward.

I think this is spot on. Any advance in technology will create risk and opportunity. Since we can’t un-invent anything, we may as well embrace it and make it work for us. I know more than a few microstock photographers who are going to be very excited about easier retouching & cleanup.

John Lund, an owner of Blend Images & an RM & RF stock shooter (and all around great guy!) has a phenomenal post on his blog about how an art buyer found one of his images via Google Images.

She had found the image doing a Google Image search. Keep in mind this art buyer is very familiar with both Corbis and Getty. Interestingly enough, the social media image in question is with both Getty and Corbis (it is actually a Blend Images photo distributed through many agencies including the “Big Two”), but she found it first on my site!

John is doing a great job blogging and improving his site and images’ SEO. Your images won’t sell themselves if no one sees them and images without text around them are invisible on the web. I have a mini-rant on this topic coming soon, but in the meantime, check out John’s Blog and follow him on Twitter.

If you want to improve your images’ search footprint, get them keyworded, tell a story about them and get those images online! As long as your image hosting platform can read and use IPTC metadata appropriately you’ll be in good shape.

Camping was #5 on our list of Top 10 US Activities based on number of participants. Given its importance, I decided to take a look at the demographic and gender trends associated with camping.

Camping Participation by Age & Gender

Source: National Sporting Goods Association

Source: National Sporting Goods Association

Some points to note:

• 47.5 million people took part in some form of overnight camping in 2007.
• Camping skews somewhat younger – 71.5% of participants are aged 44 or younger. I was a little surprised by this given the popularity of camping for those aged 55+. Even though it is a popular senior activity, when planning shoots, thinking younger may be a better way to go.
• There is no meaningful gender skew with roughly equal numbers of male & female participants
• There’s strong youth & adult participation supporting the fact that it’s a popular family activity

I’ll be looking at search trends, top keywords & stock trends in subsequent posts. Stay tuned!

Source: National Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association

The chart above shows the Top 10 Leisure Activities for USA participants aged 55 and older from 2007.

Points to Note:

• Swimming & Fishing were higher on the list than I expected
• Overnight camping in the USA often involves a car or a recreational vehicle (RV) (if you look at the top searches for camping, the first two terms related to RV camping)

Our search results were hijacked temporarily by a viagra purveyor from Australia. Fortunately, Casey caught the issue quickly and got the situation under control asap. It did, however, get me thinking about images that could be used to illustrate related concepts. Most images for ‘impotence’ involve unhappy looking men and conversely most images advertising viagra are of smiling older couples. A missed keywording opportunity perhaps…?

I also found that viagra is a valid search term on most stock photography sites. In the case of searches on Getty & istock, it disambiguates to ‘anti-impotence pill’ while when searching on other sites, such as Dreamstime, the keyword is enabled as is. We avoid trademarked terms when keywording, and most site guidelines prohibit their use, but it’s clear that enforcement is tricky. Having said that, there were only a few hundred results out of collections of millions of images so most sites are doing a good job on this front.

About This Post

This is the second post in a two part series on Cycling. The first post covered search and demographic trends and this post focuses on stock photography trends related to this topic.

Stock Photography Trends for ‘Cycling’

I decided to search for ‘cycling’ as opposed to ‘bicycle’ to search for images about the activity rather than actual images of bicycles. Also, since ‘cycling’ was the top keyword identified in the search trends, this seemed like a valid approach.

Number of Stock Image Results

I find it fascinating that Getty has more results than most of the microstock sites and that Fotolia and Dreamstime are so far behind iStock & Shutterstock in terms of image count. Links to the default searches from each site are listed below:

• Corbis
• Dreamstime
• Fotolia
• Getty
• iStockphoto
• Shutterstock

Best Selling Images

I did a search for ‘cycling’ on istock and sorted the list by downloads. As the screenshot below shows, four of the top five images are of recreational cycling involving mountain bikes. This lines up well with the reasons why people ride (73% recreation) and most popular bike types (28.5% mountain bikes) highlighted in the first post. The top two images (with over 9,300 combined downloads) belong to Monkey Business Images. These images combine a popular activity – recreational cycling, with a popular demographic – active seniors. It’s rare to see images from non-exclusive contributors in the top echelons of iStock downloads so kudos are definitely due to Monkey Business.

Paying Attention to Details

Another interesting thing that popped up was the fact that not all images with ‘cycling’ had the keyword ‘bicycle’ in them. If you search for ‘cycling’ and NOT ‘bicycle’ on the sites above, you’ll see that 15-25% of the images have ‘cycling’ but not bicycle. This is a big missed opportunity since ‘bicycle’ is the number two search term in this area. While I can appreciate that not every image of a bicycle involves the activity of cycling, I’m fairly confident that the vast majority of images of people cycling involve bicycles.

For example, searching for images of cycling that exclude bicycles, motorcycles, unicycles etc, returns 2000+ results on istock. You can see from the screenshot below that bicycle would have been a relevant term.

Conclusions

• Pay attention to your keywords
• Recreation, lifestyle and mountain bikes are where the volume is
• All age groups are relevant when it comes to recreational cycling

Conclusions from Part 1 (for Reference)

• Most americans cycle for recreation & fitness – make sure these concepts are featured in both your images & your keywords
• The fact that cycling is popular with kids and mid-age adults and that its primarily about recreation suggests that cycling is a popular family activity and this is a concept worth exploring for lifestyle shoots.
• The most popular bike type worldwide is the mountain bike, by almost 2:1. This doesn’t mean that road bikes are not important, but if you’re shooting cycling it’s important to be aware of the relative popularity.
• Cycling as a term is closely tied to the sport, but it should be part of your image keywords anyway
• If you’re shooting racing & roadies, then make sure you get your images online before the Tour! From a stock image perspective, 2-3 months before the event is the time to upload
• It’s important to use different variations when keywording your images for stock & SEO. This is somewhat moot for iStock exclusives given the CV, but still important for Titles & Descriptions given their importance to SEO

There have been a number of great discussions and blog posts lately around stock photography and microstock. There’s a mix of doom and gloom and optimism, but the final verdict is that there’s still a solid opportunity in stock, but that photographers will need to adapt and get smarter and more efficient about their work. There is more competition and more opportunity than ever. I think these statements apply across both macro & micro stock.

Make sure to read the comments on the posts – there are a ton of them and represent a diverse spectrum of opinions.

Ellen Boughn (@ellenboughn) – Success for Stock Photographers
“The vote is in. Based on the many comments on Shannon Fagan’s guest post made by stock industry leaders and photographers, the majority do not believe that the stock business is dead, perhaps sleeping but far from a vegetative state. Millions of dollars are still being generated by the photography licensing business in all models even though to the individuals whose income has decreased by up to 50% it doesn’t seem so. The best time to review the tried and true is when you are searching for the new. Here’s a quick recap of some best practices in stock photography.”

Jack Hollingsworth (@photojack) – I am Stock
“What [does it take] to make money in stock today? It’s deceptively simple. Many will confess. Few will embrace. Raise your game. Pace yourself. Think concepts, not subjects. Stop imitating, start inventing. Research before exposure. Storytell. Learn video. Play to your strengths. Sell direct and through distribution. Be frugal and thrifty in your spending. Focus on diversity. Test the micro waters. Balance speed, volume, yield. Pay attention to RPIs. Think world. Shoot your passions. Have fun.”

Shannon Fagan (@shannonfagan) – What’s your position on Global Positioning? (guest post on Ellen Boughn’s Blog)
“And now I’ll argue, why purchase exclusive RM rights for your client, when the licensing crowd at large is perfectly fine with RF non-exclusivity? Why license premium royalty free when your client can obtain it for low cost or no cost in micro payment? Ask yourself these questions. Your stock agencies are.”

John Lund (@stockphotoguy) – Positive Indicators in Stock Photography
“Yes, being a stock photographer has never been easier; and yes, making a living at it certainly has its challenges. But what business isn’t facing such challenges? The corner grocer has Costco down the street to deal with. The neighborhood coffee shop has Starbucks across the way. We stock photographers just have one hell of a lot of competition, but the possibilities are greater than ever. If we can maintain a positive attitude we are far more likely to find and utilize those possibilities!”

All of the individuals above are insightful, accomplished and have a lot of great things to say about the world of stock photography as a whole.

Nielsenwire has an article on their blog, called “US Demographics are Changing…Are Your Marketing Plans Ready?”, which was posted on March 10. In the article, Tom Pirovano, Director of Industry Insights at Nielsen writes about the fact that by 2050 over half the US population will be non-white (according to the US census) and discusses some of the marketing implications, with a focus on consumer packaged goods (CPG) sales.

Some snippets from the article:

• “Hispanic shoppers tend to spend more on categories for babies and children — (Hispanic households represent 11.8% of CPG total spending, but 16.6% of disposable diaper sales.)”
• “African American shoppers tend to spend more on health and beauty products, like fragrance (African Americans represent 11.0% of CPG total spending, but 20.3% of dollars spent in beauty supply stores.)”
• “Asian American shoppers tend to spend more in club stores. Asian Americans represent 3% of CPG total spending, but 5.5% of dollars spent in warehouse clubs.”

In another article on 2009 Muti-cultural ad spending, there are two tables which outline top advertising categories for Spanish & African American media. The top growth categories in 2009 were Satellite Communications services for Spanish media and Insurance (general & auto) for African American media. The end of the article contains details on how the company defines the two media segments and also lists details on categories and their sizes in dollars.

Implications

• Ethnic diversity is an important part of stock photography shoot planning. As you plan your shoots, it’s worth digging deeper into trends by segment so you can incorporate elements that matter to the demographics you are targeting.
• It’s not easy to incorporate CPG ideas into shoots since most products are heavily branded, and it’s often hard to get permission to shoot in a store, for example. Still, with some creativity it’s definitely possible to illustrate concepts like shopping in bulk, shopping for beauty products vs. kids products etc.

Bicycle riding was number 5 on our list of fastest growing leisure activities and was ranked number 6 in terms of total participants. This post, which will be part of a two part series focuses on:

• Demographic Trends
• Search Trends
• Top Search Keywords

The second post will focus on stock photography trends and data and will link back to this one.

2007 Participation by Gender

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States

2007 Participation by Age

Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States

As you can see from the above data, cycling is evenly balanced across gender and generally skews lower in terms of participation by age (76% of participants are 44 or younger).

Best Selling Bike Types (from our earlier post: Cycling – Interesting Industry Stats)

Why People Ride (from our earlier post: Cycling – Interesting Industry Stats)

The major conclusions from the demographic data are:

• Cycling is evenly balanced across genders and skews younger
• Mountain-bike styled bikes (including the hybrid category) are the most common type of bike sold
• Youth bikes are important and the 7-11 age group is the largest single participant category
• The vast majority of people cycle for recreation first and fitness second
• Based on the local maxima in the age chart at the low end and in the middle, I would guess that families cycling together is a viable shoot concept

Search Trends

Pinning down search trends isn’t easy because some of the terms have very specific meanings. For example, a search for cycling skews heavily towards the sport of cycling and the keywords around it are focused on racing while searches for ‘bicycle’ tend of focus on bike and bike parts purchasing. In this section, I’m going to show a composite chart to give you a sense for relative search volumes and trends.

As you can see from the screenshot of Google Insights Data for ‘bicycle’, ‘cycling’ & ‘bike riding’, There’s a steady seasonal climb in interest from January to July and a fairly symmetric decline from July through the end of the year. The red line in the chart above is the search trends for ‘cycling’ and it peaks in the first week of July after being generally flat throughout the year. This coincides perfectly with the Tour de France. Although the scale dampens the effect slightly, there is a 50% increase in searches related to ‘cycling’ in the peak week when compared to the week immediately before it.

I also decided to take a look at searches for road bikes vs. mountain bikes to cross-check the demographic data and the results are entirely consistent. In the USA, mountain bikes are searched for 1.7x more often than road bikes are and this is virtually identical to the data from the National Bicycle Dealers Association. (Also, this isn’t just a US phenomenon – the results are the same when looking at worldwide search trends.)

Top Search Keywords

As I mentioned above, it can be challenging to identify the best keywords across all types of bicycle related shoots since they are so different. To get some sense of aggregate importance, I put in a range of terms and then sorted the results from the adwords keyword tool by search volume. The top 20 results are in the table below:

Conclusions

• Most americans cycle for recreation & fitness – make sure these concepts are featured in both your images & your keywords
• The fact that cycling is popular with kids and mid-age adults and that its primarily about recreation suggests that cycling is a popular family activity and this is a concept worth exploring for lifestyle shoots.
• The most popular bike type worldwide is the mountain bike, by almost 2:1. This doesn’t mean that road bikes are not important, but if you’re shooting cycling it’s important to be aware of the relative popularity.
• Cycling as a term is closely tied to the sport, but it should be part of your image keywords anyway
• If you’re shooting racing & roadies, then make sure you get your images online before the Tour! From a stock image perspective, 2-3 months before the event is the time to upload
• It’s important to use different variations when keywording your images for stock & SEO. This is somewhat moot for iStock exclusives given the CV, but still important for Titles & Descriptions given their importance to SEO

While doing some research into travel, I came across some data on the cities that were most visited by travelers to the USA from Overseas.

Top US Cities Visited by Overseas Travelers

Source: Statistic Abstract of the USA

Note the data above exclude visitors from Canada & Mexico.) I wasn’t surprised to see NYC at the top of the list, but I was surprised that Los Angeles was the second most visited city. Given the fact that Orlando is ranked in the top 6 as well, I’m guessing that Disney is the main driver of those visits.

The rest of the top 10 in order were:

7. Honolulu, HI
8. Washington DC
9. Chicago, IL
10. Boston, MA

2007 Visitors to the USA by Country of Origin

Source: Department of Homeland Security

The chart above shows visitors to the USA by country of origin. It includes both tourists and business travelers but excludes most short term visitors from Mexico & Canada.

Stock Photography Search Results

I decided to do a quick set of searches to see how many results there were for some of the top cities at a range of sites.

The thing that stands out the most is the massive drop off when it comes to images of Orlando, especially given that there were more visitors total (domestic & international) to Orlando (48.9 Million) than there were to NYC (47 million) in 2008. A quick check of downloads however suggests that there may not be as much demand for Orlando imagery.

Another thing I found surprising was the sheer number of Getty results. As it turns out, they include the location of the shoot in their keywords. This makes no sense to me. If I’m searching for ‘New York City’ I don’t really want a picture of a man taken in a studio in New York, I want something that evokes the city.

iStockphoto Search Results for ‘New York City’

Getty Images Search Results for New York City

Summary

• New York was visited by 8.2 million overseas travelers in 2008; about three times the number who visited the #2 destination which was Los Angeles. It’s also the destination that draws the most dollars from tourists at $30billion. (Source: NYC Go Stats)
• Orlando seems to be radically under-represented from a stock image perspective when you consider total travelers. Granted, most visitors are domestic but presumably they are still being shown images of the city when they make their travel choices. Studying downloads however suggests that people just aren’t licensing as many images – I’m not sure how to explain this but would welcome your thoughts in the comments.