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.

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.

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.

There have been a few mentions of LookStat Back Office services and our new Guide to Microstock for RM & RF Photographers around the web and I’m excited to share them with you.

LookStat Back Office Services – Just Press Play – A review by Tyler Olson on the Microstock Group Blog

The back-end service of Lookstat is a great tool for anyone who likes shooting more than sitting in front of a computer or who doesn’t have a room full of people working for them.

Microstock photography is time intensive.  Shooting and editing in larger numbers, keywording those images, and perhaps most time consuming, uploading to the large number of microstock sites – all add up to a lot of time spent per file.  Time that could have been more productively spent shooting.

For those who take advantage of the Lookstat Back-end service however – all they need to do is shoot, ‘press play’, and watch their images appear on the microstock sites of their choice.  Edited, key-worded, uploaded and processed – ready for sale.

This Month in Microstock: LookStat’s Guide to Microstock for Traditional Stock Photographers – A mention on Microstock Diaries’ news roundup

Helping to demystify much of the misunderstandings of microstock in the traditional market, LookStat released a beautifully designed and free 35-page downloadable PDF guide to microstock for RM and RF Stock Photographers.

February Microstock News – A mention of our guide at Microstock Insider

lookstat published a useful microstock guide, written as an introduction to microstock for RF (macro) and RM photographers. It includes some statistics, advice and checklists that are still useful for microstock photographers who already know the ropes.

Thanks to all the folks above for the kind words!

We have been working hard over the past few weeks on a free 35-page guide for RM & RF stock photographers who are interested in microstock. Microstock is a growing part of the stock photography market and it’s important to stay informed about it, especially in light of the convergence taking place between micro & RF.

The guide provides an overview of what microstock is and how to get started. It also contains profiles of the top sites, details on their application process, and a submission checklist which covers the latest requirements for creating accounts and uploading and submitting images.

We wrote this to answer a lot of the questions we hear about microstock, especially from established stock photographers interested in adding another revenue stream to their portfolios. I hope you’ll find it a useful and helpful reference.

I know a some of you will know most of this information cold, but hopefully you know someone else that would find it useful. Please help me spread the word about this by tweeting about the guide or sharing it on Facebook.

Thank you for your help and support. As always your comments and feedback are greatly appreciated.