Occasionally too much choice can be a bad thing and stock photography is an excellent example. For years plenty of the household-name stock photo libraries would promote themselves as being the largest and having the biggest collections. If you've been paying attention more recently though, you could have noticed that isn't such a unique selling proposition any more and plenty of the bigger libraries are now busy looking for alternative ways to differentiate themselves in a crowded market.
The reality is, many photo purchasers find massive stock photography collections time-consuming and tedious to search, despite the enhancements in photograhy search engine technology. The problem is, the size of these collections has increased at a faster rate than the search technology has improved ... So in a lot of cases, searching has basically gotten slower and harder. It is unsurprising then that more and more photo-buyers are choosing smaller 'niche' stock libraries, when they have to buy stock pictures on the internet.
These boutique stock libraries don't even try to compete on volume and most of the time they can't compete on price either ... But more and more buyers are swarming to these photo stock sites just the same, with a totally new set of reasons-to-buy.
Private service, close contact with the photographers, fresh original photographs, unique styles and subjects. OK, perhaps these are not totally new reasons after all , but they're reasons-to-buy which have been pushed to the back for far to long.
A lot of it comes back to the way in which the image buyer values their time, and what sort of worth they put on finding the right image fast. The good news for photographers is, more are prepared to pay a more to avoid the tedium of a mass-distribution library and hone in on quality new photographs faster.
So the next time you need to buy stock photography, take a pass on the massive stock image super-stores, and check out a few of the boutique collections instead ... You may be pleasantly surprised.
The reality is, many photo purchasers find massive stock photography collections time-consuming and tedious to search, despite the enhancements in photograhy search engine technology. The problem is, the size of these collections has increased at a faster rate than the search technology has improved ... So in a lot of cases, searching has basically gotten slower and harder. It is unsurprising then that more and more photo-buyers are choosing smaller 'niche' stock libraries, when they have to buy stock pictures on the internet.
These boutique stock libraries don't even try to compete on volume and most of the time they can't compete on price either ... But more and more buyers are swarming to these photo stock sites just the same, with a totally new set of reasons-to-buy.
Private service, close contact with the photographers, fresh original photographs, unique styles and subjects. OK, perhaps these are not totally new reasons after all , but they're reasons-to-buy which have been pushed to the back for far to long.
A lot of it comes back to the way in which the image buyer values their time, and what sort of worth they put on finding the right image fast. The good news for photographers is, more are prepared to pay a more to avoid the tedium of a mass-distribution library and hone in on quality new photographs faster.
So the next time you need to buy stock photography, take a pass on the massive stock image super-stores, and check out a few of the boutique collections instead ... You may be pleasantly surprised.
About the Author:
Matt Brading is a photographer and writer with the Global Eye co-operative stock photo agency, where buyers can deal direct and buy stock photos directly from the photographer
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