Royalty Free (RF) is a license type which allows buyers to pay a fixed price for an image and have unlimited usage.  The name refers to the freedom from additional royalties for different uses, territories, renewals, etc.  Some years ago, the young starlet RF burst into stock photography with shocking fixed prices and CD offers.  The new license was a great success, especially in advertising, so everyone started producing RF, and competing to sell it… But with time, a younger, more economical starlet appeared on the scene, and the original RF´s allure started to fade.  RF has also especially suffered the decline of the advertising industry during the crisis.  Although her future might not appear too bright, RF is clinging on with every last red painted nail.

Why clients ♥ RF…

RF is a no-hassle option which saves clients from administrative work.

The fixed price can be very attractive for images that are needed for multiple uses or high visibility.

Most RF is model and property-released, so clients can use it for almost anything.

RF images are often created for the advertising/design industry, so they generally communicate clear concepts and clean compositions/backgrounds that can be easily used by a designer.

Why clients don’t ♥ RF…

The fixed price of RF with little to no room for negotiation is too high for some clients.

The price no longer seems like such a good deal if compared to similar imagery available in Low Budget Royalty Free.

A client can’t purchase exclusivity of an image and doesn’t know whether the same image has been or will be used by a competitor.

Often, RF has many generic takes on the same concept, and there is little variety of specialized subjects available.

What photographers should know about RF.

1. RF is the ideal spot for your clean, conceptual images which can be easily used to illustrate advertising and business needs in positive ways. 

2. Look at the newest ads, brochures, and websites around you to see what those needs are.

3. The advertising and design industry continues to demand luminous images with significant areas of negative/copy space.  You should make images which communicate a concept, and also provide a space to incorporate text into the image.

4. There is a normal expectation from clients that RF images are completely released and free of third party rights.  You should never send images of recognizable people to RF if you don’t have the signed releases. 

5. You should also be extremely careful with other subjects that are not free of third party rights, such as very well-known landmarks, famous buildings and monuments taken in countries like the US or France, or artwork taken inside of museums, as there is no such thing as “editorial use” in RF.

6. In the case of a legal dispute, it is much more difficult for your agency to withdraw RF images from the market, and to be able to track exactly how they were used.  This puts you at greater risk if a legal problem develops.  As the saying goes, it’s better to be safe in RM than sorry in RF!

Despite the challenges, the curtain hasn’t fallen on RF yet. Here are some representative images which remind us why.  Join us in part 3 to meet the “younger, more economical starlet” LBRF.

If you don’t know the answer to the above question, you aren’t alone.  In today’s potpourri of “users,” amateurs, and professional photographers, many people shoot, submit, and upload photos, and then see an RF, RM, or LBRF appear on the photo. But what are they?  Rights Managed (RM), Royalty Free (RF), and Low Budget Royalty Free (LBRF) are license types. What’s the “best” license?  We will talk about the three license types during the next few weeks.  If you understand the licenses, you can direct your product, the photo, for greater success.

Let´s start with RM

Did you know Rights Managed (RM) photographs are licensed for a specific use in a concrete geographical area and for a set amount of time?  There is a control of the use of the image, and that’s why they are called rights managed.

Why Clients ♥ RM…

Clients choose RM for the great variety of subjects available, including specialized subjects such as medicine, technology, and science.  In RM, these specialized subjects are usually documented thoroughly. 

RM prices are negotiable and adjust for the scope of a project.  “Negotiable” in these days means that a client can ask for a lot… And sometimes get it.

RM allows a client to purchase exclusive rights for the use of an image, important for an advertiser who wants to stand out from the competition.

Why Clients don’t ♥ RM…

Images with a wide distribution, multiple uses, or exclusivity can be expensive.

Clients have to renew the image license to continue using the image after the initial term is up.  This entails a certain administrative effort.

Many RM images have no model or property release so they can’t be safely used for advertising uses.  What a pity!

What photographers should know about RM.

1. Standout creative or original images can be valued accordingly in RM.  This is for photographers who create images rather than merely describe places.

2. If you have nonexclusive images in multiple stock agencies, make sure that you can block an image fast when an agency mentions 10 grand for an exclusive possibility…  Also be sure that your agency can get in contact with you.  If you are off shooting in the Congo, an assistant or trusted other should be checking your business email.

3. Photographs of specialized subjects will probably find more potential buyers and the chance of a well-paid exclusive sale in RM. Clients look for well described images, with complete, accurate captions so you should be knowledgeable about the material that you submit and provide all relevant information. 

4. If you have unreleased images of people, artwork, protected buildings, or copyrighted/trademarked material, RM is the safest place to distribute those images because your agency will help screen out improper uses, can quickly remove the image from market, and can produce the sales history if needed.  However, please note, some images aren’t even safe in RM!  See more legal info.

5. If it is at all possible, you should always get a model release signed.  Even you travel photographers!  Here you can find a simple pocket release for street photos and our standard model release.  Use the standard release when possible.

Here are some images which represent the spirit of RM.  Stay tuned to get up close and personal with the Lovely RF in the coming weeks…

Here´s a post for all of the fifty-something stock photographers out there.  Hold on! I´m not talking about anyone´s age.  “Fifty-somethings” are the photographers who manage to get 50 images on sale in any stock photography collection and then suddenly they stop sending more...

What´s wrong with 50?

If we take the age fotostock collection as an example, and assume that you have 50 rights managed (RM) photos in stock, the following occurs:

1. There are 16,865 age fotostock RM images for every 1 image of yours.


2. There are 196,039 RM, Royalty Free (RF) and Low Budget Royalty Free (LBRF) images on our website for every 1 image of yours.

So the chance that your image will be seen, first in our collection, and secondly, on our website, is comparable to:

1. The odds that you are an albino of some kind: 1 in 17,000.


2. The odds that the asteroid "2002NT7" will strike the Earth on Feb. 1, 2019: 1 in 200,000.

If you are albino and you already have an asteroid shelter built, than those odds might sound good.  If you are a photographer who would like to earn a living from your photography, you’d be better off playing the lottery.

As we tell new photographers and have told many of the old ones, you need to have an image presence of at least 1000 images to expect regular sales, since they are competing to be seen among close to 11 million images on our website.  If you only have 50 photos now, you might make an occasional sale, but please don´t wonder why your images don´t sell. Whether your 50 are in our collection, or anywhere else, just start shooting and make that 50 grow!

When times are confusing and neither the image market, nor the providers of the images, have any clear idea besides "Hey! Look how cheap I can sell my images!" it becomes tempting to add a few words here and then to the existing chaos. So let’s establish a position.

Many people say that the present situation of image prices in stock photography is the result of crazy big corporations (we will call them Kings and Queen´s from now on) trying to monopolize the business. Their supposed strategy is to offer binding agreements for important clients who get to use their images at subscription model prices, which are very low indeed (for those not yet initiated in the game). Other people believe that microstock outlets are vandalizing the market by offering fairly good quality images at even lower prices than those of the Kings and Queens.

Photographers, who produce the images everybody sells (at whatever price) are separated in groups.  There are some who say that selling low is criminal for the present stability of stock photography as we all have known it since Matthew B. Brady started taking images in the 19th century American Civil War.  Maybe old friend Brady here is new for many people who just picked up a camera yesterday, but more can be read about him at www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathew_Brady.  There you´ll read of the dramatic end of our friend Brady, alone, poor, and living in a charity ward which might resemble, god forbid, the end of stock photography.

Some photographers, even good photographers, have taken a much more eclectic approach. "If we have to sell cheap, let's sell cheap," they say, and considering that clients don't mind buying good images at peanut prices, success is guaranteed.  It goes without saying that in recession times everybody is trying to save coins, so if clients find cheap images, you can imagine the results. Other less pragmatic photographers despise the situation, so they abandon stock photography, bye-bye friend, and dedicate their time to assignment photography, while whispering bitter things on secret or not-so-secret public forums.

The fundamentals of marketing say that “differentiation” and “positioning” are important when selling your products, ie. images.  Therefore, accumulating “exclusive images” may differentiate you from the shooter beside you and may position your collection in front of discerning clients who are looking for the best they can buy. Is this the approach that Kings and Queen´s are desperately trying to play as their last card? To produce photographically good ideas, you need creative people and good photographers, but how long are those good "photo-ideas" going to be exclusive? Those that have been around a while in this industry -not many actually- might remember that in a remote past, good "photo-ideas" were copied as fast as they were created. Therefore, the term "exclusivity" isn´t enough to maintain big organizations with huge overheads once the rich people who sustain them get tired of always losing money.

Everyone seems to forget that digital technology allows all this to happen. You need a website to do business in stock photography and once digital, you can administer millions of images and strive for success. Selling single images, Rights Managed, Royalty Free, Low Budget, Microstock and even Microscopic stock (renamed as Subscription model), what´s the common denominator? Just this.  Every model needs a technical or digital infrastructure or ideally, an IT supported, software-driven structure to sell images. Without it you won't sell a penny. Are photographers managing these IT infrastructures? They've tried, but if you listen carefully, the sites that are making noise in the market aren't those managed by photographers. I´m more inclined to say that IT people, not photographers, are running this show.

However, is everything as chaotic as it sounds? Are King´s and Queen´s monopolizing anything? In my opinion, King´s and Queens are both part of the problem and suffering the problem, but certainly not the cause of it. Prices and revenue in stock photography are going down for everybody because the combination of a monstrous recession and the possibilities of digital technology reward those who can offer images at lower prices. This is bad indeed for many, but it's good for stock photography because it´ll have to profoundly regenerate itself. This implies reducing the structures, innovating the offer, and putting some order to the way licensing is conducted. One result is that Royalty Free price rigidity has largely disappeared and prices are basically negotiated like they always have been with Rights Managed imagery, cheaper or more expensive, according to the project. Allow me to call it "licensing plasticine". 

Naturally “negotiating” does not seem like the best way to go when dozens of places offer good images, especially in their first pages, at 14 cents a piece, and you only need to advance some cash and get them. It's an interesting approach, but yet there are still many traditional stock photography agencies “negotiating.”  Although they might need to update their internal structures and cope with the present recession, the real fact is that they are selling images into a market which is not completely rigid yet. Allow me to introduce another term that describes why there is still space for many: "market elasticity".

So if we can admit that there is no evil confabulation of bad King´s and Queen´s and other suspicious looking guys behind what is happening in stock photography today, we have found some light in this digital cavern. Let's talk about that light in the days to come...