Where We've Been
You've probably heard of Google, Lycos, InfoSeek, Yahoo!, AltaVista, and a dozen others. They have been around for a few years, but recently they've been refined to where they have become real tools for the stock photo industry. If you don't have
Search engines are now a bright light at the end of the mountain tunnel for stock photographers and photobuyers.
WHAT IS A SEARCH ENGINE?
In essence, search engines locate specific information for you on the Web. You can find out how many trail bikes are manufactured monthly in South Korea, or the hometown zip code of a long lost cousin, or ex-boy friend.
Because search engines inquire by text (ciphers made up of zeros and ones), it's easy for them to locate specific subject matter on someone's Web page in a matter of seconds.
And how do these search engines get this information? Two ways: Anyone can fill out the information form that all search engines provide, for inclusion in the search engine's evolving database. Or search engines will scan (webcrawl) millions of Web sites daily and collect information from these sites into their massive databases.
WHERE THE ROAD LEADS
Just how do the improved search engines affect the stock photography business?
During my three decades of providing market information for editorial stock photographers, I've seen first-hand the consistency of the work methods of editorial stock buyers. They want content-specific pictures, not generic cliches, and in their search for these pictures, photo editors and researchers first seek out subject matter information, not the images themselves. Once they find a source for their target images, then they begin looking at actual pictures.
Now the Web provides photo researchers with this speedier, more efficient avenue for picture-search and acquisition. Before now, if you were a photo researcher and were looking, say, for action pictures of a beached humpback whale in Hawaii, you'd most likely consult your Rolodex and locate photographers known to have pictures of whales. Or you'd go to your list of Hawaiian photographers. Or you would go to the mammals section of a stock agency and see what they have in the way of whales and hope that they have the humpback. Or you would check out your library, for books on sea life, in case any included a section on whales, and then locate the photographer who took those pictures.
In library science this is called "narrowing the search." You start with an inverted triangle and eliminate items that don't conform to your search. Pretty soon, thanks to your detective work, you get to the pin-point bottom of the triangle. You would be satisfied with the "Good Enough" images these sources would locate for you.
AN ARCHAIC METHOD
There are two things wrong with this archaic method of research. First, you waste time by spreading your searching net over such a broad field of possibilities/no-possibilities. Secondly, the search is so exhausting that just about any picture of a humpback whale you finally dig up will satisfy you.
A new way of researching. Here's how enlightened photo researchers are beginning to seek out content-specific pictures. Using a search engine such as Google, the photo researcher will select "humpback whale" + "stock photo" + Hawaii. This is a reverse of the pyramid search method mentioned above. A photo researcher will start at the bottom of the inverted triangle. In a matter of seconds he/she will come up with seventeen Web sites that list the Hawaiian (Kohola) humpback whale. The photo researcher will Email a photo request letter to the photographers' Web sites, outlining the specific photo need, and ask the photographers to give the photo researcher a call if they can fill the specs. Five photographers, three who live in Hawaii, one in Japan, and one in Virginia, say they have what the researcher needs.
CONVENIENCE SEARCHING
When we realized back in 1991 that this was the way photobuyers would soon begin to search for highly-specific images, we launched PhotoSourceBANK, a website that now features over 2 million keywords and keyphrases. Many of our photobuyers use the free service daily.
There are several ways a photo editor can view a stock photographer's pictures. They can ask the photographer to Email some selections, or download a selection on the photographer's Web site for viewing. Or the photographer can send a "LightBOX" to the interested photobuyer. These Email or Web page photos are usually 72dpi (dots-per-inch). Since computer monitors can't conveniently support high-res photos of a larger dpi size, it's not necessary to transmit them at a higher resolution. Or buyers can ask a photographer to FedEx a selection of their images on a CD-ROM or disk. Or, buyers can use the Stone-Age method of having the photographer mail or FedEx the original transparencies. Once buyers make their picture decision, they request a high-resolution copy of the image, or the original transparency. Then it's business as usual.
While we're on the subject of your monitor's screen readability, David Arnold, Ph.D., who lectures on problems of the Internet, has three simple tricks to get good readability on your monitor screen:
1. break your material into bit-sized pieces (chunking)
2. leave plenty of white space around the pieces (spacing), and
3. draw your visitors' eyes to the pieces
For expanded information on these his principles: http://www.davidarnold.com/write.htm.
YOUR JOB: EDUCATE THE CUSTOMER
Photo editors, designers, researchers, art directors, don't appreciate photographers telling them how to run their business. So
A transition is always painful, even when it's beneficial. Things get "mushy." Like water that crystallizes into ice, a transition happens gradually. Before water hardens to ice, it goes through a mushy period. That's where we are now.
You can accelerate progress by offering (socially correct) insights to your photo editors about the tools now available to them on the Web. Get your mind-set prepared; change is barreling down the pike. In fact, depending who your buyers are, it's already here.
Rohn Engh is director of PhotoSource International and publisher of PhotoStockNotes. Pine Lake Farm, 1910 35th Road, Osceola, WI 54020 USA. E-mail: info@photosource.com . Fax: 1 715 248 7394. Web site: www.photosource.com.
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