It is sad to see another one go but times are a changing. Photokore, a stock image library that's been around since 2010 is finding hard to find paying customers for pictures from Asia. And by December 2015, it will shutter its site for good.

One of Photokore's strong points was it capitalized on photos made available to them from photographers based in Asia. That however hasn't translated to sales. People in Asia just don't buy pictures!

It has of course sent out alerts to both subscribers and photographers on the impending closure.

Problems with a Paying Market

One of the trends I notice is that Asia isn't a big contributor in terms of revenue to stock photography. Many prefer to lift images off others from social media and don't give a hoot until they get found out. In south Asia, where the weather remains relatively the same, you don't find much changes in the environment as say in four season countries. There are no distinct differences besides the rain and the sun shine. North Asia, aside from Japan and Korea, no one really bothers about buying pictures either. The respect for copyright is a right to copy. China, well, need I say more?

Western based markets are only slightly better as collateral has to be purchased before hand and this contributes somewhat to the revenue base. In fact, a majority of these stock agencies from the west make decent living from selling photos.

The paying market is shrinking, while the contributor base has been increasing, thanks largely to mobile photo sharing sites that have opted to jump into the stock image business.

Instagram briefly flirted with a stock image revenue model in 2012 only to have their users go up in arms about it. Now users will pay the price for this with lots of advertising. Which is the other way to get around the problem.

There is no two ways around this. Monetize or die.

Stock image wasn't the first choice for EyeEm or 500px.com but they now offer a library of photos to would be photo buyers as well. Competing and sometimes complementing big names like Getty Images, they offer a cheaper option.

Not sure how long this model will survive but there isn't much in the long term to look forward to in the stock image business as we are already been inundated with photos from around the world in social media.

I have sold some photos but not enough of it to pay rent. That's my observations so far and I don't think it will change in time to come.

When Adobe bought out Fotolia, people were saying that it was a good thing but seriously folks. You have all been mistaken.

Back in June, Adobe announced its own photo bank called Adobe Stock. You sign up with their cloud services which can run into hundreds in a year, you get 40% off all your stock photo purchases.

For me, it was a WTF moment.

In doing so, and charging your customers less, and you're selling it at a lesser price which in turn benefits the agency and not the photographer. If Adobe sold your photo at a retail rate of dollar, you get only a few cents from it. And if they sold it cheaper, you get less than peanuts.

This is a problem I have with stock agencies which sell stock imagery for cheap. You want the best photos taken on a DSLR with Leica lenses, have a model or property release as well, then charge buyers a buck for a download. Maybe a little more than a buck if you want a higher resolution version. And if you give discounts to your buyers, you also discount the return on commission to the photographer. So where does this end?

Challenging the Microstock Market

I don't give a damn about long tail marketing or mass market buying. Adobe isn't a premium company that is going to pay you well for your photos. Fotolia made a name for itself as a microstock for everything. Adobe hopes to do the same.

From images to clip art and vector files, the creative effort behind it is getting valued much lower.

Sure there will be some winners but even on Wallstreet, the losers outweigh the winners. So who are the winners here? Adobe of course because they don't own the intellectual property behind your image but so long as you give them the permission to sell it for you, they can set a price and give you a percentage of the retail price. Technically speaking, they won't give you a higher rate if they sold it lower because of their promotions.

This is how it all works these days. You the photographer gets your foot in the door by providing royalty free with property and model releases, it is a classic case of having you do more and earning less. It is a disruptive model of business that only benefits the business owner. That is, unless you are some rich millionaire with plenty of time on your hands and want to shoot some really awesome photos and sell them for beer money.

The Two Faces of Microstock

Currently, don't think that you can challenge the big guns of photography with your amateur attempts to make money from photography.

There are two types of microstock agencies, one that only validates and takes in DSLR high spec imagery and those who don't. These stock agencies want only the best imagery shot on DSLR cameras to be listed as Royalty Free. Photographers who are desperate enough to sell will list them there as they have no other choice. You might think that rights managed is the way to go but seriously, unless it was a big corporation going on a global spending spree, your chance of getting something sold for such use is next to zilch.

Image buyers are spoiled for choice since they can get the best imagery for the cost of next to nothing.

The other type of Microstock will be more forgiving with your imagery but they don't make money from them because you used a mobile device to capture those photos. Not that it's not any good but compared to the quality of those using DSLRs, your photos suck.

Why buy a photo for a buck that was captured with mobile devices compared with those using DSLRs. They cost the same. Do the maths and you'll know what value it is. As a buyer, I want to pay the least for the best. 

I have seen pretty good pictures listed on royalty free, with model releases and stuff required for commercial use. And they go for cheap. As an ambitious photographer who wants to break into the business, you have to hedge your bets on a better camera, pay for models if need be and photoshop the hell out of them so they look great. All for the return of a buck. Don't think you can hijack the big boys by setting up shop. People have tried to set up coffee stalls outside Starbucks just to do the same and they never work.

Now, some photographers would prefer to sell their images on dedicated sites like Photoshelter.  You get to make all the money on your own but hey, have you forgotten the marketing part? Do you not see those online search adverts inserted into Google for stock image or stock photos? Seriously you want to take o the big boys with millions to spend so that your Google Ad bid will never get seen? Advertising is the only way to get your site shown to the world and if you were hoping some guy who wants to buy an image for his website is going to land on your web image fire sale page, well think again.

What the Future holds for Image Agencies

The market is worth roughly US$4 billion a year. If a hundred image agencies were to battle for that same market, you can see the fragmentation. Some will fall off a cliff. Others will exist only in name.

The future is marked with consolidation. Too many agencies and the market isn't growing fast enough.

Adobe Photos have subscription models, and so do some of the more popular microstock agencies, and if a client were to download photos with a their paid subscription, you will get pennies in return. 

For the up and coming photographer, listing on a stock photo library might turn out to be a bad idea. If they get bought out, turned inside out to a microstock model, you have to agree to stick with them or delete your albums for sale.

Selling your photos might sound as easy as uploading it to a site but in the end, it is the retail prices that will eventually inspire you. Why would you waste time on a business that demands not just your time but money as well if you want to compete in the big league with little or no hope of ever achieving a decent income? Think for a moment about those stock photographes who earn hundreds of thousands every year and ask them how hard they work and how much of a dollar investment they put into their business. Does the end justify the means?

That, unfortunately, can only be answered by you.

A long time ago in an era far far away, there was a film camera called the Leicaflex SL, and it was a monster of a camera in terms of size and handling.

Enter the new SL. The Type 601 is built like a German Tiger Tank, with a deadly canon of a lens as well. It is heavy. And heavy is good. The germans have been building big things while the Japanese are opting to make it smaller. Remember the Rover Mini, the diminutive car that BMW bought over and turned it into a BIG car? Mini apparently is just a moniker to the Germans to reinterpret what is small into something bigger.

It is a beast that is milled from a pure aluminum block which can be used as weapon against your detractors who say you can't take a good picture even if your life depended on it.

Many of you would have wondered why the Leicaflex even existed, well there was a time when rangefinders fell out of favor with users and Leica had to innovate. Out came a film SLR camera and this is what you get from German technology. It used R mount lenses and it was later replaced with the R series SLRs during a brief interlude with Minolta. That didn't take off either so off with their lenses. 

So why the SL? Why now? Why the fuck would someone pay US$7000 for a camera body?

Just as there are mountains that people wish to climb, there are people out there who would buy and use a Leica SL for whatever the reasons it has been uncalled for. 

I have been a fan of M lenses. But the SL lenses are something to be avoided. 

The M lenses are manual and come in a nice compact size. The SL lenses are fully AF and will scare any mugger if you swung it at him like a weapon. 

The reason why I opt for M lenses is because of its timeless nature. Being a manual lens, you don't have to fear that some AF motor inside the lens would go broke. The M is also full frame, fits like a charm to M43 cameras with a M adaptor and can be paired with those nice Fujifilm APS-C sensor cameras as well. 

The M lenses are not bulky, and is comparative to what you find with M43 lenses. 

Carrying them around and having a close look at the quality of the imaging will convince you enough to own them for life. And should you sell it, you will find ample buyers on the second hand market. 

The SL lens hasn't got a lens adaptor as yet. If you bought it and didn't like the lens you have for it, you don't have much of a choice on selling it since the number of people opting to buy such lenses are restricted to AF users who are themselves SL camera owners. 

This is probably the only clear reason that I won't be buying into a SL camera. Sure, you get the same Leica imaging but I want my hardware to last too. Digital isn't built to last. It was built to kill time when you needed something fast. 

I am decidedly old school for good reason. I see the value in old school lenses because that is what I feel will last. 

There is nothing like having a camera and lens system you can pass them to someone who can continue to use it. It is renewable technology compared to the throw away technology modern cameras are made of. 

I could for example continue to use a Leica CL rangefinder with a M lens, and pass that down to someone who wanted to experience film photography. They can also mount that M lens on future cameras through a lens mount since full frame is the direction everyone is going these days. 

The last thing you want is to double down on those latest SL lenses only to find out ten years later that the SL cameras no longer exist and there is no mount to reuse it for other similar cameras. 

Photography isn't like what was used to be. Technology has democratized the skill needed to take a nice photo and any fool with an iPhone is qualified enough to be called a photographer. 

Then you have the pros, who keep wanting to upgrade to new equipment for better imaging without really bothering to upgrade their skill. Everything is Photoshopped these days and if you are good with photoshop, you will have plenty of customers who will subscribe to your services. 

Which brings me back to the Leica SL. 

Buy this at your own peril. 

This should be a warming to photographers who think that adding meta tags to get your photo found in Google search is going to get you plenty of business.

A photographer by the name of Zach was mildly surprised when his photo turned up in a mall. The story appear on Petapixel and goes like this.

Zach listed his photo with a photo credit at three online locations, but the last one used on his blog wasn't credited with a copyright notice. The first two were Flicker and Facebook and the last being his own blog.

 

How it got stolen was relatively simple. Remember how SEO pundits tell you to name your photo so that it gets discovered in a google photo search...well that is a bad fucking idea apparently. 

This is how Zach found out when he did a name search of his photo. Guess what, it came up in the top ten results and that is probably how it got stolen. 

Once a thief does a search, gets a low resolution file and extrapolates it to a bigger resolution size, there is no hope in hell he can't do a blow up poster of any kind. 

Well meaning photographers who post to places like 500px think that their photos are safe? In your fucking dreams!

All it takes is a screens shot and your picture is worth, well about next to nothing. 

And if you chased down the offenders, in this case...for Zach who lives in a country where copyright protection is guaranteed by law, who also demanded compensation was met with stiff resistance. 

The compensation was not agreed upon and guess what. Lawyers in the US had to say this to Zach.

"The photo stolen was not registered with the U.S. Copyright Office and without that, it would be hard to collect damages aside from usage fees."

So photographers, please don't think you have a piece of IP if you haven't registered it yet with the US copyright office and yes, registration isn't free of course. You pay for it and hopefully secure a windfall once some big corporation abuses your copyright and you sue the pants off them, that is...provided you had the money to pay a lawyer to sue.

I have come across job postings for Photo Editors with online sites which says...part of the job of the Photo Editor is to 'remove' watermarks so any talent with Photoshop will be deemed a talent. Needless to say, when you remove watermarks, it means you're openly stealing from a Google search. 

With this sort of image theft going on wholesale, it is little wonder that any photographer is seen as nothing more than a Photoshop Hack. 

Copyright when it comes to image is nothing more than the right to copy. That's all. So when you display your photo somewhere on the Internet, be prepared to have that taken by others. There is no putting the toothpaste back into the tube once its been squeezed out.

 

Here is a Kickstarter Project that is worth backing. A self made camera engineer of sorts is trying to create a new 4x5 as well as Fujifilm Instax Wide instant film adapters for a wide range of old skool cameras. 

His Kickstarter presentation isn't very polished but Kendar Chen is pretty adamant about having a film back that will fit most old film cameras that used  Polaroid 600se instant film sheets. 

Since the demise of Polaroiod, the Impossible project has been hard at work producing these instant film stocks from a bygone era and unfortunately, not everyone is able to buy into them. 

Two instant film stocks that is still widely available is made commercially by Fujifilm, namely the Instax Wide and FP-100C

If you are going to use instant film, your best option is to use them with the best instant film available. The problem with the Impossible Project film stocks are they are very unreliable as can be seen by the output results. The chemicals used from for the original Polaroid film stocks are no longer available and as a result, substitutes have to be used. The new film stocks are still being tweaked, and do not perform like the original Polaroid film so something had to be done.

Fujifilm still manufacturers their instant film stocks that gives consistent results. The FP-100 is by far one of the best if not the best in the market. The Instax Wide comes in a distant second. 

What Rezivot has done is create those backs that will fit onto some of these old skool cameras that have no film stocks available and to adapt others to take in the Instax Wide processor. This processor mimics the shooting and spitting out of the film after capture. 

So with it, you could literally adapt it to a few different types of cameras, including Mamiya 6x7 and Hassey. This means those old cameras aren't going away but now have the necessary ammo designed for you to shoot again. 

For the Kickstarter Campaign, you have a choice to back your desired film backs depending on the camera you still have lying around in the attic. 

The campaign just started and I urge you to make this a reality. Apparently, they already have a few successful beta designs and are still working to make more old film cameras useful once again.

After its rebranding exercise, 500px was suddenly in hot soup after it announced that it is going into China with 500px.me as part of their expansion drive. 

What CEO Andy Yang didn't know was he had opened a door to a hornet's nest. 

As Andy pointed out in the Series B Funding scheme, Visual China Group which poured in the money expects 500px to be live in China. So when 500px started a Beta site to test out the system by mirroring the same content in China as well as their global site, photographers went on a rant to say that they didn't give their permission to go live in China. This is of course utterly stupid since 500px is not blocked in China after checking. 

China a Country for Pirates?

The only reason why photographers feel insecure is that they fear their photos would be stolen. I find this highly amusing as for some reason, photographers do not know that their most precious works are regularly stolen in the western world as well as sites like 500px are not responsible for the content you put up. 

For example, if you have a large screen computer like the iMac, you can take a high resolution snapshot of the screen and it will be saved in TIFF. The snapshot file can then be extrapolated to a larger image when you have the right software. 

To think that by displaying your images on 500px.com versus 500px.me is safer is pure hilarity. 

True. China has as bad rap for stealing anything but if their beef is with China Vision Group, the investor of 500px, then you probably have it coming. First, 500px has already given away your images as free backdrops on Chromecast. You don't get a cent if you get featured. 

China Vision Group is a content company, now owned by Alibaba.com. 

The deal is no different than 500px giving Google a free ride on Chromecast. 

500px.me will remain in Beta?

Probably not after Andy pulled the plug as he was trashed in social media for not seeking permission. 

To me, all this hullabaloo is pointless for the following reasons. 

• 500px.me is meant to be a Chinese centric site, 500px can still go ahead without the .me prefix and have a dual language login for Chinese users. This means the Chinese site will be a CDN site hosted in China. 

• 500px is not a well known source for royalty free imaging since their pricing is much higher and the stock image market is going on a downward spiral. It makes no sense to think you can earn less by not allowing the Chinese to view your images. 

• TTIP and TPPA makes no mention that your images would be protected under their copyright terms. What is protected are Music and Movies, not to mention TV content as well. Again, to think that you will have more copyright protection with these trade pacts is pure fantasy. 

Having to get your permission for 500px to use your images in China is just another layer that does nothing for you as a photographer or your earnings. If you are serious about not having your images stolen, then don't display them on any social site. 

It makes no sense to do so if you know technology well enough to conduct image theft. 

It's up for preorder but one isn't available just yet. Now would you want one coz technical specs are kinda thin. Or would you like to wait and see? Lomo has since put its pre ordres on hold as they have been inundated with demand and they can't cope with the orders.  

Here is what we know about the camera. 

• If offers TWICE the picture area of an INSTAX Mini print.
• It has interchangeable lens for wide and close up shots. 
• It has fully auto exposure settings
• It has a lens cap that doubles as a remote shutter
• It is actually a Fuji Mini Instax Wide camera with changeable lens attachment
• It is fuguly

Now many years ago...I was intrigued by this Instax Wide camera, ok...it was more than a decade and a half ago, but I settled for the Instax Mini instead and for good reason. 

I wanted to travel and didn't want to lug around a camera which was bigger than both my hands. 

It is fucking big and don't let the Lomo video fool you into thinking otherwise. The problem is the film and how it has to swallow the whole Fuji film cartridge making the camera a beast. 

Now, I have been a SLR users all my life and would gladly move away to something analog like a rangefinder but these days, I am not that active anymore in shooting and when I do, I have a Galaxy Note 4 for all those shots that come without notice. So when I held the Instax Wife from Fuji in my hands those many years ago, I decided that it has to mean something if I am to use that camera. 

For one, I would prefer a Polaroid EE100 Reporter as it folds into a nice package but comes with a fixed lens. Comparatively, the Lomo Instant Wide has interchangeable lenses. But for me, the Polaroid would win over my choice since the two is about the same in size and bulk. 

The Polaroid has character, while the Lomo looks almost Soviet-ish in design. However both a plastic bodied so don't assume it will last a life time even though the EE100 is still available on eBay for cheap. 

When you buy an instant camera, you have to know what you are using it for. If is is just for fun and you can afford those pricey prints, then it's fine. Fun is a cost factor. If you don't have a need to shoot analog then please don't. 

Shooting analog is difficult. 

There are severe technical limitations that makes it difficult to operate and even though the camera has an auto exposure, not all scenes render well on instant film. Once you understand this and don't mind going the distance to learn to use it, then it is fine. 

I hate to see people think that shooting analog is easier than digital. I beg to differ. Once your expectations are ruined, the whole analog concept will be dumped along with it and you'd never get the chance to experience it once you double down on an iPhone. 

And this is what Lomo is all about. It is about the shooting experience that analog gives you that you won't find on a digital medium. For me, digital is almost fool proof. The many ways it can go wrong for you can be corrected in post production while in analog, that is never the case. There are more challenges in analog photography and this is what makes it different. 

So if you are in the mood for a challenge, then don't hesitate to pick up an analog camera.