How would you describe your photographic vision? What kind of look/atmosphere/feel do you try and create in your photos?

It really depends entirely on my mood and my photographic goals of the day. If I’m being paid to get high impact, vivid images then, that’s what I’m looking for.  If I’m doing personal work, I try to impart a style that best suits the work. I really don’t want my work to be pegged to one style. As a professional photographer, I feel I should be able to create a look or atmosphere that suits the subject as opposed to imposing one on the subject.
 
When did you start taking photos and why? What made you decide to become a photographer?
 
I’ve owned cameras since I was about 5 or 6. I still have images I shot of friends and family with an old Kodak 120 with the little cube flash on top. Over the course of my life, I’ve always owned a camera and always took pictures for fun. I’ve taken up and abandoned many hobbies but, photography was the one that I always went back to so, when the opportunity came up, it seemed natural for me to earn my living this way.
 
When did you decide to work in stock photography? How did you start out?

My first stock sales were microstock, which I think is an interesting comment to the industry as a whole. I make a nice living as a commercial photographer shooting corporate reports, ad imagery etc. and my stock work is part of a larger business model. I do about 6 or 8 editorial travel jobs a year. It’s no secret that editorial is terrible money but, it pays my way onto trips where I come back with lots of stock for my own library and this is my retirement fund. As I get older, I intend to travel and shoot stock exclusively to fund my “golden years”.

With the microstock, I just dropped a few hundred images onto some of the micro sites early on and the volume of sales was phenomenal. Granted, at pennies an image, the per image income was not worth depositing in the bank but, multiplied by the volume, it’s probably on par with RM stock in terms of annual income potential.
  
Did you sell your work through other stock libraries before selling photos on your own website? How did this work out for you? At what point did you decided that you wanted to sell your photos yourself? What were the main reasons for your decision?

Since my first experiences with microstock, the business evolved pretty quickly and it was clear to me that this was not really a long term, viable business model for a freelance shooter like me. The demands in terms of inputting, keywording, uploading, technical specs etc. just got ridiculous. You could spend you entire life in front of the computer just filling in all the blanks that the RF agencies were asking for which, I think in part was happening as purely a mechanism for the RF agencies to hold back the flood of imagery they were receiving.

I’ve been represented by some of the larger libraries and just recently said no to a well known travel library. I think the stock business is still reeling, and evolving, from the initial shock of microstock and I don’t think this will end soon. We’re now seeing RM prices dropping and RF prices rising and companies like Getty making a series of questionable moves to try and find the sweet spot in the business. All of these companies really don’t care about individual shooters, it’s like most similar businesses, it’s not about the best interest of the individual, it’s about the bottom line. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m very much a capitalist and if I was a shareholder in one of these companies that would be my goal too. But as an individual business person in a creative field, their business model will not fill my needs. Once I realized this, I felt I would be better off licensing directly to end users.
 
What obstacles and difficulties did you face when you started to sell your own photos? How did you overcome them? How are you marketing your business and building your reputation?
 
The first obstacle was the website itself. The cost of setting this up for a small business was pretty steep and second, I learned to stop asking for opinions on the design and interface of my site. The more people you ask, the more opinions and ideas you get and you’ll never please ‘em all.

Second of course is marketing. Getting a system in place to tell people you’re here and what you have on offer is time consuming and complicated but, once you’ve found a course that works, it’s worth the effort.
 
How have photo buyers responded to you selling photos on your own site?

I don’t think buyers care where the images come from. As long as they get them at a price that fits their budget and the image fills their needs in a quick and efficient manner. If you look at the photo credits in the average magazine, you might be surprised how varied the sources are.
 
How do you market your work? How important is your website to your marketing strategy?

I have four “strategies” for marketing. First, I send out quarterly emails to about 4000 picture buyers with links to my site announcing new galleries. Second, I do a fair amount of Google Ad words and third, I spend a lot of time focusing on SEO work and natural key wording of online images. As well, I maintain contact with buyers who regularly purchase from me by sending out postcards and other mailers. The website is critical to this because, it’s an online world and offering clients online browsing by subject, especially for travel work, is essential.
 
What changes have you seen in the stock photo industry since you have been working as a photographer? Where do you think the industry will be in five or ten years time?
 
I don’t think I’m covering new ground when I mention the radical shift that micro stock brought to the business but, probably the most important aspect of this has been the migration to online offerings which has brought with it a tremendous amount of “key board” work for photographers in terms of keywording and categorizing imagery. As well, we’ve seen the business open up to part timers that would never have had access to a market five years ago and are now making a nice second income from online stock.
 
What advice would you give someone just starting out in stock photography now?

Go to Medical School.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

Honestly, it’s clichéd advice but it’s a cliché for a reason. Focus and specialize. Pick a category of stock you’re interested in and make it your goal to become known for that kind of work. There are a huge number of categories out there today and believe it or not, we’ll always need fresh images of elderly people on walks, happy kids in school, people at the dentist, business people shaking hands etc. etc. The demand is probably greater now than ever.

I worked in the construction industry for years before going full time and my biggest regret is that I didn’t shoot more of this kind of stuff when I had access to it. I probably have about 250 great images of industrial construction and they sell constantly. If I had taken my own advice and focused on this when I had the access, I’d have an incredible income from industrial stock alone. The bulk of my commercial clients are industrial and oil and gas just because I know my way around these environments so, in that sense, I do specialize.
 
What advice would you give someone who wants to run their own stock library or sell their photos on their website? I’m sure that while advances in digital photography and the internet make some aspects of the business much easier, they also lower the barriers for entry. What are the keys to success in this environment?
 
Copy someone else’s successful formula and improve on it. Dan Heller does a great business in travel stock and he gave me a lot of information about his site and strategy and I took what I felt was suitable and improved on it. There’s not many new ideas out there but there’s always a way to improve on last year’s great idea. Second, stay on top of technology. This is critical. Read blogs, follow trends, subscribe to magazines and trade journals outside your own industry. I read constantly both online and in print and I’m always amazed at the number of business ideas I get from this. When I read a magazine, I look at every picture and ask myself how it got there and why it’s not mine.
 
Micro-Stock - Good or bad? Discuss.
 
I think it’s neither. It’s smart business people and people who probably did a lot of what I said in the question above and saw a trend or a need that had to be filled. Looking back, it was predictable that this was coming. Just look at the thousands of websites for small businesses, social networks, family websites, news aggregators etc. that are out there. The liquor store in my neighborhood has it’s own website for crying out loud! And the web would be a pretty dull place without photography. But all these small businesses and social sites could never afford Getty and Corbis and they can’t take all the imagery themselves so, all of a sudden there’s a source of decent images out there for a dollar? It just seems inevitable to me that this would happen.

Microstock filled a need for people who needed images at prices that were relative to their usage. Of course, there are some big companies and even some high circulation magazines using RF microstock but, I think that’s the exception. An there have been some pretty high profile cases of companies using RF in campaigns where the same image was being used in the same media for an entirely different purpose.

Is it possible to make a decent living from stock photography alone? What other photographic services do you offer in order to supplement your income?
 
Of course it is. There are a lot of shooters out there making a great living at stock. You don’t hear from them because they’re too busy working and living their lives. You only hear about the ones who are too busy complaining to make any money. In my case, I could make my living solely from stock but choose not to  because I still enjoy the commercial work and I like taking travel assignments so, as I work on other things, I add to my stock online and will eventually cut back on the amount of commercial work I do and assignments I take and travel and work on personal shooting.

Name three photographers you like and why.
 
Joe McNally - A great guy who does great work. If you look at the body of work in his archive, there are a hundred of those “oh, he shot that? I love that picture” moments

David Allan Harvey - He shoots the way I think I shoot but don’t. He does a great job of documenting places and events without ramming it down your throat. Look at his portfolio at Magnum and you’ll think “here’s a guy who’s in the right place at the right time way too often”

Bob Krist - For defining the term “sense of place”

Where is your photography and your business going? What future photographic project or projects are you excited about?
 
I’m excited about the two workshops I’m doing in the Canadian Rockies this summer. You can get the details off my site. This is an area of the business that keeps growing for me and next year, I’m considering adding workshops in Italy, France and Mexico. I’m excited about this part of the business and I really like doing the workshops.
 
Bonus Question: Your dream assignment. What is it?
 
I’ve been approached by a book publisher about documenting various festivals around the world so, if that materializes, it would be pretty interesting. Another dream has been documenting the people who live on the reed islands on Lake Titicaca in Peru.