On Demand Is In Demand
In my last couple articles, we discussed the 3-2-1 strategy of backing up photographs. While this backup strategy is universal amongst professionals, stopping there misses a giant step in what it takes to be successful in today’s world as working photographer.
RAID drives are the industry standard for having two copies of your photographs in the home office. And cloud-based mass storage services like Backblaze are the choice of many professionals for ensuring they keep their assets protected offsite as well. But neither address the needs of working wildlife photographers in terms of how they can access images on demand no matter where they happen to be at any moment.
Most often, magazine editors work on HUGE lead times. Six months is pretty standard. And it’s not uncommon for a publication to purchase photographs today that will not run for another year. But every once in a while, something happens that puts editors into a bind and they need images NOW.
Years ago, while on assignment in Honduras photographing crocodiles, I received an email from an editor in this position that needed photographs by the following day.
Under normal circumstances, at the time, I would have sent back an apologetic but thankful response explaining I was out of the country and wouldn’t be able to help in this instance. But this sale was different. The publication was very large and the number of photographs, plus their specific usage, would result in a $4,000 sale.
Not wanting to lose this opportunity, I spent 3 hours on the phone with my office admin back in the states in the middle of the night walking them through pulling all the photographs needed for this.
This is no way to run a business.
In today’s world, “on-demand” is very much in demand.
Editors can be a finicky bunch. As the senior editor of The Journal of Wildlife Photography, I understand why. Flaky photographers are a dime a dozen. And photo buyers want to work with people who have their s**t together.
It’s no small thing for an editor to reach out directly looking for photos. These people are inundated by photographers all trying to hawk their wares. So, to be singled out means you need to be ready to deliver.
When you can deliver on demand, you WILL hear from that photo buyer again.
And when you can’t, unless you already have a strong working relationship with them, you will likely never hear from that person again in such a manner.
Three hours’ worth of international cell phone bills in the middle of the night – before Verizon changed their unlimited plan to $10 a day when in Central America – was worth it for both the sale AND the reputation of being able to make things happen.
But it was this moment that I realized I needed a better system for handling situations like this.
Returning home from Honduras, I went to work looking for a way to begin housing photographs online in a database that I could access anytime and anyplace so long as I had access to the internet.
I didn’t want a website, of course. I already had one of those. I didn’t need it to be flashy or fancy. I didn’t even want to store all my photos there. I only wanted something I could upload a select number of photographs to – what I refer to as my “greatest hits” album - in order to handle sales while on the road.
In essence, I needed a personal stock photography site. A place where I could automate sending photographs to editors or even allow photo buyers to login in and download directly from me.
After considerable research, I settled on a company called PhotoShelter.
Before buying into the platform, however, I opted to use the free trial of the service to get a feel for it. I was back in the office for a while and wasn’t rushed to get photos into a database just yet – especially since this was a new concept for me that I was still trying to hash it all out in my mind.
But before the trial period was over, the damndest thing happened: the editor of the magazine Ranger Rick did an organic search on Photoshelter for images of wild horses on the beach.
I had only uploaded around 50 photos to my database at this point, and ironically they all happened to be of the wild horses living out on the islands of North Carolina.
The editor was hoping to find one or two photos via PhotoShelter that would help illustrate a feature story they were running over the summer. But thanks to my extensive work with these wild equines over the years, the magazine decided to use my work EXCLUSIVELY for the story – including the front cover, the table of contents, an image in another issue, and the website.
All totaled: $5,900.
And ever since, me and PhotoShelter have been the best of friends.
Companies like PhotoShelter exist to provide working photographers, like you and me, an online storage platform that we can use as both backup AND for selling images.
This is a big deal.
Technically speaking, PhotoShelter is an online Digital Asset Manager.
But there are MANY companies that can do this.
What’s different about PhotoShelter is that in addition to being an online DAM, it’s only for photography and is also searchable by the outside world, basically like a stock photography agency – hence the sale to Ranger Rick.
Other DAM services function like Dropbox. Sure, you can store stuff there. And you can also send stuff out. But the photo editor of Audubon is never going to find you this way.
With PhotoShelter, they will.
With hundreds of thousands of photographs to backup, however, PhotoShelter is not a solution for me as mass offsite storage (the “1” in 3-2-1).
For that, I use Backblaze.
So, PhotoShelter is something of a hybrid tool in my workflow.
It provides an additional measure of backup for my most important photographs, while also serving as a sales platform that makes me money every single month.
Editors are actively searching for photographs there. Meanwhile, I am actively marketing my images to editors through this platform as well. I can send out lightboxes of images for review. I can make certain categories of images searchable, while keeping other work hidden from the public if it’s assignment stuff.
Other companies like Zen Folio and SmugMug can provide you with the ability to store accessible photographs online as well. But photo buyers are never going to discover your work on these platforms. Nor are they designed to help you license your photography to editors the way PhotoShelter is.
Whether you use PhotoShelter or any of the other programs out there that allow you to store and send out images online, being able to remove obstacles from making sales, being able to send over photographs on demand, and having your work discoverable by editors who are out there searching for photographs is an important part of the business today.
To be continued . . .