I am not primarily a stock photographer, but I do contribute to a few stock agencies (primarily Stocksy United). Right now, I mostly see stock photography as a way to earn passive income by leveraging leftover photography from paid gigs or personal work into additional revenue streams.
It’s pretty sweet to check your stock photography stats and find out that you just earned some extra cash from work that would otherwise just be sitting on a hard drive somewhere.
However, every once in a while I do go out to specifically shoot stock photography.
In this article, I am going to share the anatomy of a recent Christmas stock photography shoot.
Access Is the Key to Great Stock Photography
I don’t have a lot of Christmas themed work in my stock portfolio, and a lot of the Christmas stock out there is very cheesy – kind of like what it would look like if the Walmart Christmas section exploded and landed on white seamless with a lot of fake sparkles and the occasional scantily clad elf / Mrs. Claus thrown in – so I figured shooting some tasteful, elegant Christmas stock photos might be a good investment.
I’m not really a lifestyle family photographer either, but I seem to do a good enough job with my own kids, so I figured what the heck! The concept for this session was to photograph a real family (albeit an attractive and impeccably dressed family), in a high end home, decorated with trendy, tasteful Christmas decorations.
To pull that together I needed a trendy, attractive family who were willing to sign model releases, and who live in an awesome trendy, attractive house, with trendy, attractive Christmas decor.
So I asked my interior decorator (who just happens to be working on my own house right now) if she had any clients that have a great looking home that might be willing to model for some Christmas stock photos, in exchange for a few prints.
Lo and behold – she had just the family who had just finished completely remodelling their house – and a few nicely worded emails later – I had access.
Family Photo Day
In exchange for access, I did promise this family some free photos – and as much as any family would love some awesome photos of themselves hanging out together and (pretending) to decorate the Christmas tree, what they really want is family photos.
As it turned out, what this particular family really wanted was a group picture for their Christmas card and some fun portraits for a photo wall in their amazingly well decorated sitting room. We’ll come back to this later.
I was more than happy to take some lifestyle family photos while I was there. The setup was very straight forward, but I did have to make a conscious effort not to let the whole session turn into family photo day.
Return on Investment from Stock Photography
The whole point of this session was to come away with a series of Christmas stock photos that will make money – I don’t push that little button for free.
Here is a simple breakdown of the time I had invested in this session:
| Email Correspondence: | 1h |
| Pack Up and Put Away Gear: | 1.5h |
| Driving: | 2h |
| Photography Session: | 2.5h |
| Culling and Initial Edits: | 1h |
| Advanced Edits: | 1h |
| Uploading and Keywording | 1h |
That all adds up to a total investment of ten hours of my time (in realty it is probably a bit more than this).
My billable rate is $100 / h so I need to gross a minimum of $1000 in stock sales over the lifespan of the images I produced from this session.
(By the way – if right now you’re reading $100 per hour and you’re thinking something like “how dare that guy make $100 per hour, I’m better than him”…we need to have a chat about calculating your billable rate).
Out of the 2.5h of shooting time I had, I came away with maybe 10-20 solid Christmas stock photos.
I also estimate that the lifespan of the images from this session is approximately five years, after which time fashions will change, popular color schemes will evolve and the people and things in these photos will no longer be as desirable as they are now.
So that means that I have to make on average $200 per year for five years from this set of 10-20 photographs.
Right now I average about $15 per download, (which has been fairly consistent from month to month), so that means I need to sell about 13 photos per year for five years out of a set of 10-20 photos in order to break even.
Unfortunately, based on my current sales records, that is not a very realistic goal.
In reality, I will be lucky to sell one or two photos from this session every Christmas season for the next five years.
As purely a stock session, the bottom line is that I am going to take a pretty big loss here. I might get lucky and hit a few $100 sales, but the realistic projection is grossing no more than a few hundred bucks long term from this session.
Additional Revenue Streams
Remember when I mentioned that my model family wanted a photo for their Christmas card?
Well, it turns out that they are genuinely cool people who happen to be pretty well-heeled. I am assuming that they will have some similarly cool and well-heeled friends and relatives who own all kinds of interesting businesses that could use a good photographer. So I sent them a free photo for their Christmas cards. That’s what I call free advertising.
Remember when I mentioned that they wanted photos for a photo wall too?
While I was there I took a look at their room – which is a gorgeous, professionally decorated sitting room. I told them – nah – you don’t want a few crappy little 8×10 prints in little department store frames – you want big, beautiful fine art giclee, quad-toned black and white photos printed on textured Hahnemuhle Torchon paper, in custom no-glass frames with oversized mats.
Go figure – that was exactly what they wanted, and I stand to make quite a bit more from that sale then I ever will from stock sales from the same set of photos.
Do You Make Money From Stock Photography?
If you shoot stock, what is your rate of return? How many stock sales do you need to break even on a stock session? Has a free stock shoot led to a paid gig down the road?
Leave a comment and let us know.
About The Author
JP Danko is a commercial photographer based in Toronto, Canada. JP can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.
To see more of his work please visit his studio website blurMEDIAphotography, or follow him on Twitter, 500px, Google Plus or YouTube.
JP’s photography is available for licensing at Stocksy United.
FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!