Denver Corporate Photographer.

Corporate Photography - Copyright Mark Stout Photography

One of my corporate clients, Wystone’s World Teas, noticed photos I had taken for some other clients using a “special” technique and loved the impact.  She wanted to know how her store would look if we did the same.  As you can see, the storefront photo has a rich, warm, almost magical feel – warm and inviting despite being taken after all the customers had left.  Be sure to stop by the store in Lakewood Colorado, or order some of her out of this world tea online.  If you would like to have me take similar high impact photos for your business, be sure to contact me.

As any professional photographer knows, the rights of photographers to their work have been under assault in more ways than I can list here.  The Copyright Association of America has taken the initiative to draft a letter to President Obama asking his administration to work to protect the rights of artists.  This is a vitally important action.  Please take a moment to sign the letter and add your voice to the solution.  Click here to sign.

I once wished home base was in New York City or by the beach.  I was taking the breathtaking Colorado scenery for granted. I was so busy looking at the number of photoshoots that took place on the beach or in NYC, that I failed to appreciate what I had.  It actually took a NYC ad agency telling me they chose me for their photography largely because of where I was located to get me to open my eyes.  Colorado offered a break from the ordinary.  Where everyone else was doing exactly that – using NYC or the beach as a predominant backdrop for their shoots – Colorado offered exactly what I have been preaching for so long.  If you want to stand out, be unique and different.

i think this photo shoot with Claire Levin, an actress out of NYC illustrates the point.  The golden tones of the old gold mines and the rich, if not sometimes haunting, backdrops of the old mining ghosts towns served us well for some one of a kind fashion images.

Colorado ghost town fashion editorial - copyright Mark Stout

Female Fashion Photoshoot - copyright Mark Stout Photography

Ghost Town Fashion Photoshoot - copyright Mark Stout Photography

One of joys of my job is the unlimited subject matter.  From beautiful female models, to male fitness models, young and old, families, lifestyle, special events, and food and products.  It’s all beautiful, or can be made beautiful, and it is all part of the life we live.  Here are a couple of the food photos I just completed for one of my favorite clients, Wystone’s World Teas.  Be sure to stop in and enjoy the experience that only Wystone’s offers.

Food Photography - copyright Mark Stout

When I first embarked on photography, the riches of the beautiful and varied Colorado landscapes caught my eye.  I then moved on to “better things” and into a career of music, fashion and fitness photography.  The beauty of Colorado has once again caught my attention and my lens and I am adding a number of new images of Colorado’s ghost towns, rivers, streams, mountain vistas, and urban sights to the Corporate Art, Fine Art and rights managed stock photo section of Mark Stout Photography.  Images in this rapidly growing collection can be perfect finds for interior designers, architects, spas, hotels and government offices, not to mention travel and tourist publications.

Colorado Ghost Town Stock Photo copyright Mark Stout Photography

This is a new photo that has been added to the corporate art and fine art sections of my website.  As in many of my photo shoots, we literally went the extra mile for this shoot, driving over 5 hours each way to a distant location that I knew was perfect for this shot and others in the series (which was actually shot as a fashion editorial).  It is available in a variety of sizes.  The model and dress worked perfectly with the location.  Wen looking at the images after the shoot this one “spoke to me” as photos often do.  I envisioned a world that once was, crumbling, literally being swallowed by the ever expanding universe around it eons ago.  Click here for info on prints.

The Night the Stars Fell Down Fine Art Print - copyright Mark Stout Photography 2009

Those who have been following my work know that I consider the current stock photography industry to be a bit of a shambles…. One of the problems is that today’s stock photo libraries tend to consist of images that all look the same.  Hardly the way to establish the distinction of your own brand!  To remedy this, I have begun making unique stock photography available directly through my website.  One of the newest series to go up features an attractive woman enjoying the grand Colorado lifestyle.  Images were shot in several locations near Golden, Boulder, and Estes Park and feature rivers, streams, mountains, ranches and the beautiful Rocky Mountain Scenery.  To see the growing Colorado stock photo collection, click here.  Stay current with my stock photo updates on my Unique Stock Photography blog.

Rocky Mountain Woman Stock Photo - Copyright by Mark Stout

Rocky Mountain Lifestyle Stock Photography - Copyright by Mark Stout

I don’t have my wits around this one quite as well as some issues, but I have been observing a new marketing paradigm emerging and its impact on the industry is anything but good.

My first encounter with it was a few years back when I noticed significant traffic coming to my website out of a different continent.  I followed the links back to learn they were all coming from a major print magazine.  I thought that odd and looked them up on the web to find they also had a blog and had helped themselves to several of my photos.

My first impulse was to bill them for the use.  Then I made my big mistake.  I decided to let it go because of all the traffic I was getting.  I also hoped it might lead to a print assignment (it never did). It took me a while to see how much damage that little mistake made to me and the industry we all depend on.  Over the following few months my work appeared on hundreds of blogs.  I simply let it happen.  Tons of website traffic was sent to me from people who would never be my clients and wanted only to steal my work for their own uses.

The full ramifications of this all hit me on Christmas Eve that year.  Earlier that same year I had done a shoot for a designer on a work for hire basis.  He was small and I had decided to be a nice guy.  The shoot was for a single print magazine ad that I later learned was the only print ad he has run.  Before all was said and done, images from that shoot became the cover photo of several magazines, had become a centerfold in another and were used on countless smaller blogs.  One blog of note that it appeared in was anything but small, receiving approximately 1 million visitors per month.

I was broke and no one was getting Christmas presents.  The owners of the blog were vacationing in Rio for the month.  The designer was also away on vacation.  I sat down and did the math on what I should have charged for each use of that shoot and realized I had cheated myself out of a minimum of $15,000 for the shoot.  I too could have been on vacation in beautiful Rio!  That hurt!  But the pain was about to get worse! I learned that the larger of the blogs was charging as much as $40,000 for an ad… yet they had no printing costs, no creative costs, no costs period.

Later, it struck me how the print magazines are cutting their own throats here too.  The number of magazine covers, centerfolds and other print uses of my 1st shoot for that designer were driven by it’s PR firm shooting the images off to magazines who were trying to fill their image needs free….  and in the process eliminating advertisers.  Each of the magazines charge more for their ad space (especially if you want the cover of the magazine) than they pay to have the same amount of space photographed.  Forfeiting an ad sale to gain a free image was costing them a considerable amount of money.

Later the designer told me he considered the blogs and the magazines hungry for free content so effective that he saw no need to ever take out print ads.  He also said that the larger blog resulted in so much business for him that when a different photographer had sent them images of a discontinued line it resulted in so many requests for the design that he had to start manufacturing it again.  Still later he commented to me, “Wow, there is just no work out there for you guys.  I have photographers calling me every day offering to work for free and publish the work so they can stay visible.”  With all his advertising needs being met free, this left only the product packaging shoots available as paid work.

I suppose I should have felt flattered that I was the photographer he paid and the rest would soon be out of business.  I didn’t.  These photographers were complete fools (yes, I have already admitted it, I was once guilty of somewhat similar mistakes).  Not only were they subsidizing the marketing of another business by working free, they were taking paid work from me and and all photographers, and they were contributing heavily to the demise of the print magazines that DO pay for our work by eliminating the designer’s need to pay for advertising.

As for the blogs who help themselves to a photographer’s images when it isn’t being fed to them by designers, most do know they are in violation of copyright laws, but they assume no one will take action.  This can be an expensive mistake.  A photographer recently discovered the blog of a major news magazine ran his photos without permission.  He billed them $4000 and they paid him almost immediately knowing the damages they could be liable for if he went for copyright violation.  He also learned that several other blogs picked up the work from the first and billed them all as well.  He stated that his working relationship with the magazine is still intact and he had been told by the mags online staff that “we do that all the time and just assume no one will mind!”

Therein lies the problem.  Those who got screwed agreed to get screwed or were simply completely ignorant of the most basic business fundamentals.

The internet has shaken up how business is done.  The world is still trying to figure out how to deal with the change. It has been called the great equalizer.  I don’t know that I consider that true.  Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc are profiting handsomely off this innovation, while the vast majority of online publications do not make enough to fund the cost of producing content (the ad rates charged by the one blog mentioned earlier are the exception, not the rule.  Many that I have talked to are lucky to be making a hundred bucks a month off Google and affiliate ads).  Most blogs, instead of demanding ad rates sufficient to pay for producing content simply “borrow” it from the news publications and photographers that DO fund the cost.  This, of course, cuts into the profits of those of us who are producing the content and inhibits our ability to do so.  It is something everyone will eventually suffer from.

Don’t get me wrong.  The internet is a great innovation. But it does need to start paying its way in terms of the content it depends on. This will happen only if photographers demand payment from the internet publications and/or the designers who are using them (any you) in lieu of taking out print ads.

Here is some enlightening information on what you should be charging for your work on the web:

Web 1/4 screen $100 to 200 per month

Web full screen $378 – $750 per year

This is per image.  Usually when I see a photographer’s work on a website there will be somewhere from 4 to 12 images used.  Do the math.  Six 1/4 page images used for a year on one website could net as much as $14,400.  These are just rough guidelines using the PhotoBiz software for estimating.  Many other factors will come into play such as how much traffic the blog gets, how many blogs will be running it, etc.

These estimates may be a bit high, but to allow use of your work free is just plain foolish.  Purchase a copy of FotoBiz and at least have a concept of what your work is worth before you decide to give it away.  Someone is profiting on your work and it isn’t you… yet you are paying to create it.  And each time you do so you damage the industry in which you hope to earn your living.  The internet may have changed the playing field, but copyright law still applies and those who are using your images expect to profit from the use.

As a note, this “free advertising” is not benefiting the designers as much as they might want to think and the ones who do it are not the photographer’s client demographic.  I know of several designers who allow anyone with a camera and the willingness to shoot free and market the work for them have some clothes.  The result is a hodge podge of images and messages that may actually harm sales more than help.  Each photographer is shooting without art direction and putting his own look into the brand.  The blogs then put their own spin on it and frequently this is anything other than what is best for the image of the designer, photographer or model.  Look at the major brands such as Abercrombie, Calvin Klein, Guess Jeans etc.  The images are classy and the marketing message consistent.  They control who shoots thier brand and where it appears with an iron fist. That is why they are where they are.  You aren’t doing the designers any favors either when you allow them to attempt to short circuit the system.

The destruction of print would be a sad thing to see.  No online publication can compare with the satisfaction of the touch and feel of the magazine in your hands.  Nor does any electronic publication fund the costs involved in some of the stunningly beautiful shoots we see in some of these magazines.  The loss will happen not because they lose their subscribers as much as because they lose their advertisers.

I doubt that day will ever come.  However, the blog marketing paradigm as it is currently running is devaluing the work and the image of both photographers and the designers who think they are getting a deal… while harming the markets that do pay for the work.  It’s your choice.  You can charge for your work, or let the world have it free for the taking.  Whether or not you remain in business depends entirely on the choice you make.

I learned my lesson when I took off the blinders that sad Christmas Eve and looked at how those who had been crying poverty and I was trying to help were simply playing me.  I had been the fool.  I paid the price.  I now demand what I am worth, enjoy new found self-respect and travel where I want when I want.

I always love it when I can do a photoshoot that tells a story, particularly when it lets the viewers write the story line to fit their own concept.  The expression on the female model’s face could be anticipation, suspicion, fear, or sadness.  Something is about to happen and it is up to the person looking at the image to decide what.

Pet Sasso, the model for this shoot flew in to Denver from Twin Cities.  Obviously perfect for this shot, Pet brought character, personality and mood into this shot that would be difficult to match.

The following passage was e-mailed to me by one of my readers.  It is very fitting.  Having worked extensively with the music industry, as well as in the field of writing and photography, I’ve seen the relentless attacks on the copyrights, earning power and very creativity of all in the creative arts.  The suppression of artists dates back to the beginning of recorded history and is so entrenched in our society that it is as if it is indeed a Biblical proclamation as the passage below suggests.

Enjoy.

Mark

Artist 3:12: “The artist will be discovered among you.  Through his work, he alone possess the ability to enlighten man: to relieve him of his suffering, to inspire him toward higher states of being and to free him from the invisible shackles that bind him.

“This must not come to pass.

“The material world cannot exist without complete and utter obedience to its laws.  They may not be inspected or questioned.  It is therefore decreed that the people of Earth must enslave the artist just as they themselves are enslaved. Ridicule his work, caste him out, deny him the material means to survive.   Only after his death may the work of the artist be valued.  That is to be his punishment.”
Author Unknown