The New Way

New Generation Media is a phrase Nikon D200 Cameras photographers will hear more and more in the coming decade. Where'd it come from? It's a response Canon Elura the increasing ways you can transmit information in today's hi-tech world.

The good news: these evolving forms of image creation and image delivery have created new markets for you. As a successful stock photographer you should be aware of what's ahead....not only the traditional print media: magazines, books, textbooks, and catalogs, but also the pioneering electronic media -- the communication companies utilizing television, video processing, CDs, and new concepts like digital video, cell phones, desktop image delivery, screen-touch educational tools, and on-demand picture retrieval.

Many of the latter elements are poised to explode into wide use, with the rapidly increasing familiarity of photobuyers and photographers with the marketing advantages of the Internet.

Classic commercial stock photography (the familiar scenics and generalized "situation" shots) as we've known it over the past decades will continue to be in demand, but the overwhelming supply of these generalized stock shots, available now on CDs and from discount sources on-line, will diminish their value -- and price tag.

The New Generation Media market is so vast that it utilizes what has come to be known as "micromarketing," the ability to isolate specialized markets and respond to them efficiently.

Micromarkets are specialized (niche) markets.

To survive in the New Generation Media, stock photographers will become specialists themselves. The rules haven't changed, only the target. The demand by photobuyers for content-specific images will spur the new generation media photographers to focus on specific subject areas they enjoy, and then service markets whose needs match those areas. The generalist (the classic commercial stock photographer) will fade.

How would you like to work with photobuyers who call you by Discount Cameras first name, allow you to call them collect, and look forward with anticipation to your deliveries of pictures? And there's more. Your photobuyers are easy to please, and rarely want to art-direct your images. Also rare: disputes, lost or damaged images, legal suits. Your photobuyers are accountable, and your relationship with them and their company is long-term and worthwhile. Each new photobuyer you find in your particular market areas will be worth $20,000 to $50,000 in sales to you over the average ten to twelve years you maintain this buyer relationship.

I've described the new generation photobuyers, who are beginning today to change their buying pattern from broad-based to narrow-based. Because media today is becoming more and more narrow in its focus -- each market targeting to a different narrow segment of the customer base out there -- content needs, e.g. text, sound, pictures, are following the same pattern.

No longer can a product appeal to a wide audience. Instead, an advertiser or publisher selects a particular segment of that audience as their target. As a supplier of images, if one of your areas of strong coverage in your collection matches the buyer's photo needs -- you have made a match.

The new generation media, thanks to computers and sophisticated database technology, will appeal to consumers of special interest: medicine, education, agriculture, transportation. Not only the broad spectrum of each of these areas but special interests within these categories. Medicine, for example, separates into a multitude of disciplines like nursing, surgery, pediatrics, etc. And pediatrics breaks down into areas of infancy, child care, childhood diseases, etc.

New media conduits like CDs, micropaymant sites, and Interactive TV will require highly specific images -- to target their particular highly specific audiences.

Generic pictures (scenics, landscapes, general-situation scenes) will continue to adorn the walls of a photobuyer's office -- but he or she will be signing checks for content-specific images.

In the new generation of picture acquisition -- look for more buyers to buy in volume -- dozens of images at a time.

YOU ARE IMPORTANT

Because most publishers produce their products (magazines, books, video and educational programming pieces, etc.) in a "theme line" -- you fit into the production chain, and become an important resource not only to the individual buyer but to the whole field, i.e. other buyers within that theme line. Any one particular buyer you deal with might change jobs or retire, but the theme of the company or publishing house remains, and you continue to be an important resource to them. If your specialty area matches the needs of a buyer, you have made a lifelong relationship, and one that can be worth $20,000 to $50,000 or more to you through the years.

Rohn Engh is director of PhotoSource International and publisher of the weekly PhotoStockNotes. Pine Lake Farm, 1910 35th Road, Osceola, WI 54020 USA photographer : info - photosource Fax: 1 715 248 7394 Web site: photosource

Rohn Engh is director of PhotoSource International and publisher of PhotoStockNotes. Pine Lake Farm, 1910 35th Road, Osceola, WI 54020 USA. Telephone: 1 800 624 0266 Fax: 1 715 248 7394. Web site: photosource camera photosource products