Getty Images recently launched a new service to marry the needs of their clients with their network of photographers. The new service is called Custom Content Briefs. You can read about it in this post Getty Launches Custom Content Briefs. While Getty and iStockphoto have traditionally operated under the stock photography model where an image can be licensed many times, under Custom Content Briefs they can only be licensed by that one client. This makes it tricky for stock photographers to assess the likely financial benefit of shooting to these briefs. And that has lead to this post, Getty Updates Custom Content Briefs.

When the Custom Content Briefs were launched, a sticking point for photographers was the issue of what would happen with ‘unsuccessful’ images. That is, images which were not selected by the client. Getty had outlined that those images would not be able to be added to the photographer’s stock photo portfolio. That made shooting to these briefs more of a gamble for photographers. If your images were chosen by the client, great. If not, the photographer had lost the time and money invested in the shoot.

So what is changing in this update?

This week, Getty has had a change of mind. Quoting directly from the update on the Getty Images contributors forum ….

“What happens if a client doesn’t select all or part of my Custom Content submission? Can I license non-selects?
If the client doesn’t select all or part of your Custom Content submission and the non-Similar work is suitable for general stock licensing (i.e., it has all applicable releases and contains no client products), then we’ll put it straight into the regular collection you submitted it to in ESP. There is nothing you need to do and the work should appear in your regular collection around two weeks after the submission brief deadline.”

What does this mean? In short, it means if your images are not selected by the Custom Content Brief customer you will be able to use them in your stock portfolio (if the images meet the requirements of the collection).

Does this make Custom Content Briefs more attractive? In theory, yes. By having those ‘unsuccessful’ images in a stock portfolio there is a potential financial return.

Will I be shooting Custom Content Briefs? At this point, no. I can’t see enough financial upside in shooting a one off project as opposed to a steady flows of royalties from successful stock images. While Getty has addressed one piece of the puzzle they need to address another, and that is the financial return for the successful images.

What other options are there? Imagebrief’s business is built around a model like Custom Content Briefs. I wrote about that in New Ways to Sell Your Images. I see higher potential return in the Imagebrief model than I do in the Getty model. While I’m not planning to shoot for either in the near future, it’s clear to me that it would be more financially lucrative for the photographer to work with Imagebrief. What about you? What do you think of this emerging model of crowd sourced contract work?

Thanks for reading Getty Updates Custom Content Briefs. I hope it’s helped you.