Black & White Images

[Dave Handson]

Good Morning Forum, after a number of years I've joined the Forum!

A question for you all - how well do black & white or monochrome images sell through Alamy?

 

I would be interested in seeing your thoughts.

[Bryan]

Welcome to the forum Dave.

 

Not sold any contemporary B&W shots (very few in my port), but I have sold images taken from old B&W negatives from the 1960s and 1970s. 

 

I do spot B&W photos being used in some cafes etc, but customers can always convert an image to B&W is they want to. Not sure that there is a large market, but maybe someone can prove me wrong?

Edited August 12, 2019 by Bryan

[spacecadet]

70s-90s archive, yes, at a far higher rate than the general collection- about 10 times as many licences per image. But that includes some colour as well.

I only have one manipulated b/w à la Schindler's List and neither it nor its original have licensed.

Edited August 12, 2019 by spacecadet

[Mr Standfast]

Hello Dave, I have around 80 contemporary monochrome pictures, one has licensed. That was some cranes where the black and white added to the mood.  I can't remember seeing any alamy contemporary monochrome in the wild.

[John Mitchell]

I have close to 100 contemporary b&w images on Alamy. During the past year, two have licensed, one for personal use and the and the other for presentation use. One was an image of a historical building in Seattle, and the other was of an ancient Mayan pyramid in Mexico.

 

The PU and presentation licensing options seem to have opened up some possibilities for b&w images, but I doubt that they will start flying off the shelves. 🤧

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 12, 2019 by John Mitchell

[Marianne]

Welcome Dave. 

 

My experience, for what it's worth: I sell a fair number of B&W images as prints and on average make about $250 net per sale. While I can see that adding them to Alamy now that there is a PU license might add sales, at $10-20 gross I would be competing against myself, and earning less than 5% of what I normally make, so a good reason for me not to add them here. I wish the PU license was more expensive and was akin to a normal license where the size of the image made a difference so that the price went up per sale. Honestly, if I could earn $50 per PU license, I'd consider it, since it would broaden my audience, but at the current low value it just seems like an insult. 

 

Now, ironically,  the first image I ever sold here as stock was a black and white, but it looked like a black and white even as a color print since it was barbed wire against a gray cloudy sky. 

Edited August 12, 2019 by Marianne
Deleted the portion of my answer that got off topic

[Dave Handson]

4 hours ago, Bryan said:

Welcome to the forum Dave.

 

Not sold any contemporary B&W shots (very few in my port), but I have sold images taken from old B&W negatives from the 1960s and 1970s. 

 

I do spot B&W photos being used in some cafes etc, but customers can always convert an image to B&W is they want to. Not sure that there is a large market, but maybe someone can prove me wrong?

Thanks for the welcome Bryan and the points made.

 

Dave

[Dave Handson]

4 hours ago, spacecadet said:

70s-90s archive, yes, at a far higher rate than the general collection- about 10 times as many licences per image. But that includes some colour as well.

I only have one manipulated b/w à la Schindler's List and neither it nor its original have licensed.

Thanks for the response and the comments

Dave

[Dave Handson]

1 hour ago, Mr Standfast said:

Hello Dave, I have around 80 contemporary monochrome pictures, one has licensed. That was some cranes where the black and white added to the mood.  I can't remember seeing any alamy contemporary monochrome in the wild.

Thanks for the response

Dave

[Dave Handson]

1 hour ago, John Mitchell said:

I have close to 100 contemporary b&w images on Alamy. During the past year, two have licensed, one for personal use and the and the other for presentation use. One was an image of a historical building in Seattle, and the other was of an ancient Mayan pyramid in Mexico.

 

The PU and presentation licensing options seem to have opened up some possibilities for b&w images, but I doubt that they will start flying off the shelves. 🤧

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the response

Dave

[Dave Handson]

24 minutes ago, Marianne said:

Interesting. I sell a fair number of B&W images as prints and on average make about $250 net per sale. While I can see that adding them to Alamy now that there is a PU license might add sales, at $10-20 gross I would be competing against myself, and earning less than 5% of what I normally make, so a good reason for me not to add them here. I wish the PU license was more expensive and was akin to a normal license where the size of the image made a difference so that the price went up per sale. Honestly, if I could earn $50 per PU license, I'd consider it, since it would broaden my audience, but at the current low value it just seems like an insult. 

 

There are a lot of things that I think Alamy has done right in continuing to get us good prices for some images despite the devaluation of prices generally seemingly everywhere, but I think the PU license has not recognized that many people are willing to spend a lot more for a fine art prints than they are for a stock image. Most of the color prints I sell, or which other sites sell for me, go for $300-600 gross (framed or on canvas, metal, etc), netting me $100-200 in most cases. Most of my best selling prints are the exact same images that are frequently licensed as stock. Moreover, at one point some years ago, I lowered my print prices and my sales went down, when I raised them sales increased. My print prices are higher than most people's on the sites I sell on and I sell significantly more prints than most of those people.

 

I think that the PU license could be significantly higher and that if it went by size of the image, we would see more sales, not fewer. This is assuming that people are going to the sites that sell the framed/canvas images and that they aren't coming here for them, and that the more they pay for a print the more they value it.  It's really a shame. I'd upload a lot more images here if I could opt all of my image from PU, both RF and RM. 

 

Sorry, guess I got a bit off topic. But back on topic, this is a reason I would not upload B&W here.

 

Also, there is a big difference between just doing a "monotone" conversion and working with the Nik filters to bring out the tones in a  black and white image. I've had gallery owners assume that I was shooting film and be surprised when I told them my black and white images were actually digital. I guess it depends on where your sales are, but if you want to sell black and white as fine are, I wouldn't add them as stock.

 

Now, ironically,  the first image I ever sold here as stock was a black and white, but it looked like a black and white even as a color print since it was barbed wire against a gray cloudy sky. 

Marianne

 

Thanks for the comments; there are some interesting points in there. I do use Nik for my conversions and it is interesting that the dearer the print the more you sell - I may have to have a rethink!

 

I'll keep an eye on how my images do (zooms and, hopefully, sales) over the next 6 months or so and revaluate from there.

 

Dave

[Marianne]

5 hours ago, Dave Handson said:

Marianne

 

Thanks for the comments; there are some interesting points in there. I do use Nik for my conversions and it is interesting that the dearer the print the more you sell - I may have to have a rethink!

 

I'll keep an eye on how my images do (zooms and, hopefully, sales) over the next 6 months or so and revaluate from there.

 

Dave

 

It's always good to get different points of view. I look forward to seeing how you do.