Cost of Good Sold: Photo Editing

Cost of Good Sold: Photo Editing

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The thumbnail panel from Photo Mechanic with images from our T-shirt shoot

The PhotoShelter Collection has what we refer to as “edited diversity.” Although we allow almost any image to be uploaded, each image is reviewed by our team of photo editors with the goal of removing the stuff we don’t think commercial photo buyers will be interested in. The process is a subjective one, we admit, but on the other hand, all of our editors have degrees in photography, and all of them have worked as photo editors prior to landing at PhotoShelter.

But the point of this post isn’t too talk about the subjective. It’s to talk business.

We often hear from photographers who are upset about an image(s) getting rejected and the fact that we don’t include a reason for rejection. So first let me explain how the old stock agencies work. It used to be that in order to even be considered by an agency, you had to submit a body of work of several hundred images. Several hundred really good images to even be considered. If you’ve never had a portfolio review before, you might not really understand what editors consider to be good because in most cases it simply isn’t what you consider to be good.

Then once you’ve submitted the images, it goes into some blackhole where some staff members review it, and a few months later (no kidding), you get back (some) of your stuff. The agency takes the stuff it likes, and returns the stuff they don’t like. There’s no note, there’s no rejection reason, and that’s how it is.

So why is this the case?


When we look at our budgeting, photo editing happens to fall under the category of Cost of Goods Sold (aka COGS). We are in the business of selling photos, and each photo has an incremental cost associated with it to review/edit before it can be sold.

Let’s conservatively estimate that providing a reason for rejection adds 2 seconds to each image. 2 secs could be the time to affix a rejection code like “technical failure,” “aesthetic failure,” etc.

About 110,000 images were uploaded to the PhotoShelter Collection last month. So assuming 2 sec additionally per image, we’re talking 220,000 sec = 3,667 min = 61 hours = 7.6 work days. We’ve just added a week’s additional work per month to the queue.

Let’s assume that an editor makes $40k/year, which seems reasonable for a junior position. If you factor in benefits, taxes, etc, this come to more like $48k/year. With the above calculation, which is 1/4 a full-time head, we’re talking an additional cost of $12,000/year just to add a rejection comment.

You might think that this is a trivial amount, but it’s not. The more popular we become, the more images we receive, the more photo editors we’ll need. Then suddenly, our costs will be too high to support giving the photographer 70% because they wanted a rejection code. And there’s no guarantee that a company’s efficiency will scale linearly as an organization grows. People work hard in a small organization because they feel empowered. But if you are turning screws at GM, you’re out the door when the bell rings.

Microstock (boo! hiss!) companies that edit images don’t provide rejection reasons. No one does. Why? It’s too expensive, especially when you’re selling an image for $1 (and even if you’re only giving the photographer 20% of that $1).

One way to reduce the cost would be to offshore the editing. It’s something that many of the major agencies and wire services have done, but it’s not something that we’re willing to do right now. Sure, you can potentially reduce costs by offshoring editing and programming, but those two functions are core to our company, and if those people aren’t here, then what is our company culture composed of? (Plus that whole nationalism thang).

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This article was written by

Allen Murabayashi is the co-founder of PhotoShelter.

There are 10 comments for this article
  1. Andy Ciordia at 9:21 am

    We must also remember that thinking outside the box is often where we can make up ground. Sure you have your cog bound editors but how are you using the social web to your advantage? Right now for the community to take their rejected images and ask for feedback from the community we have to migrate them to another location for viewing. Why can’t we use some code to help the situation by allowing other PSC members to view others rejections and add private comments? Keep the rejections sliding off the plate so that they don’t accumulate. What people want is just input and direction help. Leverage the community more. The other ideas mentioned in the forums have some nice logic. Having a few “buckets” that an images rejection could be classified under from the editors. It didn’t meet the criteria because of A, B, C, or D. Sure it’s generalized but it’s at least a finger pointing in the direction. I’m really amazed that you can outsource such creative work as image viability. As an old IT head you can outsource heavy lifting but you can usually not outsource good creative work (you can try, but beware the results and impending $$$ spent on cleanup). Some things just belong in house. Anyhow, I’m a problem solver by nature and when the direct standard approach isn’t working it’s always good to keep thinking of how else you can solve for the problem by asking some good questions.

  2. April at 3:31 pm

    Have to take issue with the comment on the microstocks. They indeed do provide rejection reasons. And although most are from prepared boilerplate answers, the feedback is often valuable, especially to the new contributor. Not trying to pick a microstock war, but you should ensure that what you post is a true statement when making such a claim.

  3. Nacho at 7:50 pm

    I think that off-shoring some of the editing would not be a bad idea. I am not thinking cost here, but speed. Particularly for breaking news, you could have some editors in Asia working while people in the US sleep. It is true that breaking news images are already being reviewed very quickly but, when volume grows, this editing in Asia could give an edge of quite a few hours. As per the whole “nationalism thang”, I would drop it and try to be seen as global. That could be your company culture. Why be seen as “American” or “New York”? I think in this case that limits more than adds value. Once you have done the biggest effort of creating PSC, a much smaller additional investment could allow you to go truly global. Look at your contributing photographers. Great diversity, also in terms of nationality. Why not have this international diversity with editors, marketing and sales people and, more importantly, with buyers too? Sorry I went a bit off topic. Cheers, Nacho

  4. Matt at 9:03 pm

    As a contributor, this is very nice to have some perspective on the editing process from the other side. Unfortunately, the post reads a little like “quit yer whinin’… In my day we had to walk uphill both ways…” I think contributors are more than willing to hear the reasons for features not being implemented, but you gotta give the dog a bone and maybe say “we’re not budgeting for it right now or we want to focus on keeping the review queues as short as possible – perhaps this will be revisited in Phase III”. We’d still be frustrated, but a ray of hope can go a long way. I second April’s note about the micros providing feedback. I agree most of it is cookie-cutter stuff, but one site will even provide 100% crops of the problematic area with an attached note via email (not always, but at the discretion of the reviewer presumably). Just a competitive-intelligence tip. As much as we might despise the micros and be aiming ‘higher’, they should be on PSC’s radar because they sure are on the radar of contributors.

  5. Allen Murabayashi at 10:14 pm

    I’m unapologetic about the tone of the piece because I think that a sole proprietor photographer does not think about editing the way that an operationalized work force has to because they have no reason to. The intent of the piece is to elucidate some of the thought processes that go on at PhotoShelter, and perhaps you read it differently than intended, but we’ve certainly always solicited feedback and responded to feedback from photographers and buyers. The ray of hope is that we’ve had feature releases nearly every month to address product deficiencies. As far as the micros go — you are absolutely right. The biggest challenge is understanding if we can replicate that level of success and user interaction at at different price point. That is, in effect, our gamble. And not only are they on the radar of contributors, they are on the radar of buyers too. We spent a lot of time looking at the micros in our research phase, and I think we have to spend more on-going time looking at what is successful over there and provide the same level of support to photographers here.

  6. Brian Corll at 1:08 pm

    PLEASE – don’t even think about offshoring. We have enough trouble already with offshore telephone support, etc. Offshore photo editors ? God forbid. I’d be outta here. Case in point – the manager at my bank is a Chinese lady. She has an accent, but is perfectly understandable. One day she called the head shed with a support question concerning a bank procedure I needed. The lady who answered the phone was from India. Maybe IN India, who knows. Qing, the manager, interrupted the support lady after a few seconds and said “Please, ma’am, slow down and speak so I can understand you.” !! You can’t say it’s American prejudice there. We really can’t understand offshore workers much of the time, and an offshore photo editor is out of the question. I mean, would such a person even know the American market for photos ? Or German, or French ? I don’t think the level of international sophistication is close to what you would find in an editor in New York, or London, for instance. Nothing against India, or the Philippines, or wherever the offshore editors would be,but that’s the way it is. I was pleased the other day when I called Canon for the first time with a technical question, and the support person was an American ! I was shocked, to say the least, but I had my answer in seconds. ‘Nuff said.

  7. John at 8:58 pm

    I don’t think a few canned reasons would add any time to the process. I assume that now, after reviewing the image, the editor clicks button(s) for “accepted, “EC, “rejected,” etc. All that needs to change is that there would be several rejected buttons. “rejected technical problems, “rejected aesthetic reasons,” “rejected subject matter” etc.

  8. SteveHopson at 2:40 pm

    This all sounds very reasoned and well thought out. The only thing wrong with it is that it really denegrates the photographers. Every photographer here really wants to improve – without feedback we can’t do this and, by not improving, we can’t bring you a better product. In essence, what you are saying is that you don’t value the photographers enough to pay the extra 2 cents to give us feedback. This is a very regrettable statement. And please don’t tell us to take the questions to the Forums – the only feedback that is present there is “Shut up, quit your whining.” I may have agreed with that sentiment until I experienced an extremely harsh edit. Since your standard is whether photos are marketable, your editor was clearly wrong as he rejected at least three photos that had already been accepted for publication by a major magazine. Since I don’t know why more than 100 photos were rejected, I’m left thinking I hit the wrong editor on the wrong morning and my photos were arbitrarily rejected. If there was some other reason, why not pay the two cents and tell me so I won’t make that mistake again? The argument that other agencies don’t give feedback is fairly lame too. PSC claims to be different, why not step up to the plate, partner with your photographers, give a little more specific feedback, help us to improve, and allow an occasional revisiting of your editors decisions? Steve Hopson

  9. Allen Murabayashi at 2:54 pm

    Steve, Thanks for the comment. We are absolutely committed to giving photographers more information about what we think will sell, and you will be seeing more information like our travel post in the near future. But feedback is simply not economical to do it per image per photographer, and that’s what the blog was about. Operationalizing a business forces us make these types of decisions. If we were just a 2 man agency sitting in a small room with very little overhead and a fixed # of photographers that we were representing, I would totally agree with you. But we are trying to do this with tens of thousands of photographers with millions of images, and what you’re proposing doesn’t scale well when you’re giving the photographer 70% of the sale, and your competitor is giving the photographer 35%. The notion that even a newspaper editor would give a photographer feedback on every image isn’t a tenable proposition. There are too many images, too many photographers, and business moves too quickly to make it feasible and economically viable. As far as images that have sold for you, I think that’s fantastic. Having more outlets to distribute your work is a positive thing. That one editor felt it was publication-worthy, and another didn’t isn’t, however, an indictment of our editors, imo. Time publishes stuff that Newsweek doesn’t. TBWA Chiat uses images that Edelman rejects. That’s the lay of the land. Rejection by PhotoShelter shouldn’t mean anything to you, as long as we can show you that there’s value in participating with us. If we can’t provide value to you in a reasonable time frame, then you should absolutely not use us.

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