The Stock Solution
(A Stock Photo Agency)
6640 s. 2200 w.
West Jordan, UT 84084
Phone: 801-566-8684
E-mail us: info@tssphoto.com
All images Copyright © The Stock Solution 1995 - 2007
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by Royce Bair
On 21 Feb 96, Robert Savage wrote to the STOCKPHOTO mail list:
>I have just ended a six year period
>with a Long Island, New York based
>agency and the contract states it may
>take up to one year to receive all my
>transparencies back. Has anyone else
>had long delays or problems getting
>their images back after ending a
>contract?
Bob has already received some good responses on this question, but I thought a few thoughts from an agency's perspective might be appropriate:
Whenever a photographer decides to end his/her contract at our agency (and ours is only a one-year, auto renewing, with a 30-day notice, so it can be terminated quite easily), we are usually able to return 90% of their images within 30 days. The other 10% are typically out with clients.
And I think if an agency can't do something similar to this, they don't have a very good filing/retrieval system. If they can't do this, it makes you wonder how they were able to handle submissions to clients! Were your images being shown? Could they find your images on a particular subject when they were needed? If they do have a good filing system and still cannot get back 90% of your images within 30 - 90 days, then it's because you're being put on the "back burner" --or last priority. Not a nice situation.
What about the other 10% that are out with clients? This last 10% can truly take up to a year to return (and sometimes more), and a few may never return. Think about it: Some clients are always putting projects on hold, and other clients like textbook companies will often take up to a year to turn around a project. And some clients like to hold onto a transparency until the project is complete, to make sure they don't need to re-separate the image. Keep an eye on these last 10% to see if any checks follow. And be suspicious if no sales are not reported, especially if you see cut mounts or re-mounted transparencies in these final returns.
And what about the few images that may never return? It can happen, but I'd be alarmed if the number was much greater than 1%, after waiting 18 to 24 months since your termination, and no good explanation was given (such as records showing they had tried to retrieve your images from clients).
One final note. We allow a photographer to sign with us if they can put a minimum of 300 acceptable images with us (usually juried from about 1200 images, or a 1:4 acceptance ratio). Over the past 17 years that we've been in business, the following has happened at least two times (it must be part of "Murphy's Law"): After a year of no sales, the photographer with only 300 images will call and ask for his/her images back. No problem, "Sorry we didn't do better for you...". The day we start to pull the images, we get a call from a client that they want to use several of this photographer's images at about $500 - $1000 each (from a submission that had gone out just the week before). The photographer gets back their images with a fat check and wonders if we had been holding out on them all this time, or if they should have stayed with us!!!
All images Copyright © The Stock Solution 1995 - 2007
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