What happened to black and white?

If you are an emerging stock photographer and the idea of ​​taking a black and white stock photo has never occurred to you, I encourage you to give it a try. But, fair warning, it will be more of an experience for the soul, not for sale.

Black and white is no longer popular with book and magazine photo editors (our goals here at Photosource International). In rare cases (around 5%), black and white still attracts attention in commercial photography. And black and white demands even more attention in fine art photography, where photographers take a daily job in order to maintain their efforts to produce fine art photography.

If you browse through current newsstand magazines, you will see very few black and white photographs. The general public, it was proven long ago, prefers color to black and white. (Is your TV still black and white?) Editors always stick to management’s marketing research.

The color change began in the mid-1980s, and by the mid-1990s the change was almost complete. Only small publications with limited budgets or a special focus use b & w today.

As an emerging photographer, you might be wondering how well b & w fared in the early days of stock photography. In my own case, in the early 60’s, I posted my black and white photos with an early brokerage called “Photo Researchers.” (The agency still exists today).

When we moved to our farm in 1966, I started selling my b & w’s through the mailbox. The delivery system was simple, and I encouraged publisher photo buyers to keep my black and white photos archived in their central library. They sent me a check every time they used one of my photos. The honor system worked.

When I wrote the first edition of my book, “Sell and Resell Your Photos,” in 1981, I advised photographers to use the mailbox as their delivery system. The system was simple. I would send a package of my b & ws “for consideration” to a prospective photo buyer whose photographic needs matched one of my areas of expertise. If my photos were accepted, it very often meant that I had found a customer for life, unless I changed the topic of the hosted post, which was rarely the case. From time to time, I would update my photo collection at the publisher with new black and white prints, and the buyer would return photos that were no longer needed. I put them in an archive in our barn, which my grandchildren may one day sell to PBS or a historical photo archive.

Little by little, in the mid-80s the preference for color grew. Photographers now wanted color transparencies. This led to the era of “lost images”. Many photographers and photographers found that they were unable to track the transparencies they were handling. It wasn’t pretty. Demands multiplied and photo buyers began to deal with only a limited number of stock photographers who were experts in their business acumen. Veteran archival photographers reading this will well remember the turbulent mess of transparency we had to go through before the Digital Age came along and gave us a break.

Superstars began to emerge in the industry. Photographers were willing to pay the high fees of certain archival photographers in exchange for “hassle-free” service, knowing that it was safe to deal with them and their valuable transparencies. Photo buyers also placed their trust in the emerging broker-dealers of the mid-1990s, which introduced overnight transparency delivery to clients.

And then everything changed in the early 2000s. Digital delivery made transparency delivery obsolete. The line between superstars and talented amateur photographers was blurred. Anyone with a sensitive eye who could produce high-resolution images with their digital camera became eligible to sell their photos online.

Yes, b & w disappeared. Color now rules. Although black and white prints were easy to distribute and sell to photographers in the 70s and 80s, digital delivery is even easier in the 2000s … a lucky development for the freelance stock photographer.

Few archival photographers today specialize in black and white. If they do and are successful in their marketing, they are a rare breed.

Who knows? Perhaps someday in the future, the public’s taste for photography may return to black and white, if only temporarily. Get ready now to deliver and capture some of your digital black and white images.