How We Work

Licensing and Pricing. What is licensing? We license the use of our images to you, so that our work can contribute to the success of your article, advertisement, book, brochure, presentation or web site. We do not "sell" the image itself. Rather, you are permitted to use the image for a purpose or series of purposes, for an agreed-upon fee. This is what is known as "rights-managed" photography. The negotiation of the rights and fees is between you and us.

Your project may use one or more than one of our images. We extend discounted prices for projects that use several of our images. We do not have a minimum fee per image, but we do have a minimum "project fee" which we are happy to discuss with you.

In order for us to quote a fee, we need to know the following about how you will use photography in your project. The more specific you can be the more quickly and accurately we can quote a fee. In general, the fewer rights you require the lower the cost.

• What type of project is it: editorial, advertising, commercial, internet/electronic?
• Does your project require exclusivity, perhaps within your industry?
• How should the images be delivered? Traditionally (in the form of 35mm, 70mm or 4x5 transparency film) or digitally (via internet or CDROM)?
• At what size will the image be used, e.g., 1/4 page, full page, half screen, spot, cover, etc.?
• For printed projects, how large is the circulation / print run? Do you require reprint rights?
• In what countries will the product be distributed, i.e., do you need domestic or international rights?
• In what languages will the product be distributed?

In some instances we consult industry pricing guides when quoting a fee. This is standard practice for stock photographers. We are happy to explain this if you have questions.

Digital Image Delivery. When you wish to review or use our images, we try to deliver them to you in a form that makes the most sense for your workflow. Given that you have an internet connection (you are looking at our web site, right?), digital delivery almost certainly makes the most sense. (It makes the most sense for us, since we can get the image to you in a matter of minutes. In fact, one reason we have grown so rapidly is our ability to get high resolution images to clients rapidly.) We now deliver virtually all of our images to clients digitally as full-resolution downloads from our website.

For our photographs shot with digital camera (since 2002), we provide the image in its maximum resolution which is currently 5000 x 3300 pixels. The RAW file can be made available for you upon request.

For our photographs shot on color slide (transparency) film, we provide digital images as

• 5400 x 3600 pixels (e.g., 18" x 12" at 300dpi) minimum; up to 7200 x 4800 pixels (e.g., 24" x 16" at 300dpi) available upon request.
• 56 megabyte RGB TIFF files (filesize may be smaller due to lossless compression). If you prefer, files can be delivered as high quality (visually lossless) JPEG files, usually 5-10 MB in size.
• Color space: Adobe RGB (1998), gamma 2.2.
• Scanner optical resolution: 4000 ppi
• Nominal output size: 18 inches x 12 inches at 300dpi.
• Color / density corrected by the photographer.
• You will want to unsharp mask and perhaps fine tune colors for your particular printing requirements.

Larger files or CMYK scans are available for images you decide to use in your project. Consider the following options:

Conventional Film / Transparency Delivery. For many of the images in our library, we have 35mm and/or 70mm duplicate transparencies on hand. We can prepare a submission of transparencies for you, however this does take time (to pull the slides and ship them to you). Please provide us with your courier account information (e.g., FEDEX, DHL) for fast, secure delivery.

Online Search. Over 22,000 of our images are stored in our online database. You can search by keyword, common or scientific (latin) name and view the images in small thumbnails or larger versions with complete caption and keywording data. Our online search tool is perhaps the best one on the internet, particularly among natural history photographers, and it is now mimiced in style (but not substance) by a number of our peers. Google tends to rank our subjects highly in its results, a testament to the facile design of our online search tool. We can prepare a customized digital lightbox for you via a private web page of images if you identify the subject(s) you are interested in considering. This takes us just a few minutes and usually includes many more images than appear on our web site. Each image on the digital review page can be clicked to view it 720 pixels high and wide with a watermark.

Editorial Use Editorial use accounts for about 80% of our sales activity. We almost always respond to inquiries about our subjects within a day, and often within a hour. For clients with whom we have spoken or have developed a rapport, we can prepare a "private" web page for you within a few minutes that displays large views of our entire coverage of a particular subject, e.g., all of our photographs of blue whales, more than are displayed on our site.

We have a number of photo-illustrated natural history articles available for immediate publication. These are targeted toward marine, natural history and outdoor / wildlife readerships. They run between 2000 and 4000 words.

• Seaweed -- Life Amidst the Kelp Forest
• The Greatest of Whales -- Blue Whales in the Near Eastern Pacific
• Guadalupe Fur Seals
• Rose Atoll National Wildlife Refuge -- A science team assesses shipwreck and chemical damage at this pristine and important atoll
• Humpback Whale Social Affiliation in the Hawaiian Islands

Please contact us if you are interested in licensing our photography or articles.

Commercial and Advertising. Interested in using photography to sell your product? Virtually all of our images involve water, and most involve animal life in some way. We price our work as rights-managed photography. For commercial and advertising use we have had our best luck fulfilling client needs for the following themes:

• whales -- graceful, huge, imposing, magnificent, nurturing, curious
• dolphins -- curious, playful, fast, vulnerable
• water -- light, patterns, blue, expansiveness, abstract, background
• man in the ocean -- daring, intrepid, exciting, stranger in a strange land

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Updated: November 5, 2009