I was pleasantly surprised today to find a couple of images sold through my stock agency Alamy. Considering they have nearly 10 million images online, it seems like a needle in a haystack situation. They give you a good deal of information regarding the sale, all except who it was to and where it may appear. It is part of their policy that tries to balance the privacy of their clients with the wants of a photographer knowing where something will be published.
The anonymous buyer really drives home a simple business reality. No matter how attached you may be to a certain image, no matter how much or how little effort may have gone into it – stock photography is simply an object for sale. It is really not much different than a box of cereal. There is a buyer, a seller, and a commodity. The origin of the product is really irrelevant as is its final destination. An perhaps that is a concept that some artists find hard to grasp or accept. It really is a simple question at hand – does the product fit the client’s needs for the price they are willing to pay for it?
I would imagine there is quite a bit of craft, and even art, that goes into a box of cereal. Box design, packaging, taste, texture, bowl appeal and probably some industry lingo for what you call the individual pieces. Terms not unlike a lot of things that we get hung up on as photographers. But I do wonder if they discuss Raisin Bran versus Fruit Loops much? 
Some types are based upon the pure sugar appeal, while others have some good fiber to them. Some companies go for selling as much as they can in bulk as cheap as possible, others try to be more discriminating and sell on quality.
And certainly, the more brands and variety you are able to put on the shelf, the bigger reach you are going to have to the various markets. When it is applied to photographs, it can really change how you think about an image. The pure aesthetic of an image is secondary to it filling a particular need.
Nevertheless, I am sure there is a lot of pride, talent, and perhaps even passion behind a box of cereal. Do we as consumers think about any of that when we are walking the isles of the grocery store? Not likely. How about the equipment used to manufacture it or all the time spent coming up with a new variety? Not a chance.
The two images in this post are the ones that sold recently. Naturally I have a curiosity where they may end up, why someone picked this one over that one. How many people might see it and in what context? I may never know.
Photography has the potential to be as significant as changing world politics to as simple as filling space in a school textbook to being a snapshot of an event in our lives. That really is an incredible spectrum to think about. Certainly cereal can’t hold a candle to that, no matter who’s eating it.
This was the case today with these mushrooms I don’t photograph mushrooms a lot, so my ID knowlege of them really stinks I suppose if I knew more, I would recognize the ‘magic’ kind and it might actually help some of my photographs! 
, by Charles Traub. Check it out the list 
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