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past the second page of search results, and given that each page can show 15 thumbnails, assigning a higher ranking to these "wholly owned content" images so that they appear on the first and second pages means that the photographers whose work the agencies "represent" will be shown first only where no wholly owned content exists. As the agencies create the images, they can then bump stock images for which they pay a royalty to the second page and then to the third page. Because all "agency" contracts have stipulations that all captions, keywords, and metadata they assign to your images are theirs, they can freely duplicate the captions and keywords that return the best results and legitimately assign them to employee-generated works.

Although this example discussed scenics in some detail, concept images—from handshakes, to people on cell phones, to youths in activities—are quickly becoming full-blown production shoots by employee and overseas photographers, based upon sales reports showing which ideas and concepts are selling the best. The high-dollar advertising sales that were being split 50/50 with photographers are now being reshot—carefully, to skew so it's just shy of infringement—by those who get paid a work-made-for-hire day rate. Then, these reshot images are owned by the agency. Then, images that are wholly owned in these categories replace the lower-revenue-to-the-agency images. Sure, the 50/50 images still turn up, but deeper into the search results, to where statistics show few photo buyers will drill down.

So that's the deal with "agents" who work for "photo agencies." They're looking out less and less for those they are charged with representing and more and more to the bottom line for owners and shareholders. What's a photographer to do?

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There are a number of resources available to take charge of the licensing of your images, but it will take a bit of effort on your part. First, for those of you who have not bothered to caption or keyword your images, you'll need to start. In Chapter 25, I addressed the methods to best prepare your images with the proper metadata. There are, however, scores of articles and other information available from trade groups, such as the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), Stock Artists Alliance (SAA), Advertising Photographers of America (APA), as well as numerous other resources to get you thinking like a photo buyer, conceptually as well as literally, so you can understand what your image represents in both realms.

I have chosen to make my images available through the online service provider PhotoShelter. Previously, PhotoShelter and Digital Railroad were competing for photographers. In late 2008, Digital Railroad abruptly closed their doors, leaving countless photographers high and dry. They pointed to their client service agreement where they stipulated that you should not rely solely on Digital Railroad for your storage and that you should also keep your own copies. This didn't change the fact that Digital Railroad quite literally railroaded their clientele. Fortunately, PhotoShelter stepped in and helped out many of the DR clients. The following sections contain descriptions of the PhotoShelter service and one other—IPNstock. Both options offer localized and geographically redundant protections (an important point that we discussed in Chapter 24), so your data is safe from not only drive crashes, but also from natural or manmade disasters.

PhotoShelter

PhotoShelter (www.PhotoShelter.com) offers a customized homepage model. You can assign (or map) a URL from your website to theirs. So, if your website URL is AmazingPhotosByMe.com, you can assign, through your ISP that hosts your website, library.AmazingPhotosByMe.com to link to your customized front page on PhotoShelter. By doing this, clients will still feel as if they are on your website.

Grover Sanschagrin, co-founder of PhotoShelter, puts his service this way, "More than just the ability to change a font and a background color and insert a logo—PhotoShelter can actually