Tinted — In Search for more
Who Are We
Tinted is an emerging creative initiative aimed at diversifying the photography industry. This can mean many different things from producing stock content, working with clients for commissioned work, as well as supporting photographers. Because of our ultimate goal, we aim to support photographers of colour and allied groups.
Where it began
Tinted was created as a direct response to the lack of free diverse images on stock photography platforms. To be specific, our founder wanted to find an image of “an anklet on a black foot.” Despite the stock photography industry expecting to reach $4 billion in revenue by 2023, with over 350 million photos worldwide, you still will not find one image of an “anklet on a black foot.” Though this describes a specific instance, our attention is drawn to something more general. Current stock photography platforms fail to address the issue of diversifying their imagery in a way that empowers the communities they aim to visually represent. Instead, we are incentivised to represent our own community at extortionate fees of up to 80%. Whilst no incentive is offered when creating free diverse imagery.
The Wider Problem
For the Creatives
The Issue itself is intersectional. Whilst on one hand, photographers of colour are not directed towards photography as a means of income. Instead, encouraged into STEM education as a “call to action and moralizing rhetorical device for an educational movement with seemingly endless funding and political support.” (Link) The photographers of colour successfully making it through these barriers are now left in a position of isolation, initially existing in a space where surrounding figures mismatch their skin tone, later evolving into outbursts of unconscious bias. The New York Times’ Sarah Lewis highlighted ‘The Racial Bias Built Into Photography’ by reminding her readers that photography is a system of subjective decisions — from lighting, modelling, to set-design — “light skin became the chemical baseline for film technology” (Link). Even Campbell Addy, an artist abundantly motivated in diversifying whatever space he touches, resorted to creating Nii Agency as a direct response to the lack of diverse models. Similarly, shout out to the organisation Models of Diversity.
Moving forward, we believe that this issue will be solved with increased awareness of the different roles available in the photography industry and community support to guide and encourage photography as a role.
For the Clients
So far, we have only looked at the issue from the perspective of the creatives, but there are two faces to this beast. Between 2018 to 2019 around 670,000 start ups were formed in the UK. Of these numbers, around 60% of these businesses failed, with the majority of these successful businesses not generating profit til their third year. What i’m trying to reveal is that the startup journey is expensive and hard-hitting. In other words, it’s a survival instinct to cut costs. Because of this, startups turn to free stock imagery in search of quick-fix content for their digital ads, blogs, website landing images, and more. Above I detailed the struggle of finding “an anklet on a black foot,” I also highlighted the extortionate fees. The scary fact remains, up to this point I have been referring to paid stock photography platforms, where there is a direct incentive to produce diverse imagery, namely, payment. Unfortunately, these platforms are not the go to service for startups, who instead cut costs at every corner.
More favourable choices are Pexels, Unsplash or Pixabay, to name a few. On these platforms, diversity of imagery plummets dramatically, with the resulting response being free stock platforms focusing on diverse imagery. You’ve got Nappy Co, Dragon Images, Mocha Stock, and more. These are great initiatives and the team at Tinted wholly support them. The issue however persists if there is no direct incentive to producing diverse stock imagery. Another way to put it is that stock imagery should be free, but it should not be so in a way that disfavours the creative. A lot of these platforms make their income from ad placements and merchandise, which in no way benefits the creative. It’s also important to note that startups want to market to a diverse audience, but their ability to do so depends on the content readily available on these stock platforms.
Because of this, a key differentiator between Tinted and the rest is that we aim to produce free diverse stock imagery in a way that also favours creatives. How is this possible? Simply put, by creating a marketing ecosystem in which businesses with the goal of reaching a diverse audience are supported by creatives with the production of marketing assets. Namely, photos and eventually videos. The beauty of this model is that every produced asset is done so by members of the community and paid for by the business in need. It’s true to think that a business can create its own agreements with creatives, but what Tinted offer is a nurtured community. We are the guarantee and validator of quality, thereby functioning as an intermediary production company focused on supporting different-sized businesses.
Why Now
During this decade, the increased global awareness of Black, Asian, and African consciousness and the issues we all face as an intercultural community has reached new heights. Not only must we be listened to as our protests demand, but following the capitalist mindset, people like Michael Jordan, Kanye West, and Riz Ahmed have shown the world that there is money to be made when you align your product with the wider culture of Black, Asian, and African consciousness.
