From Sidelines to Mentor: Dave Stock's 40-Year Journey in Sports Photography

Have you ever wondered what it takes to transition from an amateur photographer to capturing iconic moments in sports history? Join us as Gary Pageau of the Dead Pixels Society welcomes Dave Stock, the mastermind behind Team DSP, who shares his captivating journey of over 40 years in the realm of sports photography. Starting with a borrowed Argus C3 camera in high school, Dave's passion led him to positions like the Director of Photography at Runner's World, and the sidelines of NFL games and U.S. Open golf tournaments. Through his narrative, Stock delves into the physical demands, the excitement, and the camaraderie that defines the world of sports photography.

In this episode, Stock takes us through the golden years of photographing the San Francisco 49ers in the 1980s, where serendipity and skill earned him unique access to the team, including snapping Jerry Rice's first touchdown catch. We also explore his transition into the licensing business inspired by an enlightening conversation with Joe Montana, which led to securing the first license from NFL Properties. This venture opened doors to high-end collectibles and 8x10 glossies, eventually steering Stock to Beckett Publications and navigating the changes brought by industry giants like Getty Images.

Stock further shares the intricacies of the Team and Individual photography business, recounting his initial challenges and eventual successes that set a higher standard in the market. Emphasizing the importance of mentorship, Stock reflects on the generosity and spirit of sharing within the photography community that shaped his career. As a Lumix ambassador, he discusses the innovation and marketing hurdles in camera sales, especially in North America. 

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Chapters

• 0:02 Sports Photography Career Journey
• 8:53 Licensing and Stock Photography Evolution
• 17:56 Evolution of Sports Photography Business
• 28:58 The Importance of Mentorship and Innovation
• 29:08 [Ad] OWNR OPS Podcast
• 29:48 (Cont.) The Importance of Mentorship and Innovation
• 36:56 Marketing Challenges in Camera Sales

Transcript

Erin Manning: 0:02

Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, gary Pegeau. The Dead Pixels Society podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Advertek Printing and Independent Photo Imagers.

Gary Pageau: 0:18

Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary. Today we're joined by Dave Stock, the owner of Team DSP, a longtime sports photographer, volume photographer and teacher and coach in the industry. Hi, Dave, how are you today?

Dave Stock: 0:37

Doing great. How are you, Gary?

Gary Pageau: 0:38

Great, great. Now you've been a fixture in the photography world for well over 40 years and all various aspects in your career. How did you get started in photography, especially in sports photography?

Dave Stock: 0:55

Well, years ago, as a high school freshman running cross country, we had a very good team. We won a national championship and, as a result, the San Jose Mercury News was covering our events. One day I took an interest in taking pictures, borrowed my dad's Argus C3 camera, which is an old rangefinder, started taking pictures and went to the darkroom at my high school and asked seniors if they would make some prints for me. And they they gave me an answer which we can't repeat. But they did allow me to, uh, borrow an enlarger and show me how to use it. So I was hooked. Once I was making prints in the darkroom. Uh, one day the san jose mercury dude called up and said that they could not make it to the meet. And he said if you could give that camera to someone else, take a picture of you running in the race, make a print and get it downtown by 7 pm, we'll give you 10 bucks. Back then, 10 bucks would buy you I mean a dollar, buy you eight hamburgers right at bag of burgers.

Gary Pageau: 1:49

So uh, you could buy the whole team basically yeah, so I.

Dave Stock: 1:53

So I had a picture in print photo of dave stock by dave stock and massage my ego and got me some money and that's how I started, and so I started shooting high school events pretty soon. They soon shooting track and football and baseball and basketball and selling them at 15 a picture back then, which is huge. Yeah, as a junior, I was hired as the sports information photographer at the local junior college and so that was outstanding and I was, oh, you were still an athlete too, right yeah, yeah, so I'd run my workouts really fast.

Dave Stock: 2:28

It helped me run faster because I had to get over to the junior college, took pictures there, went home, did homework, made a bunch of prints in my bathroom, in my home and uh was contributing to track and field news and runner's world. Went to college, studied it and when I got out of college I had a job waiting for me as a director of photography at Runner's World, which is one of seven magazines, and I was there doing as lead photographer and photo editor for all of those and from there I went to contributing to sports illustrated and nfl properties and on and on. But that's how I got started well, that's.

Dave Stock: 3:00

You know it's funny because you know most people know I, you know, dabbled in running back in the day. Surely didn't win a national championship with my team back in the day. You know it's funny because you know most people know I, you know, dabbled in running back in the day. I certainly didn't win a national championship with my team back in the day, but you know so. I'm well aware of R runner's world. I probably saw some of your photos back in the day.

Dave Stock: 3:14

I suspect you did. I was the first director of photography there, so they created the position for me Awesome.

Gary Pageau: 3:20

Awesome. So how long were you at Back then? Was it Rodale Press who was the publisher back then?

Dave Stock: 3:26

No, it was before Rodale Press. I was doing publications with Bob Anderson being the owner in Mountain View. Oh, okay, and then we sold to Rodale several years later, and then we moved to the East Coast.

Gary Pageau: 3:42

Talk a little bit about what you liked about sports photography, because a lot of people get into different photography for different reasons. Right, and I think part of you know what happened in your career was, you know, sort of the explosion in sports photography overall. You know, during that time period, you know cameras were getting better, lenses were getting faster, film was getting better because we're talking film days, right so you know you were kind of riding that wave, if you will.

Dave Stock: 4:07

Well, I love sports. I love watching baseball and football. You know pro and I was participating in sports as a distance runner, but also on the basketball team, so I enjoyed it from that level and, of course, being able to go down on the field and enjoy it more intimately than someone who stands was very attractive. And then the challenge of me as a physical challenge as well. When I shoot an nfl football game back when I was able to do it, uh, I outran everybody. From end zone to end zone I controlled my breathing and got the shot where other people couldn't even get there on time. So right. So there's a very definitive physical aspect to it. Like I was a USGA photographer at a U S open several times. So again, you're, you're, you're running a long ways with heavy equipment and physical conditioning is a huge part of that.

Dave Stock: 4:52

So, that whole thing really appealed to me, and just the challenge of of trying to outthink everybody else, of trying to triangulate the movement of error, all the players and positioning yourself so you could get the touchdown catch all of that appealed to me. And then being able to see your pictures in print was was really cool too. Um went down to a magazine rack after an nfl game and my other photographer friends and myself we would. We would go through the magazines very quickly and see who had more pictures in print and then the winner would have to, would not have to pay for pizza that night.

Gary Pageau: 5:23

So so talk about that. So you went to you know kind of a you know a niche publication, you know running publication, and then you got into sports illustrated, which was, you know, the granddaddy of the time, you know, I mean, and you had to probably demonstrate. You know, clearly you could do more than just you know running photography. You could do all you know running photography. You could do all you know, like you said you had to do. You know football, which is very arduous, and the other sports. So, um, how did they find you? Were you just constantly looking for the next opportunity, or people finding you?

Dave Stock: 5:55

when I was at runner's world um, sports illustrated would call upon us from time to time when they wanted coverage or referral of a photographer for a road race, marathon, cross-country meet, track meet, and I usually refer that to myself and so we do the photography and that's the initial connection. And I've always been a goal setter and I figured you know, aim high, if you fall short, you arrive somewhere, right? So my goal is to be, you know, an elite sports photographer and I thought if all I do is distance running, I can't really like claim to a title. I need to branch out a little bit. So I went to a workshop taught by the man who created Sports Illustrated, mark Hoffman he became one of my original mentors and Peter Reed Miller, who's had over a couple hundred covers as a legend in sports.

Gary Pageau: 6:47

He is a legend, yep.

Dave Stock: 6:48

And they became my original mentors. They arranged my interview at Sports Illustrated. They told me I had to go out there and eventually got me out there for an interview. I had an interview on a Friday. On Saturday I was shooting Testa Verde in Miami, and on Sunday I was shooting Dan Marino in Miami, in miami, and on sunday I was shooting dan marino in miami. So that was my first weekend, uh, shooting for sports illustrated. It was, uh, the whole thing was an out-of-body experience. I was 23 at the time and it just kind of went from there. I was quickly picked up by nfl properties where I and the 49ers as a 49er team photographer back when we were winning super bowls on a more regular basis basis Actually, we haven't been doing it in a while. I then started shooting everyday baseball game in San Francisco and Oakland. I was shooting NCAA football every Saturday in Stanford or Cal. I was shooting Raiders and Niners on Sundays. So I kept quite busy in the Bay Area and occasionally traveling doing those things.

Gary Pageau: 7:42

And that's you know a lot of time. You had probably no spare time. What was that like just having any kind of personal life as a young guy in that area, thinking you know you have no personal life?

Dave Stock: 7:55

Well, I had a real job, and the real job was doing commercial photography. So I was based in Monterey, California, where we do a lot of the growing of the various crops in the country. So I was doing annual reports for a wide range of companies, doing a lot of editorial and advertising work. My three main clients were hospitals, actually in the Monterey area doing their stuff, so that kept me busy. And I did have three kids and I was involved in lives as well and a wife along with those. So and I was training hard for a long time as a distance runner. So, yeah, I was busy.

Gary Pageau: 8:36

So just, I mean, I just can imagine the discipline that that took, though, to have to do all, hopefully, all of those things well right, because usually most people have some gifts, so sort of, probably the discipline of being a distance runner probably came into play on that. So let's talk a little bit about the 49ers period, because that's a period I think that you know. As a Lions fan, I would love to have, you know, that kind of experience, and hopefully we're going to experience that this year. That must have been an amazing experience, because you didn't know, obviously, when you signed on the team, that they were going to have that sort of success in that time period. So what was that like? Kind of having an insight into the locker room as you did?

Dave Stock: 9:20

Well, my first game photographing them came in 1982. I was added as a team photographer in 85. My duration as team photographer lasted one season, which went longer, but it was pretty intense. My first game as a 49er photographer was the game in which Jerry Rice made his first touchdown catch. So it's kind of cool to be there.

Dave Stock: 9:42

But being able to have that kind of access travel with the team, be at the workouts, be in the locker room was really unique and really cool and develop some relationships with players and guys who they had to lay off. One of the two team photographers and I was the one the other guy had been there forever, michael Zagaris. He's still there and he's incredible. I still received three photo credentials to every game through 96 when I moved out to the Dallas area. So I was there, I was contributing to the team, but I was also contributing to other magazines, to my agency which was Focus West, eventually became Allsport and eventually became Getty. I was still part of the family in essence, even though I didn't travel with the team and I lost some of that special access along the way. But that's okay.

Gary Pageau: 10:39

So let's talk a little bit. You mentioned the licensing thing because that's kind of interesting, because I mean I find it ironic that someone named Dave Stock got into licensing.

Erin Manning: 10:49

I don't know if that was intentional or not.

Gary Pageau: 10:51

You know, you got the whole stock photography thing going for you. A little pun there. How did you see that opportunity? Can you talk a little bit about that licensing business and how you saw that opportunity develop and then eventually have to evolve? Yeah?

Dave Stock: 11:31

I was honored that they named the whole thing after me, so that was cool. I took a little side excursion for four years and I sold securities and was licensed in stock as well. So the only thing I haven't done is raise, you know, four legged animals at this point to do the hat trick in stock. But when I was with the Niners I learned that it was illegal to sell pictures of NFL players without a license, and at that point no one had a license to do high-end collectibles, and Joe Montana in particular encouraged me to seek a license. So I did. Being young and naive and not realizing that the odds are totally against me.

Dave Stock: 12:12

I put together a business plan and received the first ever license from NFL Properties to do high-end collectibles. We then branched into doing the 8x10 glossies. It was us and one other company that did that. So typically when players were signing 8x10s at trade shows, there's a pretty good chance that either I purchased the rights to the photo and printed it or I actually took the photo and they would say ProLook on the bottom, which was the name of the company I created. For that I got the attention of Beckett Publications in Dallas. They did price guides and a bunch of magazines. Jim Beckett wanted me to head up his new licensing division in Dallas and I said, well, I've got my own company I'm running here. And he said, well, if I buy your company, then I can bring you out here and have you run licensing. I said, well, if you want to do that, sure, so we did. So. He bought ProLook, moved me out to Dallas and I was in charge of doing licensing with baseball, football, basketball hockey and NASCAR Right.

Dave Stock: 13:11

We attempted to get licensing in each area but basically to sell photos of any of those images. If you can see a registered trademark with 49ers it would be the SF on the helmet, the three stripes down the helmet, the stripes on the sleeves those are registered trademarks with the NFL and, of course, the NFL shield. Independent of that, you have to be licensed with the Players Association. So to use the players' likeness if you can recognize his face or see the back of his uniform, his name you have to be independently licensed the players association. So you have to, you have to get those contracts and you have to pay percentages to both on a monthly basis as you made sales and it works that way with all the leagues. So that's kind of how licensing works.

Dave Stock: 13:50

There are a tremendous number of people who sell pictures without licenses. The leagues leagues rarely pursue people unless they're doing it on a big-time basis, because there's so many out there and it's hard. It's just not worth their time. But I always try to do it right and all the pictures that I've sold have been licensed.

Gary Pageau: 14:08

Was the impetus for your move to Dallas was to work for Beckett.

Dave Stock: 14:12

Yes, yeah, beckett acquired a lot here.

Dave Stock: 14:15

Now, what I didn't touch on was the stock photos used to be a huge thing back in the 70s, oh yeah, and you could take pictures of NFL games and you could send them to Allsport or Sports Illustrated would sell them out of their files as SI picture sales, their files as x si picture sales. That has disappeared because of the fact that getty images has basically acquired almost all their sideline rights to all the sports and they hire young people willing to work for really cheap to take pictures right, and the technology has, uh, enabled a wide range of people to be able to get good images, even people with relatively limited experience, and so they're paying $100, $150 for a total buyout on a game and then they're selling those pictures over and over again. So Peter Miller and I did a calculation years ago and we said there used to be at least 100 guys in the country making six figures shooting sports, pro sports. Ten years ago we figured that number had dropped to under 10 we're making 50 000 or less that it has disappeared.

Dave Stock: 15:23

So, um, if you look at the sidelines of 49 a game today, there's 30 guys with credentials. That used to be 250. They've cut way down on the number of people who are on the sidelines, and almost everyone there can't sell them to anyone except to a daily newspaper if they're working for them. But outside of that you have to go through getty and I've got a bunch of my images. You know, tens of thousands of them are in a coal mine somewhere in pennsylvania where they're stored underground, uh, a place called iron mountain where currently I can't get access to them because they shut the whole thing down in 2019 due to COVID. So it's kind of sad.

Dave Stock: 15:59

I've got a bunch of good pictures in there that I'm not making any money from, and if they were being sold, I would be doing a 50-50 split and getting virtually nothing for them.

Gary Pageau: 16:09

So roll that back a little bit so these are transparencies right.

Dave Stock: 16:13

Yeah, yeah, color slides.

Gary Pageau: 16:15

And they've never been digitized some have.

Dave Stock: 16:18

Yeah, I don't know which ones, but largely no, so I know I have never digitized them. I'll tell you that yeah, so that's interesting.

Gary Pageau: 16:26

So you've got, like this whole uh bank of images from when you were, uh, you know, on the sidelines chasing balls around and you know it's an asset that's not being utilized at all right now basically that's true.

Dave Stock: 16:39

I I just went to get it yesterday and did a search for joe montana, jerry rice and some some other names where I know I have a bunch of images. None of them were mine, even though I know getty has. I think getty has some images, but just trying to track what's happened because they went from allsport to Getty to AP Wirephoto to another company and so I'm not even sure who has my images. Now I know that Getty was you don't All you know, is you don't?

Dave Stock: 17:10

Yeah, I know that I don't. I have the ones that didn't come out very well. I got the outtakes because, yes, I will go through, they'll take out all the best ones. You never get to see those unless they're in print. And then they send you back all the outs and then you, you edit those and you send them to your various agents to see what you can get from that. You know what's the dual value, because they send back a lot of good stuff yeah it's just to keep the best so.

Gary Pageau: 17:33

So after Beckett, what did you do after Beckett?

Dave Stock: 17:35

Jim Beckett, the guy who brought me there. I had a heart attack and it changed the direction of the company. They no longer wanted to go into licensed products, so I became a salary they wanted to unload.

Erin Manning: 17:44

Yeah.

Dave Stock: 17:44

And so at one point I resigned and I found myself without a job, without a warm market, without much of my equipment left behind in California and I'm in Dallas now with a decent sized mortgage, and I started coaching cross country and track for free. I just have something to do, and during that time I shot a team picture of the local high school cross country team at Marcus High School. It was a pain because I realized, after making the commitment, I had to get a relationship with the lab, which I did not have. I had to figure out pricing, which I had not. I had to figure out how to do an order form. There's all these things that are you know.

Gary Pageau: 18:17

What was this time period? What was this time period this?

Dave Stock: 18:19

was 1998. Okay, so I went crap, what have I got myself into? But now I've got a safe face. I can't tell these people I'm not going to do it and I meet with them every day, twice a day, for practice and I did the pictures and crossed 2,700 doing a cross-country team. I thought, well, that felt good because I've had no income for a while now. Let's try again. So I ended up doing some other work on that campus and then I started doing work for other schools that visit that campus and saw my pictures in the wall and it happened fairly quickly that I was doing a lot of TNI work and the name tni, as far as I know, came from a talk I did in dallas in 2002. I call it team and individual photography. People start, uh, calling it tni as opposed to tna. Don't, don't get it confused.

Gary Pageau: 19:07

Yeah and uh that's a whole other market it's another market I have not investigated.

Dave Stock: 19:13

I had kind of a unique vision back then the the pictures that I had seen were largely done with on-camera strobe, everything on automatic, no three or four light setups, no digital graphics. You know, photoshop wasn't really kicking in yet. Digital cameras were just hitting the market. So my thought was, if I could treat a photo shoot like I was on assignment for sports law, started doing a feature shot, if I could light it nice, if I could take many pictures and choose the best, that parents would see a difference and would be willing to either pay more or at least a higher participation rate would resolve.

Dave Stock: 19:48

And I was told by the veterans in the business, at PMA and other places that I was screwing it up for everybody Cause I was setting the bar up there.

Dave Stock: 19:56

There was no need to because our parents can tell the difference. And I I thought, well, I think I'm right and you're wrong, but I'm 27 and you're 60. I've been doing it for a while. I won't mention names, but you know the guys and I think the time has proven that maybe my vision was a little better, because if you look at what the line photographers are turning out now, the innovation, the quality is very impressive and we've reached a point where the traditional PPA market you know, the guys who have the danglies around their neck of which I actually have a couple, who do portraits and weddings actually appreciate some of our artistry, whereas back then we were the bottom of the food chain. You know we're right there with I don't know forensic photographers and guys who go door to door with a horse and say if you want your kid to get, jump on the pony, I'll sell you a print.

Gary Pageau: 20:44

You know you do have to do some real nice work to compete these days and I take a little credit, maybe turning that around well, I mean definitely, we're like said again, going back to what I said before about the timing right, the timing was great for you and that you saw the opportunity and apply that. So what were those early days like? Because you didn't have team DSP, you had DS, you had. Basically, you know clearly, you understood, you understood sports photography, clearly understood you know what athletes would like and what parents are like being a coach and an athlete yourself. But you know there's a whole business side of it that you kind of had to create on your own.

Dave Stock: 21:25

Well, I suffered from a pretty healthy dose of naivety and arrogance because I thought you know how tough is it to tell a kid hold the ball under your arm and snap a picture of him, right? It seemed like such a simple business conceptually and I had been at the top, so to speak. You know, I was one of the glamour boys shooting for the big magazines at Super Bowls and on my second shoot ever, we shot 312 teams and 3,200 individuals at of soccer league and I literally wanted to die. I said, if there is a God, hit me with a thunderbolt and take me out right now, please, because I realized that it was. It was a whole different deal and that there are so many things you have to be good at as a action sports photographer. You really need to be good at taking the pictures and, sorry, but not a whole lot else.

Gary Pageau: 22:17

Yeah, exactly.

Dave Stock: 22:20

Yeah, there's not that much more to it really.

Gary Pageau: 22:22

Because someone else is editing the work. I mean, you're turning in the images and someone else is.

Dave Stock: 22:27

And if you're shooting for magazines, they're doing the marketing. You're just handling the assignments and I found out that the photography part of it is a very small part of it. Right, and so handling the assignments, and I found out that the photography part of it is a very small part of it right, and so I? I started building massive tent complexes. I started one of my, I think, innovations this idea of doing between two and eight lines with a single photographer and utilizing the strengths of the photographer, not having them wasting time walking back and forth and doing posing or taking money. There's a bunch of things I did that I thought were fairly unique and I refined the model over time and now, thanks largely to COVID and having six months off where I had to completely redesign the entire model, we can now do we'll do Allen High School football, which has 500 athletes and 85 student trainers. We'll do them in two hours with three people on the staff, whereas I used to have 12 people and it took me a little longer. So it's been a constant refinement process.

Dave Stock: 23:20

A big part of it is realizing that the wheel has not been invented. It may be somewhat of an oval, but still clunks from time to time. So we're always after every shoot saying, okay, what could we have done better? We're asking our customers what could we have done better? We're asking our customers what could we have done better? And we're making changes. And, as I tell the groups when I speak to them, 90% of what I talk about, I think, is decent information and 10% of it's crap. I don't know what 10% is off, I believe it all. Today and a year from now I'll be able to look back and say, oh man, I missed the mark on that particular thing, on that particular thing, whether it be a marketing thing or a technical thing or something that's missing. So it's constantly evolving and, you know, trying to stay ahead of the fact that parents have their own cameras on their phones now and are more and more likely to take their own pictures and trying to stay in business has been a challenge.

Gary Pageau: 24:10

You know it's interesting because the competitive landscape has kind of changed. Because back in the day when you first started, you were competing against the kind of the old school photographers right, you had to get accounts from them. Now you're competing against mom's camera, right, absolutely, or dad's camera, if you will. Now you're just the team of sports. Are you doing any action as part of your uh portfolio of offerings for schools or because I know a lot of buying photographers who just shy away from doing action completely.

Dave Stock: 24:39

They don't want to touch it I figured that if I went out with my equipment, my background and did some real nice action pictures of a team that was winning, like on its way to a national title, that I would clean up and make a bunch of money. And that never happened. I I just found it wasn't very profitable and if I didn't have anything else to do I would have done that because I was making a profit doing that.

Dave Stock: 25:01

But when I compared what I was netting per hour relative to working the volume business doing tni, there's no comparison right now there are people hi maria and the people that, uh yeah, all those directions have have found a model that works for them, but exclusive of him, with very few exceptions, I don't know that.

Dave Stock: 25:21

People are making money doing spec action, and Haim is a great friend of mine and he is the leader in the spec action and we've talked about this for a long time. In fact, we all met together, the three of us at PMA, when we were on the committee together and you're doing marketing there. But no, I don't do action. I get requests to do it and I give them the names of a couple of people in the area that do and I say have fun with that. Also, part of it is a wear and tear thing. I mean, I've had both of my knees and both my hips replaced. I've had a couple of heart attacks, so I'm just not as anxious to go out there to Texas Heat and chase kids with a long lens. It's just not high on my list of priorities these days.

Gary Pageau: 26:03

It's just interesting because it's almost like you know again, haim, you know, has been on the podcast. He's a friend of the show and all that. I mean he's a great guy and I literally I think he's the only person who has a system for making money with action photography, just because the way they do it. But it's interesting. When I talked to volume pp on the sports and event, they're like they always say, you know, like I said, they'd rather get rid of it, they'd rather. Yet there always seems to be this belief, and I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it's because people see sports illustrated on the news stand still or whatever. They still think there's money there and there's not.

Dave Stock: 26:36

There's no money there there's not a lot there. I mean, parents can get a nice camera with a telephoto lens. They can follow their kid for the entire contest. Most of the kids and games we already touched the ball, yeah, but they're. They're following their kid right and you're there as the spec guy trying to do that. And the reason I'm one of the reasons time does well at this is because they pre-sell and so they only target those people of pre-purchased right and they're not chasing every kid in the field, they're just chasing ones that have the colored rubber band on their left ankle right. Um, one thing I can add is that I stopped doing action basically 98 but I came out of retirement last year specifically because I was mentoring a young lady whose goal was to be a team photographer for a pro sports team. So I went back and got some credentials to send cw games, including deon sanders first game in colorado here.

Dave Stock: 27:27

Yeah, yeah, it was colorado and I was very happy to see that I I could still get good action pictures I hadn't lost it totally and I've noticed that there's a whole new market and that is and I was very happy to see that I could still get good action pictures I hadn't lost it totally and I've noticed that there's a whole new market and that is with the new NIL stuff. They are agents representing the majority of the top athletes in the college level and they need images so they can get it from stock photo agencies. But in many cases they're willing to pay someone like me, you know, at least a partial day rate to go in and follow their athlete at a game and they can get credentials and their money. So a new market is opening up as NIL is now making these kids pro athletes and there are NIL deals going on at the high school level now I know it's crazy.

Gary Pageau: 28:12

It is crazy. Yeah, that's something I actually hadn't thought about. That, actually, that may be kind of an extension of the prepaid action model, right, is you know? Again, you're not shooting everybody, it's not on spec, it's people paying for that, for the for that thing. Cause it is amazing to me how, like you see these platforms that have been created where people basically have a sizzle reel of their, of a high school kid has a sizzle reel of their highlights of their, of their things in order to get recruited. So I think this is kind of an exception, that there's old business model around that sort of thing, whereas they're they're, you know, they're the video of them catching a touchdown and everything else, and it's sort of a you know, hey, look at me, recruit me, kind of thing. It is a very interesting development in the youth sports area. Let's talk a little bit about the mentoring thing. You've mentioned that a couple of times, that word mentoring. You had mentors and you are a mentor. Why is that important to you to be a mentor?

Dave Stock: 29:38

Yeah, Well, first of all, I just flat out enjoy it. This is kind of in my heart, you know, just giving and helping. Also it's kind of my obligation. I remember when I was working with Peter Miller on some billboards for Eastman Kodak leading up to the 84 Olympics, I was in his apartment at two in the morning and I got kind of misty-eyed just thinking about how cool it was to be hanging out with Peter in his apartment and painting a hurdle for Edwin Moses to jump over and I said, peter, I don't know how I could ever thank you and he just looked at me deadpan and said you can't. And then he walked out of the room and I thought, well, that wasn't much of a Hallmark moment. But then he came back and he sat down and he put down his paint can and said look, years ago Mark Hoffman and John Zimmerman and Neil Leifer helped me get going.

Dave Stock: 30:30

I can never repay them, but they told me the way I repay them is I find people like you and I pass on what they gave me to people like you. And someday, dave, you're going to go on and you're going to help people and you're going to pass on what you learned from all of us. You're going to go on and you're going to help people and you're going to pass along what you learned from all of us. And so it was really cool years later to be on a committee at PPA where I brought in Peter Miller as the speaker.

Dave Stock: 30:51

I got to introduce him and I told that story and he says Well, I think you've repaid it many times over, dave, and it was a really touching moment for both of us, I think. So I think, think I hope my legacy at least part of it is that I helped a bunch of people and they went on to help people, and I know that that's happening with people I've mentored in the past. So one that comes to mind is jay boatwright, who is, I think, probably the top name in the tni field right now, who came out and spent several days with me he and his wife, karina, and in trying to do a brain dump for them. You know they launched a career and it got well beyond anything I showed them, and now they're doing these boot camps and helping many. So I get to take a little pride in thinking that I was part of that. That definitely.

Gary Pageau: 31:37

So what do you think there is? I've always seen this in the photography world and I've always thought of it kind of interesting how, for some reason, the photography world there seems to be this generosity, a spirit of people who don't mind sharing their tips, tricks and whatever to help the next generation. I'm not sure every industry has that.

Dave Stock: 31:57

I'm sure that's true, and maybe almost everything I think about right now that I list as strengths came back from what I learned as a high school distance runner, and the cool thing about being a cross country runner at least in most areas is that, yeah, you have opponents from other schools you're running against, but really you are all on the same team, running against a course, running against the environment, and so you have really close relationships with your competitors. You actually talk to them on the course sometimes before you try to beat them up, and that same type of thing exists and at least are part of the photography world, and part of that attitude is really encouraged by our biggest event, which is SPAC, which is every January in Vegas. But at SPAC the whole idea is hey, let's share. You know we all benefit through sharing, and people have asked me why are you willing to go up in front of a group, some of which are competitors in your market, and tell them your so-called secrets and what I say, as, as a speaker, collectively, I get back more from all the people in that room than I give them, and you know, the person the microphone in front of the room is not the only expert by any means.

Dave Stock: 33:05

Part of it is is just a matter of you give and you get back. Part of it it's just. I think it's a great way to to to lead your life and I found that you know, I mean I I've lost accounts in my market to people that I've trained and it hurts on the whole, it just, it just feels better than trying to beat everybody up. The thing is, the market's huge and, with few exceptions, there's enough work for all of us if you do a good job. But the key is you have to be honest, you have to think win-win, you have to do a great job, you have to have customer service. If you do all those things, you're going to be okay. If you're shorting any of those areas, in my opinion, and you're struggling, you kind of deserve to struggle because you have control over every one of those things and your obligation as a professional, as a human being, is to be good in all those areas.

Gary Pageau: 33:49

So one of the other areas you participate in is being a Lumix ambassador and helping them provide products for this market. Now, recently they've come up with some innovations in that space. Can you talk a little bit about your input in providing insight into that licensing and workflow model, which really what it is? It's a workflow tool and that's, you know, what you kind of help with.

Dave Stock: 34:14

Yeah well, I've been going to SPAC for a long time and actually I was brought in years ago by John and Rick to kind of start up the sports side of that whole complex event. I wear multiple hats when I'm at SPAC. I'm a photographer, trying to find tools and suppliers or whatever that help us collectively. And now as a representative of ImageQuicks with their software and Richmond Lab with their lab work and Panasonic with the Lumix product line, I'm also trying to represent them and figure out what we can do with those companies to produce a better product so we can earn people's business and their loyalty. With Panasonic, from the very beginning I could see that they cared about the photographers. I was involved with Canon for many years and they cared about the glamour boys and people in Sports Illustrated. They didn't seem to care too much about the volume market Right.

Gary Pageau: 35:06

You can kind of see that by their lack of presence at volume events. I mean, let's be fair, they're not at those events.

Dave Stock: 35:13

Yeah, yeah, so they might have a booth there or some equipment, but they're not really connected, they don't really understand us and they don't need to, because they're selling a bunch of gear to other people in other markets. Right, the panasonic, uh, largely because of the guy that I reported to, tom curly, very much kicked, and so we, we were constantly asking questions of of the other photographers there and the other vendors, exclusive of the camera manufacturers what, what can we do? What is it you're missing? What, what can we do? And, and a lot of it was, you know, to create the ability to put masks into the cameras themselves, as opposed to having them etched onto an interchangeable piece of plastic. And now the use of barcodes, where we're able to take pictures of a student and have their data put directly in the EXIF information and a header of each individual image, which is a huge thing that known industry has been able to do for 20 years.

Dave Stock: 36:13

Fuji did it 20 years ago, and then the camera disappeared. So we're doing that now. We're now sending images directly to the Adobe Cloud as we capture them, which the video guys are very excited about. The still guys haven't latched on to what that means for them yet, and we've got some other things that we'll soon be able to talk about, which are even more exciting than anything I just discussed. But we've very much been chasing that and unfortunately, there's a long period of time that goes between producing the white paper and convincing the bean counters to Japan. The ROI is there because the conversation is always well, how many are we going to sell? And my answer is I don't know. And they say, well, we're not going to take the risk. And they say you've got to do it. And then you see how many we sell and they go well, we need contracts in in advance. No one's going to buy a camera they haven't seen has been developed.

Dave Stock: 37:05

So that's, that's an ongoing debate for sure, oh, absolutely in marketing and it's a frustration for us at our end in north america because the people north america, with panasonic and myself as an ambassador, we all understand the opportunities there and we know that we could own this market if we did certain things but we answer to people in Japan.

Gary Pageau: 37:29

Yeah, and that's always. I mean, that's not a thing specific to Panasonic as a company, right? I mean, you always have people who are you know you want things that customers ask for, right, like the masking that you want that feature because you know people are asking for, they want it. But how many more units are they going to buy? You don't know. It may be more, it may be less. You have no idea. It could be a pleasant surprise, right?

Dave Stock: 37:50

Well, the other problem is that we have to put together reports after each trade show and it says how many did you sell? We didn't sell any. There was no retailer there. We spent X amount of thousands of dollars on this event and we didn't sell anything. No, no, we we educate, we show people. They go out later and they buy, sometimes thousands of cameras because of something they a conversation we had at SPAC or whatever. So that's another set of battles we're going through is how do we quantify our sales? You know we can't empirically prove for success rate is. We just have anecdotal evidence.

Gary Pageau: 38:25

Yeah, and that's hard for a data-driven organization, which most of the Japanese companies are. I mean, they very much like the spreadsheets, they like the numbers and columns all lining up and you can't do it because it is subjective. And actually I think that problem is going to get even worse because in marketing today, people are absorbing all kinds of messages all the time and they're making decisions and they're always looking for a better deal. So let's say, for example, I go to a show and I see the Lumix G9 or something. I may not buy it there, I may buy it two weeks later or through a promotion or something Now, but I got the idea at that event. But how do you track that?

Dave Stock: 39:05

exactly. It's frustrating, but um initially, the big challenge um years ago because I started with lumix in 2014 was people didn't know what a mirrorless camera was oh yeah well, there's education and then and then.

Dave Stock: 39:18

Then they started understanding the advantages of mirrorless. Then it was why buy our camera? And they didn't understand macro four-thirds format, which is unique to us, and what used to be known as olympus on system, the built-in skepticism that how can a small sensor produce the quality we're looking for. So we would show them blow-ups from that very small sensor and blow their mind. You can get incredible stuff from micro four Thirds Sensor. I've always believed that you don't need to be good at sales if you're good at education and you represent the best product or the answer. And the Panasonic cameras aren't the answer for everyone, but I believe with all my heart that it is the answer in most situations for the volume market and that's why I bought four cameras and 10 lenses before I even knew they had an ambassador team.

Gary Pageau: 40:06

So you were on the team before you were on the team is what you were saying.

Dave Stock: 40:10

Well, yeah, the bean counters. I'm sure they asked Tom Cruddy do you think he's out of money? Has he stopped buying stuff? And when he said yeah, he said tell me about the ambassador team, because when you're on the ambassador team you get free cameras and have fresh cameras and stuff. But they already had all my money. So, um, I was. One of the things I'm very proud of is being part of the lumex ambassador team. Is not all ambassador teams are made up of people who were users first, who are loyal to to the brand and use it. Sometimes it's more of a free agent type thing and I've had offers from other companies Well, you don't use our product, we'll give you a bunch of free product and you can be on our ambassador team if you use our product and we'll give it to you. And I said, well, no, because I don't use your product, I don't necessarily think it's best, so I'll continue to use Lumix as long as I think it's the best thing for what I do.

Gary Pageau: 41:09

Great, justin Davis. This has been great. Where can people go for more information, to learn more about where you may be speaking or Team DSP.

Dave Stock: 41:14

Well, I would suggest that you follow the SPAC website and their Facebook page. Just if you're in a volume market, you need to be at SPAC each year. There are other big events for volume photography. There's the MVP gathering, which is specifically aimed at users of ImageQuix and Philips products, but you can go there if you don't use either, and I do believe that you should be looking at those products for not using them, because I think they are the leaders in the volume industry.

Dave Stock: 41:42

As far as what I'm doing, my website absolutely sucks. I've never got around to do anything with it because I've been busier than I want to be for a long time, so I've had the blessings of being busy and I haven't needed to be any good at marketing. So I'm embarrassed by it, but it's a testimony to what a dedication to customer service and quality and value can do for you. It's kind of a back ass words way of doing it, but you can always call and write. You can send me a friend request on Facebook. I treat Facebook kind of like a blog. I've been paying for a blog for years and I haven't used it, so I hope to have some time soon to get into that, because I'm ramping down my TNI part of my business. So I have time to be more of a consultant and an educator, because that's really what I enjoy and I think that's where I could do the most good.

Gary Pageau: 42:36

So do not, under any circumstances, go to teamdspcom. Do not go there. Any listeners.

Dave Stock: 42:44

Go there. Go there for an example of a bunch of placeholders of the Golden Gate Bridge. I put in there 10 years ago and have not updated.

Gary Pageau: 42:51

Yeah, Thank you, Dave. It's great to see you. Hopefully we'll see you at industry and events soon. I usually see you everywhere, so it's great to see you. Take care. Good to see you again.

Dave Stock: 43:02

Thanks a lot, Gary.

Erin Manning: 43:04

I enjoyed it. Thank you for listening to the. You Take care. Good to see you again. Thanks a lot, gary, I enjoyed it. Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at wwwthedeadpixelssocietycom.