How Stewart Cohen Built A Photography Career Beyond The Shutter

What does it really take to build a creative career that lasts—from film backs and FedExed portfolios to AI search and virtual production walls? The Dead Pixels Society sits down with commercial photographer and stock photo library owner Stewart Cohen to trace a candid arc across decades of change, revealing what fades, what scales, and what never stops mattering.

Cohen starts with the old-school apprenticeship: assisting legends, traveling light, and learning how to manage clients when the stakes are high. He explains why he chose commercial work over weddings, the thrill of annual reports that sent him around the world, and how he built trust before online portfolios existed. When digital upended the economics—killing film costs while introducing tech overhead—he didn’t flinch. He rebuilt the business model, focused on relationships, and found leverage in licensing by treating every frame as an asset that can pay again and again.

Cohen then digs into ownership and strategy. He shares why he acquired Superstock, how he invests in metadata and modern search, and where AI currently fits: powering discovery and efficiency rather than chasing loss-leading generative tools. He talks about the market’s swing away from over-retouched perfection toward authenticity, and how video workflows are transforming with virtual production walls, smarter post, and lighter gear. Through it all, one theme anchors the story: deliver on time and on budget, but bring heart to the picture. Tools change; trust and taste don’t.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Stuart’s Origin Story
• 2:15 The Lost Art Of Assisting And Learning On Set
• 5:25 Choosing Commercial Work Over Weddings
• 8:20 Annual Reports, Travel, And Early Big Breaks
• 12:10 Portfolios Before The Internet And Getting Hired
• 16:10 From Film To Digital And The Business Reset
• 21:10 Competing In A Crowded Market And Relationship Building
• 24:45 Creative Right Brain Meets Business Left Brain
• 27:20 Staying Small, Scaling Attempts, And Support Teams
• 30:00 Licensing Mindset And Early Getty Success
• 33:20 Buying Superstock And Betting On Archives
• 37:15 AI In Search, Costs Of Generative, And Strategy

Transcript

Erin Manning: 0:01

Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society Podcast, the photoimaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau. The Dead Pixels Society Podcast is brought to you by Media clip, Advertek Printing, and Independent Photo Imagers.

Gary Pageau: 0:17

Hello again, and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society Podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau, and today we're joined by Stewart Cohen, who's been running SC Pictures out of Dallas, Texas for a lot of years. He's a commercial photographer, and he's got a lot of insights to share. Hi, Stewart. How are you today?

Stewart Cohen: 0:37

Gary, thanks for having me. I'm u kind of excited to be here. Just our initial conversations about the photo biz are intriguing.

Gary Pageau: 0:46

Yeah, I was gonna say I kind of I kind of wish we'd started recording about 15 minutes ago when we were doing the preamble for this. That's usually how it goes, though. So, Stewart, tell us your story about being a commercial photographer, how you got into the business, how you've stayed in the business, as we know. That has changed dramatically over the last 10, 15, 20 years.

Stewart Cohen: 1:08

Indeed. Indeed, how I got into it is I loved seeing work that people were doing, like traveling all over the world, meeting new people, and just really exotic stuff. I went down the old path of commercial photography where I went to school and then I worked as a photo assistant for a couple of years. I had the good opportunity to do some time working with Arnold Newman and Helmut Newton. Okay. So my photo assisting life was fantastic. And then I started out on my own. And I still have assistants to come work for me. And I've, you know, I have this whole now uh yearbook of guys that have had had gone on to have really great careers. And I know the old way of assisting has gone away a lot. A lot of people think they could do it without doing it. Although everybody that comes through here says, and this is what I learned too, is there's so much you learn from an established working photographer that you could never learn from a YouTube video.

Gary Pageau: 2:10

Well, yeah, of course. And that is sort of one of the things that's changed, right? Is sort of that whole idea of the process where you know you're gonna be the person on the side schlepping film into the back into the film backs and handing them off to the photographer and keeping those things in, you know, labeled for the lab and all those organizational type things you need to know. And that's kind of gone by the wayside.

Stewart Cohen: 2:33

Right. But at the same time, you were also, you know, packing to travel, flying through airports, staying in hotels, learning how to deal with clients, learning how to interact, going to client dinners and learning how to be a human being, you know, as opposed to like a college student. Um so there was a lot of learning, like life learning that I think that's what's gone. And and understanding, you know, like when you'd be on a huge job, you know, if if I had come out of school and somebody present, nobody would present you with a job that's like a half a million dollars, you know. But all of a sudden, you know, you're number two in command on a project that has a lot of money attached to it. You learn a lot and you learn fast, and you learn how to take on that responsibility and how to be comfortable with that responsibility. And I think that's what's really important. You know, the the second part of your question is, and it's an easy one, because and that's why I'll just answer it quickly. Like, how have I stayed in this business and maintained it? I mean, maybe because I'm too dumb to change, but um no, I love it. I mean, I still love it. I still like I two weeks ago I was in Shanghai, and one of my old assistants lives there, and we were out. I I made him take me around to certain areas I wanted to see that he had never been to. And he's and he's just watching me shoot and he's like, Man, you really love this, don't you? And I'm like, I absolutely do. He said, I don't love it as much as that. I'm not I'm not doing it like you are. And yeah, and I think that that probably pretty much sums it up. It's like, you know, I do love it, and I think that's why you stick with anything.

Gary Pageau: 4:05

Okay. Well, that's tough though, to keep that sort of passion going, because I had a friend of mine who's a photographer, you know, kind of did wedding does weddings in the weekend, that sort of thing. And he says, Nothing kills your love of photography faster than having a photography business.

Stewart Cohen: 4:22

Well, I mean, some people could say that or it or or it fuels it, you know. Yeah, that's true.

Gary Pageau: 4:26

Yeah.

Stewart Cohen: 4:27

Now, granted, if I had done weddings my whole career or ever and had to deal with mothers of the bride, I don't think I would love it either.

Gary Pageau: 4:36

Yeah.

Stewart Cohen: 4:36

I mean, I think I listen, I'm a huge admirer of some of that work that's being done these days by some wedding guys, but they're they have budgets, like they're, you know, they're it's like a million-dollar shoot, you know, with great styling and everyone's dressed perfectly and and the flowers are perfect. And so it's like they have this beautiful set. Like for us to do a TV commercial or still shoot that's dressed so perfectly, that's an expensive shoot. Right. So, aside from if you could get around the stress of it being somebody's biggest day and you better not mess it up, right? I mean, I think there's some really fantastic moments to be captured. Sure.

Gary Pageau: 5:11

Now, was that a conscious decision on your part to not do weddings or that sort of thing? Because why? What was that decision? Because I mean, if you worked with, you know, Hellman Newton, you you certainly saw portraiture being done.

Stewart Cohen: 5:26

Sure. Well, I mean, the weddings were it was just never on my radar. Um, you know, I like we were saying earlier, I think it was considered a different kind of photography, and I always wanted to do commercial advertising work. And yeah, so I it just never really crossed my radar. You know, I went after uh corporate, like when I started out, you know, was still back in the day of annual reports. And yeah, but I mean, one of my first big jobs was I got to do the Intel annual report where I went around the world. And luckily I had done things like that when I was a photo assistant, so it didn't totally freak me out. But it was like it you just traveled and you got to go places and they'd say shoot cool stuff.

Gary Pageau: 6:10

Right.

Stewart Cohen: 6:10

And it was it was fantastic, you know. So that that was my entrance, you know, and probably the first, I don't know, five, 10 years, you know, we did a lot of that stuff, and basically not a lot of art direction. So it wasn't like, you know, subsequently, like when I got into the ad game, you know, you'd have a layout and you're shooting for a layout. And but those early days, we need a couple pictures from each office in seven countries. Go do it. And it would just be like, wow, okay. And so, you know, you'd go, it was it was small crews back then, you know, there was maybe three or four of you total, and it would just be like come up with good stuff, you know, and you'd be working. And and those days, that was with a lot of graph good graphic designers, so it was a good training too, because these guys had super great eyes. If your work wasn't really great, you weren't getting the next year's job, right?

Gary Pageau: 7:03

So, yeah. So, so I'm just curious, like, you know, in that era, right? We're talking about film, we're talking about all that, you know, that that era of commercial photography. You know, how do you get that your foot in the door on a lot of those things? Because there weren't like you know, online portfolios or anything like they have now, right? Or you know, you can't no Instagram feeds.

Stewart Cohen: 7:30

No, it was it was old school portfolios um that you would have a printed portfolio, or the other thing we did is we had enlarged transparencies that we would mount like on 11 by 14 boards, you know, like prints, and we had a big portfolio box, and people would hold them up to the light, and you would ship those around to people if they called or you called them, and they would look at your portfolio and it would be whatever 20, 25 pieces, and they would hire you off of that. You know, a lot of word of mouth went a long way, and I think it still does, really.

Gary Pageau: 8:05

Yeah, I yeah, I don't think that's changing.

Stewart Cohen: 8:07

Yeah, but but that was it, you know, and so so if somebody was looking to do a project, they would call in 10 or 15 portfolios and go through them all and probably make some internal decision and then of course vet it with the client. We would pay for shipping one way and that and they would pay for it the other way. But we had like, I don't know, 10 or 12 copies of this portfolio.

Gary Pageau: 8:33

Yeah, I was gonna say because I'm sure some of them never made it back.

Stewart Cohen: 8:36

No, they always did, but it would be like there would be days that you'd be going to FedEx, you know, at you know, the last drop-off at FedEx and dropping off seven or eight portfolios and just keeping your fingers crossed, you know.

Gary Pageau: 8:49

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's crazy. So now can you talk about any specific like campaigns you worked on that maybe were memorable that you know were kind of like highlights from back in that era?

Stewart Cohen: 9:04

Oh, back in that era, uh not really.

Gary Pageau: 9:07

You were doing a job, you were slapping things around, right?

Stewart Cohen: 9:10

No, there was um, you know, early. Uh I'm trying to think what it was. It was a Bud Light campaign, or I think it was Bud, that we got to shoot in South Beach, you know, with a lot of Latin models and you know, jobs like that that will always stay with me because it was like some of the early days of getting to hire talent and great stylists and just again less layouts, more like, okay, this is gonna be a party at the beach. And it's like, all right, let's do it. And then the next day is okay, now we're doing a party in a restaurant. Yeah, you know, so I mean that those were really early. It was like I remember once one of the early first times I went to shoot in Miami on a job like that, and on the rental car bus heading back, you know, from the lot to the airport, thinking this was the closest I've come to going to summer camp ever. This was so much fun, right?

Gary Pageau: 10:05

And then the world changed, right? The whole world of commercial photography evolved and changed. Obviously, you had digital coming in, so there are all kinds of ways that workflow changed. And I don't want to get into the technical side of you know that sort of world, but how did that change your business approach as a commercial photographer? Because the the world of competition opened up, right? I mean, it really opened it really opened up.

Stewart Cohen: 10:33

I think that was the beginning of the change because I don't think the competition like caught up immediately, but you know, think about the craft, like what I've seen, and and I do think about the craft, and and not shortchanging anybody today using automatic cameras, but you know, I like when I started, we used to have to know how to focus, you know, and and I remember backwards and upside down on a glass plate, right? Well, no, yeah, yeah. Well, that was four by five, but even 35. I remember going in college, like going to the side of a freeway with a 300 millimeter lens and trying to follow license plates, right? You know, because I was able to go shoot football games for for my college. So, you know, autofocus was a huge that was the first thing that was like, oh my god, this is amazing. And that was, I think, in the late 90s. And so, you know, I hadn't been doing it that long, but it was it was a big change. And then, of course, um, you know, digital, I I called the you know, the digital transformation, which to me was 2006, like when the Canon 1DX came out. Yeah, um, I called that the film killer. I remember that, you know, there was there was a lot of trepidation and a lot of people saying, Yeah, digital's great, or no, it's not, we want to stay with film. And I was doing a big job back then for Nokia, and we decided, you know, somebody had suggested we shoot it digitally, and we decided that we were gonna do a test with their color separator. So we shot the same subject on I think it was like three different cameras, like film, two different kinds of film, and and what was the preeminent digital camera at the time. And we sent them off to these color separators, and they made these giant prints, you know, like a piece of the file. They made giant prints, and there was this whole big meeting called from my studio. You know, their color separators were coming, the clients were coming, everyone was coming to see this and make this decision. And these guys came in, like, I don't know, 10 minutes before the meeting start and laid out these big strips. I wish I had kept them, and identifying what was what. And to me, it was like, okay, well, the conversation's over. The digital was already so much cleaner. And I never ever shot another roll of film. Like there were 300 rolls of film in a fridge at the studio that never got used. And we finally, we finally we started selling them like 10 years later, you know, because it we're like, um, we're never gonna use this, let's just sell it. That was a transformation from for us. Yeah, you know, there was in terms of from the photo perspective, of course, there was a big dollar change because we used to charge by the roll of film.

Gary Pageau: 13:15

Right.

Stewart Cohen: 13:16

Um, like, well, aside from, you know, it was plus film and processing, and you know, we would have a budget for film and processing, but I'm the kind of guy that the our jobs, we used to shoot 150, 200 rolls of film.

Gary Pageau: 13:27

Right.

Stewart Cohen: 13:28

So, regardless of the markup, there was markup. And that, of course, went out the door. Um, you know, then of course digital text came in into being, and and you needed to keep up with, you know, the digital technology, just monitors and laptops and and hard drives.

Gary Pageau: 13:44

Storage devices, yeah.

Stewart Cohen: 13:45

I mean, yeah, exactly. And and you know, and you do burn through those, whatever you think. We use them hard and they got torn up. But again, it was just like, how do you re-jigger your company to make it work for the current economy? And that's what we learned how to do. And it was like, like it or not, this is the way it's going. And then I think shortly thereafter, that all of a sudden there were some guys coming into the industry that really didn't understand kind of the craft that we all had to learn. And you can't really blame them for it, it's just because technology made things easier, and and that became, you know, the the field started to get more crowded, I'll just say.

Gary Pageau: 14:24

Yeah, and you've had people who may not have gone through the apprenticeships or like that, right? Because they've got direct from, you know, spanning we and we've seen that in the portrait market too, right? Where you had traditional portrait photographers who maybe went the PPA route and they got the medals and the certifications and all that. Yeah, you know, the weekend shooter with a you know, with a Canon Rebel GSLR, you know, and they're kind of competing. And right, oh yeah, you can see the difference, but is the difference worth it, right?

Stewart Cohen: 14:54

You're absolutely right. And you know what, but I will say, and and I'm because I'm not gonna I'm not gonna vote one way or another on it, because can you see the difference? Yeah, whatever. But I'm just gonna say that I really, really enjoyed the whole opportunity to work with people that were my legends, right? And there would have been no other opportunity to do that, you know. Um, so anyway, yeah.

Gary Pageau: 15:19

So when you do that transition, right, when you see that, so uh what how did you position yourself in the marketplace with that crowded competition, right? I mean, you you had a more crowded competition than you had, you know, maybe who was somebody you're competing against for a job who's maybe more styled than substance, if you will.

Stewart Cohen: 15:38

Sure, absolutely. And look, I think you got to just understand that you're competing, it's it's a big landscape, and we were already competing, you know, predominantly nationally. I mean, some jobs were internationally, but you're predominantly nationally. So we were already in that playing field, and then all of a sudden these new names started to seep into that, you know, that group of people that you'd always bid against. And it just became, you know, that's just part of it. And so I tried to stay ahead. You know, we definitely advertise to the trade a lot. And I would really try to nurture relationships that we did have and actively look for, you know, new relationships. Yeah. And I just think it's just one of those things. You just gotta, instead of driving on a country road, you're getting onto a six-lane road. You just gotta focus on on your path and and and you know, hopefully you continue.

Gary Pageau: 16:34

It seems like a lot of people, like I said, you you know, you get into the business because you love photography, but there's the whole business piece of it that is not really photography, right? It's just customer relations, it's new business development, it's sales, it's right acquisitions, it's doing a bunch of different things. Where did you learn that kind of stuff?

Stewart Cohen: 16:58

I think some of that, because I didn't go to business school and right, that's why I asked. Yeah. I I think some of that luckily was like I I had an innate sense that I knew you couldn't spend more than you made. That's where it started. And and I do love the business. Uh I love the business of it. Um, I'm very comfortable with the negotiations and and so on and so forth. And I still I I always watched the bottom line in in a responsible way, not not to a fault, you know, but just you know, and and would take calculated risks based on cash and stuff like that. It was trial and error. And luckily I I had hired some people along the way that were really, you know, we saw eye to eye in terms of managing the money, and and it kind of set me on a good path.

Gary Pageau: 17:50

Because that's always one of the things I hear, especially in the portrait segment of the market, right? Is they're great artists, but not the greatest business people.

Stewart Cohen: 17:58

Well, well, the one thing I always say, and and I've always heard, and I heard this way back, is there were people that are great business people that aren't great photographers and they could have fantastic careers. And then there are people that are great photographers and who didn't have a lot of great business acumen and they struggled, you know, and a lot of them ended up leaving the field or doing something else. I think I'm lucky in that I had a pretty good split of left brain, right brain, and knew when I could turn on the, you know, like when we were talking about roles of film, just say, for instance, like I knew when we hit the budget and I wasn't going over that budget, you know. Right. So, you know, stuff like that. Very, very cognizant of the dollars going out. And I could do that in the back of my head while still playing the creative game.

Gary Pageau: 18:44

Now, is your company set up so that you're doing the most of the work? I mean, obviously it's SC Pictures and you're the SC of that, but do you have other people who are like on in your stable who meet with clients and do the work? I mean, what how big is your company?

Stewart Cohen: 19:00

Um, it the company has ebbed and flowed over the years. Right. I am the only person that shoots. I tried to scale the business multiple times and I and I call it you know, years running into walls.

Gary Pageau: 19:13

Right.

Stewart Cohen: 19:14

And I realized that it wasn't in my best interest because then you're managing other people's careers. So I've kept it that I um I was the only one that's shooting, and I have a relatively, you know, I've had a relatively large support staff on and off over the years. You know, I have a full-time producer in Digitech, and you know, we also leveraged a lot of uh the work that the previously shot work, or I shoot a lot without clients, you know, just for licensing reasons. And I was pretty lucky early in my career when the whole licensing world was exploding to be an early contributor to Getty Images and you know its predecessor, and that taught me how to really try to leverage every frame that you shoot.

Gary Pageau: 20:01

Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about the licensing piece of the business because you own a stock organization, right? And you've made some acquisitions over the years. What kind of steered you towards that? Is it because you kind of had the idea that you know intellectual property was important?

Stewart Cohen: 20:15

Actually, one of the guys I worked for who I'm going to his 80th birthday in a couple of weeks, um, and he was a big influence on me. He exposed me to the world of licensing because people would call him to reuse something, not even through a stock agency. This is back. And I would see it's like, wow, he shot that two years ago and he just got paid, you know, X amount of dollars for it. That sounds good.

Gary Pageau: 20:39

Should have once monetized multiple times. Sounds like a really bottle.

Stewart Cohen: 20:43

So so early on, like right when I started on my own, I started going looking for, and this is early stock agencies, looking for somebody to represent my work. And I found uh somebody, and at the time they were called Tony Stone Images, and they were the predecessor of Getty.

Gary Pageau: 21:01

I remember that name.

Stewart Cohen: 21:02

Yeah, and and they had a very tight editing process, and they figured they didn't need to show a lot of work to people, they just needed to show the right work, and I started getting checks every month. I'm like, hmm, this works. And and then they floated, but it had always been stuff that was thought like ancillary to a job, right? But then they they floated the idea of you should shoot just for licensing.

Gary Pageau: 21:32

Right.

Stewart Cohen: 21:32

And so I started trying to do that, and it actually worked back then. And to the to the extent that they would say, Hey, Stewart like we want to do this job. We we we feel like there's a need for this work in Cuba. Here's an example. And then we're going back to the turn of the century, like around 2000. And they said they would send an art director and some ideas, but it's all on me financially. And they said they think that I could probably make the money back in a year or two years from licensing. So we went down to Cuba there illegally. No, I was Canadian, I am Canadian. Um, and we shot and spent, you know, I think I remember actually exactly how much. We spent around $40,000. When I tell you that I probably made a couple million dollars off of that shoot, I'm probably not, I'm not lying. You know, my my whistle was wet, so so to speak. So I really went head into it. Like when we weren't shooting jobs, we were shooting other things that we were trying to license. And we had some really, really great years doing that. You know, obviously, as you know, that industry has has had some some really downward price pressure as well and a lot of competition. But yeah, so I did a lot of it. And then when when Getty bought their first footage collection, was a company called Fabulous Footage. They called me because they knew I shot film too. And I flew to LA and we talked about it, and I started shooting some of their earlier productions that were shot solely for licensing, and that's pretty much how I started with it. Yeah.

Gary Pageau: 23:07

So I mean, you've you've acquired companies along the way. Was that just because were there opportunistic where people just said, hey, I want to gather business, here's my library, or were there segments that you felt you know would like bolster your catalog, if you will? You were trying to fill gaps in your catalog?

Stewart Cohen: 23:27

No, I would call it a moment of weakness. So these guys that I knew were putting together a crew to buy Superstock, and Superstock had been around since the 1970s. It was a New York uh agency, and it it its predecessor was four by five. These were early, early stock agencies, and it was falling on hard times. This is the early 2000s, and they asked if I wanted to be a part of it, and I said, absolutely not. And then they said, Well, would you invest some money to help us buy it? And guarantee you we're gonna make you money, you know. And and back in the day then, I had some cash, some liquid cash. So I threw some cash at them and it didn't really go anywhere. And and I'll just fast forward, there's a big story behind it. But years later, um, the company was down on its heels, and I volunteered to step in to see if I could help steer it and threw some pretty bad decisions on my part. Um, but but I really loved the collection. Like they owned, they owned some vintage collection, vintage archives that I thought were really valuable. And I'm a big collector of photography as well. And so I saw the value in that. So I pretty much stepped up and bought all my partners out and invested in it and continue to invest in it and to make sure that the technology was up to snuff and so on and so forth. And um, so yeah, that's the the net net is here we are now in 2025, and I've owned it for six years and and have invested in it heavily in the tech side, which makes me interested in podcasts like yours because you start to listen to all these guys in the tech world about digital marketing and about digital development. And I've become now that's part of my spiel, also. I start to understand that. And um, I think it's still a hard space, but I do still love the pictures. I love the we manage now 27 million assets, digital assets, video and stills. It's another adventure.

Gary Pageau: 25:34

So, in the last couple of years, you've had this whole generative AI thing happen and where people are trying to you know create content using prompts and things. And I've heard, you know, there's a bunch of different you know approaches to that where people are either wildly for it because it, like you said earlier, democratizes, you know, that there's other people against it because it's not real, you know. And I as we were talking earlier, it's just a tool, it's just gonna happen. Um, where is the place for a company like yours in that space? Because, you know, I've seen what Getty's announced and some of the other people where they're like, we're gonna also offer generative stuff too. I think, and I think they're doing that to kind of you know seem hipping with it until they figure out what's gonna happen.

Stewart Cohen: 26:21

Well, they are. I think I think uh Getty, Shutterstock, Adobe, they're all doing that, they're all offering it. We have a subscription to the service that the same service they use. We haven't really implemented it in terms of creating generative fill yet, because we look at their annual their public companies, we look at their annual reports and they're not making any money on it.

Gary Pageau: 26:42

Right.

Stewart Cohen: 26:43

And it's expensive. But we have implemented a bunch of AI for search and for um, so for finding similars and for keyword search, and so we're using AI in every way, shape, or form. You know, we're we're engaging all the tools. Uh, we just have not rolled out a customer-facing generative fill uh option yet, because we haven't seen, I mean, we still do need to pay the bills, you know. And right now, I mean, if you look at you look at Getty's balance sheet, I mean, they're they're you know, they might they might be grossing a billion dollars a year, but they're spending a billion and one, you know. Right.

Gary Pageau: 27:23

Yeah, and that's one of the challenges I think where people who aren't in the business don't realize, you know, every time you're hitting that server to generate an image, you're that that there's a cost structure to that. And exactly, you know, if somebody's just playing on your website, it may seem like you're doing what you used to do, which was go to a light table with some slides and with it with an eyepiece and look at all the various options that are there, then you pick the one. Well, generative may feel like the same thing, right? Hey, I'm gonna, but every time you're doing that, you're you're paying for that slide, if you will. You're right, exactly. Yeah, you're being dinged for it. Exactly.

Stewart Cohen: 27:57

So depending on who's paying for it. But listen, I think as a as I we're obviously in the middle of a revolution. Sure. So, you know, I'm not gonna take a stand one way or another. I think it's a pretty valuable tool. I think how it's gonna net out is still a big question mark to all of us, but I do think it's getting exciting and it's you know, interesting landscape.

Gary Pageau: 28:18

Well, it is one of those things where you know a lot of the legal side hasn't even been worked out, right? Because when you generate an image, who owns that, right? No one technically owns it, right? So if you're licensing it, you know, who really owns that? I don't know if that's been actually determined yet. And I mean, except they're determined that an AI can't create anything, so therefore there's no copyright. But if you're using it for commercial use, and that's just oh my gosh. And then you have the issue with, you know, who did you have the original license to even look at the images to build your models from?

Stewart Cohen: 28:51

Right, right. And I think there's some lawsuits that are kind of in play currently on all that. But listen, we we do take some AI generated, we do license some AI generated content on Superstock. And there have been some pictures that I see, you know, I have this live feed that shows me everything that gets licensed. And I saw a picture, and I mean, before I I mean, I figured out in a second that it was AI, but it was great. I mean, it was really, really great. It was like somebody pouring a drink with you know steam coming off it or something. And I I commented to one of our guys, I'm like, oh my God, we sold this digital picture. And I said, I think the picture's great. I couldn't have shot it for for that. And and you know, he said, Of course you could have shot it. I'm like, yeah, I could have shot it, but it would have been expensive and there would have been a lot of retouching. And the fact that we manage the rights to that picture for whatever and and we licensed it, it was great. And to your point, yes, people can make them themselves, but at the same time, if you're an art director and you just need a picture of X, Y, Z and you just see it as like I don't I don't need to spend 45 minutes prompting stuff, you know. Right. Let me just license it. You know, clients are paying for it anyway.

Gary Pageau: 30:07

So Yeah. And you know, time time is money in those cases because, you know, if you spend any time at all on these, on these models and doing these things, you know, you can start and then two hours later you're still dorking around with it.

Stewart Cohen: 30:19

Oh, it is it is a time suck. It's kind of like early days of Photoshop or even thinking time in the dark room. It all it's all equivalent. I mean, you know, you could go down a dark hole and it's really fun, but it just next time you look at your watch, you're like, oh my God, you know.

Gary Pageau: 30:34

So one of the things that that's happening is I think it always actually raises the bar of of what's possible and the quality thereof. Because, like you said, that image that was created was pretty darn good. And right, so if you're so if you're if you're really shooting that that type of image, right, a cup with steam coming off of it or whatever, that's what you're competing against.

Stewart Cohen: 30:59

But no, no, so here's something this is of interest. So for a minute, I think, especially ad agencies were over-retouching pictures, absolutely. Like photoshopping them to death, you know. So even something that I think would have been great, as is it got like, oh, I want to change this, I want to move this, I want to change this, you know, nearly to death. Now, what we're seeing with AI is you could just create that right out of the bag. I think what we're seeing is a swing back to show me something that makes me believe that it was really shot.

Gary Pageau: 31:31

Right.

Stewart Cohen: 31:32

And I think we're gonna see that trend. I think we're gonna see that trend.

Gary Pageau: 31:35

Well, yeah, so I mean we're definitely seeing it in in the capture side of the business with the growth of film, right? Where there's like people are saying, hey, look, you know, this is really an authentic picture. Now, you know, again, I'm I'm like you, I haven't shot a lot of film because in the last 20 years, because there's a digital thing, but there's certainly you know that approach that right and and and and I think that's something that people gotta remember in this business because you know, that authenticity piece is what's important, right? That is what I think you can ascribe an actual higher value to as opposed to an AI-generated image, right?

Stewart Cohen: 32:14

Or something that's just r over retouched to perfection, that it's like yeah, it's obviously not real. So, anyway, I think that's a really interesting, interesting trend that we're gonna see that that I'm enjoying. Those of us that are professionals, I mean, your eyes are pretty finely tuned anyway, right? And and and the pictures are 90% of the way there anyway, to begin with, unless you're doing some crazy compositing.

Gary Pageau: 32:39

And on the video side, with video assets, I think that's actually gonna have a bigger impact, I think, in a lot of ways, because you know, the entertainment industry is gonna be impacted a lot by this because you know, I know a lot of stock images are you know used in film, right? Or stock footage that's in the background of us. Now a lot of that stuff can be generated.

Stewart Cohen: 33:01

That's correct. I I think that's gonna that's gonna be huge. And I think, you know, even what we've seen is you know, like rotoscoping, like when you know the the the difference, say we were doing a campaign where we were doing the TV and the stills, and we knew something had to be retouched. It was not a big deal. It's like, yeah, yeah, we'll just do that in post. On the footage, though, it was something because we're gonna have to get it rotoscoped and it was expensive. You know, now we've seen some of our editors, you know, being able to use some of the tools out there and just remove things or change things.

Gary Pageau: 33:34

Right.

Stewart Cohen: 33:34

And it's gotten good. Um, you know, but the whole live action production, we're gonna see some crazy changes. And you know, think about it with volume walls now. I mean, the stuff that that we're being able to do is pretty, pretty amazing.

Gary Pageau: 33:50

Now, what do you mean by a volume wall for the people who don't know what that is?

Stewart Cohen: 33:54

Well, you know, they have, and I guess the one thing that everybody knew is like they how they shot the Mandalorian, right? Because that was, I think, the first show to ever use it. So think about a 270-degree video wall that's moving, including the ceiling. And you see it in a lot of car campaigns too. Yeah. So the environment is real, and it's not like just you're shooting in front of a picture because it's a video background. Right. So as the camera moves, it moves just like your eye would do it. But you're doing it in the studio, you know. So what you see is like sometimes you see these car ads today that it's like they're driving through the desert, you know. And but the truth is the only thing, the only desert that's there is, you know, your art department has built the floor with a bunch of rocks and they elevate the car so the wheels are spinning, but then the whole background is just moving, you know, and you have hydraulic jacks to make the cars move. So I think what that's doing is, you know, granted, I'm a guy that that started out really loving to go on location. Right. And that's why I got into it and I wanted to travel and go on location. Unfortunately, a lot of what we're gonna see going forward is you're gonna be able to produce some really stellar work in a studio, right?

Gary Pageau: 35:10

I've seen some behind behind the scenes stuff on some of the movies that are out there. Like, I didn't really even realize this, but like there was that uh Batman movie from a couple years ago that was almost all shot inside a studio, even the car chases and everything. There were no actual moving vehicles, and you can't tell.

Stewart Cohen: 35:30

No, you can't tell. And pretty much any TV show you see with like people having a conversation in a moving car, I mean, it's not real.

Gary Pageau: 35:38

Well, it never used to be that way before, but you could tell, right? I mean, you could they would have like a the screen behind them jiggling, yeah, yeah, like I'm doing like Andy Griffith's show or something like that.

Stewart Cohen: 35:48

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but I think it's gonna open a lot of doors to some really amazing creativity. Sure.

Gary Pageau: 35:55

Sure. And and it's and it's gonna impact a lot of people, right? I mean, like you were saying uh before we started, you know, there's gonna be some fallout, there's gonna be some attrition in the industry. Uh right, it's gonna happen.

Stewart Cohen: 36:08

But I think I think some jobs will go and then some new jobs will come, right? You know, yeah, and they'll be different. I mean, and who knows what they'll be, but you're already seeing it. You know, there's like, you know, might be tech jobs, but yeah, I I don't know if it'll totally balance out what we lose to what we gain, but I think part of that also, if you talk about gear, you know, how gear has become so much, I'll just say lighter, smaller. Oh, sure.

Gary Pageau: 36:34

You know, you you don't need as many guys on a lot of or as many people um, you know, on your grip and electric departments anymore because you don't need as much light or you get multiple cameras from different angles at the same time because you got to put GoPros or Insta360s or yeah, or drones all in the same shot capturing different angles is something that's true.

Stewart Cohen: 36:56

And even if you're using bigger cameras, you know, compared to when we were doing film, you know, your ISOs are higher, so you don't need as much light. And um, yeah, so it's made production, I think it's probably brought down the cost of production, it's probably had a net loss of some jobs in terms of the you know, on the group, yeah, those guys, but I think it's made it exciting. I mean, you know, because you could think of doing some really interesting things with without needing to spend a fortune.

Gary Pageau: 37:29

And yeah, I was just read something the other day about how you know when Apple produced their race car movie recently, you know, they actually be because they could, they they they they took the guts of an iPhone and put it inside the the rear view mirror or something on one of the cars, just so they could say they used an iPhone in the production. And it was just really cool, right? It was just something because of that small camera, they could do that.

Stewart Cohen: 37:55

Yeah, and I I gotta tell you, like when you see the ads, you know, for the new iPhone 17, and right, I mean, the camera technology is it's kind of nuts, you know.

Gary Pageau: 38:05

But what it's never gonna stop though is the personal side of it, right? I mean, like I like you said, you know, that piece of the business, as much as change you've seen over the years, right? The ability to, yeah, you can have all this great technology and all these workflow processes and all this AI stuff, but if you can deliver the job on time on budget for the client, right.

Stewart Cohen: 38:27

And it has to have some soul, right? You know, how many bad TV shows or movies have you seen that just were soulless, you know, because they're leaning on on these whiz-bang technological gags. But you if you could put some heart in it and some soul in it, I think that's what uh to your point, I think that's what's gonna continue forever. And storytelling, just storytelling.

Gary Pageau: 38:50

Speaking of continuing forever, where can people go for more information about what you do and your various companies?

Stewart Cohen: 38:58

Well, I would love you. You know, you're all welcome to visit the website, which is scpictures.com, which is our production website. If you're looking to license any content or you want to be a contributor to license content, it's superstock.com. And of course, I'm on LinkedIn and Stewart Cohen and Instagram SCPictures. And yeah, we'd love to have a conversation.

Gary Pageau: 39:21

Awesome. Well, thank you, Stewart. This has been fun. Like I said, it was been it's fun to trace the path of somebody who kind of started in the analog days and made the transition to digital, didn't look back, and is now looking forward.

Stewart Cohen: 39:33

So well, Gary, I I didn't I didn't think we were gonna be going back that far, but it was a fun, fun walk down memory lane there. So thank you.

Gary Pageau: 39:41

Thanks so much, Stewart. Take care. Hope to talk to you again soon. You too.

Erin Manning: 39:45

Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at www.theadpixels society.com.