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stockphotography |
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Independent information |
| Do you have something that others would buy? | ||
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 It doesn't matter if you're a photographer, graphic designer or an artist of what ever shape and form, you will only earn money if somebody buys what you have to offer. To start with, let's assume you're a photographer; similar workflow applies to other artists. I concentrate here for the moment on selling to the so called microstock sites as they are a good "training ground"! We may graduate later together! The picture on the left hand side is called "blueshells" and was my first ever approved and sold image.Back to the initial question: "What do they want and what do they pay for?" Generally speaking all that can be used as a picture/image in advertisement/publicity, on postcards and mugs, or what has a "WOW-WOW-WOW" effect on the editor. The photograph of the eyes that adorne the headline of this site was sold to a french webmaster for one of his projects. Other possible uses include advertisement/publicity, resale like postcards, mugs, t-shirts and posters, bookcovers, illustration of articles, presentations, websites, templates and on and on and on. The market is huge and hungry! So what to feed? Most popular are images which show people. Make sure you have a signed and witnessed model release. If not, they are only of editorial use = less sought after. The young and beautiful are good, the old and active are better. Try to stay away from the classic image of a yuppie (young urban professional) and try to get a photo of the GAH (golden age and happy) so to speak... Generally bright coloured and "positive" images, highly saturated, well lit and pinsharp! A very slight overexposure is sometimes good! Or try a high key image approach :-) Concept shoots: Images that represent an idea like faith, peace, beauty, fear, power... "I have such images, how shall I digitalise them???" If you don't shoot with an digital camera you have several possibilities: 1) Get always a Photo CD the next time somebody develops a film for you. As I started off, I used the cheap and cheerful scans my supermarket developer offered! And yes, I sold quite a few of them. Some High Street or Pro Labs offer high resolution scans for a higher price. Always go for the best quality you can afford! 2) Get existing pictures scanned in. Prices and quality vary greatly, so test before you order a scanning of your entire collection. As I went directly from 1) to 3), I can't tell you of any experiences, but in the Links section you'll find something to get you started. 3) Get a dedicated filmscanner and do the job yourself . I am using a Plustek Opticfilm 7200 and be reasonably happy with it. But back to the selection of your first pics for submission. Look at them, sort all out what is out of focus, poorly lit, badly framed, unintentionally blurred or over/underexposed. Then sort out all that contains trademarks, copyrighted symbols/signs/buildings/cars. Sort out all people shots for which you DON'T have a model release. Sort out all snapshots or those who are only of interest to you and your family. You should now have a nice pile of technically perfect photos of general interest. The more you have the better, but you can start this adventure also with one only photo. Try a organized approach like this: 1.Compose a test portfolio of your 20 best photos, look out for noise (neatimage is quite good and has a free trial version), correct keywording (www.pixvue.com is a great programm to manage keywords/description etc. It saves time because the keywords are automatically uploaded with the pic and its free!, always keyword at last, because some programms like the demoversion of neatimage strip out the meta data!), over/underexposure (levels/ curves in Photoshop or whatever programm you use normally, I use Photoshop7 and have also used CorelPhotoPaint8), artefacts etc. Best review them at 100% = actual pixel and at 100% brightness. 2. Make yourself a Excel Spreadsheet or a table in a word document with title and to which agencies submitted and where you can mark later on if the pics were accepted or rejected (DONT TAKE REJECTIONS PERSONALLY!!!) Its very easy to get carried away and loose track of what you have done. I was NOT organized in the beginning (strange for a german ;-) and have now to retrace the steps of over 150 photos in over 10 different agencies... 3. Choose your best 3 photos and submit them to iStock, your best 5 to stockexpert and your best 10 to Shutterstock. Be careful not to submit noisy photos to one of these as they will be rejected (and then you have to wait one respective three month before you are allowed to try it again). 4. While you wait submit the 20 photos test portfolio to Fotolia, Bigstockphoto, Dreamstime, FeaturePics, 123rf, imagevortex, gimmestock, CanStock, ScanStock, Stockphotomedia, TotallyPhoto, Crestock, Bigwhitebox. The order is roughly from good selling sites down to less good selling sites. BigWhiteBox is actually a case apart as it makes money for Charity and should be therefor supported... 5. Watch the views/sales over the coming months and submit accordingly, with the time you get tuned in the different sites. Shutterstock, iStock and Fotolia are very good sellers, but I would give the others also a try... Dont go exclusive with one agency before you have tested out all the others/ made the arithmetics and do know what you do! 6. Try to figure out what site is your site, visit the forums (great source of information) take advantage of provided information and make yourself a home on at least one site, for mutual support and feeling part of the community. Stockphotography, especially online, can be a rather lonely business. Before you ask my site is Fotolia. |
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| Site last updated 03.06.2006; © SY 2006 All Rights Reserved. Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided on this site is accurate. However the site owner accepts no responsability for any inaccuracies contained therein or in any of the links on this site. |
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