Shooting for stock photography
With stock photography we all know that for every image, magazine, book cover, and marketing campaign there is a need for the images to accompany the content of the article.
Stock photographers may be shooting images of flowers to be placed on seed bags, to photography of day to day items, this may seem like there is an endless need for fresh photo’s and new photographs but often there are many photographers who will sell the same images for many years.
Getty Images and Corbis are the two largest traditional stock photography agencies in terms of revenue from stock photography and they offer mostly photographs that have been shot by professional photographers.
There are many alternative stock photo agencies which enable amateur and professional photographers to offer their photographs for sale.
Images are filed at an agency that negotiates licensing fees on the photographer’s behalf in exchange for a percentage, or in some cases owns the images outright.
Pricing is determined by size of audience or readership, how long the image is to be used, country or region where the images will be used and whether royalties are due to the image creator or owner.
Often, an image can be licensed for less than £200, or in the case of the microstock photography websites as little as £1 for a low resolution license.
http://www.photographersdirect.com is a photographic portal to help picture buyers and researchers find suitable stock photos for any media. In response to the enormous changes that have taken place in the photo business in the past few years, Photographers Direct have pioneered the concept of “Fair Trade Stock Photography”.
The photographers receive 80% of the sale price of their images (through an agency they normally receive 50%, through sub-agencies they may receive as little as 8% of the sale price!).
Photographers have greater control over the submission of images to clients by being able to select the requests, often this can be tendering for the image sale and prices are shown upfront.
Quality is every thing.
With stock photography quality and resolution is everything, many stock photo agents will not sell images under 3000 pixels as the image need to be printed at a usable size, this is why professionals use SLR cameras for their high quality images over the smaller CCD images of a point and shoot camera.
The agents will look at blur or soft images which will be disregarded on this basis, no matter the quality (technical) the image has.
Out of the box or inside the box
With fashion and trends the need of the photographer to understand the concept of the client is greatly important as to the style of the photo and market that the image is intended.
Wedding photographers may know the difference between contemporary photography styles over traditional photography and the same will be taken into account with the use of the image, contemporary companies may want to paint a modern image to sell a product that is new and fresh and not seen before, the “seen in a new light” would apply here; more traditional companies may want to hold onto old values and traditions to sell there products.
Most of the time if you were not selling stock but were commissioned to carry out the photography, you would speak to the art director to fully understand the remit and requirements for the image, your job then would be to conceptualise these into a set of images.
To illustrate a point in photography, here are some images of a well known landmark that have been taken in a number of view points.
Looking at these images taken by photographer Rory Witham you can see there there is a large difference in how the concept ” take a picture of Westminster tower”. Of course this subject is often misunderstood as “big Ben” and often photographers will misunderstand the requirements of the photograph, which of course if the request was for Big Ben, then the photograph should be of the Bell, that of course is what Big Ben is and not Westminster Tower.
Let us take a look at the images, from the top image through to the bottom image and see how the concept and use may differ for each of the images.
The First image is a close up of the Bell tower and the clock, this may be submitted for articles (requests) on the west minster clock, the bell tower at Westminster, Clocks, Famous clocks, London land marks. You can see that the tower is not straight in the image.
When taking an image of a subject it is thoughtful to allow for the textual content for the articles, In this image there is a top right areas for content to be added or extending the sky to the left of the image for more textual content.
The second image shows a worms eye view of the tower, it is also tilted and there for not of much use to anyone, if the images was taken at perhaps a angle showing more of the clock face, was straight and did not show the tops of the rails (or showed more) then the image would be more interesting and useful, maybe targeted toward children.
This Third image shows a more contemporary image of the tower and its setting with the inclusion of the crown iron work and rail showing in the image, the image also shows the full tower and allows for textual content along the left side of the image, as many people read left to right, this is more fitting in its marketing concept and consideration.
The fourth and final image shows a more traditional image, it is a tourist image of the tower taken through open gates, the only advantage of this image is that the gate may not always be open and therefore may be an image that is not often available or seen and therefore may hold some value.
When submitting stock photographs, you should take into account that your view and their view of what they are looking for and what makes the best image will differ, it is also worth submitting a number of images taken in a number of ways to give you the best opportunity to meet the clients requirements.
National Photographer’s Photography training often as a starting point for photographers will ask for a number of images of a single subject to establish the photographer’s creativity when taking photos and to assess the training requirements.
National Photographer’s Stock photography is based on Consultations and commissions from our other service company Grafixphoto
We invite professional photographer members of City photography and National Photographer to submit images for commissions and stock as active members of National photographer.
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Well thank for it we’re really lucky to have found a great article like this one
The Photograph is very neat and precise, the photographer sure had a taste of class shooting up Big Ben in UK. great job… TWO THUMBS UP for the magnificent photograph.
This is just another work of art. Very elegant. Nice work. Looking at your photographs makes me think that i will be taking photographs too.