The Decisive Moment

Gaz wrote a smashing article the other day about Online Photo Libraries and how they have clearly ruined the stock photography market and crushed the soles of small time professional photographers (actually that’s not really what he said I just wanted to spice things up a little. You should go ahead and read it by the way. It was very thought provoking.). For the most part I agree with what Gaz had to say, however I have been a member of a few of these libraries for a while and without putting any real effort into it I’ve managed to make a reasonable amount of money from them. I thought I’d do a quick guide to some of the online stock libraries and share with you some of my tips on how to become successful through them.

Before I get started I really aught to say that if you have an issue with earning very little for each sale you make don’t do this. Find another way to sell your photos. I promise you that if you can’t accept this one simple fact you will find selling images through these libraries entirely sole destroying.

Getting Started

The very first thing you need to do is go through your collection of photos and pick out the ones you think are best. Generally you need to be looking for images that are high quality, the equivalent of 3 megapixels or larger in size and that have something reasonably unique about them. By reasonably unique I mean things like a fresh viewpoint on a subject or a rare subject (e.g. an owl catching its prey). Reasonable uniqueness isn’t essential, but it will greatly improve your chances of making a sale. Most of the heavy users of these libraries are people like web developers, commercial blog writers, and people who need images for newsletters and press releases. With this in mind the images that sell the best are conceptual images - images that can convey a message.

When you have your images sorted it’s time to hit the libraries. I have tried about a million of these and the ones I have found to be most successful for me are the following:

• Dreamstime
• Big Stock Photo
• Shutterstock
• Stockxpert
• Istockphoto

I particularly like these libraries because the images I upload don’t have to be exclusive to each site and the payouts are some of the fairest out there. That’s not to say that the payouts are good. They really aren’t. For each sale I only get between 20c and $1.50. Depending on the volume of sales I make these royalties can go up, but they’re never going to be impressive.

You need to register with each library and you’ll have to pass a submission test before you can start selling. This involves uploading a few of your photos for them to assess. If you fail assessment you will be told why and then you can apply again. If you pass you can start uploading the images you want to sell. You’ll need to give each photo a title, a description, select a number of suitable categories for it to sit in and create a list of keywords that pertain to the image. This helps place the image appropriately when a buyer does a search.

Every image you upload will go through the approval process again and won’t be available for sale until it passes. Providing you follow the sites’ guidelines for submitting photos you should have no problems. Once a photo is approved it’s up and available to buy until you decide you want to stop selling it.

Another reason I particularly like the libraries in the list above is that they all offer buyers the ability to buy different licences for your images. Now unless you are pretty lucky, it’s not incredibly likely that you will sell any images for full exclusive rights, but it you do you could be looking at a few thousand for your trouble. It hasn’t happened to me yet, but I live in hope.

How to Really Succeed

The key to being successful in these libraries is to create large conceptual images and lots of them. The larger the image is the more media it can be used for. If you can produce thousands of images that cover as many categories as possible you will maximise your exposure and therefore your chance to make a sale. Obviously the higher the quality the better and the more you think about your keywords and image titles the better too.

Categories that will always sell well are:

• Images of people. These are the hardest to produce because firstly you need willing models and secondly you’ll need to upload a signed model release with each photo.
• Images that convey business messages.
• Business orientated conceptual images.
• Warm and fuzzy conceptual images.
• Money conceptual images.
• Seasonal images when they are in season. You won’t sell Christmas images during Easter.

Images that don’t sell very well are:

• Pet portraits.
• Landscapes (unless they’re exceptional).
• Pictures of fruit and other very accessible still life.

Make sure you keep tabs on which images are selling best from other photographers. Don’t just flat out copy what they have done though. Take pictures that are similar but with your own unique twist to them. If a buyer is presented with 30 pictures that are all basically the same they’ll just pick the first one. Or even worse they’ll decide that they wanted something more unique and go elsewhere.

If a genre is flooded with thousands of photos, don’t bother trying to compete. Find another genre where you could really make an impact.

Lastly, be patient. It may take a while before you see any real results. Keep plugging away, use your head and you’ll soon get there. Most of all have fun. You won’t make a living from these libraries any time soon, so if you’re not enjoying it why do it?

Recently I decided to sign up to do an AS level in Photography at the local college. The course requires you to have a “good, basic 35mm SLR camera”, so as soon as I received confirmation of my place on the course I excitedly marched into town to buy one. I’d been saving up a bit and had a budget of £200 - more than enough to get a basic SLR I thought. Well, you see it would have been enough if I could have found one.

In my local town centre (which is actually a city centre) there are three photography shops. One is part of a big chain. One is part of a slightly smaller chain and the other is an independent store. I went to all three and not one of them had a 35mm film camera in stock. In fairness the two chain stores did both have a second hand section that did contain film SLRs, but these were archaic to say the least, and to be honest I didn’t want to buy a second hand one. I had saved up my money and I wanted to treat myself.

Neither of the chain stores ever stock film SLRs and would only be able to order me in the very expensive top of the range models. The independent store on the other hand was the most helpful and offered to order me in Canon’s recently released EOS 300x (which I now have in my possession and love by the way).

The really odd thing about all this though, is that despite not being able to sell me a camera there and then, all three of them had piles and piles of multi-grade paper, all the right chemicals and a plethora of film to choose from.

I asked the independent guy why he didn’t keep them in stock and his reply was very simple, “no one buys them.”

So here’s my question - What do all the film photographers do when they’re kit wears out. Are they going to have to go digital? This isn’t something that bothers me too much. If I’m honest I prefer digital and the flexibility that it offers me anyway, but I bet there’s going to be a mass of disgruntled film enthusiasts out there when this happens.

I even checked the internet. Again, unless you want to buy the very top end kit it isn’t much easier to buy a brand new camera from there either. Not using UK websites at least. Does this mean that we really are going to see the death of film? Once all the second hand kit dries up and every piece of existing kit breaks / wears out is that it? Are we going to be left with lots of rolls of film (that we can apparently buy almost anywhere) but have no way to use them?

If you check out most of the manufacturers websites you can see that there are less and less film cameras in their ranges. Some manufacturers have even stopped producing them all together. Is this the real beginning of the end? Is this even a big deal? Will Mildred get together with Trevor? Who knows? We sure don’t. What do you think?

I’ve been using Canon digital kit for ages and yet I’ve only just come across this. Hopefully you’ll find it as interesting as I do:

http://www.usa.canon.com/content/eos_guidebook/index.html

My kettle broke the other day - a major catastrophe when you drink as much tea as I do. So into town I went to find a Kettle hardy enough to supply me with my daily two gallons. I ended up buying one of those kettles with the filter in it. The water that comes out is almost as clear as if it were fresh from a mountain stream. It boils so fast I barely have time to select a tea bag before it starts to cool down. All in all it’s a magnificent piece of equipment. There is one downside though. With a traditional kettle you want to fill it just before you boil it. With this you need to fill it after you’ve used it to make sure that enough water has filtered before you next want a cuppa. Otherwise there’s a bit of a wait as the water trickles through the filter. Such a small difference and worth adapting to for the spring-like H2O. The trouble is I can’t adapt. I never remember to fill it once I’ve used it. I’m stuck in the habit of using the old kettle. The same is true of my new camera.

I needed to buy a 35mm film SLR for a course I’m taking at the local college. I mostly use my canon EOS 350D so I thought I’d buy the closest thing I could to that – the canon EOS 300x. It is indeed very similar to use but it does of course have it’s differences. It’s driving me nuts! I’ve read the manual. I’ve sat on the couch without film in it practising whilst watching telly. I’ve even tried writing it down to get it to sink in and I just can’t get it. When it comes to crunch time and I have to actually use it to take a photo I go right into auto-pilot and try to change the settings as if it were my digital. Now I know this is nothing to do with the camera and everything to do with me being a useless git, but how do you overcome something like this? Am I destined to be unable to operate my camera without having to really think about it? Am I finally going to get the hang of the film camera and then struggle with my digital? Will I forever be in a limbo state unable to use either camera properly? What can I do?

Please send answers on a postcard to 43 Chilton Aven…actually, you could just use the comment form below. Let us know if you’ve had similar troubles and what you did to resolve them.

I’ve been having to change lenses on my Canon 350D quite a lot recently and no matter how careful I am it seems impossible to stop the dust getting in. There are hundreds of products on the market for cleaning your camera’s sensor but the ones that seem to be the best all require making contact with it. To be honest I’m not thrilled about the prospect of doing that. I just don’t want to risk a slip-up and ruin my beloved camera. So, for the last few months I’ve been trying to give it a clean with my blower. I’m sure you have one of these too - a little rubber bulb with a brush on the end - useless by anyone’s standards. I have decided that enough is enough and today I purchased a Giottos Rocket-air Blower.

If you don’t have one of these then run out and buy one right now! I mean it looks like a rocket for crying out loud! Actually, joking aside, when you use the blower it becomes clear that its looks are a by-product of its engineering. The bulb is erganomic and as large as most people could comfortably hold. The fins at the bottom are there to stand the blower up, preventing the inlet valve from becoming blocked and the nozzle, well OK I think the nozzle is just to make it look more like a rocket but still, it really does seem to be the product of good engineering rather than aesthetics.

With each squeeze you really get the sense that this is a very well put together piece of kit. It’s made of thick, natural, environmentally friendly rubber and feels almost indestructible.

The pressure of the expelled air is substantial. Certainly strong enough to blow away dust that had become statically stuck to my camera’s sensor. I’ve also used it to clean my lenses with equally superb results.

The one I bought was the medium Rocket-air. With that in mind the power of the large one should be very impressive am I’m certain the small version will combine ample oomph with pocket sized portability. They cost around £5 - £10 depending on the model and are available at any good photography store. If you’re like me though and can’t be doing with the trip into town you can have one delivered straight to you door by good old Amazon:

Giottos Rocket-air Blower - small

Giottos Rocket-air Blower - medium

Giottos Rocket-air Blower - large