Stock Photography

Question> Can I make money selling my photos at a stock photo agency?

I took some seminar courses in NYC on becoming successful with stock photography. Yes, there are many photographers that still do this primarily for a living and make good money at it too. Some of these top earners have way over 400,000 photos in circulation and a studio staff to help them out. They have developed a style and a really good sense of what are the most desirable kind of photos that sell the best.

Two of the speakers at the seminar now even have their own family members that are currently building up their own separate photo collections because it is such a successful business model that they pass it on to their own relatives.

They have developed it into several similar systems that they explained at the seminars. It really works. I only a small number of photos in my libraries (still building them up) and after implementing their system I ended up quadrupling (and still growing) my sales in a few months.

A big part of it boils down to a game of numbers. The more photos you have in the stock library, the more money you make. Once you reach a particular number, then you start replacing the lowest earning photos with photos that will be about subject matter and style that has proven to be more successful. You end up building up the successes and removing the low selling photos from your library. After a while, the photographer can stop and the checks just keep coming in on their own consistently. That is when you start to work on the next stock agency.

Question> I submitted photos to a Photo Stock Agency. I sent 10 photos taken with a 5D & 30D all at ISOs of 100-400, with exposures very close to “as shot”. Why were so many of them rejected?

Several major points when I shoot for any stock agency submission:
1. Try to shoot ISO 100 whenever possible to minimize digital noise (its called grain noise in the film world). If you have to shoot at higher than ISO200 then consider some noise reduction (I’ve had limited success with marginal photos).

2. Always shoot RAW and never sharpen a photo. Shooting RAW gives you extra detail and less digital noise. Sharpening a photo will almost always guarantee a rejection. Sharpening multiple times creates artifacts that can be easily seen. Let the end user do the final sharpening to their own preference as their last step.

3. Make sure that your lens and sensor are always clean before you even take the first shot. I like to use my LensPens because they are so quick to use, handy, and I get good results consistently.

4. Stock agencies looooooove macro shots of non-flower and non-bug subjects. Some of my best sellers are macro close-ups of watch faces, pencil tips, crayons, color paper clips, marbles, etc… The possibilities are endless.

5. Make sure your lighting is lively and contrasty. They will reject almost anything that has flat lighting or where the contrast has a dull grayish look to it. Also make sure that your white balance looks good. This is where RAW really shines because you can easily make adjustments before converting to jpg’s.

Just keep on trying and you will develop an eye for these things before submitting.