You learned about different license types, the photo subjects most sought after by stock agencies, copyright, licensing and more.

In this second part, we’ll present the technical and design aspect of stock photography. You, the photographer, will learn the technical skills necessary to improve the quality of your photos in order to be accepted on stock photography websites.

We’ll cover photo composition, file formats, and post processing as well as a short list of insider tips.

Composition

There are times when we look at a photo and we say it’s beautiful, but we can’t say why that is. That is great composition.

Composition is the most important thing in stock photography, but every stock agency has its own guidelines that you should carefully read and examine. Composition, quality and professionalism go hand in hand from a stock agency’s perspective.

Composition is not always as easy as adhering to several rules, because photography could be very subjective and photographers must use their creativity to transmit their messages through their photos.

As with every other aspect of stock photography, when you decide to take a photo for the purpose of submitting it to a stock website, you have to look at what others submitted and what works and what doesn’t.

Stock agencies always welcome fresh new angles in photos where a little creativity is put into that photo and not just the same old boring shot-from-the-front angle. The best way to find fresh angles is to experiment and always think of how you can improve the composition you’re about to shoot. If you’re shooting a flower, try to get on the same level as the flower or shoot far above it.

Of course there are a few rules to keep in mind that it will greatly help improve your chance to be successful with stock websites, but one particular rule tends to be more important than the rest:

1. The Rule of Thirds

According to Wikipedia the Rule of Thirds states that “an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections”.

Essentially it’s not a good idea to put your subject in the center of your photo, because it would create  a snap shot instead of a professional photo. Always to imagine these horizontal and vertical lines when taking shots.

2. Taking Tack Sharp Photos

“Tack sharp photos” is the term that photographers use when they talk about the sharpest photos that you can take with a camera and a lens.

These little things set the professional photographers apart from the amateurs and stock agencies love these.

If you’re thinking it’s not necessary to use a tripod to achieve tack sharp photos, then you’re on the wrong path. A tripod is essential for sharp photos.

You have to eliminate every little vibration of the camera that might prevent taking sharp photos, but using a tripod is not enough. Simply touching the camera and pressing the shutter button can cause tiny vibrations that will be transferred to the photo. To prevent this, use a cable release. Every digital SLR camera nowadays has this feature, so you can easily attach a remote control to it, either wired or wireless. If you don’t want to or cannot use a remote control, the next best thing is to use the camera’s self timer.

Now, the following statements may sound a little silly. If you set up your camera on a tripod and you have a lens with image stabilization or vibration reduction, turn this feature off.

Let me explain why: Manufactures created this feature for situations where your hand holds the camera, but in situations where the camera sits on a tripod and it’s absolutely still, you should turn the image stabilization off to prevent the lens from looking for vibrations in the image. By looking for vibrations, it creates a slight movement in the lens, enough to cause a distortion on the photo.

3. File formats

Many beginner photographers ask this question: What is the best file format for photographs? From a stock agency’s points of view, they recommend file formats that preserve the best quality of the photo.

There are a few commonly used file formats that are also available in digital cameras: Jpeg (JPG), PNG, TIFF and RAW.

The file format requirements usually varies on each stock photography website, but there are a few common steps that you should bear in mind in order to maximize your photo’s quality, which in turn will translate to a successful submission.

The RAW file format is the best to use when taking your photos, but stock agencies don’t accept it simply because it has several disadvantages: Firstly, the file size is too large. A typical RAW image file starts at around 14-15 MB. Secondly, each camera manufacturer’s RAW file format is different. It would be a tedious job for stock agencies to sort through these formats, therefore they simply don’t accept RAW files.

A RAW file preserves all of the information that the lens passes to the camera’s computer, everything from color space to EXIF information. Usually it’s the way to shoot the best quality photos and it’s also good for post processing too.

The Jpeg file format uses the lossy compression methods, meaning that not every piece of information is preserved when saving the photo, and it cripples the quality too, but stock agencies usually prefer this file format.

The best a photographer can do is to shoot photos in the RAW image format, post process it, tweak it and then convert it into a Jpeg with 100% compression quality.

4. Improving Photo Quality (Post Processing)

For a quality photo, the post processing work should be the absolute minimal, of course not every time we can get away with beautiful photos, so we need to tweak it here and there.

I will present the most common problems that a photographer will encounter and how to fix them, in order to get submitted on stock photography websites.

4.1. Noise Reduction

To keep this problem to the minimal or non-existent, you should think of this before you shoot your photos by setting your camera to the lowest ISO speed.

ISO speed is the camera’s sensitivity to light, the higher this number the more sensitive the lens is. This number can range from as low as 50 to as high as even 8000 on really expensive dSLR cameras. If the ISO is set to a high number, the noise which appears on the photos won’t be acceptable for stock photo submissions.

Given the fact that that we can’t always set the lowest ISO considering weather conditions (e.g. rainy day, cloud shade, etc.) we could post process the image to reduce this noise and improve the photo’s overall quality.

Luckily Adobe Photoshop CS3 has a really good noise reduction filter. Consider this image:

In Photoshop go to Filter -> Noise -> Reduce Noise

Set the following values, strength 8, preserve details 75%, sharpen details 30%

The result is shown below. You can clearly see the image is smoother and the noise is reduced significantly.

This technique is fairly simple. You can find a more complex and effective method at cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/image-averaging-noise.htm using the Image Averaging technique.

4.2. Resolution Change

This is not really a post processing technique, but a good tip that you should always take into consideration. Always shoot at the camera’s highest resolution and you can then reduce the resolution if necessary in Photoshop. To do this, go to Image -> Image Size.

One important thing to mention here: don’t ever scale up your photos, because this will result in mediocre quality. Stock agencies will notice this and reject them.

4.3. Sharpness

I will show you a really cool trick that you can use to sharpen your photos by using the Unsharp Mask. The name is a little confusing, but this method works best for me and I consider this technique the best, because it’s easy to apply, resulting in significant improvements.

Let’s take the following image:

We need to change the Image Mode first, so go to Image -> Mode and choose Lab Color

Go to the Channels palette and select the Lightness channel. (If you can’t find the channels palette on the right then go to Window -> Channels to open that window).

Go to Filters -> Sharpen -> Unsharp Mask and adjust the values as you see fit.

Usually, for portraits, the following values works best for me: Amount 130%, Radius 1, Thresold 10

Switch the Image Mode back to RGB by going to Image -> Mode -> RGB. You can see the final result below.

5. Insider Tips

• Always think before taking a shot. Are the light conditions good? Is the subject framed correctly?
• Think of the following rules: Rule of thirds, Golden Ratio, horizontal and vertical symmetry
• A little post processing won’t harm anybody
• If you shoot portraits, always focus on the eyes. Make them pop out of the photo
• Use the highest resolution your camera will allow and always use the RAW file format
• Set the ISO as low as possible, even at night, and just put your camera on a tripod
• Don’t post edit your images in JPEG or other lossy image file formats
• Avoid harsh shadows, distorted colors, under/over exposed images, purple fringing and lens flare

Please follow your own tips and tricks that you use to create great stock photos and leave your comments below…

Never Ending WordPress Business Bundle – only $14!

I’ll also cover a few insider and marketing tips that will help you get accepted and simply create better stock photos.

Simply put, stock photography is a collection of photos that can be used for different purposes under strict or relatively flexible usage licenses. Stock photos include an ever expanding variety of subjects which publishers, advertising agencies or anyone can buy and use.

1. What is Stock Photography?

Stock photography simply works because the end user who needs photos can save time and money by not hiring a photographer. If photographers and their portfolio websites could be considered stores then stock photography websites are the supermarkets of images and illustrations.

It’s a win win situation for all parties involved. Stock photography agencies get to keep a percentage of every photo sold on their website, photographers get the remaining percentage and users get the desired photo.

2. Stock or Microstock?

There are two types of stock photography marketplaces, stock (also called macrostock) and microstock photography websites. Let’s look at the difference between these:

1. Stock photography websites are the traditional photography marketplaces where photo prices range from a few dollars and up to thousands of dollars.

2. Microstock agencies are “the new kids on the block” so to speak and in recent years microstock got a lot of coverage and popularity on the Internet, because photography equipment became cheaper and more professional, therefore more and more people could afford to take professional photos with consumer cameras (digital cameras). This article will focus on microstock photography to cover a larger audience of readers, from beginner to advanced photographers and designers who want to get their ‘hands dirty’ in stock photography.

Microstock was the answer for this niche market, where amateur and professional photos can be sold for a really low price, usually anywhere between 1 to 5 dollars. The idea behind microstock is that if the images are cheap enough, more people will buy as opposed to selling at a higher price to a more restricted number of customers (usually agencies with large budgets). The sellers of microstock photos are usually average users. The system allows not only professional photographers, but also beginners to create a portfolio and sell their photos.

You can make some money out of stock photography, but it’s very hard to make a living out of it, simply because your competition consists of literally tens of millions of other photos in the same marketplace. Let’s do the math, say your photos are sold at roughly $1 per image, and you’d need an average of $100,000 per year to get by, that means that you’d need to sell 100,000 photos per year. If your photos are sold at $1 to $5 dollars a piece, you will only earn a percentage of this, which usually translates to a few cents.

The rate of failed submissions is very high, because stock photo websites are saturated with millions of photos, you either need to submit photos of a completely new, groundbreaking theme or choose a very narrow niche market.

3. What to submit

This seems to be always the first question beginners ask… what to submit? New photographers usually submit everything they have and let the buyers decide what they want. I certainly wouldn’t suggest this approach. Let’s rather look at this from a marketing perspective: What buyers want is usually what stock agencies are looking to buy, so a better approach is to submit what these websites are looking for.

All stock photography websites have guidelines that you should adhere to in order to make a successful photo submission. They usually include a detailed list of what subjects they’re looking for. You should carefully examine this list and filter out your photo collection as well as use this as a guideline to find great opportunities from which you can profit from.

3.1. Subjects That Sell

The majority of successfully sold images contain people. Every statistical research conducted around photos shows that people are attracted to photos that show other people, instead of nature or abstract photos.

Keep in mind that in order for stock agencies to accept photos showing people you will have to send them model releases which include signed agreements.

Take a close look at some of the popular photos on stock photo websites, such as the top 50 or top 100 and their all time best sellers. You can learn a lot from these photos and what buyers of that particular stock photography website are looking for and are willing to buy.

Example of popular photos:

• Fotolia – Hall of Fame
• Corbis – Popular Photos
• Big Stock Photo – Popular Images
• Shutterstock – Top 50 Images Ever

3.2. Choosing a Niche Market

A niche market is a subset of a larger more generic market. Photos targeting niche markets are for example just animal photos or just building photos. According to Wikipedia: “A niche market may be thought of as a narrowly defined group of potential customers”. By choosing a niche market you can double the chances of selling a photo.

Specializing in only one or a few selected niche markets makes sense, because buyers will instantly know that you master the techniques for that specific niche market. On stock photography websites where the competition is really stiff, you have to choose a very narrow niche market in order to achieve many sales.

To sum up, look at the demand, learn from it and try to fill the holes of your chosen niche market.

4. Where to Submit Your Work

There are many stock photography websites where you can submit your photos. In this article we’ll showcase the top stock agencies:

iStockphoto

iStockphoto “is the internet’s original member-generated image and design community. Find your inspiration on the world’s leading royalty-free stock destination”.

This website has a very large database with millions of photos. You can sell your photos for as low as $1. You can earn up to 40% from this price. The site has a complex pricing plan which can be viewed here: istockphoto.com/photographer-royalties.php

Here’s a detailed description as to how to sign up and sell your stock photos: istockphoto.com/sell-stock-photos.php

Dreamstime

Dreamstime “you can find a large variety of Royalty-Free stock images. Thanks to the continual evolution and diversification of digital technologies, we are able to provide images of a very high quality at a completely convenient price”.

The agency works on a credit system. One credit costs $0.99 and a standard image of 1600×1200 pixels costs 3 credits. The contributors share on the sale a photo is 50%. You can view their price plan here: dreamstime.com/sell

Stockxpert

Stockxpert “is a royalty free stock photography community with the goal to provide customers with affordable stock imagery while offering a powerful tool to photographers and digital artists who would like to sell their work”.

Small images, such as 400×300, are sold for $1 and larger 3600×2400 photos are sold for $10. A photographer can earn 50% for each download. For their guidelines have a look at this page: stockxpert.com/support/help/8_1

Fotolia

Fotolia “is the first worldwide social marketplace for royalty free stock images, allowing individuals and professionals to legally buy and share stock images and illustrations”.

The more images you sell, the higher your commission, starting at 33% and up to 50% or 60%. Buying images on this site is a little more expensive than other stock photo sites. The cost of 1 credit is $1 and a standard image costs 9 credits.

Shutterstock

Shutterstock “is the largest subscription-based stock photo agency in the world. Every day we add thousands of photographs, illustrations, and vectors to our outstanding collection of premium, royalty-free images”.

Clustershot

Clustershot “is just a website. It’s not a movement, a fad, or a social experiment. On ClusterShot, you can sell your photos or buy other people’s photos”.

Corbis

Corbis “is a creative resource for advertising, marketing and media professionals worldwide, helping to bring creative work to life with the highest quality photography, footage and rights services”.

5. Before You Submit

Quality:

In order to maximize your chances of success, ensure that every photo you submit is top quality. Quality is the most important criteria on every stock photography site. Do not scale down your photos (making them into a smaller resolution) or scale them up (making them a higher resolution).

Editing:

Be extremely careful how you modify your images in digital photo editors such as Photoshop. Don’t bother to submit over or under exposed images. Also avoid the following photographic errors if you can: lens flare, noise, high contrast and blurs. Stock agencies will normally reject these types of photos.

Copyright:

You should not, under any circumstances, upload photos which are not yours. Also, avoid submitting third party logos and trademarks of any kind. One last thing, avoid taking photos of military buildings as well as buildings and objects where the trademark is visible (e.g. photos of the Apple Store).

6. License Types and Model Releases

Photos are not sold and/or purchased by users, they are licensed. Stock agencies will license your photos and create a binding agreement between you and the stock agency.

Copyright was first drafted in the 1976 Copyright Act, signed by most countries in the world and states that photographs are automatically subject to copyright protection for the lifetime of the author.

A copyright owner has four exclusive rights:

1. To reproduce the copyrighted material
2. To display the copyrighted work
3. To create derivatives of the copyrighted work
4. To distribute the copyrighted material

In most cases you always retain these rights when you submit your photos to stock agencies, but read the contributor agreement very carefully as these rights can be sold, assigned or transferred to a third party.

Licensing is the way in which you allow other people to use your photos. There are different license types that you need to know about before you submit your photos to stock agencies.

Royalty Free (Standard or creative) License

This is the most common form of licensing on stock photography websites. A buyer pays a flat fee for the image and nothing more. For example if a photo costs $1, then the buyer pays $1. The buyer doesn’t have the right to resell the image, only to use it.

Rights Managed

This type of license is more rigid then other licenses, but it gives more options to professional photographers. It can restrict usage to just a few buyers at any given time, for example they can exclude a particular country from using the photos. It is usually much more expensive than a Royalty Free license.

The buyers will pay the base price of the image every time they use the image. This means that if the buyers want to print your image on flyers, brochures, etc. and want to make 100 copies, they will need to pay 100 times the base price of the photo.

Exclusive

This is not really a license, just an extension of the above licenses. Many stock agencies offer this option, which means that if you upload your photo to a stock agency website and make it exclusive you cannot upload that photo on other websites whether it’s a stock photography website or your own personal site.

Model Release

This is a contract in which the person used for the photograph (the model) gives his/her written permission that his/her image can be used by the photographer in a specific way. Each person appearing in a given photo must sign this contract.

This is actually easier than you think and can be as simple as offering something in return, like a free copy of the photo in which they appear. You can find a model release example here

7. Tags and Descriptions

Title

Getting a catchy title for your photos is essential in stock photography. Think of the other millions of photos that you’re competing with. Also, make sure that the title is targeted to your photo and not a meaningless title used just as a marketing strategy.

Tagging

With the help of keywords you can greatly enhance the chances of selling your photos. Consider this process, a sort of mini SEO (search engine optimization). Without tags the website’s built in search engine can’t show an accurate result. If you get your keywords right, you greatly improve the chances of your photo being shown first in the search results. As with any other aspect of stock photography, look at your competition and start by analyzing popular tags. Here’s an example of the popular tags list on Fotolia.

Start with a keyword list that describes your photo:
Query these keywords on stock photo websites and see what comes up. If you found a photo that is similar to yours check that photo’s tags. Avoid using generic keywords such as dog or flower, because stock websites are saturated with these keywords, instead try to think of more specific tags such as “dobermann puppy”. If your photo illustrates people, again be specific and make sure you mention the mood of the people depicted: “Happy man”

Use keyword suggestion tools:
Although these techniques are used in search engine optimization (SEO), it’s perfectly okay to use it to find image keywords too. One particular tool that is worth mentioning is the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. You simply write a few keywords per line and the tool suggests other similar keywords.

Descriptions

Usually, 2 to 3 sentences is best for the description of a photo. If your photo illustrates a location make sure you mention it in your description (or in the photo title), and be as specific as you can.

Don’t write long descriptions, because it’s a fact that users are not reading website content, they scan it. If the website allows it, bold and emphasize important text in your description. Try to capture the essence of the things that your photo illustrates such as objects on the photo, the mood of the photo, and location when necessary.

8. Insider Tips

• Always use quality photos and targeted to the niche market you’re after
• Be creative and always try to improve your techniques.
• Analyze the want list of stock photography websites and make sure you adhere to their guidelines.
• Photos of people sell better than nature photos.
• Choose a few niche markets and stick to them.
• Copy the business strategy of Richard Branson, choose a niche market, find the biggest hole in this market and fill it.
• Experiment with photo types and what type of photo work on which website.
• Read the fine print of contributor agreements.
• Always provide a model release when using photos depicting people, even in the case of photos depicting infants.
• Timing is extremely important as well. The celebration of major events such as Christmas or New Year are usually popular at that specific time of the year only.
• Promote your photos on other websites, like your personal portfolio site.
• Create effective titles, captions and tags.

Written exclusively for WDD by Gyorgy Ferkete.

Do you have experience selling stock photography? Share your tips with your fellow photographers below.

Never Ending WordPress Business Bundle – only $14!