Stock Photography - Waste of Time?

icor1031 wrote in post #15620965
Is it a waste of time to take shots for stock photography websites, as a source of extra income?

Good images last forever, and so you could collect on it for your entire lifetime - as I understand.

However, do they actually sell? Is it at all worth the time invested?

Thanks.

First read what picture will be accepted. You'll realize if something or someone is on the picture you would have to provide paper work with signed permission often.
If you took house picture you can't sell pictures without owner permission. For every person within the frame you would have to have permission signed.
Then you would have to clean the picture to make it noise free and if some logos are in the frame you must mask them. So, you have to like photoshop because you are going to spend a lot of time with it to make picture submitable.

Thinking about Microstock? Some things to ponder:

What sells mostly at stock sites?

Who sells stock photographs?

Getty/Flickr interesting discussion

As a video editor/producer (my real gig), I have spent a lot of time browsing through libraries for shots I need. I still use stock libraries as I don't always have time or budget to go shoot stuff myself.
The one suggestion I would make to anyone wanting to get into selling is to find local companies or people who use stock images on a regular basis and find out what they are looking for.
And from my part of the industry, I need people. I'd say 80% of the stock images I have purchased have been business-attired people doing things in offices. Computer, white board, phone call, conference rooms, lunch rooms, etc. And the most frustrating thing is to have the right setting but one angle or one person as my only choice. In other words, hire bunches of actors, get a location for a full day and shoot every conceivable angle and combination possible. Not cheap up front but for the type of work I do those pics would be worth the effort.
The other thing I use a lot is interior spaces as backgrounds for green screen work. This means very natural looking, eye level standing or seated angles and no super wide shots. Too many shots try to get an entire room by using a fisheye or superwide which distorts and setting the camera 8' in the air.
I do training vids for major companies and this is what I'm looking for. There's a LOT of other companies like me out there doing this kind of work so find out from them what is needed and provide it. That's how I would go about selling stock images. Not exciting as a photog but we're talking about making money, not art.

I've been with dreamstime for 2 years now, and for me it's less about money, and more about getting more exposure as a photographer in a very different way then say posting it on Flickr. It forces you to polish your skills as a photographer. In my experience, making photos specifically for microstock is not worth it - you'll probably get 5$ for a photo in its lifetime. I end up submitting photos which I'd make anyway - so I don't consider my time wasted even if I'll earn 5$ or so, with hours spent on making it.

At this point, I have 70 photos accepted, and I am making 20$ a month on average. I noticed that certain kids of photos sell tens of times better than more traditional stuff (like beautiful landscapes). Specifically, something in demand, and which only few photographers have access to. For me, it's IT photos (inside data centers mostly) - they sell probably 20x better than anything else I'm shooting. One of my IT photos was bought 50 times, and earned almost 200$.

jra wrote in post #15622316
I'll chime in as someone who sells stock.......Photograph​y is my sole source of income and I use stock as something to do when I have nothing else to do. It can (and does) earn a little extra money for me......just to give you some perspective, I think I've earned about $400 over the last two months after commission fees.....not much but I'll take it. Some months I get nothing, other months I get a nice surprise. That said, IME, making any money and realizing regular sales with stock images takes a huge library of quality salable stock images that number in the thousands. It takes quite a bit of time to get things rolling.
When I shoot stock, I take the time to put together a plan to create images that I think have selling potential.....simply uploading a hard drive of all of your useless images you have no need for will rarely create sales. It takes time and commitment along with a vision for what's in demand.....and even then, the payoff is pretty small. IME, for most people, getting a part time job delivering pizza's or bagging groceries would be a better way to make a few extra bucks......at least there, you're guaranteed an hourly wage.

the unvarnished truth - but photography is more fun than bagging groceries or delivering pizza !

icor1031 wrote in post #15622336
Who do you sell with?

Also, you said $400 in 2 months... about how many pictures do you have up? And when a picture is sold, that same picture may be sold again to someone else.. right?

Thank you!

Sorry about the long response time......but, to answer your questions, I sell with Alamy, I have about 1300 stock images for sale and yes, images can be sold over and over for the most part. That said, if you want any success at all, I will stress the fact that selling stock images almost requires that you approach the subject as if you're trying to sell stock images. While a big stock library is an important factor, the number of images becomes irrelevant if you're posting up stuff that has absolutely no stock demand. A smaller library of relevant material is far more valuable than a large library of irrelevant material......that said, I'll stand by my original response that if you're goal is to make a few extra bucks, the time is usually spent better elsewhere at a part time evening job (at least for the vast majority of people)

As someone that's new to stock and kind of new to photography, i'd place stock photography at the higher end of the skill level.

Why do I say this? Because you need to be technically perfect at everything. Subject matter, exposure, composition, recent events, upcoming events, post processing and everything else that goes into a professional looking image.

i've seen videos, i've read blogs, and bought ebooks, and they all say "anyone can get into stock photography, all you need is a camera and good lighting" I'm sorry but that throw away ideal is just simply not right.

I think you need to understand all the principles of photography, how light effects a subject, and how to create an image that tells a story, conveys a message or provokes thought. If you think that buying a camera and taking pictures is going to be enough then it's not.

I'm on Alamy, Shutterstock, Fotolia, Bigstock, Can Stock Photo and have failed the iStock submission twice, I can tell any new person getting into it, to be prepared for those images that all your friends say is perfect, to be shot down in flames on these places. It really opens your eyes, and takes you down from that higher place your peers, family and friends put you on.

It's been the most stressful journey in photography i've ever been through and if you don't have proper lighting, and you're images are borderline with technical detail then you're going to struggle, which in turn will really deflate your confidence.

On the flipside, if you are determined, and can take rejection with a pinch of salt, then go for it. If you have the time to gather thousands of images, and I mean you're going to need thousands of images, then go for it. However, if you are the type of photographer, that wants to make some pocket money from a few hundred images that meet their submission criteria, you might find your images (unless they are totally different to what's on there) drowning in a sea of the same old stuff.

Don't go on and see what's there, that's the worst thing you can do. You end up trying to emulate what sells well. Take the best pictures of what you do best, and as long as it tells a story, invokes a thought process in people, and you'd buy it, then you're on to a winner.

I'll probably start a fire with this one, but based on my experience over the last 3 months, this is the conclusion i've come to.

Stock photography wesbites demand the best, and remember it's photographers at their peak level that review these images, and if they see that you took no effort to snap the pic, then they won't even look at it twice. I've tested this deliberately and it's quite amazing how some images get accepted by some and not others. There's no pattern to it.

The harder the image is to get, the more it will sell. Just my observations

Stock photography could be a living when the min standard of kit was medium format film.

Now, nearly everyone with a digital SLR thinks they could be a pro(consider how dread full the majority of images posted on this website are) and think their pictures of say the Manhattan Skyline could easily be sold by a Stock Agency, or that picture of a dollar bill in autumn leaves.

The game has now changed in that the Agencies can display instantly 100,000s of images to their clients and can get away with paying small sum to their contributing photograhers.

I think that if you set out to make a living from Stock you are going to go broke, well your gear will fall apart because you wont earn enough to cover depreciation.

You either treat photography as a hobby and submit exceptional work to the agencies. And be self-satisfied with the warm feeling that someone has chosen you work over the rest of the world to fill a corner of the publicity brouchure.

Or you might make a living in another part of the photography area and submit work from that area.

The alternative is to corner the market on say URban London, or Highland Life and get a web-prescence and publicize yourself to publishers and printers and graphic artists.

The best one I have come across are ariel shots of cities. High outlay but not much competition.

You have to try to manufacture a new business for yourself if you want make a living from Stock Photography.

I looked at selling stock photography. IMO, unless you have some compelling work that nobody else has available, I wasn't seeing any worthwhile $$ coming in. This is how I put it together.

Go out for half or full day taking photos using your own expenses, worse if I have to travel far away for the shot.

Spend hours post processing the image to perfection as I was told the requirements are quite strict.

Spend more hours uploading to the agent.

All this and a photo could sell for as low as $10 up to several hundred. Like I said, you need photos that are in need and very, very good.

After all that I equate a whole day of expenses could run into several hundred locally and thousands if I travel to the other side of the country to photograph subjects that don't exist here.

There are many successful stock photographers and they are successful because their work is amazing and they have built a relationship with buyers. For what its worth, IMO, it can be a waste of personal time and resources.

I have a real life example.

Have a photo of a fish sitting in a plastic tub freshly caught by a trawler. A well known agency basically said, I would get about $25 for it if someone contacted them. i contacted personally a fish co-op and showed them the photo. I was given $125 for the same photo. They could have gone to the agent and only paid $25. Was it worth my while going to a stock agent?....hell no!

I sold another photo from just calling a person whom I assumed would be interested and got $300. The photo took 30mins of my time(taking and post editing) 30mins=$300

If in you travels you manage to discover a hidden secret herd of purple lamas and you are the only person in existence to know about them. Yes, you will make heaps on the photos, tens of thousands, why? nobody else has those photos, nor can they try to create similar, you only know where the lamas live.