How to Become a Stock Photographer Selling Stock Photos Through a Photography Agency
Do you like taking pictures and consider your photography a serious activity that you try to improve all the time? – So becoming a stock photographer could be a challenge for your future photography.
To become a stock photographer, you must be able to produce a continuous stream of salable, professional-quality images. It is not enough that you have taken 10 photos that you consider salable and professional quality.
When you start to get into stock photography, you need to have hundreds of really good images, just as good as the ones you see published in magazines of many kinds. In fact, you’ll need thousands of salable photos to do well in stock photography, but all stock photographers who come here have to start from somewhere, so don’t feel rejected by this claim.
The most important thing is that you are able to take some types of photographs that are for commercial use and of competitive quality and creativity.
Salable photos are the kind that can be used as an illustration for something. They can be very concrete things, but illustrations of a conceptual nature or moods often work best. Lifestyle stock photos are also in high demand these years.
Each photo must be able to be described with a few tags or keywords found in an image search engine that selects the photos from the image database and displays the results to clients.
When you are sure you have the right type of photos, you will need to find one or more photo agencies.
An alternative would be to start your own photo agency and start selling your photos as stock photos online from your own photo website. This is not the focus of this article, as it will require you to shift your efforts from being a photographer to being a marketer of your images, at least in part, and wanting to face the total competition in the world of stock photography.
Today there are many smaller photo agencies and few really large agencies. In addition to professional photo agencies, you will find a growing number of so-called micro-stock agencies or micro-stock websites. They offer photos for very small fees and most of the people who offer their photos through micro stock sites are amateur photographers, although some are very capable photographers.
How Stock Photography Works
The mechanism of stock photography is to deliver the best and most salable photos to be stored in an image database at an image agency. You will retain your copyright to your images, but you charge the imaging agency with granting its clients the right to use the images after some specific conditions, including paying a fee to the imaging agency.
A typical agreement between the photographer and the photo agency will imply that the photographer receives 50% of each “sold” photograph. Better wording would be “every image rented”, as the customer will only buy the full right to an image on very rare occasions.
In the world of archival photography, payment to the photographic agency and ultimately to the photographer is called copyright. This is the classic model for stock photo use.
Parallel to this model of the so-called licensed stock photography or rights-managed model, there is the model called the royalty-free stock photography model. In this case, the customer buys the right to use the image for whatever purpose he wishes. With royalty-free images there is no report to the photo agency about the actual use of the image and it can be used many times. The downside to this customer model is that many customers may have purchased the same image and used it infinitely many times for different posts. Consequently, viewers of the final posts may not find the images as compelling as if they were viewing a post with new “fresh” images.
The stock photography industry has become an increasingly competitive business in the last decade. Due to the Internet and globalization, everyone can offer stock photography to everyone.
Get accepted by a photography agency
Your first big challenge will be getting accepted by a stock photography agency. Some imaging agencies are general imaging agencies, covering all kinds of valuable business images. Other agencies are specialized agencies, from regional agencies, for example, Antarctica, to very specific agencies that cover a single topic such as auto racing, bird racing, wine or business.
Take the time to research different options. Be Aware Of The Potential Threat To Stock Photographers – Is The Imaging Agency A Financial Success? Photographers complain that they don’t get their money on time, etc.?
Also take into account the aspects of exclusivity. Does he have to be ‘married’ to the photography agency or can he participate in other agencies with other photographs? In all cases, you should expect to have each photo (and its similar shots) only at one photo agency.
Focus your efforts on one photo agency at a time. Be very, very careful with the first submission of a selection of your photograph for it to be accepted.
Read the submission guidelines very carefully and follow ALL specifications. Let others give you a critique on your choice of images before submitting your final edited selection. The response of potential stock image users may be more helpful than the response of other photographers.
Some types of stock photography are inundated with photographer presentations, such as the fields of nature photography and travel photography. Other fields of photography are in higher demand and often higher paying, such as lifestyle stock photography and business photography.
Model release and property release must be in effect prior to filing, if required.
Use the links below to dive into the field of stock photography and become a true stock photographer.
No Comment