Tag: stock

Stock photography – how much does it pay?

 Gavin   Sales
Stock photography - Sales volume over time

Stock photography – how much does it pay?

There’s no denying it, the stock photography industry has changed over time. A lot. The advent of the micro-stock libraries a few years ago caused a major upheaval and with prices as low as a few $$ to buy a low res image the traditional libraries had to react or go the way of the dinosaurs.

But how much of an impact has that had on you, the photographer, submitting your images to sell into the visual market place around the world? In the long-term, perhaps not as much as you might think… Continue reading Stock photography – how much does it pay? »

Is everything getting silly?

 Gavin   Journey, Musings

Over the last few days I’ve been having an interesting conversation with a stock library about model releases.

They’re auditing all the images they carry to see if they’ve been correctly annotated. In particular with regard to the simple criteria “if there is a person in the shot you need to state whether you have a model release or not.” It’s easy to do. It’s just a check box at the keywording stage.

My query related to a corner case where there wasn’t a person in the image but rather a body part. Continue reading Is everything getting silly? »

Taking stock of things

 Gavin   Business, Marketing, Tips

Funny business is the stock industry, and by that I mean photographic stock and not the city markets. The role of the stock library is very simple. Its a repository of images that a picture buyer can search to find and buy images for their projects. They supply an enormous range of clients and picture needs from newspapers to advertising to cards and calendars. Every time you flick through a book or a newspaper, or see an advert, card or calendar you’ll probably find the images they use were actually purchased from a stock library rather than being commissioned for the job. That isn’t true in every case but you’d be surprised how common and prolific it is.

If you’re interested in finding out a little more about this field, read on.

Continue reading Taking stock of things »