Silver Soph - 15th August 2007

Well it’s still a couple weeks until I start traveling and using this blog for its intended purpose so I figure I may as well throw in a few shots here and there as I get them edited.  Here are a couple pics from a shoot I did about a year ago with the scrabble genius Soph (yeah it’s taken me this long to get them edited - I’m slack ok?)

The setup for this shoot was an overhead bar above and behind Soph with two large pieces of silver sheer cloth hanging from it and a black backdrop behind them.  Lighting was 3 strobes in total, one to each side of and behind Soph (bare bulb) and another in front of her, a bit higher than head height firing through a snoot aimed at her face/upper torso.  It was then a matter of playing with some big industrial fans that were set up, one behind the material blowing it forward and some smaller, non pedestal units in front of Soph blowing up.

Model = Soph 

Makeup = Danielle

 

 

 

So You wanna earn money from your photos? (part II)

Microstock: The players

 

Shutterstock

Now if you’ve taken even a cursory glance at the table on the previous page it should be immediately evident that if there is one stock site you want to be on - this is it.  There isn’t too much to complain about with shutterstock, sure they are a little more discerning with their content than the other sites (bar Istock & SXP) but when you have the industry presence they obviously do, you can afford to be.  In fact it could well be part of the reason why they do so well - customers are going to go where the quality is, so tougher acceptance hoops to jump through can really only be a good thing for the contributers as a whole.  Uploads are as simple as FTPing a batch of shots, then assigning categories (1 or 2) for each shot and if applicable a model release.  Submitting could perhaps be made a touch swifter with some sort of bulk categorising/release assigning feature but that’s a reasonably small gripe given all the reasons ($) to be on here.  If you are looking to be a microstock shooter, you have to be on here, it’s as simple as that.

Dreamstime

Ok so Shutterstock is a done deal, but if Shutterstock is number one on your list then for my money Dreamstime comes in at number 2.  Now I hear what you are saying “but look Ben, your own table shows us that Istock has earned you more money both overall and per shot per month! Are you crazy?”.  Well yes, this is true (just ask one of my ex’s!), but in terms of effort vs payout Dreamstime wins hands down.  They are if anything a touch easier to submit to than SS as when categorising each shot you have the ability to just copy the categories from a previous shot, this makes things a tiny bit quicker.  They have a slightly longer approval time than SS but what’s a couple days when the shots will be earning you money for years down the track?

 

Istock

For my number 3 vote I really wish I could go with SXP because I love some of the things they do but well, you just can’t argue with numbers ($) and Istock has them.  Considered by many to be the first, the biggest and the best it certainly does sell a few pics (once you jump through the ridiculous hoops they set up to get them on there).  First of all there is no FTP, they are the one site on this entire list without it, so you have to manually upload each shot individually from a html upload page.  Then there are the upload limits, which although they’ve just been increased are still far lower than any of the other sites here.  I won’t bother listing them here as they tend to change more often than my car breaks down (and yeah - I drive a piece of shit).  Then there are the model releases, do you think they save them in a handy folder somewhere?  Of course not, got 20 pics of the same model?  Well you just have to upload that same model release document 20 times.  Then there is the ‘disambiguation’ process, what this means is you have to go through each keyword and tell the stupid computer what it means.  For example does ‘orange’ mean the color or the fruit? does ‘breakdown’ mean your car has stopped or you’ve just tried to submit 20 shots in a row to Istock?  Another factor that doesn’t help with time vs payout is the large amount of rejections one gets from here, although that’s the one thing I don’t really have a problem with.  To be honest half the time I get rejections from them are when I secretly knew the shot wasn’t good enough to upload anyways but figured I’d try my luck.  Good once you get the shots on here, but if your work is a little below standard or you just don’t like beating your head against a monitor in frustration then I’d pop this site a couple down your list of update priorities.

 

Stock Xpert

These guys have done a bunch of stuff right, first off is the (unique) ability to upload shots and have them approved BEFORE you go to the bother of assigning categories etc.  The one exception being model releases, if your shot requires one then you have to attach it before it will be reviewed.  Second thing right is the bulk editing tool, it allows you to tick off any number of shots in a folder and assign categories, model releases, descriptions, keywords & titles to all simultaneously.  Note that you don’t HAVE to do all these things, you can mix and match what you are editing, so you can just do categories, or just model releases - brilliant.  The combination of these two features means that even though they are pretty picky with the shots they accept, submitting is quite easy and painless.  For the most part you don’t have to put any time at all into your submissions until you know they are good enough for the site and going live - this saves a lot of time.  My only gripe with them is that along with Bigstock they have some outdated beliefs about the human body - in a forum thread about why they don’t accept nudes their admin actually made the comment “I mean what are you going to use them for apart from your own enjoyment? :D”  which I must admit I find damn near offensive.  Once they grow up and join the 21st century the site will be nigh on perfect.

 

 123 RF

Next up is 123 RF, I’m giving them a higher spot than Fotolia simply because they are so easy to submit to, FTP up a batch of images, go in and assign model releases and you are done.  Well that’s assuming you’ve been smart and pre keyworded all your images in photoshop or other software before uploading them to the different sites (more on this next article).  There are no categories, no lengthy drawn out processes and almost no rejections (not necessarily a great thing in my book but perhaps a good confidence builder for those starting out).  This one could even be a couple spots higher in this order simply because of how easy it is.  It has also really picked up in sales for me this last month or two, if that keeps happening it will be a winner of a site. 

 

Fotolia

There isn’t too much great to say about Fotolia, some people seem to get good sales there but I wouldn’t call mine all that crash hot.  With a submission process that is only beaten by Istock’s at being a pain in the ass it doesn’t seem all that time efficient to upload here in comparison to the above sites.  The problem with the submission process here is that we have a prioritising system where you have to go through your keywords and sort them in order of priority.  When you are submitting a large amount of shots this quickly blows out to a VERY large amount of time.  There may be daylight between Fotolia and Istock with regard to submission ease but there is also daylight between Fotolia and all the other sites - just in the opposite direction.  On top of this the whole site has a clunky feel and is quite slow to load.  Still if you have your keywords, titles and descriptions already done you may as well upload here for a few extra dollars from shots you’ve already put the hard yards into.

Big Stock Photo

Last up is Bigstock and they are easy enough to submit to but if you have a look at the sales table from the previous page the reason for their position on the bottom of this list is clear to see.  No real problems (aside from the old fashioned view on nudity that they share with SXP) but given the poor sales they are a solid last place for me.

In the next part of this article I’ll be giving some tips and tricks I’ve picked up so far on shooting for and workflow in stock. 

<—Part I     Part III —>

So You wanna earn money from your photos?

 Quick links for photographers:

Shutterstock            Stock Xpert           Bigstock

Dreamstime              123 RF                  Fotolia

Istock   

 

My Introduction to MicroStock Photography

 

A few months back, around the beginning of the year (2007) I decided to do a little experiment and post some shots up on a couple microstock sites.  I didn’t expect much out of it as my work was mostly fashion and art nudes, not drops of water, mobile phones or business people shaking hands.  Nevertheless my shots started to sell better than I’d expected and so I delved a little deeper into this experiment.

To be fair I really haven’t put in all that much effort into it thus far, perhaps over the course of the year it would have averaged out to around 5-10hrs a week in submitting, keywording and editing (bear in mind this doesn’t include shooting and shoot organisation time).  I’ve really treated stock only as something to do with work I’ve shot anyway just to get a little more income out of it. I’ve never done any specific stock shoots and only once or twice modified planned shoots to include specialist stock work.  I’ve simply shot what I normally shoot and then posted it afterward.

But it is exactly this freedom that I enjoy about stock.  You can shoot whatever you want, and so long as the results have quality it seems they will sell.  In just over 6 months I’ve now raised my stock income to a point where I can mostly give away my fashion/nude work (models really give me the shits sometimes) and should be able to sustain myself travelling around SE Asia (albeit on the cheap).  A feat I’m actually quite delighted with considering the relative neglect I’ve shown my stock portfolios.

Now before we get into specific sites or tips etc I thought I might post up a comparison table I put together of the different sites I submit to:

 

This table is designed to give you an idea of the relative performance of the different micro stock agencies.  The %income columns should be obvious but I’ll add that all percentage figures are rounded off for ease of reading, so they don’t always add up to exactly 100.  The $/month/photo columns provide a great way to see just how much money is made on each site per image per month.  These are my personal figures and of course you may find yours vary greatly from these, either higher or lower, depending on the saleability of your images.  However they may still serve as a guide to comparing the different sites, as each of these sites has had roughly the same shots submitted to them (with some exceptions we’ll deal with in the next part).  The ease of submitting number is merely a number I came up with to give you an idea how simple the process is to submit work to each site - 10 being the quickest/easiest and 1 being the most convoluted.  Lastly is my acceptance ratio, fairly obviously this is a percentage figure of roughly how many of my submissions make it live on each site. 

Now on to part II for a closer look at each site.

Part II —>

Weekend up the coast 02-07 August 2007

Spent the weekend (thurs night - tuesday) up the coast at Jem’s place.  Was largely a lazy bastard during this time but I did manage to take some abstract shots of some of Kel’s hippie crystals and then shoot some kite boarders one of the afternoons.

Lismore Uniting Church 13th November 2006

While doing my aerial photography work around northern NSW I came across this amazing old church in Lismore.  I’m not a religious man by any means but I’ve always been somewhat fascinated with these beautiful old buildings.  Ryan, my trusty pilot was driving at the time and I made him pull over so I could jump out and snap off a few frames.  The weather was absolutely perfect for the mood I wanted to achieve.