An Online Guide to Stock Photography

Tuesday March 9, 2010

Stock Photography Tips: Creativity vs. Saleability

One thing that seems to be a bit difficult for photographers just entering the stock photography marketplace, is the difference in the way your photographs need to be taken. Most photographers are creative people at heart. And often they've learned many ways to make their photos much more creative and artistic. Indeed, these are often defining marks of a great photographer.

Unfortunately, there's not as much room for artistic or creative shots in the stock photography world. By definition, stock photos must be fairly generic in order to sell well. With micro stock photography particularly, the goal is to sell one picture as many times as possible, over a long period of time. And doing this requires a slightly different approach to your photography.

When creating photos for stock usage, you need to keep the end users in mind. And since stock photography is most often used for advertising, you need to think about the saleability of the photos you'll be shooting.

A gorgeous picture of a field of daisies might be wonderful as an art print or poster, but does it have much commercial value? In other words, are there many ways for that picture to be used in advertisements, brochures, or other promotional creatives? Unfortunately the answer is not usually.

In fact, the types of photos that sell best in the stock photography industry, might be those considered mundane, boring, or generic by creative photographers. A calculator on a plain white background... people shaking hands... a piece of fruit.

Conceptual photos sell quite well in the stock photography world, as do people shots. People who look like business professionals do the best, and conceptual photos that fit into a wide variety of business settings sell quite well too.

Objects on plain white backgrounds can seem to be the most boring subjects around, but they sell quite well on royalty free stock photography sites because they have such a wide variety of uses. One apple for instance, isolated on a white background, can be used alone, mixed in with other pictures to create a collage, or "inserted" into another generic picture to make something completely new.

It can be used for a variety of types of creative too: Education, health, fitness, nutrition, or even gardening or pesticides.

If that same apple was photographed creatively - say as a still life with pretty jars, crockery or baking supplies - it's use would be much more limited, thus it would most likely sell much less often.

The same applies to people. As boring as it might sound, posing people against a plain white or neutral colored background will generate more stock photography sales for you, because those pictures could be incorporated into a variety of themes and topics.

Technically you're not giving up your creativity by creating these types of shots, it's just a different type of creativity and that type is difficult for some photographers to adjust to.

Another example is depth of field. Many photographers take beautiful pictures of something, and purposely use low depth of field to make it much more creative. Often times unfortunately, these works of art may be rejected by stock photography agencies, because there is not enough clarity to make the photo useful for designers.

One other creative technique that doesn't always work well for stock photography is cropping. This is often done when taking pictures of people: The photographer gets in really close, and makes a gorgeous photo of a person or object. Often this is done at the expense of some part of the object or person you're photographing. With people for instance, close shots frequently don't include the entire head, or an ear may not show in the picture.

Stock photography agencies may reject these types of close shots often, because they're considered to be cropped too closely. You see designers prefer to choose the cropping themselves. So they look for stock photos that have the entire object or person in place, then they do their own creative work with cropping or not cropping.

The other reason cropping is not overly popular with stock photography sites is "copy space". The term copy space refers to blank space on a picture, where words can be inserted. Think of a magazine cover... it may have a wonderful picture on it, but there's also many words, sentences and phrases too. Magazines, art directors and designers often select pictures based on how much room they need for text. In other words: They need copy space on the photos, so they'll bypass any that are cropped too close because there is no where to put text on the picture.

So be prepared for rejections. Particularly when you're just starting out in stock photography and particularly if you have a very creative photography style.

© 2006, Kathy Burns-Millyard. All Rights Reserved.

Stock Photo Galleries

Stock Photography Articles...

• What is Stock Photography

• Photographers: Rights Managed vs. Royalty Free Micro Stock Photography

• Stock Photography Tips: Creativity vs. Saleability

• Can Photographers Make Money With Stock Photography?

• Stock Photography of People: Model Releases

• Are You Using Stock Photos In Your Business Illegally?

Royalty Free Stock Photo Portfolios

• Dreamstime

• Shutterstock

• Fotolia

• Bigstock

About This Site...

This website is here to help new photographers and business owners learn some of the basics of selling or using stock photography. My portfolios are no longer available here, instead they have been condensed onto my main Electronic Perceptions website.