Around the Web- talking stock
Many professionals and as many hobbyist are considering supplementing their income with stock/microstock photography. I do that myself. It requires some skill and certain persistance, but is also well travelled road, so why not use experience of others?
For those interested, here is a collection of some useful links. You will find here posts and articles discussing the business model of stock agencies as well as practical tips in this week’s collection from Around the Web.
- For total newbies, Virtual Photography Studio put up a starting kit, including a video explaining what microsotock is, along with few links to useful tutorials to get you going.
- Two-post series written for Digital Photography School by Dale Wilson discusses the economical consideration of submitting images to microstock. Part one explains the revenue models, part two talks about the history of stock agencies and how the market was changing over the years. Be ready for some hard truths!
- Perhaps directed more towards traditional stock photographers, John Lund brings up few important things to consider before choosing the stock agency to work with.
- Soctt Wyden Kivowitz did a short Q&A with iStock photo exclusive photographer Nicole S. Young, who also authored great e-book on selling images to microsotcok agencies, “(micro)STOCK: From Passion to Paycheck”. Nicole knows ins and outs of iStock, and shares her experience freely.
- Luis Alvarez wrote a guest post for Microstock Diaries, outlining the stock photographer survival guide in the times of commoditization of the industry.
This post is not intended to be a discussion of ethical issues of existence of stock, and especially (micro)stock companies. And these days, not only some more “traditional” stock companies seem to be geting the heat as well (take Getty for example and its recent scandal).
The image to accompany this post is one of my most popular with Shutterstock. I have a lot of images of random object on white seamless backgroud, which sell rather way- including a collection of my Mom’s flowers and vases.
