the mirrage of stock photography.
By thebeing
@thebeing (657)
Romania
April 14, 2008 2:14am CST
hello all!
i have seen everywhere on the web this advice: "make money with your digital camera with stock photos". Man, i believed that could be a simple way to make money, too. I mean, how hard can it be to shoot stock photography? well, not that IT CAN BE, but IT IS very very hard. Why? well, not every flower, not every rainbow, not every landscape can be a stock photography that would and will be accepted by a stock photo website. Nowadays, even the GOOD pictures from these categories are denied. They want pictures of doctors, bussiness men (and women), and all that .... which you can't possibly shoot in your everyday life.
So, i'm curious to hear some other opinions. Have you been succesfull with you picture selling? What type of picture was it? How many pictures did you sell?
I'm thinking of starting a blog/website, to try and sell the photos i make. I really need the money... but i don't think anyone will buy any of my photos... eh, we'll see.
2 people like this
2 responses
@jayperiod (870)
• United States
14 Apr 08
Selling photos on microstock sites can be very frustrating. The lighting, composition and subject need to be near perfect. Pictures of some locations can sell well. I have sold quite a few of the Parthenon in Nashville. I also sell photos of food fairly well. Again, though, they need to be near perfect on the lighting and noise levels.
Another thing to do is think seasonal. Just recently I uploaded several photos of tax forms. I used different compositions and they have done fairly well.
The error is that those sites you mentioned make it sound like anyone with a "point-and-shoot" digital camera can make money, but the cold, hard truth of the matter is that it takes very expensive equipment, camera and lighting, to make money.
@hcromer (2710)
• United States
16 Apr 08
I have found the competition for selling stock photography to be a little ridiculous also. I just joined Shutterstock a couple of weeks ago and all of a sudden I feel like none of my pictures that I loved are worthy of their site (their site that I had never even heard of before I decided to sell my photography as stock). You might be able to do well on your own, the only thing is you would have to push your photography a lot harder and do a lot of the marketing that the stock website would have done for you. Good luck if you decide to try it! :)
1 person likes this
