I found an interesting and in-depth article about stock photography published in two parts by webdesignerdepot.com (Written exclusively for WDD by Gyorgy Ferkete). The articles are focused on microstock photography to cover a larger audience of readers, from beginner to advanced photographers and designers. It's a sort of “summa” of many of the subjects also treated in this blog.
First part: How To Sell Stock Photos – Part 1 by webdesignerdepot.com
- Stock or Microstock? an introduction of what stock and microstock photography mean
- what to submit, subjects that sell, choosing a niche market, where to submit
- Fotolia – Hall of Fame
- Corbis – Popular Photos
- Big Stock Photo – Popular Images
- Shutterstock – Top 50 Images Ever
- License Types and Model Releases
- Title, keywords and description
Take a close look at some of the popular photos on stock photo websites, such as the top 50 or top 100 and their all time best sellers. You can learn a lot from these photos and what buyers of that particular stock photography website are looking for and are willing to buy.
Example of popular photos:
Second part: How To Sell Stock Photos – Part 2 by webdesignerdepot.com
- Rules of composition
- Taking Tack Sharp Photos
- File formats
- Post-processing (noise reduction, sharpness)
For a quality photo, the post processing work should be the absolute minimal, of course not every time we can get away with beautiful photos, so we need to tweak it here and there.
I will present the most common problems that a photographer will encounter and how to fix them, in order to get submitted on stock photography websites.
Good reading and thanks WebDesigner Depot for the authorization of using part of their materials.
