Stock Photography--Anyone Have Experience?

[bgran8]

Hey guys,

I am wondering about getting into stock photography to bring in a little bit of extra money from my hobby. I have looked into it somewhat, but would benefit from someone who has experience making money from selling their photography through stock agencies. Anyone, please feel free to respond if you know the answer. Here are the questions:

1) I am mainly a landscape photographer, but I am guessing these photos are not in high demand, correct?

2) I have dreams of one day selling my landscape photos as fine art (they are sold currently in a shop in Maui, but it's small time). Would selling these photos as stock photography hurt that possibility?

3) How much money can you expect to make per month per 100 photos or so?

4) What do you find sells the best? i.e. generic object photos, photos with people in them, landscape photos, etc.

Thanks!

 

[ajfotofilmagem]

Landscape images are not too sold on an Stock Photo.
Landscape images may be more valued in art galleries. In this case, you would sell the images printed on good quality paper, and limited edition.

Stock Photo primarily sells photos for advertising campaigns. Things as store flyers, political campaigns, Internet sites, and small manufacturers of products that do not want to incur the cost to hire a team of photographer, makeup artist, costume designer, producer, rent a studio.

Imagine the cost to produce photos with a team (described above) is R $ 1,000. As anyone would be willing to pay for photos "generic" that has no use of exclusivity? Depends on the number of distributed leaflets level reporting period, territory where the photos will be used, but it could be something like $ 50 for each photo used in an Stock Photo.
How much of that value comes in the hands of the creator of the image?
Less than half.

This looks very attractive advertising campaigns to cut costs. What kind of picture? Smiling people to consume a product or service. Thoughtful people in front of a computer. People with facial expressions that represent the feelings of a consumer. This type of shot is the best-selling in an Stock Photo.

I read reports of some photographers who make money with stock photos. They are not spectacular photo. They have many thousands of photos, able to serve many different uses. They do not earn fortunes with the "perfect shot", but earn a few dollars with each of the thousands of photos that are used every month.

 

[Halfrack]

Who have you researched as to stock outlets? Take a look at folks like https://tandemstock.com/ and http://www.stocksy.com/ and start finding who you'd be a fit with.

Given you have work hanging somewhere, have you worked to improve or increase where it's available. Are you located in Maui? Have you looked into sites like http://fineartamerica.com/ or http://www.imagebrief.com/ ?

Have you read up on others who put it out there?
http://petapixel.com/2015/04/20/how-i-make-money-as-a-travel-photographer-in-2015/
http://petapixel.com/2013/08/08/a-picture-sells-a-thousand-cents/

Things I would add is be aware of cross-licensing or promotional uses - make sure your stuff doesn't end free.

Best of luck

 

[unfocused]

There used to be a guy on this forum who did a lot of stock photos. I don't think he participates any more.

As I recall, a lot of his photos used visual puns. Things like an ax half covered in dirt (bury the hatchet).

He also concentrated on obscure or minor sports like curling.

I think he did a series using a kettle-ball and flying chalk. Probably the best kettle-ball pictures I've ever seen.

Generic pictures of kids and teachers are good because they are hard to come by in the real world – classroom lighting is usually poor, real classrooms are too cluttered with posters, etc. for a good generic shot, real kids wear shirts with logos and sayings on them, few classrooms have a good cross section of photogenic white, Asian, black and Hispanic kids. Plus, you need to have releases from their parents.

Unusual or rare subjects may be in demand. You probably won't sell a picture of a cardinal unless it's in a top hat and doing a tap dance, but if you had great shot of a Golden Cheeked Warbler it might sell.

The stock agencies also set very high bars for resolution and sharpness. It's an easy way for them to weed out pictures -- not tack sharp, not high enough resolution -- no thanks.

Most of the stock sites have guidelines that will tell you what they are looking for and what they are not accepting. Quite a few say upfront they aren't currently accepting landscapes, flowers, etc. And, yes, you pretty much sign away your rights to the photo when you sign up with a stock site.

 

[Nelu]

Hey guys,

I am wondering about getting into stock photography to bring in a little bit of extra money from my hobby. I have looked into it somewhat, but would benefit from someone who has experience making money from selling their photography through stock agencies. Anyone, please feel free to respond if you know the answer. Here are the questions:

1) I am mainly a landscape photographer, but I am guessing these photos are not in high demand, correct?

2) I have dreams of one day selling my landscape photos as fine art (they are sold currently in a shop in Maui, but it's small time). Would selling these photos as stock photography hurt that possibility?

3) How much money can you expect to make per month per 100 photos or so?

4) What do you find sells the best? i.e. generic object photos, photos with people in them, landscape photos, etc.

Thanks!

There you go: I do landscapes and I have 100 photos on ShutterStock (Nelu Goia) but I`m not exactly active there.
Here is my stats. So, do you think it`s worth doing it? I made $3000 since 2009 on this site alone for photos that otherwise would be just buried on a hard disk...

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Adobe now sells stock photos from shutterstock as well. The good ones all are directed at use by advertisers. Look at them, and you will see that the have a blank area to insert advertising, or they can be used as borders.

They are sorted into categories too. Landscapes work well if they are shot with advertising in mind so its possible to use them in a ad. Photographers must have a use in mind when taking photos for stock. Its tough to just submit good photos for stock, they must work for a buyer.

There are 40 million photos available from Adobe. Don't plan on making any money.

https://stock.adobe.com/

 

[geekpower]

I work for a stock photo company with close to 200 million photos (it's not one of the ones mentioned above, but you can probably figure it out).

We have detailed submission guidelines on the site that will tell you everything you need to know about what kind of photos are in demand, among other things.

As for earning potential, it all depends, of course, on how many photos you sell. It can range from beer money, to a legit full-time income. Some of our contributors do very well, and in fact are so big they employ staff of their own to assist with both shoots and editing before uploading.

Good luck!

 

[bgran8]

Thanks everyone for all of your input. I really appreciate you all taking the time out of your day to answer and help me out.

 

[Zeidora]

I'm not doing landscapes but more specialty natural history for college textbooks etc. Have about 1700 images with almay.com, and strongly recommend AGAINST them. My particular beef is that for fully licensed images they give unilateral discounts usually in the 80% range, and that is before 50% commission; most egregious was a 97% discount! Make about 1-2K/year from it, but have not added any images in years. What's on there is "sunk cost" so just get what I can, but otherwise have no interest in building it. The only "landscape" that sells there is a comparison shot of visible light vs. infra red, shot back in the day on Ektachrome EIR.

If I start again submitting, it will be with CalPhoto, serves educational community, and occasionally someone will pay for commercial use, where I get 100% of sale's price. That gets better bang per image per year than agency "sales". Currently busy with other stuff, but may think about it for retirement. Once in a while I get direct request, last one from Smithsonian for an exhibit; at least they appreciate what and how I shoot.

You may be better off with gallery sales for landscapes, or try to get into a specialized landscape agency. For that your image quality need to be National Geographic cover or better. Landscapes is an utterly oversaturated market, unless you are really at the very top of it.

Good luck and have fun which ever route you are (not) going.

 

[zdenkam]

I do have 11 years of experience... and yes it is possible to make money but you have to be very smart about it. In face, I created a video about this where I honestly try to help new photographers in stock... here: https://youtu.be/10JSRmxG0aA let me know if you have any more questions, I would love to help ou.

 

[Labdoc]

I have an account on adobe stock and they really don't pay well. Mostly pennies per image but I do it for exposure not income. Lots of landscapes and I've sold quite a few, mostly HDR.
https://stock.adobe.com/contributor/207106586/martin?load_type=author&prev_url=detail
My biggest seller is a portrait of a young calf taken with the 5dsr and it's all about the detail. Stocksy will get you more money but you have to apply to be a contributor and they are not taking applications right now. They want mostly people pics doing things. Just opened a shutterstock account and haven't uploaded much, but again I'm not looking for extra income, just exposure. Unless you have a very large portfolio or get famous not seeing a lot of money from stock photos.

 

[triggermike]

Do your research through the various contributor sites - how much they pay, etc. Not going to offer what to contribute - best you browse these sites and you can see the top performers and judge for yourself what sells best.

What I can tell you is there is a bit of work and time required for the submittal process which includes the submittal, a review process for acceptance and an occasional rejection (though there may be more rejections at first until you get familiar with the review process.) Also, some have a number per week upload limit. For these reasons, it can take a while to amass 100 images into your offering (cannot simply send them 100 images.)

Buyers of images do not necessarily pay large sums - all of this depends on the size of the image purchased (images are offered at several resolutions for different $'s) and whether the buyer is part of a subscription plan (and you the contributor allow your images to be part of the subscription plan.) We are talking usually below $10 USD max and your take a fraction of that. Many times under $1 USD.

Good luck.