Microstock Libraries

To put this in context - it was written for this thread - http://www.mu-43.com/f35/shutter-stock-rejections-17534/index6.html

"Microstock libraries do like "bright" images. They are not too keen on "moody" "dramatic" etc. Mainly because of the markets they do best in. For example, travel images for brochures, on websites etc. need to be drenched in sunlight, with few or no shadows.


They also like "conventional" colours.


A lot of the reason for this is that many of them, iStockphoto being the obvious example, were set up by graphic designers for graphic designers. On the whole, they are looking for clean, "straightforward" images that they can then use in their "creations".


There is also the notion that most images sold are "upbeat" "positive" etc. I do sell some images that show the "darker" side of life, but on the whole its images that show the world and its people as happy, confident and above all "clean"!! Business and lifestyle images have to show, young, attractive, enthusiastic people, who like nothing better than rushing to their desk, or to school or caring for their equally young, attractive, clean families. Even the oldies have to look "young" if you know what I mean.


There is very little opportunity for reality to impinge on this dreamy idyllic lifestyle, where the sun is always shining and everybody is happy and smiling, all the time. Think toothpaste commercials and you'll get the idea. Consequently I used to call these images "teeth shots" because everybody has pristine white molars. This spills over into everything else. I've said before that I sell a lot of interior property shots, and I make sure that they are "clean" too. I clone out anything that ressembles the reality of how we all live. Its "show homes" full of "show people". Think Stepford Wives and you are in the ball park.


OK, this probably sounds very cynical. But think how people react to advertising. If they open a travel brochure and see beautiful lit landscapes with dramatic thunderous skies, they may not have a photographers perspective on that, but think Oh-Oh, the weather looks a bit "iffy" there.


If people are contemplating looking for a new home, do they want to see that "lived in" look, or a clean, bright environment.


And that is the bottom line. In some way shape or form, these pictures are mostly used to advertise something, to promote something or to sell something.


However, other non-microstock libraries, have opportunities for different kinds of images. There are opportunities for editorial and yes, even social documentary images to find a market. But this isn't with Shutterstock etc. They do have them, but I've had emails from them saying, just clone out a trademark, remove this and that and you have a much more saleable image.


I did say in a previous post that Stock Photography doesn't have much to do with art, and in fact I would describe it as much more of a craft or a skill. But then thats nothing new. Most commercial, fashion, portrait, wedding or advertising photographers are trying to present the client or product they are photographing in the best possible light most of the time. Annie Leibovitz used to shoot grainy B/W for Rolling Stone Magazine, she now shoots high-gloss fantasy images for Vanity Fair, with a substantial increase in her fees.


So do these Microstock libraries want perfection on a budget? Well of course they do. They want wonderful images that leap off the screen and they make no concessions concerning the limitations most of us work under. Before you send out an image, have you thought to yourself "I can't get it any better"? Do you think to yourself "Wow thats a great picture"? Then reduce it to the size of a website thumbnail and ask yourself, "Does it still look impressive"? "Would I want to click on it and see the larger version" If the answer to any of these questions is NO then you need to address that.


It used to be that Stock Libraries were populated with "extras" "not quite made it" "also-rans" and similar types of shots. I myself was guilty of that 20 years ago when I started this. But not anymore. Never was the phrase "Give it your best shot" more appropriate."

Yesterdays sales

Continuing the Stock Photography theme of recent days. These are some of yesterdays sales from one library - Shutterstock.

These are shot on 35mm film, 645 film and digital cameras from 5MP to 16MP. The oldest was shot in 1991, the newest a few weeks ago.

PIcture Library Portfolios

I've added some picture library links to the site. As you can see from those and the above example, selling pictures online is all to do with how your images look as thumbnails. When you click on a thumbnail the example image is not much bigger and certainly smaller than the pictures I post here and on flickr.

Its from these that clients make a decision as to whether to buy that image or not.

So as far as the picture buyers are concerned, the camera used is irrelevant. The exif data is stripped out anyway in most cases when they download the images, so they will never get to see what camera the photographer used, or details like aperture, shutter speed, focal length etc.  


Where all of that does become important is when you submit images to the library itself. Since the image has to get on the site to sell, thats when the quality / size issues etc. become important and thats why the quality of the camera and the lenses used can make a difference as to whether a file gets accepted or rejected.

Stock Photography

Over at mu-43 there was a discussion on stock photography and someone just starting out and getting a lot of rejections.

I wrote the following as a reply.

"I make 90% of my living from this, and have been doing it for over 20 years, so here are a few tips that might make it easier if you're trying to get started.

1)You have to spread yourself as wide as possible. Don't go with just one library, go with as many as you can. I have work with 16 currently.

2)You need quantity AND quality. There's a rough guide that says that once you have a certain quantity online, you can expect to make an amount equal to $1 per image per year. However you need 1000's up for sale before this kicks in.

3)Its a long term job. It can take years before you start to make any real money. People think its an easy option to make some money. Its not. It takes as much work and persistance to become successful, as it does to make a living from portraiture, weddings, advertisng, commercial etc.

4)One rejection is nothing. My first library wanted to see 1000 "sellable" shots before they took me on. The first batch was turned down, so I had to shoot another 1000!

5)Have a good look at whats out there. Check out all the sites, looking at what the competition for your kind of image is. Do you have better shots? If not why would anyone buy yours?

6)Ignore the fact that somebody on the internet said your pictures are good, ignore the fact that you have taken competition winners. Stock is about what designers and picture editors want. In virtually all cases, your images are there to serve the text, not vice-versa. Look in newspapers, magazines and on websites. How are pictures used? What kind of pictures are used? Many of the pictures you see are fairly ordinary, but most will be well composed and technically OK. My most sold image is of a bathroom!

7)Be prepared to work really hard and long. Shooting images, editing them, captioning and keywording them takes a long time.

8)Shoot ALL original images raw. The final product is going to be sold for download at jpg.8 usually, so shooting on jpg. originally means the image will degrade too much.

9)View all images at 100% to check for CA, fringing, noise, artefacts. Make sure your levels are within printable limits. Most libraries require 5 to 250. i.e. no pure white, no pure black.

10)Shoot everything you can at the lowest ISO possible, including interiors. If you don't own a tripod, GET ONE!

11)Make sure your image is bright and well-exposed. Learn to get this right in-camera as it means less work later and your images will look better.

12)If you shoot travel, landscape etc. never shoot in dull, overcast light. Nobody is going to buy pictures like that, unless you are shooting extreme weather. Blue skies sell pictures.

13)If you shoot lifestyle, people etc. you will need model releases. You will also need to update these regularly as clothes, gadgets, cars, interior design etc. go out of fashion very quickly.

14)You may get get pictures rejected simply because the library has too many of the same, they don't think it will sell or its technically poor. With the amount of images available, libraries can now be incredibly choosy about what they take. They expect top quality, both aesthetically and technically. If you can't give them that, there are lots of others who can.

15)Stock photography is now global. You are competing with the whole world! Libraries tend to have all the pictures of cats, dogs, sunsets over lamposts, cute toddlers etc. they are ever going to need. Modern online libraries have millions of images online. Alamy in the UK has 20M + for example.

16)Does your image look good as a thumbnail? Because thats how people will view it first. What is going to make them click on it to see the larger version?

17)With regard to the above, keep it simple. If you need to write a couple of paragraphs to explain whats going on in your picture, then you are in trouble.

18)Stock photography is nothing to do with art.

19)Did I say stock photography is nothing to do with art?

20)With regard to 18 and 19, take as much trouble and care over photographing ordinary domestic objects or street furniture as you would over a glorious landscape or a beautiful model. If you do that you are inthe ball park.

21)Don't be afraid of the obvious. Don't be afraid of simple. Just make sure your image is as close to technically perfect as you can make it.

23)Yes size does matter. The more MP's you have the larger your image, the more potential it has to sell to the clients with the biggest budgets.

24)Actually reading the libraries submission guidelines helps. I used to run my own library and people who thought that they were "different" and could ignore my requirements got rejected. To be honest the technical standard of the material I received was also pretty dire on the whole. "It'll do, its only for a library" seemed to be the attitude of many.

25)Finally, following on from the above, send only your "best" work to a library. Also send what people like. I use flickr a lot. I post several images and see what gets the most hits and the most positive comments. These are often not my personal favourites.

Still interested?

There are advantages.

1)You get to photograph what you want, when you want, in the way that you want.

2)If what you happen to like photographing has a market, you can do very well.

3)You have no client breathing down your neck and looking over your shoulder and giving you the benefit of their "artistic" advice.

4)If you shoot "non decade specific" images your pictures can have a very long "shelf life" and be earning you money for years.

5)You get to try your hand at all kinds of photography. Landscape is my love, but I've shot house interiors, industry, still life, performing arts, lifestyle, models, transport, animals, product shots and sport as well.

The most important lesson in all of this is to look at photography in all its commercial manifestations. Can you shoot an image like you see in the adverts, the billboard, the magazine article, the brochure etc. that pass your eyes every day. Absorb what you see, think how its done, say to yourself "Can I do that?" Chances are what you are looking at is a "Stock" photograph.

Its often been said that if Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray etc, submitted images to a picture library they would probably get turned down.

Finally, I work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year doing this. I happen to love it and think that I have the best job in the world, but not everybody feels he same. If it just turns into another chore, then it may not be for you."

Alamy now accepts 24MB files.

I've often written about the 48MB file size minimum that some picture libraries require for submission. In an unexpected move the library that has the most images online Alamy has now decided to accept images of a minimum size of 24MB, instead of the 48MB they required before.


They give their reasons as the following:-

"We are making the change for a number of reasons. It’s clear that for a lot of photographers it will simplify their work-flow by reducing the need to upsize. We’ve also looked at the requirements of our customers and looked at submission standards elsewhere. We believe that by setting the minimum level at 24MB we can offer an even more user friendly route to market for photographers without compromising on quality. We are not relaxing our view on the suitability of certain cameras and our recommended camera list and our unsuitable camera list remain largely unchanged. Photographers who have a good spec camera will not have to upsize if they don’t want to. We see a large number of QC failures as a result of poor upsizing, this move gives photographers an opportunity to submit images at their native resolution or with minimal upsizing.

Alamy emphasises that it does not want photographers to downsize images and it still recommends the 48MB files"

On the subject of interpolation it says the following:-

"If necessary, interpolate (upsize) the file to 24MB using a specialist, professional software package. If you have a camera that is capable of producing an uncompressed 8 bit file size of over 24MB then leave it that size. We recommend Adobe Photoshop although other software is acceptable. If using Photoshop version 7 or higher select the bicubic option. We advise that you do not use “step” or incremental interpolation. Check your software’s default settings to ensure that all sharpening is turned off."

Personally I hate interpolation, which is the upsizing of digital camera files to produce a "bigger" image. I think its a con for clients. In a way its deception. A possible picture buyer wants a picture to fill a double page spread, so they search a picture libraries archives to source a file that is of a suitable size to do that (usually 48MB+). If they are searching a library such as Alamy then they will have no idea whether the file is a "genuine" 48MB+ file or a file that has been upsized. They won't be able to tell from the images on the website and the only way they will be certain that the file is good enough is when they download it. 

A colleague of mine was once advised by Alamy to upsize his images to 100MB+ as that was what advertising clients liked! He was using a Nikon D1X camera at the time. 5.47MP. So they were advising him to upsize a 15MB image to 100MB+ ???? 

When I ran my own picture library I refused to take any upsized files. I also set a limit on film scans. 35mm scanned to no larger that 35MB and MF scanned to no larger that 70MB. Having been involved in a scanning business for a while I believed that these sizes were the upper limit for quality files. 

I can't really complain about Alamy, in the years that I've been with them they have made me an awful lot of money. Currently this figure is in excess of $200,000. So they have to be doing something right. However in the last 2-3 years my sales via them have dropped substantially. There is no doubt that the microstock libraries are taking lots of business away from conventional image libraries, because they are cheaper certainly but also I suspect because they have very high quality control standards. None of the ones I contribute to will accept upsized files. In a world that is now dominated by electronic publishing, internet etc., they have no need to. They also check every image submitted to them, to assess image quality, they also check the files after they are keyworded and captioned and will reject a file if it doesn't meet certain standards. Some of these libraries reject more than they accept. 

Alamy have a different system, which doesn't involve looking at all the images in a submission. A few years ago they claimed to have checked only about 5% of all images submitted to them. Since they are now approaching 20 Million images, that leaves a lot of room for some not so great stuff to be sitting on their website. There are many images that I have with them that I wish were smaller in size. Up to now their 48MB minimum requirement has resulted in my upsizing some files that I would rather have not. Some 35mm scans, and some 6MP digital camera files don't take kindly to these enlargements. The other thing to remember is that the vast majority of image library sales are for files less than A4, so 48MB files are not necessary for that.

I was hoping that Alamy would now decide to not accept upsized images at all, but that is not the case. To me this results in even more confusion for the picture buyer. How on earth do they know what they are getting. When a client buys a A3 sized file they have no way of knowing whether it is taken on a D3X, Medium Format film or whether its been upsized from a 6MP digital camera. Since Alamy were accepting 6MP images upsized to 48MB a few years ago, and have still left them on their site, this could well happen. Some clients wouldn't notice, but many would. 

In terms of how this will affect me, I have decided to upsize no more files that I send to Alamy from now on. This will obviously include m4/3 files which I have been interpolating to 48MB from their 34MB native size. I will no longer do that. It doesn't affect the 50,000+ files that I have sitting on the Alamy site currently, and there is nothing that I can do about that. However it means I won't have to be working with two different file sizes and won't have to put up with uploading what I regard as less than 100% satisfactory image quality any more. Thats something at least.

D

All images taken by D & A and currently residing on the Alamy website.

London Colour

Stock Photography - The Best Sellers

These are all images that have generated large amounts in terms of fees. All were sold for advertising. As the picture library and stock photography business has changed dramatically over the past few years, sales like these are probably in the past. All of these date from the days when companies would pay huge sums of money for an exclusive image to use in their advertising and promotion campaigns.

Unlike the downloads top 20 several of these are among our favourite images of all time, proving that those "special" pictures sometimes get their reward.

This was an image taken at the Cirque de Lescun in the French Pyrenees. Pentax 645. 150mm lens. Fuji Velvia. Sold to a New York advertising agency. We never found out what the product was though we did find out it was used on the side of subway trains, buses and was a 48-sheet billboard poster. Also used as double - page magazine advertising spread. This image despite being an all-time favourite never sold until 13 years after it was taken. It has still only ever had one sale. It is however our highest-grossing image ever.

Total fees- £8250

Taken from the summit of Castle Crag in the Lake District. This was the only time the sun came out all day. Shot on Fuji Velvia (pushed 2 stops) with a Pentax 645 camera and 55mm lens. Used by a walking boot company for magazine advertising and point of sale promotion. This picture was on the box of every pair of the boots.

This was how it was used:-

Total Fees - £6500

Kelly Hall Tarn in the lake District. Originally shot on a Pentax 645 with a 35mm lens on Kodak Panther 100 Transparency film. It was then cropped down and put into a 35mm mount, because of a large amount of flaring on the image. On the section of the bank below the tree a black felt tip pen was used to remove the last remaining flare.

Used as an advert for Glen Morangie whiskey.

This was a double page magazine spread plus was on huge billboards all over the London Underground. Yes we are aware that it wasn't taken in Scotland, as I am sure were the company and designers.

Total fees - £4835

The most incredible haw frost I've ever seen. Shot in Bedfordshire, this was opposite the house we were staying in with friends over New Years. Incredibly cold. Shot on a Pentax 645, 55mm lens and Agfa 50 Transparency film.

Sold several times including two large sales to a Swiss pharmaceutical company. Never found out what it was used for.

Total sales - £3950

The European Commission Parliament building in Brussels. Taken when we were in Belgium shooting Christmas markets and general shots for a travel company.

Pentax 645 150mm lens on Fuji Velvia 50. The building wasn't even finished. Below the flagpoles were concrete mixers, diggers and all the rubbish of a construction site. Taken on Christmas Eve. The temperature was -6 selsius with a fierce wind, which you can see on the flags. The site was completely deserted, no security, not even a barrier. We had the the entire place to ourselves. Sold to the travel company (non-exclusive) and then many sales via a picture library. Biggest single sale was to VISA in the US. Still sells now, even though there are a lot more flags as many more countries have joined the EU. Note the Union Jack first in line, which is ironic for a country not renown for its enthusiasm towards Europe and the EU. Maybe thats why it sells!

Total sales - £3870

As I said the days of these kinds of sales have largely disappeared. During the time these were taken it was actually cheaper to buy a library photograph than to hire a photographer. These days photographers work cheaper so its now more "cost effective" to hire a photographer, if you want an exclusive "bespoke" image.

We should point out that these kind of amounts for pictures were the exception. All other images sold for a lot less. However even with the driving down of fees for pictures, with the huge amount of imagery available throughout the world, we are in the fortunate position of still increasing our income from this source year by year. Its just that we have to take and sell many more images to do that.

Images D & A

Stock Photography - Top 20 Most Downloaded

So why exactly is there a picture of a bathroom posted here? Well this is our most downloaded image. This picture has been bought many thousands (yes thats thousands!!) of times. Two members of our family buy old run down houses, do a complete make-over on them and then sell them again. We do the photographs after the conversion for them in return for being able to sell the images on various websites. The majority of these sales are from Microstock sites.

To a certain extent its a bit depressing to have this as our most popular picture. Its also always been surprising that its been so successful, since we have never regarded it as particularly good.

It has the advantage of showing a pristine brand new room but the cramped conditions have caused distortion from the downward view. There is not enough space to "correct" the verticals. Your guess is as good as ours as to who buys this and why.

Somewhat more encouragingly this is No. 2 on the list of most downloaded. A shot of the lavender fields of Provence in France.

No. 3 is a shot taken a few hundred yards from our front door. It sells very well in the winter but also throughout the year. Used for everything from a christmas card to a road safety website.

No. 4 is another property shot.

As is No. 5

As is No. 6

As is No.7 Are you beginning to spot a pattern here???

No. 8 Conservatories are very popular.

No. 9

No. 10. The owner of this conservatory was watching a BBC TV property programme when this turned up on the screen.

No. 11. At last another landscape! Again a remarkably high selling image, but one that is also a bit baffling in terms of its success. A fairly unremarkable cotswolds landscape. Whilst watching a detective programme (Lewis) on TV, this turned up in a picture frame in an office.

No. 12. The stepping stones across the River Dove in the Peak District. We know this well, one of us having fallen in the water!

No.13. The old town in Nice on the French Riviera. Looks picturesque doesn't it? Actually the photographer was in fear for their life as the atmosphere on the streets was like something from Jean Genet.

No. 14. Back to property again. This is actually Soundimageplus central and the source of all these ramblings. Looking strangely tidy! Shot as a "Home Office" "Working from Home" image.

No. 15. Sky photoshopped to remove clouds which were left in the office building. Shot in the City of London.

No. 16. A wine cellar from the Bordeaux region in France. An exposure of several minutes with the photographer walking up and down the line of barrels with a torch, as they were pitch black.

No.17. A springtime Peak District landscape.

No. 18. A foggy winter evening in Leamington Spa.

No. 19. Shot on the same day as No.3

N0. 20. Planting seeds in Devon.

So there it is. These images have been downloaded many thousands of times between them. Certainly not our 20 favourite images and none of them would figure in a list of what we regard as our best images. Predicting what will be a successful stock image is difficult and the success of many of these is surprising. In almost all cases, we have what we consider a better image from that particular set, but these are the images that sell again and again. All sell several times a day and while we don't pretend to understand the appeal of many of them, we are grateful that people find them useful.

Images - D & A