Three Keys To Success In Stock Photography

Success in today's stock photography environment requires quality, quantity and visibility in your photography.

Three Keys To A Successful Stock Photography Career

The three key elements to success in stock photography are quality, quantity and visibility. Master those elements and you can still carve out a very good living in stock. In stock photography I would define quality images as images that are flawlessly executed and are needed in the marketplace. How much quantity is needed varies with the individual and their financial goals. Visibility, I believe, is the trickiest of the elements, and potentially the biggest stretch for photographers.

Quality Photography And Passion

What makes a picture a quality stock photo? Quality can be different things to different viewers. In some cases the quality may come from the perfect model and the perfect lighting, in other cases the location might be the key, and in yet other cases humor might be the answer. In any case, quality is revealed in a photograph that connects with the viewer.  The days are gone when you could bang out dozens of shots in a day and hope to do well. There is just too much competition…and the pictures just keep on coming. The shortest path to quality photography is passion. If your not passionate about what you are doing, about the photos you create, be they personal work, assignments or stock, then photography is not the career for you.

Multiply Quality With Quantity

Five years ago I had an return per image (RPI ) with my Getty Rights Managed stock photos, of over $800.00 per image per year. Right now my RPI is at around $130.00. With drops like that you have to go beyond quality; you have to multiply that quality with quantity.  How much quantity do you need? Check your business plan. If you need $200,000.00 a year to run your business, produce new work, and live a great life…and you have an RPI of $78.00, then divide $200,000.00 by $78.00 and you will have a very good idea of what you have to do…at least in terms of producing images.

Visibility, Key Wording, SEO and Social Networking

Visibility is vital to success in stock photography, and it comes in many ways. Visibility can come through careful and smart key wording with Alamy; visibility can come through an exemplary body of work that rises to the top of the searches in agencies such as iStockphoto (think Yuri Arcurs); and visibility can come through your online presence whether it is through great SEO or effective use of social media.  The use of an online presence to supplement the visibility of your stock photos is a strategy with benefits. By driving additional traffic to your images on an agency site you can exercise at least some control over the visibility of your images. This visibility boost can be compounded when the algorithms used by the agencies are positively impacted by the additional traffic and sales produced by your own efforts.  Not only will more potential licensors see your work, but that visibility can also lead to assignments, increased traffic and subsequent monetization through print sales, advertising revenue, imprinted gifts and even opportunities that are impossible to forecast.

Success In Stock Photography

Success in stock photography used to be a matter of making either great images, or a lot of images, and getting them into the agencies. These days that isn’t enough. It is important to find a balance with quality, quantity and visibility. For photographers that visibility part might be the hardest. We love to take pictures, not spend hours understanding and undertaking key wording, learning social media and practicing SEO (search engine optimization), but increasing such skills are vital to our long-term success. They say getting old isn’t for sissies (and I can vouch for that), but success in a photography career isn’t for sissies either!

Funny Animal Stock Photo To The Rescue!

Cats And Dogs With Paintbrushes
A friend of mine owns a painting company and asked me to create an image to help him promote his business as he enters the slow winter months. In the past I have helped him with images of dogs holding paintbrushes and so forth. The animal-centered promotions have worked extremely well for him. After the first mailing he remarked to me that it was the first time ever that no one had contacted him wanting to be taken off the mailing list.

Funny Cats And Dogs Doing Human Activities
The first thing I did was to go through my Animal Antics images, a collection of funny cat and dog pictures, in which these pets are doing human activities, that I created for a greeting card line. If I could find the right image to start with it would save me the work and expense of shooting animals, locations, props and of all the stripping out of hair and fur that would be necessary. To charge adequately for putting together such a photo would take it far out of my friends price-range.

A Weimaraner, A Beagle And Two Cats
I found a likely candidate in a get well greeting card featuring a Weimaraner, a Beagle, and two cats, all waiting at a front door and holding soup, flowers and accessories for someone feeling “under the weather”. My friend, (we’ll call him Greg since his name is Greg), had asked me to create an image that included a stormy environment and the pets safe inside their home. I wasn’t coming up with a way to effectively show the pets inside and a storm outside. But when I saw the get-well card photo I realized I could drop a storm scene behind the pets and put various painting tools in their arms and come up with a great image to fit Greg’s needs. And I wouldn’t have to re-invent the wheel either. A great headline for the resulting image would be “We Are Here To Help!”

A Paint Brush, Masking Tape, And A Ninety-Seven-Layer Photoshop File
I gathered up some painting supplies and photographed each item separately. I pulled up my original layered Photoshop file for the greeting card. I used a clipping path to create a selection around each object: a paint can, a paint brush, a roller, some sand paper, a putty knife and a roll of blue masking tape. I copied and pasted each of the items into place in the layered file (after eliminating the layers containing the original get-well objects). Then it was just a matter of adding some shadows and dropping a stormy sky into the background. When I was finished I had a nice little, ninety-seven layer, Photoshop file!

Royalty Free, Micro Stock Or Rights Managed
What I now have is a humorous image that can be easily used by any painting contractor, distributor of painting supplies, or related business, to promote and advertise their enterprises. Now Greg certainly isn’t going to want someone else from his area using that image. If this stock photo is released as a royalty free or micro stock image, then there would be no control over that. You can see how the effectiveness of such a compelling image would be dramatically curtailed if more than one painting business were to use the image in any given client base. As a Rights Managed image, this picture can be used by many, many clients, with each one able to insure that they can get the exclusivity they want and need, and I, as the creator of the image, can get a premium for the imagination, creativity and plain old work that goes into such images.

A Key To Success
Choosing whether an image belongs in Royalty Free (includes Micro stock), or Rights Managed is one of my hardest tasks and one of the keys to optimizing your stock income. Ultimately I believe the success of a stock photo depends more on the photo and less on whether it is RM or RF. However, it can make a big difference and so I believe it is important to carefully weigh the criteria and try to make an informed choice. Oddly enough, in the case of this funny pet picture, I believe that by putting the image in an RM collection I am being of the most service to the client. It is hard to go wrong if you are putting the client first.