Ahhhhhh the wonderful world of Micro Stock Photography.. Creating hundreds of images and getting paid pennies for your efforts each time one of your images gets downloaded. I use to think "I'm going to make a killing!!" when I thought of the possibilities of downloads. However; I've come to realize that it's not that easy and you have to put a lot a lot a looooot of work into it to be successful. Your not going to start selling over night, your not going to be excepted to a Stock Agency right away, and you can't just upload the 50 or 100 images that you have in the archives and start making money. The images must be clean, well photographed, and with good compositional elements (rules of thirds, balanced, etc...). So I've decided to take today and go through the motions of a good stock image.
What to photograph.. Hmmmmmm.. What what what..? How about... A toaster! That’s right a toaster.. Everyone uses a toaster from time to time, food in stock photography is a constant, people look for all the time, and well this is just an example any how right..? We won't actually know how well the photos will do for at least 2 weeks after we upload it to our favorite stock web site.
Toaster Toaster.. Light.. With bread or without? Ummm with.. Natural sunlight through a big window with a diffuser, and a reflector to give it a little fill light.. Sounds good to me. Look at that my assistant Cleo is smelling something good cooking.. O wait! No!! Shoot shoot shoot!! Alright, Cleo isn't allowed to eat people food but I can't move very fast with a Camera around my neck and reflectors all over the place.. Take the pictures and she gets away with one.. Thanks for the action shots Cleo!
Oops. I spilled thumb tacks while I was attempting to stop my assistant from taking an early lunch.. Wait.. Those will look good as stock too!! O' and there are some paper clips right there as well. Sweet!! I've stumbled up more objects that are just lying around the house. I've got everything set up anyway, and it will only take a few more minutes of my time right..? Done and done.
So we captured the images, processed them in photoshop with an easy work flow of: cropping and rotating, levels, saturation, and put them through the Highpass Filter in Photoshop CS5. All we need to do is upload them to our favorite Stock Photo web site. I use Dreamstime and Photospin. The great thing about stock is that as long as the image isn't exclusive you can submit them to multiple sites. However I will recommend committing to one site or another because exclusive images make more money per download in the long run. See the FAQs at the site your going to join for more details on the legal jargon.
That’s pretty much it. Easy pezzy. Go shoot some everyday object people recognize right away with good composition, post process it, and then submit it! Like I said you make pennies, but unlike your favorite social network where you normally upload your photos, there is an opportunity to make some money while they sit online.
Please feel free to contact me via email with any questions you may have regarding anything within this post! Thanks again for stopping by.
JR
jurphotographer@gmail.com
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