What should I shoot and what sells well?
Posted on: May 23, 2008 (27) CommentsBranding
Microstock is filled with loads of imagery and literally millions of images so if you don’t stand out you will be “lost in the crowd” completely. Branding yourself by having a unique style that is recognizable and consistent is probably the most important aspect in microstock and also something that makes it so hard for traditional shooters to enter micro. You cannot underestimate the importance of branding yourself! If you do, you will wonder, "why am I not selling anything?" The reason is that you have not made enough of an impression on buyers so that they go directly for your images when searching for material to buy. So here is the breakdown: Step by step plan for getting started
1. Find something you can shoot effortlessly. Your hobby, the sports you do, your friends, family and their life. Shoot the things you know something about, so you can make it look real, natural and genuine. Write down the things you should be able to shoot quite effortlessly. 2. Decide on a style and a limited range of subject matter and stick to it. Microstock is getting competitive so specialize yourself in your field so you can become very good at shooting it. A shoot never goes quite as planned and you often have to "play the hand you are dealt" to get some good shots out of it. You can do this with the things you know about from before but not very well with things you have little or no experience with. Write down the style and subject matter that you want to go with. Brainstorm! 3. Shoot something new and find your spot instead of duplicating successful images. Duplicating is probably the fastest way to be unpopular in microstock and because microstock agencies have forums (unlike traditional agencies), this can be highly damaging for your branding. Don’t do it! There are a few overall categories of subject matter that are neglected in microstock:
- Travel photography, special places and extreme nature
- Really, really old people
- Contemporary fashion
- Policemen, military and state officials from all over the world
- Pictures of currency other than Euros and Dollars
- Aerial pictures
- Stylistic still-life in soft and low contrast colors
- Fantastic panorama shots in high quality
- Motion-blurred and lively pictures
- Artistically executed lifestyle, edgy
- Natural looking people, that don’t look like microstock models
There are a few over-represented categories where you really have to know what you are doing to compete efficiently.
- Businesspeople (too easy to put a group of people in suits around a table)
- Isolated people on white (too easy to duplicate and too many shooting it)
- Anything with a laptop
- Nudes
- Spa (requires so little set-up and every model in the world wants a spa shoot)
- Medical (Too easy: a scrub and a model)
- Backgrounds and “lonely tree” kind of pictures
- Beach pictures (Really too easy)
Why share? Having been reading this, you might wonder: Why would he share this information with me? Why would he give any such information to a potential competitive photographer? Well the case is this: I believe in complete information sharing. I don’t hold anything back and have no problem giving away my secrets to new photographers. This was how I was introduced myself to stock by my mentor and this is the mind-set I prefer. I can give you a helping hand and a few good micro guides, but you will have to do the hard work yourself.
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That’s exactly the mindset I have in my daily job (graphics programming for videogames) and it’s great to know that other people have the same idea when it comes to something new I’m trying to learn nowadays.
Thanks for sharing.
Francesco
«Well the case is this: I believe in complete information sharing. I don’t hold anything back and have no problem giving away my secrets to new photographers.»
vs.
«We do not accept applications from competitive microstock photographers that want to learn from us and pursue their own carrier afterwards. »
Hmm.
Guido: Your point is valid. However: There is a difference between hiring someone to shoot for you and paying him a salary and just pure sharing information. If I hire a guy, pay him money, it would be natural of me to want him to work for me and not himself…right?
I am contacted constantly from microstock photographers that want to hang around for a week or two and learn from me. I don’t unfortunately have the time for this right now, but I really hope I will in the future. The job position you are referring to is meant for another kind of individual, a person ready to work for me and get a salary in return. I do not think this contradicts with my opinion on information sharing.
Hi,
I think your keywording tool is the most valuable website / software that I use, thankyou.
IMO most of the stuff that is neglected in microstock is because of low $/image or other probs (some of these areas have high rejection rates because the micros consider them poor sellers)
ie travel and aerial -> needs to be generic or iconic (but better than competition). demand for location specific images for places that dont have thousands of tourists is low and will do better in country specific macro libraries.
Policemen, military and state officials -> copyright issues for badges and some “uniforms” etc- duh! LOL
a number of currencies also copyright.
fotolia says no still life as it is overdone and low demand??
Pans -> I thought would be good for web graphics, but very very low demand and high rejection rate (apparently everyone wants square), cant be produced in high volume easily and often high post production. Far better $/image in macro.
artistic, blurred and edgy -> fine line between art and garbage :):) extremely high rejection rate.
If I was good enough and new enough to do contempory fashion at a professional level I wouldn’t put it on micros :):)
Rgds
Phil
Thank you so much for sharing your secrets. This has really helped me to understand how to get into the business of microstock. I am a single mother trying to keep food on the table and am desperately hoping to turn my 40,000+ images into some sort of steady income. Your information is invaluable to me. Again, thank you.
Thanks Phil. Great extra info!!
You’ve done all the shoots from the second list as well, though, did you? At least as long as they include people…
Don’t forget composition. In my opinion, its on of the most important aspects of stock photography. There is certainly demand for a rock solid stand alone shot, but there is even more demand for a shot that can be good on its own OR look just as good with text / other design elements integrated into it.
I work primarily as a Cinematographer during the year (microstock is what I shoot between feature films and TV commercials). I think a good stock photo shoot should be approached the same way as a good film shoot:
Lots of planning!
Also, don’t just grab any old model and make them a doctor for example. Ask yourself, “Do they fit the role?” Casting is huge in film, and its the same with stock photography.
My last tidbit: This is a volume based industry. * Get used to it! * There is a reason why Macro agencies expect potential contributers to have already established collections of images well into the thousands. The same thing applies to microstock.
Hello Yuri,
After ten months of microstock experience, I think I am ready to share what I think about this industry:
of course the biggest people like you hav a lot of income from this job, but it happen only working very hard with a great staff and a lot of technical gear and higly specialized hours of work. My opinion is that only a little part of a photographer production sells well, there are a lot of photos that will be rejected for sometimes strange reasons, a very high number with no more than 10 sales per year, and of course a little bit with huge numbers of sales. What was the value of a portfolio like your in the macrostock market? What the number of income from if it was sell in alamy, and getty or corbis? Are you happy with the evolution of the industry or are you tryng to sail in this ocean against your wishes? I am not happy when wonderful shots taked with my imacon flexframe were rejected, or don’t sells, like when a customer don’t want to pay for my job.
TO Bravajulia:
You have not given micro a fair change. You have had rejections, because your digital quality is not up to scratch, have gotten angry and have left micro angry. Any channel where I can hit a return per image of more then 10 USD per month is a valid and good marketing opportunity. Many macro channels are less.
Don’t get angry when getting rejections. Your standards are not the only ones out there so listen to the rejections and make workflow changes and overcome.
# Pictures of currency other than Euros and Dollars
How I have not think this before. I have collected coins and notes almost 8 years (have many hundred items to shoot and coins and notes are in “perfect” mint condition) and have only shoot few dollar and euro images:). Thanks for the tip.
BTW, do you know is there anykind of market/demand for food images in microstocks (or which ones sells best: normal food, gourmet / artistic, healthy or junk food etc..)?
great site and information
thank you for sharing
I think it’s great that you are willing to share your “secrets”. I don’t think it creates unnecessary competition because knowing the secrets and having the ability to finesse and USE those secrets are two different things. As Zig Ziglar says, “You can have anything in this world you want, if you just help enough other people get what THEY want.”
you are the best yuri! its hard to do photos like yours…please teach me!!!!! congretulation for your pictures and i’m sorry for my bad english language!
Greetings from MX.
Some/most sites tell you what they do not want because of overabundance or low value, etc… However, in at least one site, they tell you they do NOT want flowers, while 3 of their top five photo sales are… Flowers (5 out of the top ten are backgrounds). Would you recommend rather “filling the gaps” (subjects that are lacking) instead of following what the clients are searching for?
Thank you for a great informative site.
Hi Yuri,
Great site. Sorry, but I can be a pessimist. I can’t help but notice a certain issues was not addressed. You have not answered the question about the “second list” in fact, a review of your portfolio includes a lot of the “don’t do” list.
I know we all want to hold on to our share of the market place, however, I can’t but help think this is self preservation. Even your assistants use white backgrounds, It only makes sense since the art director will be happly to replace the white / green / blue background with whatever they want.
Am I missing something?
I think also Alberto brings up a good point.
Tks
Karl
Those who dare to share are people who are confident enough and will always be ahead of the game…. You’re one of these obviously: good on you!
Have you hard of the “pay it forward” principle?
Thanks for your keyworder, I use it all the time, along with picniche and my brain!
Ah yes, I forgot to say, Food still sells well, but it works better when it is properly style OR/and homemade.
This is a great site - thanks for sharing all this stuff.
I don’t have a lot of time for shooting, and one technique I’ve found useful is to simply type random ideas or words into the earch engines of the bigger sites. This usually highlights a couple of areas where there is less competition/smaller numbers of images. Several of my best sellers (I’m not in the same league as lots of the peple here) have been inspired this way.
I’m also a bit suspicious of ’show me’ threads - if you’ve got an novel idea, hang on to it - it’ll be copied/repeated soon enough.
I appreciate yo sharing your tips.
One question: How/where can I find out if my currency is copyrighted?
Thanks for sharing your ideas with us. I confessed you that when I first know you I didn´t agree with
your ideas. Now understanding you better I really became your fan ! Your message is here for who wants to understand ! And it´s absolutely right ! Your keywording tool is great too ! You won´t mind if I lead some people who need trainning on keydording to it , will you ? thanks again ! Warm Regards from Brazil
When i finnish my schooling i am hoping to become a full time stock photography. In the mean time i have been learning as much as possible about photography. What i have found is that you can’t by a “photographic eye” and experiance is invaulable. These kind of articles have helped me a lot
Thanks
Yuri, do you generate your HDR images from a single RAW image?
I have to chime in here again…
Just because some areas of micro stock are “under represented” does NOT mean they will make you money if you choose to supply them. I learned this the hard way. You should be looking for topics that embody all of the following:
1.) A subject matter that is showing growth in SEARCH DATA. In other words, people are increasingly looking for that subject matter.
2.) A subject matter where photos are more preferable than vectors and illustrations. Trust me on this one…
3.) A subject matter that is low in supply. Low in supply would be under 100,000 shots representing it online at one agency, preferably lower though, like 50,000. I derived this number based on the # of shots representing business images on Shutterstock, it’s a staggering 448,592! Business is in decline, so its a good measure in my opinion.
In a nut shell, if as subject is under represented, it could just be that no one cares about the subject. It could be a waste of your time to shoot.
Yuri great site
thanks for sharing, your attitude is so refreshing.
Best Regards,
Sue
Thank you for sharing all these information!
Very inspiring!!!
You are a very wise person. Merry Christmas for you and your family!
Greetings from Holland
Mariana
Hi Yuri,
Thank you very much for all your useful information you’re providing. Although I’ve been in business for 15 years, there’s always room to learn.
Happy Holidays!
Walter