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Quality vs Quantity
A good question to ask yourself is whether your going for quality or quantity or a nice medium of both. There are pluses and minuses for both sides of this argument, and the answer should always boil down to individual preference and skills. Your choice should be based on how much time you want to divulge into learning photography and/or photo editing/photoshop. Also it is based on what your main focus is in your freelance career.
How Photos are Influenced by Quality and Quantity
Making profits from stock photos rely on impressing buyers to buy your photography and providing enough photography in order to supply buyers and be reciprocated in the form of a good paycheck. Without both conditions met you will be left to rely on bad marketing efforts. If you supply a ton of pictures of a low quality they will inevitable be found fairly easy but will be passed up for more impressing photos. If you take just a countable number of great looking photos you will not get enough exposure and will left with trickling profits. There must be a balance of both. There is always exceptions to these rules with altering strategies but with whatever strategy this still remains very important. You need to give buyers a good supply of good quality pictures. Although, a balance must be struck, you can still utilize what you are great at and choose a method that suits you best.
If your still confused about how stock photography can earn you money, check out some of our other articles: 5 Steps to Start Selling Digital Photos and Introduction to Stock Photography.
How to Increase Photo Quality
There are several different ways to increase photo quality involving editing and taking pictures. Increasing quality can be done all with Adobe Photoshop or another editing program. The hard part about increasing quality is it can be very time consuming. You may want to run hundreds of photos through photoshop which might take several hours. That is if you know how to edit pictures (learn what needs to be edited). Another tough part of editing is figuring out a time efficient method to avoiding trial and error. Some pictures may need brighter lighting while an other may need a change of contrast, it is tough to decipher a pictures needs with untrained hands. That is why it is best to understand the tools that photoshop has to offer, it can really help.When you take pictures with your digital camera you may notice that they all suffer from the same lacking qualities. This is why they make multiple modes on your camera. This will make it easier to take macro, people, nature, scenery, etc, photos. Make sure you utilize the cameras options by reading the manual and researching on the camera models website. If you take advantage of your digital cameras features you can strongly improve lighting, color, exposure, and more.
Still, even with the best camera settings it can be hard to make your photos glow and feel surreal. Here are a couple of settings that can usually use a change:
Saturation - This can make colors more vibrant, increase saturation as much as needed.Sharpen - Always sharpen your images using a filter or tool.Auto Tools - Always try the auto tools, like auto-levels and auto-contrast in photoshop, sometimes the software gets it right. It saves you a lot of time.
How to Increase Photo Quantity
The method of getting a good number of photos is to develop a good understanding of what a great digital photos is. Most digital photographers have the habit of taking 10 photos and only being able to salvage 1. These statistics must increase in your favor, you have to develop skills that make you a better freelance digital photographer. To help you take more pictures; be precognitive about where you are going to go to take pictures. Meaning, decide before you leave your house that your going to the Museum or the Park. If your going to shoot pictures from your house decide what objects your going to take pictures of before you start. What wastes a ton of time is thinking of places to walk to or objects that you can take pictures of. You could spend this time actually taking photos instead of just meandering around with your digital camera, yes, quit being a meanderer!As was said before, study up on the modes of your digital camera. Also try to understand and utilize Exposure, ISO, Color Modes, and Aperture. Overall you will be able to keep more pictures that you take and be more time efficient if you learn the ropes of photography. I may explain it plain and simple but it is not simple, it takes hours of practice. Keep a good schedule of taking pictures and be consistent. Read more about Stock Photo Portfolios.
Make sure you fit the build and are working properly.
Pre-think the best angles, lighting, and camera settings before taking pictures.Try taking pictures 3 to 5 times a week.Run Digital Photos through Photoshop to avoid retakes and try to save pictures.Use the same pictures with multiple angles, if one angle doesn't catch the buyers eye maybe another one will. This can double your pictures (note: make sure it is considered different enough not to be considered a duplicate, see the guidelines of the stock photography site).