The world of digital photography changes quite frequently, over the last couple years a new opportunity has been created for freelance digital photographers. There are sites created for business and people who need to purchase digital photos over the internet. These sites are called stock photo sites and play several different roles in the digital photography business.
Why do People Purchase Stock Photos?
The simple answer is they need them, not a the basis of a one time thing. Some business need thousands of stock photos everyday. These businesses can be anything from advertising, graphic design, brochure, marketing, artistic, articles, web design, magazines, and so on. Thousands of businesses need stock photography. Read more on
Stock Photography
This is Where you Come in
I'm just going to touch upon this quickly because I'm not one to beat a dead (insert animal of choice). You can take photos upload them onto stock photography sites and earn money whenever someone purchases your photos. You can accumulate a few hundred dollars a day, if you supply enough photos and learn how to properly optimize your photography. In other words stock photo sites are job resources that you can earn profits from independently and at your own pace. For more information head over to the
Stock Photography page.
Stock Photos
So what is a stock photo? Technically you can apply stock photography to any other tutorial that we have gone over and YOU SHOULD! But more significantly stock photos are photos where you keep in mind the buyers intentions for buying your photos. When graphic designers and web designers are buying stock photography they want something with a matte background (most of the times), if the background is one single color it will be easier for the designer to edit the picture or edit things out of the picture. They may need simple ordinary objects that every digital photographer takes pictures of but they need it to be more accessible to their job/project. Another thing that separates regular digital photography jobs from a stock photography jobs is the divide between art and utility. Although, you may be able to take a picture of a maple tree at a beautiful angle that accentuates the light on the leaves it is not always applicable to the different needs of a stock photo buyers. Sometimes advertisers, marketers, etc need a picture of a maple tree from a particular angle that your not providing them. The angle may be considered in artistic terms void of aesthetic quality or plain ugly, but they need it for their own specific purpose. This might shy a few photographers away from earning money from a stock photo site, but photographer should love taking pictures no matter what the subject may be.
People Stock Photos
Now you know what stock photos are you need to know what stock photo buyers are looking for. A large majority of jobs need pictures of people, doesn't matter if they are beautiful they just need to be shot well. This can be the hardest subject matter to find since you probably only know so many people that want their picture taken. What buyers want out a portrait or picture of a person is expression, they want to see a specific mood or expression from the persons face and body language. They close ups of gloomy faces, hair blowing in the wind, a person deep in thought, and so on. If you just take pictures of a person smiling, looking directly at the camera, then what are people going to use that for? When a buyer looks up the expression 'hope,' they want to see a hopeful person. You can use the same subject multiple times just make sure that most of the expressions are very exaggerated.
Ideas not Pictures
A common misconception is that people are just looking for photos of predetermined objects that they already have in their mind. I can say with experience that that isn't true. Tons of people look through stock photo sites in order to get ideas for a project their working on. They are looking for pictures of ideas and they don't have ideas of pictures. So don't think one dimensionally about taking pictures like: picture of a dog, or picture of a sunset. Think more along the lines of what your pictures are needed for like logo for a communications business, or article about overcoming depression. These are called intangible ideas. If someone types in the keyword compromise what kind of imagery comes into mind? picture of two people shaking hands, or maybe a scale having equal amount of weight on both sides. These are the kinds of ideas and images people need, and part of your job will be coming up with and anticipating those needs.
Simple Objects
As we said before a lot of people who buy stock photos are looking for a simple object and a white background. This can be achieved through a light box. A light box is a box that is specifically made for photography and helps bounce white light evenly on every part of the object you are photographing. You don't have to purchase one just Google "build light box" and you should find out how to make one out of objects around the house.