Does Money Talk?
Advance Notes: The following pictures aren't necessarily going to be the photos you'd choose as the best
Jim Maxwell once wrote an essay on how you can write a Country Western song guaranteed to hit the top forty: Include a done-me-wrong lady, a horse, a thief, a train, a jailhouse, a shotgun. Mix with emotion: jealousy, love, regrets. Add some action: A bank robbery, wreck at a railroad yard, a hard-driving rodeo. Deliver with a twang, weave in a refrain that can be repeated with five notes on the piano--and you can't lose.
Would you like to know a similar guarantee for making top moneymaking stock photos? Like the songs you can manufacture from the above formula, the following pictures aren't necessarily going to be the photos you'd choose as the best representatives of the heart and soul of your talent--but they sure will pull in dollars for you while you are laboring to survive in the stock photo industry.
Here's a photo that will win the all-time high: A financially happy family, watching a group of busy employees, silhouetted against a palm-fringed beach, at sunset, with dramatic clouds in a big sky featuring (in the upper left-hand corner) the NASA shot of the planet earth.
Well, maybe separate shots of each of those elements would be more manageable.
Do these pictures sound familiar? They should. Financially successful commercial stock photographers manufacture them over and over again. Excellent examples are in a book put out some years ago by former president of the Four By Five Stock Photo Agency, James Ong. Ong pulled together 100 such top-selling stock photos and gave each photo's sales history. He rightfully illustrates the kind of success you can't argue with: the pictures make BIG money. The cash register keeps ringing. Henri Cartier-Bresson or W. Eugene Smith aren't included, mind you.
What was the big winner out of the 100 pictures in Mr. Ong's book, PHOTOGRAPHY'S BEST SELLERS? A subject that doesn't require much effort to get. Just point your camera and shoot. The Number One photo: Clouds. One particular clouds image earned back then, total sales of $75,131. The number two picture was - also of clouds, and earned $66,174. Other pictures in the top fifteen: Busy workers, happy families, sunsets, beaches, and the public domain NASA picture of our earth.
If you are into photography strictly for the money, the above could be a clue as to what you should be taking (or making) to send to the micro sites that you work with.
Author James Ong wasn't making any value judgments on the pictures, other than to say that money talks. His book is an insight into public taste. It's a good indicator as to where you could be pointing your camera if you've been recently overdrawn at the bank.
Rohn Engh is the best-selling author of "Sell & ReSell Your Photos" and "sellphotos.com." He has produced a new eBook, "How to Make the Marketable Photo." For more information and to learn how to sell photos and to receive his free eReport: "8 Steps to Becoming a Published Photographer," visit his website, PhotoSource International or call 800 624-0266.
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