The New Breed of Digital Stock Photographers
Q: All of the photography i have done in the last 16 years has been underwater. Yes, i have loads of film negatives and slides i could scan, but to scan all of my stuff will require me to buy a very expensive
I am land locked in the midwest and thanks to corporate america i am unable to afford to travel to those diving destinations anymore, or have my previous career.
To do what i need to, i need to take thousands of pictures. Of some editorial category. And keep doing it. And since i can't do underwater, i need something else.
But I still can't find that "specialty" area (ps/a) to work in.
A:PCC: Or, you could get into the spirit of the Digital Age we now find ourselves in.
Yes, do those quality scans of the most competitive of your images, but also look toward the future. In this way.
Most photobuyers have a (relatively) long window of time to gather their needed images. (Unlike art directors in the commercial world who often need images yesterday, or at least -today).
This "float" is to your advantage. It's not unheard of that a photobuyer at a magazine, newspaper, or book publisher can give you five to six days to deliver your image via a lightbox, for consideration.
My suggestion. Retire that film camera.
"But digital is expensive!" I hear you saying.
But wait.
With a quality 'used' Canon or Nikon (check out Ebay, for example, or the Want Ads locally.) and a subscription to the PhotoSourceBANK (www.photosource.com/bank) you are in a prime position to become an important resource to worldwide photobuyers.
Your underwater skills have given you the technical experience to produce a good stock photo, -- now you need to shift your focus since you are landlocked.
While you are deciding what your specialization(s) will be, you pay for your new/used digital camera by submitting 3,000 keyphrases describing your environs, your geographical area where you live. (The local Chamber of Commerce, or Bureau of Economical Development, or the Regional Tourist Office brochures all will show you what you should be photographing: landmarks, skylines, entertainment centers, industry, schools, museums, agriculture and so on. Even check out the postcard rack at the drug store. Begin building your database of pictures.
But as Brian says, "Why take thousands of pictures?" You don't have to.
Here's the difference from the world of film that we have graduated from and the digital age we live in.
You don't have to take picture(s)… until you get a call, fax, or e-mail from a buyer who has found you through the 3,000 descriptions you have entered into the PhotoSourceBANK. You've probably noticed, the search engines today can now handle three, four, and even five word searches very well. The trick is to enter your descriptions on the PhotoSourceBANK with three, four and five word descriptions. (Single word descriptions are now 'out'. Multiple word descriptions (captions) are in).
Here's the good part. You can have a hi-res digital image on a photobuyer's screen within 24-hours of getting the original request. Now that's speed of delivery.
This is a revolutionary way of doing stock photography. But more and more, I see photographers operating in this fashion. This way has many advantages.
Here's just one advantage: you receive a photo request from an editor or publisher. This becomes a "permission" or "passport" to gain entrance to wherever or whomever the publisher has requested. Say it's a classroom picture.
What school board superintendent wouldn't want to cut through the administration of getting you into
The same applies for museums, agricultural centers, dentists, even hospitals. You'll be amazed how easy it is to get "permission" when the request comes not from you, but from the media. Any media.
All businesses and services are looking for good public relations plus their 15 minutes of fame. And here's where you make the transition from those shoe boxes filled with aging transparencies to the new way of marketing your talents as a stock photographer.
While you are building your sundry collection of pictures, you will probably discover an area of specialization that you enjoy: teen basketball, gardening, small planes, or dance. In the meantime, you are paying for your equipment (even buying a new model of your camera) and making contacts with buyers that could last a lifetime -all because you live in a part of the world where the competition is manageable.
If there is another photographer in town getting more picture requests than you, it's only because his or her photo descriptions on the Internet are more complete that yours.
Rohn Engh
By the way, to get an idea of how a photobuyer uses the Internet to find the source of a hard-to-locate picture, -- in the Google search bar, (or any major search engine) type in a really off-the-wall request. For example: talking drums and witch doctors XXXXXXXXX. Where you see those X's, put the word, photosource. And click. Scroll the site and see the keyphrase highlighted in red. Try this with any selection of your own. Google is making photo research, fun!
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