As many of you know, I spend some time submitting my pictures to various microstock sites. I currently submit to five agencies - Shutterstock, IStockPhoto, Dreamstime, Fotolia, and StockXPert.
Lately I have been extremely busy and have little time to submit pictures. As I slowly started submitting a few, I noticed something very interesting.
What I noticed is that IStockPhoto sales have slowed considerably in recent months. In the past, IStockPhoto vied with Shutterstock as my top site and a few times took the lead. However, that has changed now.
Today, IStockPhoto is fourth for me in terms of sales. Only StockXPert brings less. Another problem is that submissions take a long time on IStockPhoto due to their archaic upload system and their own keyword vocabulary. As a result, it takes me longer to submit to IStockPhoto than to the other sites combined. It is even more annoying that after submitting the photo my shot is rejected for a keyword that is pertinent. For instance I had a picture of Jerusalem rejected for using the keyword “Israel”.
Another interesting thing occurred when I was searching for some photos for a friend a few weeks ago. I was rather stunned that, despite their claim to having an advanced keyword system, I was unable to find the pictures I was looking for. I had much better success on Dreamstime and Shutterstock.
Therefore, I have ceased submitting regularly to IStockPhoto. It simply isn’t worth my time. I will not close my account there though and I will submit pictures that sell well on other sites.
However, the future of IStockPhoto right now does not look bright.
Posted 11 months, 1 week ago at 12:53 pm. 1 comment
I have owned my Canon 5d Mark II for about four months now and have taken around 3500 shots. Overall I am very impressed with it but I had not yet truly tested it in terms of microstock.
Lately I have taken the attitude that I will not waste my time with the microstock sites. I take the shots that I like to take, and later on figure out if something may sell. This works out the best for me, as I do not feel pressured to take particular shots that I would not have taken other than to sell them. When these shots are not accepted or are accepted and do not sell, I have wasted my time. However, if I take the shots I like in the first place, my time is never wasted.
I went through my shots and found a bit over forty that looked stock ready. Now was the moment for the true test of the 5D Mark II - what would the editing experience be like?
This is the last post of the Introduction to Microstock Photography series. I hope that this series has been helpful. In this post, I will go through the final set of examples.
This is a panorama of the Jerusalem city walls at night. The taking of the shot has an interesting story itself. I took this with my Sigma 80-400 4-5.6 OS at 400mm and 5.6. When I first submitted the shot, it was rejected due to softness. I was quite surprised at this because I used a tripod, mirror lock, and a remote shutter release. The tripod itself was on sturdy concrete. How could it be soft?
To my surprise, when I examined the shot at 100%, it was soft. The simple fact was, the Sigma was too soft at 400mm and 5.6. As a result of further investigation, I sold this lens because I could no longer depend on it. Eventually I will buy a new telephoto, but right now I rarely need one and I’m waiting for Canon to improve on their 100-400mm lens.
The next step I did was shrinking the size of the picture down. This often works when the shot is a bit out of focus. Shutterstock accepted the picture and it is a good seller. IStockPhoto rejected the shot - and it is an interesting point why.
In this post, we will continue with the examples we started earlier. We will start with what most people want from microstock photography…
This image was rejected for poor lighting. It is a complete isolation that took me some time to accomplish. I took this picture explicitly for stock. The result… I wasted my time. This is an example of why you should only take the pictures you like, rather than take pictures just for stock. If you take only the pictures you want to take, only the extra time spent adding keywords will be wasted if the image is not accepted or does not sell.
Interestingly, some time after this shot was rejected I post processed it a bit more and it was accepted.
I hope this series has been useful for you. In the next two blogs I will go over some examples, but before then I would like to discuss my philosophy on microstock. If you’re read other series on microstock, you’re probably familiar with different methods of tracking you make per picture and how you can strive to take new pictures for stock that sell better. I have deliberately not included that information here, and the truth is I would be at a loss to tell you how much I earn per picture. The simple fact is I take the shots that I enjoy. If I’m able to make money from them, then that is a nice bonus.
I enjoy photography, and I noticed that when I started making an effort to take pictures specifically for stock, I liked it much less. Stock pictures are not very interesting nor are they very artistic. They are meant to sell and to appeal to graphic designers for general purposes. Even if I did take pictures specifically for stock, if I calculated how much time I spent taking and processing the pictures and averages out my income per hour, there are a lot of things I can do that pay better. I must admit that I laugh at people who spend hours editing a photo just so they can make a few dollars from it on the microstock sites.
Therefore, here’s my philosophy and strategy for handling microstock.
In this post I’ll mention a hodgepodge of strategies that I have found useful for microstock photography. Keywords are extremely important. I typically spend more time getting the keywords right than I do post processing the image. Always make sure you get these right - because they’ll strongly affect whether the picture sells.
Often the best selling pictures are those others haven’t thought of. Try to be a bit inventive and try some new things. Some of my best selling images were ones where I thought “let’s try this”.
However, my best selling images by far are those I took on vacation. Sometimes I have even paid for a good portion of the vacation itself. Especially if you go somewhere exotic, always remember to bring your camera with you and think about stock when taking photos. Very often I see a shot that I wouldn’t have thought to take otherwise - but I feel it may be worth a try as stock. Sometimes the sales of the shot shock me. Just remember when shooting outdoors to try to take shots during the late afternoon or early morning. Often this means I have to get up quite early on vacation, but I always find the pictures are worth it - whether or not I sell them as stock.
In general, I expect most of you already know how to use a camera. However, there are some aspects of shooting a photo that I believe you must pay specific attention to when shooting photographs that potentially will be sold as microstock. First, RAW is your best friend. When I first started I shot only in JPG, then switched to RAW after the advice of some coworkers. Once I started shooting in RAW I never stopped. Today, I always shoot in RAW+full JPG. While this does fill up my hard disk easily, this also means I do not need to post process every picture - just those that I feel are worth it. RAW gives much more flexibility in terms of changing the exposure (to a limit) and white balance.
Always account for camera shake either by using a tripod together with a remote release and mirror lock, or use a high enough shutterspeed. The rule of thumb is to use the reverse of the camera lens - so a 400mm lens should have a shutter speed of 1/400, but with today’s lenses that contain IS and various optical tricks there are often exceptions to this rule. Still, keep your shutterspeed high if you are not using a tripod.
I always try to stay at ISO 100, even on the Canon 5D. With some of the newer cameras capable of better high ISO handling, you may be able to go higher without risking the possibility of requiring noise reduction.
Finally, always check for blowouts when taking shots. These will almost always cause your image to be rejected. Proper exposure will often fix this but sometimes you may need a diffuser or need to create an HDR.
Keywording is immensely important if you want your images to sell. Once in awhile I receive e-mails from photographers mentioning that their pictures do not sell. When I take a look at their portfolios, I see beautiful pictures with horrible keywords. Put simply, keywording is more important than workflow. Many photographers spend hours editing a single picture only to give it horrible keywords. In this post I’ll attempt to provide some guidance on keywording.
Without proper keywording, buyers will never find your picture. No matter how beautiful it is, buyers will never see it. Therefore, you need to make as full use of the keywording space as possible. Most sites allow you to use up to fifty keywords and I suggest that you reach this limit for many of your photos. This does not mean you should keyword spam. Many sites automatically catch keywords such as “teen” and “sex” and ban you if you are found keyword spamming. Your keywords must also be relevant to the specific picture. Choosing a large number of relevant keywords people would actually use is as much of an art as a science.
