Another rule is that I must pick one shot and only one shot.  This means I need to go through my shots until there is one left. Often this can be quite tricky as I may like several shots.  This exercise, however, teaches me to find flaws in my photos.  Until I realize these flaws, I won’t know how to improve.

This weekend I was presented with an interesting dilemma.  I had photographed during lunch by my office that day and had taken a number of photos.  That evening, I sat down with my wife and kids to select that day’s photo.  After a bit of culling, it came down to two shots.

Red Leaf by Joseph Calev

At first glance, the first photo seemed the best to me.  I rather liked the pattern caused by the missing part of the lea.  I wasn’t crazy about the gleam on the left of the shot or the fact that the right most “point” is off the photo.  In addition some of the points are more OOF than I would prefer.  Still, I thought it deserved being the shot of the day.

My wife preferred the second shot.  She couldn’t narrow it down, but really liked it.  The funny thing about the shot is I took just this one, then moved on.  When I looked at it in the viewfinder it didn’t look like anything special.  Typically I wait until it is downloaded on my machine before deciding whether to delete it.  Upon examining it on my machine it escaped deletion (I delete around 70% of my shots each day) but I wasn’t keen on using the shot.

In terms of criticizing the shot, I am not crazy about the blown out highlights, but most of all it didn’t really impress me as being that unusual.  The first shot tells a bit more of a story.  There used to be a leaf with this shape and some insect had a snack – leaving the outer edge of the leaf (which evidently must not have been as tasty).

In the end, my wife preferred this shot and I had already published the following shot a few days earlier.

Imagination by Joseph Calev

As I try to do something different each day, I went with my wife’s suggestion and published the red leaf.

The next morning, I awoke to a ton of e-mails and my first 100 vote photo!  I find it rather intriguing how so many people liked this photo but it has now reached the rare echelon of photos my wife wants me to print.

The next day, I let my wife make the full decision.  She chose this photo, which promptly received not a single vote or comment.

Calligraphy by Joseph Calev

For the record, I and my older son preferred this shot, which in retrospect I probably should have made the photo of the day.  It’s not a great shot, but I have a feeling it would have at least received one vote.

So what have I learned from this experience? What seems obvious is you never know how some photos will be received.  Everyone judges photos differently and there will always be someone who hates a particular shot.

Going forward I will continue to listen to the opinions of my wife and kids.  At times I will let their choice trump mine, while at other times when I am more sure of myself I will make the choice.  One thing with the Red Leaf photo is my wife really, really liked it.  So perhaps the lesson is when someone really likes a photo, it is best to pay attention.

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So, this weekend while at the Pacific Science Center, I decided that I should join the club.

There!  Now I have officially joined the club!  OK, maybe I could have put the ‘eye’ a bit to the right and exposed it a tad bit less, but nonetheless I have not posted my ‘obligatory’ shot so I am officially in the club!

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Limited use – This is a very limited license that allows images to be used only by non-profit organizations.  As far as I know, only Alamy supports this model.  While Alamy is generally a traditional stock house, they currently support a limited microstock model where non-profit organizations can purchase licenses for far less money.

Editorial – These are basically newsworthy pictures.  Editorial pictures do not require model and property releases, but also cannot be used for advertising campaigns.  Good examples of editorial pictures are those found in newspapers of various politicians.  These politicians did not consent to their pictures being released, but because they are newsworthy no release is necessary.  Various news web sites may use these pictures.  However, editorial photos sell much less often than standard licenses.  Today only Shutterstock and Dreamstime support editorial pictures.

Standard license – This is the license for the vast majority of pictures.  This allows most uses for pictures except for large commercial runs.  The license contains limits to how many times the image can be used and the resale of items containing the picture, but these limits are acceptable for most uses. 

Enhanced licenses – These licenses have far fewer limits and are much more expensive.  They are much less frequent than standard licenses but over time you will see them.  Enhanced licenses are prominent on both IStockPhoto and Shutterstock.  Typically the payouts are much higher than for standard licenses.  While standard licenses pay anywhere from 25 cents to several dollars, enhanced licenses pay from twenty to fifty dollars.

Note that the licensing terms for standard and enhanced photos vary from site to site.

Submission process

I will now discuss the general submission process that is common to all sites.  The following are the general steps for submitting a picture to a microstock site.  In later posts, I will give more details per site.

1) The first step is to obviously take and post process the pictures.

2) Send the pictures to the site.  Various sites support HTTP, flash, and FTP upload.  FTP upload is generally the quickest, though I have found flash upload to be easier to use sometimes.  HTTP upload – where you select each file – is generally the slowest way to upload.

3) Select keywords for each image.  Actually you should have done that as part of step 1 by adding the keywords directly to the image.  Still, most sites require you to click a button to use the keywords from the image or to correlate their keywords with yours.

4) Select categories for each image.  All sites have categories and all except for StockXPert require you to enter them.  Categories vary from site to site.  Some sites have quick ways to categorize, but this is still generally a manual process.

5) Many sites have one or more standard checkboxes you must check.  These basically signal that you understand the agreement and the photo was indeed taken by you.

6) After some time, the site will review the image and accept or reject it.  If the image is accepted, it is added to their collection where it may sell.

In the next post, I will begin to discuss the different microstock sites and my opinions of them.

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