Stock Photography and Illustration -- Wanna Play?

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The supply can never fill the demand! Thats the status of the present stock photography market.

The internet with its exponential growth in what might be an infinite amount of subjects is always in need of new imagery.

If you are an artist or have an interest in photography, you may be able to suppliment your present income through this means. If you do it right, you might even be able to do it for a living.

The customers come from many directions. Book publishers, graphic artists, corporate creative groups, magazines, advertising agencies, filmmakers, web designers, interior decor firms, specialty publishers, and similar use stock photography to fill the needs of their design and creative ventures. Also added to the scene are bloggers. Other markets being strategically tapped are general consumers, small businesses and marketers of other sorts.

While the possibilities are infinite, your creativity must be matched in practicality. Just being a good artist or good photographer (which in themselves are subjective) is generally a start, but certainly not enough. I've come to think of it as a game.

Let me say first that these are mostly my own observations that I've used that work. There is much more to it than I can write here, most of which I have yet to learn!

THE GAME

If you are playing a game of pool, the success of your game will be largely determined by experience. That experience breaks down to a number of factors -- the two biggest of which are aim and strategy. Regardless of your skill, there will always be an element of chance working for or against you.

AIM: Your images should be aimed to a particular market, or a few simultaneously. Naturally, you can send a pool ball rolling in any direction on the table, and by chance it might accidently hit the right balls into the right pockets, but thats not going to be very effective in playing among the experienced. Likewise, simply drawing or photographing your heart away without any purpose might accidently appeal to some people, but probably not many, and it will be largely by chance when it does happen.  

It's better to understand the market you are trying to appeal to. Research the trends that market is following, the content they are buying, and try to develop your image along those lines. You have the luxury of choosing. If possible try to hit a few targets at once! Professional web designers are very trend oriented. What sort of color schemes do they favor? What subjects are hot with them? Can you include these in your next art or photography project?

Just like a game of pool, you can continually increase the accuracy of your aim, always to your benefit.

 

STRATEGY: I've included a few good ones below.

Be Original:  The best strategy, very good, although very cliche: BE ORIGINAL! Naturally, inspiration comes from many directions and in many ways. But eyebrows raise in suspicion when the content your producing looks exceedingly close to the known best-selling images or ideas. Keeping in mind the incredibly large number of people whose only strategy is to base their next idea off of what's selling hot (no pun intended) in stock photography, using the same method will leave you lost in a crowd of copy-cats.

The "strategy" can go on forever. I have a few of my own which have sent much of my work (not necessarily due to quality) ahead of the masses based on a few simple lines of reasoning. Here's a few well-known and not-so-well-known strategies:

Concepts. Be vague. Vague is good. Vague fits many subjects, and will usually find a home in a design where the designer couldn't find the more appropriate image. Of course, maybe they did find it...but maybe it wasn't the right color? So, take your "vague" strategy and combine it with color choice, and quite likely your image will be the winner in a pile of choices based on aesthetics. Make a few color versions. Why don't you do a little research to see what the present greatest color trends are? Suddenly this game of chance is being played like an orchestra that you are directing. Thats where the aim comes in.  

 

Be Precise: The polar oppose to vague, but of huge value. What is everyone who has something to sell boasting about these days? No doubt they will want it expressed in a way that hits home and leaves an impression.

Keep it SIMPLE: Designers don't want you hogging the spotlight in their design. If you have an idea for a scene, you will go through a lot of work to produce that scene -- whether drawn or photographed. Keep it simple. If you're an illustrator, use every part of the buffalo. After you've created the scene, take all of the elements comprising it out and sell them as separate clip-art. The lamp from the office scene you created will probably sell better than the scene itself. Your time invested will go much further too. 

Develop a Style: You will probably be getting a lot of return customers. Many stock photography sites allow the customers to contact you. Often, if they are not asking for direct purchases of your images (be wary of such inquiries, it's not such a good deal in the end) they will want to commission you to do some custom work. That's because they like your work, which is defined by your style.

Make a Series: This is a good one for Illustrators. If you have a series, the designer will most likely buy more than one--if not all--of the images comprising that series. A lot of my sales are the result of this strategy at play.

 

My first year in selling Illustrations I did 100 dollars. That's less than 30 cents a day! Now its not uncommon for my portfolio to do well over that a day! Which of course is entry level wages for a guy with two babies and one on the way. (That's a year and a half into it). Portfolio size counts for a lot, but quality, aim, and strategy count the most. I'm still perfecting my style, and I haven't even begun to describe the journey I had to take or the smaller details. If I had known the above at the outset, success would have come much sooner! I hope this helps you. If you want to see which sites are good to submit your work to, see below:

iStockphoto    Shutterstock    Dreamstime    StockXpert    123rf