Making stock photo submissions

[Ann Braun Wheatley]

I was intrigued by the latest email from Rob with its link to Jason Row’s guide on how to prepare for stock photo submission. I’ve had a go with this for the first time this year by joining EyeEm and have succeeded in getting about 20 photos onto Getty Images. None have sold yet but it’s a first step. I’m curious to learn about the experiences others here have had with the world of stock photos.

Wasn’t sure where to post this. Hope this is the right place.

[Kent DuFault]

I’ve been involved in selling stock photography since around 1985. It used to be quite lucrative. Now, the quantity outpaces the demand. So, naturally, prices have been driven significantly downward compared to the old days. Two things about selling stock photography. First, you need a large library of accepted images to have any expectation of regular sales. Secondly, (and this is super important) the more specialized your submitted images are, and the more written information that you can provide about the subject (key wording and captioning) can greatly increase the market and value for the photo. For example, instead of saying, “Bird in New Zealand on the west coast in Spring”. You say something like, New Zealand Plover, Scientific name: Charadrius obscurus Higher classification: Charadrius Photographed in the September mating season with molted plumage. Its Māori names include tūturiwhatu, pukunui, and kūkuruatu, and it’s on the endangered species list. The more specialized your submissions, the more likely they will sell.

[Ann Braun Wheatley]

Thank you Kent, that’s very helpful.

And what about EyeEm? I have found the tagging system frustrating, especially when trying to be as precise as possible about the location of my photos.

[Kent DuFault]

Me too on the keywording… The advantage to EyeEm is that they’ve made the entry requirements fairly low, and if your image is of high standard- it may be passed on to Getty Images Worldwide. I’ve made quite a few sales through EyeEm over about a 5 or 6 year period. Of course, like I said earlier, prices are low. I think the largest single sale I’ve ever made through EyeEm was about $30 USD.

[Kent DuFault]

Just to give you an idea what supply and demand has done to prices. Around 1992, I sold a stock photo of my son standing on a beach in the Bahamas (that I took while we were on vacation) for $4000.00 (it paid for the trip). I would say back then the average price for a released stock photo for a commercial use was at least $1000, and both of those numbers reflect the stock agency already having taken their half.

[Ann Braun Wheatley]

My reason for joining EyeEm was really just to see if I could get any images accepted by Getty, so was pleasantly surprised when  they were.  Your comment about the precision required on tagging woke me up to the fact that those images now on Getty via EyeEm will probably never produce even USD $30!   I tried contacting EyeEm to complain about the tagging problem, but no traction on that so far.

[Federico Alegria]

This is going to sound nuts, but you should try the free stock photography places as well. I’ve had some quite interesting exposure results with Unsplash. I have only 25 pictures there, the 25 pictures that build my portfolio, but people get curious sometimes about my pictures and go to my website. After that, they have contacted me for actually buying some of my photos for their websites. This has given me $5.00 to even $10.00 a couple of times. It is short money indeed, but way more than the $0.25 Shutterstock gives (in sum to all the effort of creating a highly commercial product, which in my case is hard since I’m a Street Photographer).

These free based places are less strict, and are giving people some high quality exposure too.

[Ann Braun Wheatley]

How do you handle releases as a street photographer,  Frederico? Tal vez Unsplash no los exige?

[Kent DuFault]

I don’t know about Unsplash, but EyeEm will accept unreleased photos for editorial sale. The problem is… the photo is much less likely to sell.

[Ann Braun Wheatley]

Yes, this has been my experience too.

[Federico Alegria]

Unsplash is pretty flexible and it doesn’t ask for releases. In those places you are aiming for exposure, no direct sells.

[Rob Wood (Admin)]

Good question! @federicoalegria?

[chris pook]

Ann, my experience with stock was brief…  I gotta say, it is not exactly food for the soul, doing stock.  I got accepted by Shutterstock on my second go, but only because I saw it as a challenge to produce some photographs technically good enough to get accepted.  To get in I included (and this is a true story) a shot of my wooden fence.  It was correctly exposed, well lit, in focus, did not suffer from noise, had no rights issues, was easy to key word, and I didn’t have to walk a long way to get it.  (I have a small house).  I mean it was just soul less, but hey, technically it was fine.

Then I did the numbers…  This was perhaps 5 years ago.  People then were complaining that the money had gone out of stock.  I came up with a small equation, which looked at how many good clean novel photographs I could create, process, keyword and submit in a day.  I worked out the likely pay out, as of today, per image, based on a bit of research and my own tiny experience.  I think I worked out that you could expect, oh, $1.50 a photograph a month, on aggregate, so 2,000 photographs would bring in $3k a month.  That would just about have covered my (then) overheads.

I then worked out how long it would take me to get up to 2,000 photographs – not that long, as it happens, but nor does it happen overnight, particularly with Shutterstock, where if you get a reject it just takes forever to re-submit and get batches accepted.

What I then looked at was the growth in the number of Shutterstock images.  At the time this was going through the roof, as everyone with a camera and some skill jumped in.  What became clear is that if the global budget for stock photography is fixed, and let’s assume it is more or less, and that the number of available stock photographs doubles every 6 months, then you will need not 2,000 but 8,000 photographs to clear $3k this year, and 32,000 the year after…

Ok, so my memory is hazy, and the numbers just illustrative, but it made me realise there was no way I could make a living doing stock photography, and that for me at least it would be a slow death trying to do so.

That is not to take anything away from the very talented photographer / business people out there who have made a way with it – I’m just not that good enough myself!

🙂

 

 

[Kent DuFault]

Good planning and thought process. I think you may have been over-zealous as to how often and how much each image would bring in… especially if they were as generic as your backyard fence. At this point in history, 3K a year on 2000 generic photos? No way.

[Ann Braun Wheatley]

Thanks Chris.  I really appreciate your story.  While I LOVE photography, I’m not aspiring to make a living  at it. And if I were, it wouldn’t be doing stock photography.  But it boosted my confidence to post 100 photos on EyeEm and have 1/3 of them selected as premium — those are the ones that get passed on to Getty Images.  Interestingly, none of my photos have made it into EyeEm’s own competitions. Looking through those and reflecting about why my photos haven’t made the grade has been a useful experience.

[chris pook]

Absolutely!  Everyone should have a go – it’s a learning experience.  🙂

[chris pook]

That was 5 years ago, my analysis…  now, if you needed to double the number of photographs every 6 months to stand still… well, there would be a lot of zeros.  Here the research breaks down, but the principle remains.  Thank goodness I decided to do this other thing!!

[Ann Braun Wheatley]

Keen to hear from you @fredericoalegria on how a street photographer handles releases.

[Rob Wood (Admin)]

Well this has been a depressing thread. lol!

[Author]

Posts