I am looking into producing images for submission to Science Photo Library and was wondering if there are any contributors here who work with this agency.

In particular I am interested in what kind of (annual) RPI is typical and what kind of portfolio size is needed to achieve sizeable returns (i.e. $1,000 per month). I will of course need to upgrade my camera as I believe they require images to be at least 12 megapixels uninterpolated.

I have a background in science so have some idea of the types of images that could be submitted.

it's distributed by Getty but i've no idea about RPI, however the BBC site for instance is using SPL/Getty *every day* in its scientific articles, mostly extra small web size (2-300px ?)

i think most of the best images are made with 3D softwares and then with photoshop they make a whole illustration using other layers, take a look at the images of molecules or DNA for instance, there's some very nice stuff and concepts, a few ones could even be "fine art" and great for book covers or posters.

so i guess to be over the top you need to invest a lot of time on it, production costs will be higher than for normal stock but probably there's also less competition.

Isn't (or wasn't) SPL some sort of BBC enterprise from their nature/science output?

It's a trad library where you should get a good return when you sell something but sales may be few and far between. But I think it is the market leader in its niche, which is good.

I have some salable science-themed photos, so I just took a brief look at sciencephoto.com.  Their inventory includes plenty of quite ordinary stock photos:  "teenagers using cell phone outdoors" doesn't set the bar too high.

But they want 60-100 images for an initial submission, which I probably don't have.

And this is from their submission guidelines:

· File format – we need uncompressed TIFF files in 24-bit (8 bits per channel)
RGB colour and in the Adobe (1998) colour space. Set resolution to 300 pixels
per inch (ppi).

· File size – photographs: a minimum of 36MB when open. Illustrations:
preferably 60MB when open. Do not resize your images to reach this level.

If I'm not mistaken they only do Exclusive representation (check the contract PDF on their site).

Hi ScottishPhotographer,

Quote from: ScottishPhotographer on June 28, 2013, 14:09
I am looking into producing images for submission to Science Photo Library and was wondering if there are any contributors here who work with this agency.

In particular I am interested in what kind of (annual) RPI is typical and what kind of portfolio size is needed to achieve sizeable returns (i.e. $1,000 per month). I will of course need to upgrade my camera as I believe they require images to be at least 12 megapixels uninterpolated.

I have a background in science so have some idea of the types of images that could be submitted.

Do you have now any impressions from work with Science Photo Library?

Okay guys, I will describe my own short experience of work with Science Photo Library, may be it will be useful for somebody. I like to draw 3D illustrations of microbes. Mainly I sell my images and video clips through Shutterstock and Fotolia. I also tried 123rf and Depositphotos but they gave so low earning that finally I stopped spending time on them. At the end of last year I decided to try SPL too (thanks to this forum!). I was ready to draw some exclusive images and although I did not have many, I decided to try.
They proposed two types of contracts - exclusive for new images (according to it I will get 50% from sales) and non-exclusive for my old images (with 40%). With video clips the same. They wanted that I upload all my Shutterstock portfolio as soon as possible but the main limiation for me was the size of images - I made 3000*2000 px for Shutterstock but they wanted 4 times bigger (6000*4000 or 5000*5000) and I had to rerender them, so uploaded overall near 40 exclusive and 70 non-exclusive.
I was given my own photo editor and video editor, they check now my submissions and guide me. At beginning all my submission were very fastly uploaded on-site (I was really impressed because Shutterstock takes 2 weeks to upload my clips). But then they started to work rather slow, and I am not so happy with this. My latest submissions from beginning of February are still not uploaded to site.

To summarise, what I like:
1) I can sell there my non-exclusive images from Shutterstock also,
2) my photo and video editors give me useful suggestions regarding what else is good to draw,
3) images/clips of other artists are really interesting and studying them gives me lot of new ideas,
4) they send my works also to Alamy and other agencies.

What I don't like:
1) they work too slow, when submissions are checked for several months I really loose interest,
2) for the first 2 months my earnings are rather low. Only few my exclusive images were sold at the lowest resolution, so I even don't know whether there is a sence to spend time on sending non-exclusive images,
3) my computor is not so potent and large size of images which they request slow down all my work.
At beginning I was so impressed and excited that was going to spend all my next efforts on SPL but now, I am still going to continue to submit some images and clips, however, main my efforts I am again directing on Shutterstock and Fotolia.

I will keep posting my next impressions as well 

Quote from: Microbe on March 16, 2016, 14:22
Okay guys, I will describe my own short experience of work with Science Photo Library, may be it will be useful for somebody.

I will keep posting my next impressions as well 

Thanks. It's always good to hear about other agencies besides the big micros.