Microstock Photography Forum - General > Off Topic

My pet peeve

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rjmiz:
     Forget about open space for text. I have NO idea how that
ever got started, or who ever suggested we help the designer by providing copy space.

Important NOTE: Don't be so bold as to think you're doing a
professional designer a favor by providing him copy space by
leaving empty space in your images.

Remember, you are an amateur photographer. You have been taught to fill the frame with your subject. (if not you are now)
Composition, framing, and balance are our credos.

HE...is a professional designer. He has been taught how to create his own copy space.
You do your job, and leave him to do his!

Oh and one more thing....

...I need to concentrate on photography in the purest sense. Making excuses for poor framing
by saying "Well I wanted to leave copy space" is ignoring the fact that I framed my image poorly.

I certainly wont accept a poorly framed image in my own gallery.
I wont tolerate my own lack of planning in the design. There is no excuse!

hatman12:
Sorry, but I couldn't disagree more.

Before I decided to enter the Microstock market I was lucky enough to share a coffee with hidesy, who is the second most successful contributor to IS (nearly 300,000 downloads).  She gave me lots of advice, one of which was to resist the temptation to create compositionally pleasing images.  As an example, she warned me not to cut off the top of heads in portraits and to leave plenty of space to one side or both.  Now today's 'pleasing to the eye' portraits tend to focus in close and cut off the top of the head, so her advice would be going completely against my own inclination.

When I looked at her portfolio I saw that she was indeed correct - most of her best sellers of people have lots of space, and preferably three corners of the picture left empty to allow the designer to resize the canvas at will.

In Microstock, there is a HUGE difference between a great picture and a picture that SELLS.  And if we want to succeed, we have to create pictures that SELL.

No offence, rjmiz, but given that hidesy has 300,000 downloads, I'll take her advice rather than yours.

wysiwyg_foto:
Miz - a very long time ago, I did some work for a magazine on a freelance basis.  The requirements were a margin on the right and a margin on the top - both for copy space.  If they wanted a cropped image, they cropped it.  Was as simple as that.

The latest PACA meeting had designers expressing the same sentiments.  Give me full body shots and uncropped images - we can do the cropping.

Though I do agree with non-stock related stuff...did a wedding a couple of weeks ago.  I went ahead and cropped some images for the bride and groom.  They liked the cropped images better than the uncropped images - and they didn't know enough to know it was the same photograph.

You shoot with a 16mp camera - why not shoot uncropped, then crop to your liking and submit both?

sharply_done:

--- Quote from: rjmiz on May 16, 2007, 14:41 ---...
Remember, you are an amateur photographer. You have been taught to fill the frame with your subject. (if not you are now)
Composition, framing, and balance are our credos.
...

--- End quote ---

Please don't assume that all of us here are amateurs - I'm a bit put off by that.

As far as framing/cropiing/whitespace goes, I think there are two distinct microstock buyers: those who want as close to a raw image as possible, and those who want a completely finished image.

And thanks for sharing the hidesy advice, hatman12!

madelaide:
I am also of the opinion that stock images have a different look than "regular" photography.  Copy-space, angles, isolations. 

Regards,
Adelaide

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