So I guess the best way to apply is to try to go via people you know who know someone...or maybe there are active content hunters somewhere.

I brought this up in a different post but I think Getty still accepts new photographers but they have to be established advertising photogs, no run of the mill stock shooters like us.    I skim Getty images all the time looking at photographers work, plugging their names into Google and looking at their websites, and 9 times out of 10 the shooters are displaying advertising/assignment work on their website. So I guess it probably is who you know, or maybe they'll contact you when you shoot the next Coke a Cola campaign.

Quit a few years ago now I had a long conversation with a Getty images shooter, he started long before digital, long before micro stock, and he talked about the money Getty stock photographers used to make. High six figures and he didn't work full time. He was going to Art Center in Los Angeles when he started and quit school because he making money hand over fist. He said he got the gig just by showing Getty some images he took of his girlfriend on the beach.

He's no older than me and i was shooting at the same time he was but, I never knew about stock back then. Wish I did.

I'm a Getty photographer. I have images in two different collections, their "Moments" collection which used to be the "Flickr" collection, and their "Photographers Choice" (PC) collection.

In 2008 I submitted images to Getty and was invited into their PC collection which at the time was a pay to play scheme. It cost $50 per image to submit. However, your first submission was a reduced rate of $25 per image, up to 10 images. Also, for every image you sold, you could submit one for free. So that's what I did, I submitted 5 images at $25 each, then would submit a new image after I sold one.  I never wanted to pay $50 for an image, not worth it.

Then a few years back Getty was scouring Flickr and inviting some photographers to contribute to the Flickr collection, and I was invited. It was very limiting in how many images you could contribute every month, it was taking months and months to review images and then every six months or so they would stop accepting images for six months at a time. Finally, they stopped accepting images for over a year but wouldn't tell their photographers one way or another if the collection was permanently closed.

Now Flicker has become Moments and things so far are much better, accepting 50 images a month, much shorter acceptance times. Also, I just found out that the PC collection stopped charging their $50 per image fee a year ago, I never got the email. So now I'm back to submitting to the PC collection.

Your images on Getty cannot be placed anywhere else, and any similar image cannot. So as an example images from the same shoot, same model and clothing, location and time of day, that sort of thing. You can use the same model in another shoot but the images can't look the same as the previous submitted shoot. So yes it's restrictive but for me, my return per image is at least 3 times better on Getty than it is on all the micros and Alamy combined. However, I have fewer than 10% as many images on Getty as I do on the micros so I still make a lot more from the micros.

That link above is the way to submit however, things are different then they used to be. Looks like you now enter a competition based on an image brief / need that they're looking for.

Animals. Totally under rated PF album.

Yea, I just looked that up, you are right. Well there's a lesson for ya, get lazy, don't pay attention and you miss something important. You'd think though that Getty would send a freakin' email to their photographers letting them know about something like that. Anyway, that's 200 royalty free images this last year I could have been submitting. My fault.

Thanks for pointing that out to me.

Corbis just sent me to Veer. Masterfile liked my portraits however, those images were already on Getty and they didn't like my still life, which I mostly shoot. I am on Alamy, and Acclaim but Alamy is hit and miss, Acclaim only had a few sales so I removed most of my images. I've looked at Image Bank but i'm not shooting lifestyle right now, I want to, but my current stuff is a lot of conceptual still life and I don't see that working with IB. I'll just stick to Getty Moments when i have some single images that can be uploaded there and put everything else on Alamy and the Micros. When I get to shooting some lifestyle I'll try again with some of the other macros.

Yea, I assisted a Digital Vision / Getty photographer about 12 years ago and she had a personal editor in Getty, she had done some advertising prior so that is how she got in with Digital Vision. If I remember Getty bought Digital Vision slightly before I assisted her. Then, she was hired by Getty once or twice to shoot stock for Getty, which she got paid directly, no royalties.

So this Moments collection is turning out to be such a frustration, I see so much potential but I can't spend the time and money putting together a shoot only to have one or two (if I'm lucky) images selected out of possibly 12 or more.  I've asked to get into Getty's other collections but they've said no. I'm also part of the Photographers choice collection but I've only paid to have a few images in that collection and have just broken even so, not worth it. $50 per image is too much, maybe $25 I would consider it, but nothing more.

Anyone know how the different Getty collections work? I know for instance the Image bank is an aggregate stock agency that will send their photographers images to not only Getty but Corbis and perhaps others like Masterfile. Also I think Digital Vision was a stock agency that was bought out by Getty a number of years ago so if you were shooting for them you're now shooting for Getty. But there are dozens of different collections in Getty and I'm just curious what differentiates them and how one gets accepted with these premium collections. I read once that you have to be an established advertising or editorial photographer to be considered, but I've seen examples where that is not the case. Also, I'm pretty sure the photographers with these other collections actually get to talk to real people when submitting their images, so they can have a conversation about what gets accepted, how many, etc. Stinks that the "moments" collection is the bottom of the barrel and we have no options. When this was the Flickr collection, I remember that once the images were selected, we could still upload a higher resolution images or not. That way if only one was accepted from a series I had the option not to go through with the submission but now with the Moments collection, it's a different portal for uploading, once they're  up, thats it.

For me micros have been consistent or better than 2008 (especially iStock) with very few new photos uploaded. However, Alamy sales dropped like a lead weight. 2000 images, averaging two sales every month for all of 2007 and 2008, just totally dropped at the beginning of 09, now I get one sale every three to four months. Acclaim, nothing this whole year, whereas before I could count on around three sales a year from 300 images.

Sometimes Getty pays  off. Last month I had one of my RM images purchased at 3 sizes at the same time for advertising. They spent almost $2000 for the set, of course my take was considerably less, around $586.00, but still no complaining. I had about 3 months in a row with these dinky 12 and 30 dollar sales then boom, this (relatively) big sale.

So after deducting placement fees, I'm earning an average of $70.00 per image per month, based on 20 images over one and a half years. Would that number hold up if I placed a lot more images, I don't know. I could easily dump thousands of dollars on placement fees and never earn it back, that's why I'm scared to put more images with Getty, but on the other hand so far $70.00 per image per month is very good for me compared to my numbers on the micros and Alamy. Forgive me if I'm not willing to show you all the image, it's a simply executed image that is easily duplicated. I'm proud of it, it's a cool shot but others have put similar stuff up on the micros so...

Dreamstime contacted me today explaining that there is a buyer interested in buying full rights for one of my images. I'm curious if anyone here would give their opinion regarding selling full rights to their micro images, would you do it and for how much? I wont share the exact image but here are some basic stats for this image. It was uploaded early 2006, and has generated a total of around 650 downloads across Dreamstime, BIG, Fotolia, Stock Xpert and 123, I'm not sure how to find out how many times an image has been downloaded on Shutterstock but it's in my top 20 out of 1200 images on SS so a guess would be around 200 or so. So a rough estimate would be maybe a total of 900 downloads in about 4 years. I earn roughly a buck per image per month, maybe slightly less, counting all of my micro sites. So a very rough estimate would be this image earns around 200 per year for me. What's the shelf life of said image? I don't know, it's still getting downloaded almost daily on Fotolia and Shutter. So assuming it would continue to earn $150 - $200 per year for the next five years? $1000. I'm thinking no less than $2000 (if I do it at all) but I'd like to hear what others think about this. Thank you for any opinions.

ou have to go to the image page. You can't do it from your details page.

I did that, did not see anything for deleting or deactivating my image. Just so I am understanding, click on one of the images from the details page right? The same way you would edit an image, change the keywords or categories, correct? Where the heck is the delete button?

Dumb question but I cant find a delete option / button, I have done in the past but things seem to be different. Cant figure it out, please help.

Thanks

When I made the post, I didn't take the time to look at where the extra sales were from, it was one $20.00 dollar sale. Other than that one big (relatively speaking) sale, Can stock is a total dud.