Stock photography is all about making commercial images. You will not have much success selling fine art images (e.g. East Texas landscapes) in the commercial stock marketplace. Given your location you'd do well to keep your eyes open for such iconic things as cowboys on the range, oil derricks, longhorn cattle, and armadillos.

If you are serious about this you'd also do well to forget about film. Film is now only useful in making fine art images, which is not what you want to be doing if you intend to make money here. Instead of getting a new entry level camera (e.g. Canon Rebel), the better route might be to buy a used mid or pro-level one (e.g. 1Ds MkII, 5D, 30D, 20D).

You'll also have to be at least moderately familiar with Photoshop to make competitive images. Straight-out-of-the-camera stuff, for the most part, just doesn't cut it commercially.


... good luck!

... what's an EC?

EC = Editor's Choice

Thanks for the recognition everybody - I really appreciate it!

I've seen a bit of a jump in sales, but mostly subs so far. The biggest change is that a lot of people have added me to their 'favorite photographer' list.

I just experienced the same thing: "You can not make a new conversion until the previous one has been processed." Perhaps I haven't run into this before because FT used to be one of the faster agencies to pay, but now they're among the slowest -- it's been over a week since my last payment request and they've yet to respond.

He who can't be named with a white beard needs new glasses?

Heh ... Volderind.

Overall rank: #$%@
7 days rank: ****

Quote from: sharply_done on July 08, 2008, 12:42

Section 4(a)2
4. Standard License Prohibitions

Those statements are in reference to the standard license. The extended license states:

Quote

Items for Resale - Limited Run
Notwithstanding the restriction contained in section 4(a) of the Standard License Prohibitions prohibiting the use or display of the Content in items for resale, you shall be entitled with respect to this specific Content to produce the following items for resale, license, or other distribution:

up to 100,000 postcards, greeting cards or other cards, stationery, stickers, and paper products,
up to 10,000 posters, calendars or other similar publications, mugs or mousepads,
or up to 2,000 t-shirts, sweatshirts, or other apparel, games, toys, entertainment goods, framed or mounted artwork
in or on which the Content is used or displayed (the "Resale Merchandise"), provided that:

the right to produce the Resale Merchandise in no way grants any right to you or any recipient of the Resale Merchandise in any intellectual property or other rights to the Content;
you agree to indemnify the iStockphoto Parties from any cost, liability, damages or expense incurred by any of them relating to or in connection with any of the Resale Merchandise;
any production of Resale Merchandise in excess of the allowed run size is prohibited and requires the Content to be purchased separately;
all other terms and conditions of the Agreement remain in full force and effect, including all Prohibited Uses.

The issue here, I believe, is that the image is being used in a print-on-demand environment, which clearly violates the standard licensing agreement. The extended license does not modify the standard license in this regard, and thus its terms still apply - just read the last part of the clause (which I highlighted).

Looks to me like this site is not operating above board. Go here to contact the Contributor Relations people at IS.

I PM'd kosmikkreeper and rinder to let them know they're in there, too. I'd mail Ansel Adams, but he's dead. (grin)

I do see a lot of good images with poor keywords sell well though.  If the contributor has good images, the buyers seem to find them.

I suspect image sales and keywords follow a something-like 80/20 rule: 80% of the sales are through 20% of the keywords.

I think it's currently in a 'proof of concept' state. Sure, it works, but you can't easily see the influence and interplay of primary and secondary keywords. What's there right now is an engine for something that could be a very powerful tool.

I'd like to see it evolve to work something like this: you give it a few primary keywords ("man, beach") and a bunch of secondary ones ("running, jumping, walking, volleyball, football") and it does an analysis on the possible combinations then throws up the results on some sort of easy-to-read chart. In this way you might find that "man, beach, volleyball" has a better market than "man, beach, running".

Looks pretty crappy to me - there's a ton of CA/fringing happening.

Like I said in my first post  there are many people think that light meters no longer necessary .but can you please tell me Sharply why you can't use it with digital technology.
...

I didn't say you can't use a light meter with a digital camera, I said that it won't provide you with the correct digital exposure.

A light meter calculates exposure based on obtaining an average brightness of medium gray. Although this is the correct method for using film, it's going to give you a noisier image if you use a digital camera.

The proper way to work digitally is to overexpose so that the brightest colour is as close as possible to the right side of the histogram. This provides the sensor with a maximum signal-to-noise ratio, resulting in a cleaner image.