I buy a lot of lifestyle stock and I rarely use models isolated on white. What I am always looking for are natural looking people, not posing, not looking at the camera. I want to see an instant of real life captured. I want great lighting, and artistic flair. As the boomers age, there is definitely a growing market for good looking, active older people. Shopping, golfing, eating, drinking, biking... It sounds cliche, but I need those images all the time, and most of what is available is awful.

Sounds like you need either assignment work shot for you or higher end RF / RM images. You won't find many microstock photographers who can create those kinds of images in bulk.

I would assume Sean would pick one of the better photographers who does a lot of isolated on white shots to make his point and the people that do it well get a lot of downloads.  Look at Lisa with around 3,000 isolated on white or the guy with 300,000 sales he has 17,000 isolated on white images or look at Yuri with 1,000 isolated on white.  Anyone can shoot bad shots and not get sales but that can be said about every single subject and doesn't add anything to the discussion.  Speaking of adding nothing to the conversation, thanks for chiming in.

These aren't the best examples - they are all people who got started a long time ago. The guy on IS with the 320K sales has been active on IS since 2002 - that's 11 years.

Let me repeat it one more time.... 11 years of production and sales. Find someone of similar portfolio size and history with mostly location shots and I'm sure you'll see a stark contrast in numbers.

Quote from: rgphoto on May 01, 2013, 20:42

Yes, I looked thru a few sites with my proposed scenario but white background is most feasible now due to location cost.

You can shoot in a white background and then add backgrounds later in PS. You should start building a background library to do that.

I wouldn't recommend composite backgrounds for micro. Too much time required, and most people suck at compositing.

What do you think a location goes for?

All the top selling "people pics" are location shots. Very few white background shots ever become high sellers. If you want to separate yourself from the pack, location shots are a must, not an option.

Quote from: rgphoto on May 01, 2013, 20:15

2- What's the return on such a shoot? I estimated around $1-1,500 up front cost (model, hair & makeup, studio, and retouching - I work in fashion so I can style). In return I'd like to get around 50+ images per session (multiple scenario, multiple angles). Can I make that money back with in 6 month or less, given it's well executed?

If you're spending more than $100, you're not going to make it back.

That's not entirely true, you can spend over $100 on a shoot and make it back, but I will say this, you won't break even spending $1,500 to produce only 50 white background style shots. Don't even try that.

If you're gonna drop over $1,000 on a shoot - it better be a location shoot producing more than 50 shots.

I use online storage solution (dot) com for my backups. It's a very powerful little service that's only $35 a year and gives you unlimited storage and you can backup from any device you have - internal drives, USB externals, etc.... they take it all - unlike most other services. It's also true cross platform, unlike most backup sites that only work with proprietary programs on Mac or Windows. They allow rsync to be used if your a power user, you can also use regular FTP, create public folders, users with login names, etc... It's really nice. The only downside, don't expect any customer support. It's mostly via email. With that said, it's a great bargain for the power user out there. They do seem to fix any issues fairly quick when you email them. I've been there for 2 years.

Being a minor will work against you for a while, it's always easier to work with adults.

What kind of model do you want to be? Keep in mind that a lot of agencies really hate or even prohibit their models from doing stock shoots. YOU are a BRAND. Do you want to loose control of your brand? That's what you risk doing when you pose for stock photography and it's why most of my models are not models. Just people I find and then coach.

Can you have a closed network and decide who you want to team up with? Collection curator's play a big role in the success of a stock collection.

Just found this:

http://pixabay.com/en/blog/posts/hotlinking-protection-and-watermarking-for-google-32/

Personally, I'm all for the more exclusive agencies that make it harder to contribute to. My highest paying agency isn't a crowd source agency, it's a traditional agency I was invited to join. You won't find a single page on their site about how to contribute.

Like it or not, stock photography has a stigma among a lot of ad agency people - microstock has even more of a stigma. I see this as an attempt to capture that crowd of people who really don't prefer microstock but are at least ok with more traditional club like agencies.

The huge problem with non-exclusivity models is that people only have pricing to compete with, and once that happens, you will see you're earnings fall. Never compete on price.

Camera requirements are a holdover from the old days of traditional stock photo business models - but they are not necessarily invalid. You gotta remember that some of these agencies cater to a group of buyers who are in the market for images that can be blown up into very large prints and the standard for that kind of printing is well into the medium format world, even large format. If you're that type of customer, you wont' even bother with micro - there's no guarantee that any file you like was shot with a good enough system for your use. Why do you think Yuri shot with medium format? Because he probably understood that issue and did his own direct marketing making it known - that's what I would have done Also keep in mind that even if the customer is going to commission the shoot, it will most likely be shot with a medium format camera, unless you're doing something that requires high speed bursts, etc... medium format isn't used for action.

I'm at one agency right now, traditional, that will not accept anything less than 12 megapixels.

Refine edge is one of the coolest new tools in Photoshop, but even with all of it's power, it still does a sketchy job with hair in my opinion. Halo's and crunchy edges are basically the two end results you can pick between unless you're going to a background that isn't too different in color or even white can look good since they are essentially graying out the fine edges.That knockout 2.0 looks interesting, never heard of it.