Songkran Festival 2012 Editorial Use Stock Photos

Songkran Festival Editorial Use Stock Photos

A friend once asked us for advice on how we started making money from photography online. After explaining our methods to her, she then described how she wanted to become a photo journalist one day. I can't profess to knowing a lot about the path of a photojournalist but there was something I'd been doing that would set her on to the right tracks.

It's called 'Editorial Use Only' images on www.istockphoto.com

In basic terms editorial use only photos are pictures taken, uploaded and sold on istockphoto that can't be used for commercial purposes like adverts, labels, posters or any media that can be deemed for commercial use. Editorial Photos can be used in blogs, written articles and magazines that are using the images as visual illustrations to compliment what they are writing about.

So if you were blogging about Songkran Festival in Thailand, you could purchase editorial images like this one and use them to illustrate your article.

Songkan Festival Chiang Mai 2012 - Kid gets splashed hard

The link between istock editorial and photojournalism is the fact that it doesn't need to be the set up photo shoot affair you sometimes find yourself in with regular royalty free images. No model release is required and branded logo covered objects can be all over the place in your images and they are still eligible for submission. So all those street photography projects you may be thinking of doing can be uploaded for sale on istockphoto.

There are some rules and regulations though. All manipulative editing is forbidden such as airbrushing, spot healing, HDR and extreme cropping. They just won't accept that because it detracts from the story that the image was intend to tell. The most extreme edit you'd be allowed to submit is a black and white conversion with some levels and contrast adjustment, like this image.

Songkran Festival Chiang Mai 2012 - Boy uses Shield

Also istockphoto isn't looking for current news event coverage. So if there is a specific riot happening on the news right now and you're nearby so you photograph it for editorial use. Istock won't take it because their licenses won't cover it. Getty images is the best place to send your work should you want to get into that type of photography.

All in all 'editorial use only' photography is still a viable way to make money from stock photography. I'd recommend covering events that people would want to write or blog about, much like a photojournalist might. That way you'd stand a much higher chance of people finding your images. Also branded objects and products can be shot in the same way. Like this.

Good Luck with the shooting!

If you'd like to see the rest of our Songkran Chiang Mai 2012 Professional Editorial Use Only Images. Check out this lightbox.

IStockPhoto Promotion Code 06/30/2012 5% off 120+ credits

If you are a current istockphoto customer and want an istock promo code, they are currently offering 

5% off 120 credits or more at iStockphoto.com (minimum $175 purchase). Use coupon code ISTOCKEX5 during checkout. Expires 06/30/2012.

Some of our Royalty Free image and video lightboxes are linked below.

health and fitness images
lifestyle pizza food images
hair and make up images and video series
England & UK Beach and Farm Stock video footage
Crete & Athens Stock Video Footage

Unique Stock Photography (How to make your stock photos sell)

The first images you'll see when you google the word stock photo are clean cut businessmen and women shaking hands in the cleanest corporate environments you'll ever see. These kind of images sell very well and are heavily used in campaigns around the world. The main problem with us relatively new comers to stock photography is that if we tried to tackle this market we'd be fighting the big boys in the royalty free image industries. That means that there's a good chance you haven't got the resources, models, staff, environments, setups or equipment to contend with the guys that are pummeling out the business stock images day in day out like conveyor belts. So whats the best angle to come in from?

In our experience the best place to start is where others haven't yet. So if you went to the search bar on www.istockphoto.com and typed in 'running', you'd get thousands of contributors 'running' photos show up. However if you typed in 'cross country running', you might only get a few dozen. So that's where you'd begin. Thats what we did, and it was the turning point in our istock career.

Our cross country running photos have been our best sellers to date.

The image in the center was used for an advert in mens fitness magazine in 2011.

This method or searching what isn't well covered applies to any subject or field that takes your fancy. If dramatic sport images aren't your thing or you don't have access to areas or models that would suit that type of photography. Then look up images that 'you' can specialise in that haven't got many images to represent them on istockphoto.

Another example of images that have worked well for us are 'stuffed crust pizzas'. Pizza is a well covered area but 'stuffed crust' came up with almost nothing. So we did these photos at a pizza shop that needed images.

These Royalty Free Pizza stock images have been a great addition to our istock portfolio. Whenever a new type of pizza style comes out at dominos or pizza hut it's a good idea to replicate the images of them for the smaller pizza shops that wish to compete by following suit.

Our latest angle on unique stock photography was focused on health and fitness. We noticed that there wasn't a lot of images to represent resistance band training. We had a few resistance bands lying around that a friend had bought for us when we moved to thailand to save on luggage weight. So we used them to create these resistance band stock photos in our living room.

Also to link in with the theme of us moving to thailand we thought we'd do a Muay Thai Kickboxing Photoshoot. Which turned out to be one of the most dramatic photoshoots we had done for a long time. The images turned out so well that istockphoto accepted them into their vetta collection straight away. Which is their premium set of images renowned for creative artistic direction.

Vetta images can get rather pricey for the customer so sometimes we choose not to nominate our good work for the collection so that we can get more smaller sales. But in this case istock chose to nominate them for us because they liked them so much.

If you are a current istockphoto customer and want an istock promo code, they are currently offering 5% off 120 credits or more at iStockphoto.com (minimum $175 purchase). Use coupon code ISTOCKEX5 during checkout. Expires 06/30/2012.

I hope that this post helps you to get a head start in your istockphoto career.

Getting Started with istockphoto

Tips for success with stock photography (sell your photos online)

Everybody has to start somewhere. But the most important step you will have to begin with before you can progress anywhere is to buy an SLR camera. Other bloggers will tell you that you can contribute with your compact or your phone photos. Which is technically true. But in reality you will need a lot more control over your camera than a point and shoot will ever give you.

We are currently using Canon EOS 60D and Canon 5D mk2 bodies to contribute to istock. Admittedly these cameras aren't cheap but we didn't start with these and the royalties we made from istock actually paid for the upgrades. We began with a Canon 350D and worked our way up.

The main problem with cheaper camera bodies and lenses is that stock agencies are very fussy about the quality of the final image. Some of the older technology produces a lot of noise and deterioration in the final image which can cause a lot of your submissions to be rejected to begin with. But there are ways around that. Which I will explain later.

Before you even open an account with istock, you'll need to have taken some photographs that you consider to be your best work. It doesn't matter what the subject is as long as you've thought about the composition and the lighting to create an image that you think is good. The reason for this is that when you open an account with istock and apply to be a contributor, there is an online test you have to complete. At the end of the test istock will ask for 3 photos of yours so that they can see if you're on the right track. To be honest if you've got an interest in being a photographer of any kind and you've bought an SLR. That generally means you'll be at a high enough skill standard to be accepted as a contributor. Plus you can resubmit your application indefinitely until they do. So don't worry too much at this stage.

Once you've been accepted you will allowed to upload images that you've taken into the istock library to be sold as Royalty free stock photos. That means that clients of istockphoto can pay for the rights and licenses to use your photo commercially in their designs, projects and campaigns. But you as the creator of the image you still hold the final copyright of the images you submit. Whenever someone purchases an image you will receive a percentage royalty of the price that they have paid to use the image. Which varies according to the size of the image and how many photos you have sold. At present the starting royalty for a new member is 15% of the cost of the photo which ranges between 1 dollar and 150 dollars +. But as you become more advanced your royalties can increase to 45%. We are currently at 30%. Here are some of our top selling images.

To begin with a lot of your pictures will probably get rejected for camera shake, 'artifacting', 'noise' or 'purple fringing'. This is normally caused by using too slow a shutter speed hand held, high iso settings in low light situations. High contrast lighting conditions (ie shooting a backlit subject towards the sun), poor lens glass or cheap filters. Or using the cameras jpeg setting. It took us a long time to get around these rejections and sometimes being human you take it personally as an insult. But seriously looking back at old submissions to what we produce now, the feedback makes you a better photographer.

Here are our key tips for getting off to a good start with istock.

• take photos outdoors using a low iso setting of 50-100.
• use a tripod where practical to keep camera shake down to a minimum
• shoot subjects with the light coming from behind you or sidelighting the object (this minimizes purple fringing)
• shoot in RAW mode and use adobe lightroom to edit the files later (this makes the camera take in as much detail as possible for fine tuning later)
• make sure you subjects have no logos or branding showing
• don't over edit your RAW photos as this will reintroduce the image degradation that shooting jpeg would have originally caused.
• using fixed prime, non zoom lenses can help decrease purple fringing
• for static subjects, if using autofocus set a single point and set your camera to one shot mode. with people make sure you focus on the eyes unless you are defocusing them intentionally.
• always try to set up your scene so that it is easier to create a well balanced compostion of shapes and lighting.
• learn from your mistakes!

Hopefully those basic tips will help you to avoid some of the common pitfall rejections that most of us got when we started out with istockphoto. Before quitting the day job to take it on full time. You just have to dedicate your time to making a good start.

PS. As your skills and technology increases you will find some of these rules and tips are no longer set in stone. We have taken countless photos of subjects strongly backlit by the sun with iso 320 - 400 sometimes and they still get accepted. But this requires some shooting and editing practice that will come over time.

To see some tips of what techniques have worked well for us. Check out our next post on Unique Stock Photography.

How to make money from stock photography

A few people have asked us how we have managed to move abroad with our dog, to a country where it's not straight forward to get a job and work legally. Yet still have money to live a decent life with a house, car and the freedom to choose a different place of work everyday.

The answer is fairly straight forward. My wife and I are photographers from the UK. We bought SLR cameras a several years ago and started taking photos as a pastime. It fast became a passion of ours and the next natural step was to want to make a living from it.

That's how we discovered making money from stock photography. We'd spent a few years learning how to take professional photos. Accumulated a decent amount of kit and photographed over 10 weddings before deciding it was all too samey. Part of the fun of photography is choosing your subject material and getting creative with a project. With weddings that wasn't happening so we made a decision to concentrate on stock photography instead.

The name ' stock photography' sounds a little dry and misleading. But the reality is you can take photos of almost whatever you want, wherever you are and they could be eligible to be sold online. Which means that you can work from anywhere in the world. Currently my wife and I have chosen to live in Chiang Mai north Thailand. We emigrated here so that we could lower our living costs to make it possible for us both to concentrate on making money from stock photos.

One of the most important things to note however, is that making money from stock photography isn't a get rich quick scheme. It requires a lot of time and effort before you will start to make a decent living from it. For example. We signed up with www.istockphoto.com in january 2009  By the end of that year, uploading images sporadically without thought or effort we only made $100 in royalties. Which is rubbish. However the following year in 2010, Sacha left her job in the city to concentrate on stock photography. She uploaded 15 photos per week which was the maximum a non exclusive contributor to istockphoto was allowed, until we finally made enough sales to qualify to be exclusive members. (which means you're only permitted to sell stock photos with www.istockphoto.com, no other agency) At the end of 2010 we had made $1658 in royalties. We used that money to buy better cameras and started contributing stock video as well in 2011. That year we closed on $4872. At that stage we decided it was time for us both to concentrate on building our microstock and stock video library so that we could live on the royalties as wages. Thats why we moved to Thailand. This year we have both left full time employment to upload as many photos and videos as we are allowed to with istockphoto. We project that if all goes to plan we could earn between $8000-$10000 in royalties this year and double that in 2013.

If you've read this much then you will probably be interested to see what we actually make money taking photos and videos of. Our istockphoto portfolio has quite a range of images covering different genres and subjects. But the best sellers are health and fitness stock photos, food photography and dramatic sport images.

So if you're into photography and want to make money online selling your stock photos. We have some tips that we've picked up over the years that we intend to share.

If you'd like to see what its like to emigrate to Thailand to start a new life, you'll probably be interested in watching cinematic travel vlog. Its quite unique!

To learn a little more about us check out our blog.

See you next time for some more in depth tips on how to get started with istockphoto

Alternatively if you're looking to buy some stock photos for your design projects you can Buy Istock Credits  and get your royalty free images right now.