giphotostock

About 20 years too late? PhotoDisk etc...

Tawna, Sounds like you are licensing directly to your clients. That's great, so you know what your market is. Developing that market further is going to be the best use of your time. I think engaging in a conversation with them about their picture needs is going to be way more effective than chasing Alamy's list. Regarding picture needs in general, in the past I've found Getty's Creative guides and Visual trends to be a lot more useful than Alamy's list. These days I am my own creative guide. GI

Studio shots of models on seamless. Blue background looks horrible. Generally colored and darker backgrounds were popular 20-30 years ago. Do the same but high key. That is, contemporary style is using a background that light, almost white, maybe even overblown highlights, but, importantly, somewhat graduated (non-uniform). Better yet, more in-demand style is some high-key, out-of-focus background that gives a hint of a location (ex, home, office, beach, cafe, park, city, etc) for context. In the studio you could use some out-of-focus props to achieve that "location" feel.

For example, see below for how one very successful photographer produces his real estate shots: https://ashleymorrisonphotography.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/everyone-sees-things-differently-and-sees-different-things/ As a result, his images have what is called "high production value". Here's another example. Hans Halberstadt, a known photographer specializing in US military: https://www.militaryphoto.com/gallery-list Note the title for one of his galleries: "New production - Oct 2020" Your random example is indeed an example of a produced image, but in

Actually, taken at a face value, this statement is a very common myth. It may be true if you focus on a market overcrowded with suppliers, like documentary, travel, etc. Anything that "everyone else is shooting". However, if you specialize on something that is less crowded and go deep in your coverage of that specialized market, pretty soon you'd start discovering plenty of gaps. That is, shots that are in demand but in short or non-existing supply. Choose a niche, where you have any combination of special access, special knowledge, passion, props, photography technique.

Something like this for stock, in order of demand: 1. business 2. lifestyle 3. concepts ... 10. travel 11. documentary If you choose to do #11 aka walk around and document stock-worthy scenes in front of the lens, you'd get the corresponding and disappointing sales. Speaking from personal experience. GI

Thoroughly rusty machinery shots are regularly used in Chemistry textbooks. However, in my experience (sales to the same textbook via different agencies) Alamy leaves about 50% of the money on the table. GI

We got >10x compared to last year. Our main market is textbooks and scientific journals. Not sure what is going on. Expect an e-mail any day now, asking for money to be returned... GI

Auto-translate рулез. 😀

That's exactly what I mean. Do the same exercise for other subjects and you will have to ask "how long?" a lot less frequently. If you goal to sell and make money, it would pay to spend time on market research (ie what images sell and to whom). That would take a lot of guesswork and presumptions out. If your goal is something else, then why contribute to a stock agency (other than that there are a lot of nice people here on Alamy forum)? Of course not. But the rate of sales per image is much higher when you have (at least intuitive) understanding of the potential

A good question to ask yourself is "what these images can be used to illustrate?" (aka "what is my market?"). What it is that the buyers can do with these images? GI

Well, I think most of them are actually well-meaning people. They are nice, they are freely sharing what they know. That's the thing, people do not know what they do not know, by definition. It is probably one of the unintended consequences of democratic internet. A voice of an expert gets drowned among that of non-experts, particularly if the former attract large followings... GI

Well, his "hard-to-find" image experiment is "statue is well off any tourist areas to Washington and so only a local or dedicated stock photographer would go there and take the time to keyword and upload it" Walking to a spot in a major metropolitan area is not "hard-to-find". No wander he got the results he got. The reason it did not sell like hot cakes is because there's not much demand (=market) for it. Real hard-to-get stock images require a lot more effort to get access to, like negotiating with some sort of a gate keeper. They also often require actually producing a

40 "downloads" total. Average $3.65 per sale. There we some $0.10, but there was a large number of sales that were more than previous standard $0.33.

Well, for what it's worth, my 50 test images on SS on the average net ~$20/month. In June, with the new commission scheme, these 50 images brought in $73. Could be a fluke. Sample size of one contributor is not statistically representative. GI