Home Studios

Hello again! Firstly, let me apologise for my poor output of late, my only excuse is that I've been rather busy, but I will endeavour to change this! My lack of spare time has also led to a lack of photos being taken and the lack of income that is associated with that, but I'm now finding time to shoot again, which can only be good news.

For a while now, I've been trying to develop a 'home studio' of sorts and I'll admit that I had no success for too long. My first attempt, some months ago, was to simply buy one, which seemed like a good idea at the time. However, I quickly learned that this was not going to work out, perhaps because I had bought a relatively cheap one... The set in question included a fold out white sheet between two diffusers and two lamps to illuminate the scene. It seemed ideal, yet it actually turned out that the lamps included were not of the highest quality and were not, in fact, bright enough to have any noticeable effect when shone through the diffuser walls. On top of this, the white sheet was quite heavily creased, which was a small nightmare to edit out.

Effectively, don't bother. There's a much easier way.

First things first, I expect you have a tripod. If not, get one, you'll really thank me. My easy home studio (which probably took an unjustifiably long time to develop) is a humble piece of A4 paper; if you can get larger, I'd use that, but A4 should suffice in the most part. The set up is fairly simple, you'll need a fairly hefty amount of natural light, preferably diffused by clouds or otherwise, and then all you need to do is place your subject about a third of the way into the piece of paper, then prop the far side up against something (I used a box of grapes, possibly an odd choice) and you're away!

In terms of shooting, you'll want to use your tripod and fill the frame with your subject - you may need to adjust your setup to ensure your background is all white. You'll also need to use as wide an aperture as possible to ensure that the entirety of your subject is in focus - my first attempts had quite selective focus, which was not the effect I was going for. About f/16 or over, depending on the length of your lens. If you're shooting in aperture priority mode, you may want to increase the exposure compensation to make sure your whites are bright; if you're shooting manually, just open the shutter for a bit longer.

You'll also need to spend a bit of time on editing. I use Photoshop Elements because it's all I can afford, but it certainly does the job. Firstly, you'll need to whack the brightness right up so that your whites are really bright - don't worry if your subject becomes over-exposed, we can fix that right away. Next you'll need to head into "Shadows/Highlights" and Darken Highlights until you're satisfied. The rest is up to you really, do as much or as little as you want to it.

So, there it is, perhaps not the most exciting breakthrough a photographer's ever made, but certainly one I was happy with. Let me know how you get on, will be interested if anyone else can have success with it.

Exclusivity - Is it Worth it?

A question you've asked yourself at some point - I know I did.

My decision was that, no, it probably isn't.

I originally considered becoming an exclusive contributor on iStock, purely because it's the biggest microstock site. The pros? Well, for starters, I'm quite impatient, so I liked the idea of a quicker review time (I hate waiting 10 days to find out that they don't like a photograph I've taken)! As well as this, I must admit the idea of earning a bigger percentage of each sale and greater exposure sounded rather nice too...

The reason I didn't go for it in the end, and the reason I recommend you don't either, is that you seriously reduce the exposure that your photos get, which certainly isn't good when you don't have time to upload photos every week. Since making my decision, I've seen a rapid increase in sales on a lot of other sites (particularly on SS, who don't even offer exclusivity), so I feel as though I've made the right decision.

Another reason, should this not be enough for you, is that committing your entire portfolio to one site is effectively like putting all of your eggs in one basket - if the basket crashes to the floor, you've lost all your eggs (that's how I've interpreted the simile anyway, correct me if I'm wrong!). There has been a lot of talk about this on the forums in relation to iStock, whose recent changes in pricing structure and site design (the loss of the zoom function, in particular) has meant that a lot of contributors aren't seeing the sale that they were a few months ago. I too have noticed a decline in sales there, though probably to a lesser extent than those with thousands of photos on there...

So, what should you do instead? Well, simply upload wherever you can, it can't hurt! Have a look here to see where I recommend you spend your time and, if you only submit to one site, please make sure it's Shutterstock - they are by far my biggest earner these days and I'd be earning a lot more if I took more photos (which I will do soon, I promise!).

Should I take Editorial photos?

For those of you that are unaware, editorial photos are photos of people who haven't signed a model release, things/properties you don't own and anything that's copyrighted; the usual culprits are candid shots in public and buildings that you don't own, though this can extend to things such as cars, boats and logos too.

The premise behind these photos is that they are newsworthy or of interest to the public, so can be used in newspaper and magazines but not in adverts - seems fair enough, really. The problem I've had with shooting editorial, therefore, is that it's very rare that I'm in a newsworthy situation and so the editorial photos I do have are lost beneath tons of others.

What's in my editorial portfolio? Well, not a a great deal really. I have a couple of photos of crowd controlling policemen from when I saw the Olympic torch and then a couple of boats and buildings that I shot on holiday. I think I've had one sale of a boat, but that's it really. Perhaps the lack of sales is all down to my small collection, though I've heard of many other photographers having similar issues, so I've assumed not.

One thing I have found, though, is that different sites have different views on what kind if photos should be considered editorial. The most notable distinction I found was stances on buildings. Shutterstock have a strong policy that modern buildings are copyrighted in the same way that modern art is, where as iStock doesn't seem to care - I have actually seen good sales of photos of financial building on iStock, where SS rejected them.

So, in answer to the question above, I'm tempted to say no, not really, though if you find yourself in a particularly newsworthy situation then by all means give it a go! Similarly, if you do go ahead with it, it may take a little while to get a feel for what will be accepted where, but you should be able to refine your workflow fairly quickly.

The Importance of Keywording

Any microstock photographer will tell you that good keywording is absolutely vital to being successful in the industry, so naturally I'm going to tell you the same thing. Thankfully, the fact that it's important doesn't mean it's difficult to do; though, you may find it's one of the more tedious jobs in your workflow.

Firstly, you need the right tools. The main program I've heard discussed and the one I use is ProStockMaster and I can't see any others doing a better job really. It's easy to navigate and gets the job done, simple as that really. Download it at http://prostockmaster.com/ and you're on your merry way.

Right, the hard part (well, the "hard" part) - you have to think carefully about the keywords you use to make sure that the right people see and download your images. That's the theory, at least. In reality, there is a wealth of ways you can do this relatively painlessly. One way, which I found very useful at first since it reminds you of words you might have forgotten, is using the PicNiche toolbar with Mozilla Firefox. It may take a little bit of downloading bits and bobs, but should be worth it in the long run. Effectively, you type in the main keyword relating to your image and it gives you a long list of related keywords which you can simply click and then copy to your clipboard. It works a treat, in my experience, so it's definitely worth the download (which is luckily free).

Another (slightly less moral) way of doing it, which I shan't actively condone, is to simply find a similar looking image and simply copy their keywords; check out istock if this appeals to you. However, recent developments at Shutterstock have seen a new key wording tool, which lets you type in your keyword, choose the images that are similar to yours (about five) and they provide you with your list of keywords. It's basically the tool I've always wanted, however sad that may sound...

Whatever you do, don't try and concoct a list of keywords in your head! No matter how hard you try, your list could be twice as long and SS have just made your life so much easier!

Happy New Year!

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas break and that Santa gave you all the lovely camera gear you wished for!

I thought I'd start by letting you know a few of my New Years resolutions - you might find that a few of them apply to you...

1) Take more photos! Probably a bit of an obvious one, but last year I didn't take anywhere near as many photos as I should have/would have liked to, so I'm planning in changing that this year.

2) Get more creative. I let myself get into the habit of taking "easy" stock photos, so I'd like to try and break some new ground this year, hopefully finding the next big trend along the way.

3) Spring cleaning. I don't mean dusting and hoovering here (though I should probably work on that too...), I actually plan to clean all of my gear, just so my photos stay nice and sharp. This will include cleaning my sensor, which I'm a tad nervous about...

4) Continue to hone my technique. This goes without saying really, it's something I feel a photographer of any level should be trying to do!

5) Try out some new options. I have a few alternative income sources I'm planning out - I'll let you know how I get on!

This should keep me busy for now - feel free to comment if you think of any others I should try!

Easy Money - Backgrounds

This will probably be my last post of 2012, due to a fairly busy Christmas period - hopefully this won't ruin your holidays too much, but my apologies if it does! (I do realise this may be a tad optimistic...)

As the title suggests, this post is about photos that should make you some easy money - backgrounds.

Now, I'm not going to pretend this will be the most exciting photography session you have, it has the potential to be the exact opposite of that, in fact, but hopefully it'll be one that should actually be quite quick and painless. Designers and advertisers all over the world need backgrounds for their work, so there is a constant stream of people buying them - it makes sense to take advantage of this, no?

A brick wall is by far the most popular, so it's worth having a couple of these in your portfolio if you have enough time to take them and make them look good, but there will hundreds of thousands of them out there already, so make sure they're technically accurate. My best seller (see below) is actually a fence - just a bog-standard fence in my garden. I didn't think it was particularly exciting (I still don't, in fact), but it seems to be selling quite well, mainly because its a background that isn't as widely shot as others; there are still a fair few though...

My advice? Have a look around your house at potential backgrounds you could shoot, making sure that they have good texture and that you can shoot them sharply. Then, have a look on a few microstock sites to see which aren't as well shot and concentrate the majority of your time on these. It might seem counterintuitive to take photos of things that don't sell as well, but you'll end up with a larger percentage of the market and will get a lot more sales, especially if your photos are of a better quality.

If you find yourself with some spare time, then take photos of the more popular backgrounds; they'll probably get you a couple of sales along the way, so they're a good way to bolster your portfolio. As always, time management should be a priority, so use your time wisely!

When taking the shots, a tripod is completely necessary so that you can still shoot at a low ISO and get a good quality image. It's up to you whether you use natural light or flash - I use natural light because I can't afford a decent flash! Be wary of using the built-in flash, it doesn't always give you the great lighting you're looking for... Keep everything sharp and you should be fine. Also, a minor vignette can also help your image stand out a bit.

Give it a go, it shouldn't take you too long and could be very rewarding.

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It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Easter

Christmas is over, I’m afraid. At least, the opportunity to upload Christmas photos is over (you haven’t missed it, don’t worry).

If you’re really serious about selling holiday images (and I recommend you consider it, it can be quite a big earner), then you need to stay well ahead of the game. Most customers will be downloading holiday images months before the actual day, earlier each year, in fact, so the earlier you get your images out there, the more likely they are to sell. You surely must have noticed that Christmas adverts start around September these days… You should take advantage of that.

Come January, I’ll be shooting images for Valentine’s Day and Easter, when I have the time. These are always popular ones for advertisers, so you’ll have a good chance of getting images accepted and sold. It’s not difficult to choose what to photograph either, which is nice. Obvious things like love hearts, chocolates and plenty of red spring to mind, with eggs, rabbits and sunshine being obvious choices for Easter. These have been done to death, there’s no getting around it, so try and be creative with your images as always. You’ll quickly get a taste of what sells well and what doesn’t and hopefully you’ll be able to put your own spin on this; working with different angles and lighting on familiar subjects can often be just as creative as photographing something new.

You never know, you might have a look through the best sellers and spot something that’s missing completely that will go on to sell thousands of times. That’s what I’m hoping for, at least.

If you’re from a region or religion that heavily or uniquely celebrates particular celebrations, it’s worth making the most of this too, even if you think it’s a celebration that isn’t particularly commercial – you’ll always find buyers looking for images from religious festivals or patron saint’s days, shooting what you know is always a wise way to go.

As with a lot of subjects, the list of subjects to shoot is a long one. Naturally, each holiday comes with its own iconic images (Santa, Christmas trees, etc.…), which is a good starting place, but these are by no means the only things to shoot. The food associated is always similarly iconic and is often the most important of some people’s celebrations and the memories that the food triggers can play right into the hand of advertisers. Apart from this, decorations are often a good thing to consider shooting, especially if you can turn these into a background, as these are also potential top-sellers.

If you can get people in your photos too, do it. A smiling face or group of smiling faces can bring a celebration to life, so this is what people will want to see – make sure you get model releases signed though!

Start planning your next holiday images now, it may feel a little strange when you first take pictures of Easter eggs next to your Christmas tree, but it’ll be worth it when your photos are on there for twice as long as others.

Why Don't You Like Me?

To clarify, I like you. And I would accept all of your photos if I could.  But you may be finding that reviewers have a different opinion about you. Let’s try and change that.

So, here’s a few reasons reviewers have decided that they don’t like me:

1) Technical Quality. Seems like a fair reason to reject me, I guess, my photo just isn’t technically good enough to sell.

The main reason I believe this happens to me is artifacting. This usually means noise, in my experience. If you don’t know what noise is, then it’s certainly worth looking up, but it’s basically just the name given to the grainy texture you get in photos. Nobody is fully sure of what causes it, but it happens to a greater extent at a higher ISO and in low-light conditions, so you might want to try and avoid these where you can. If you end up with noise in your image, the noise removal filter in Photoshop (and Elements) is usually pretty good, but can mean you lose detail, so be careful.

Also, make sure there’s no dust or marking on your lens before you start shooting – a prefect photo with a lens spot is nowhere near a perfect photo.

The rule to follow is that you should check your image at 100% zoom every time, this way you’ll know if it’s good enough.

2) Lighting and Composition. Perhaps less obvious, but it certainly makes sense that a dark image with odd composition will not sell.

Overcoming the first part should be easy, just make sure your image is bright and colourful, simple as that. This is easiest to do in camera, but adjusting these things in your editing programme shouldn’t be too taxing, if you need to (this can often be a problem if you shoot on cloudy days, as I mentioned last time).

Composition is one that I’m still not entirely sure about and actually seems to be quite subjective. My way of thinking about it is that no one should be able to look at your image and tell you that something looks a bit off, it should make sense to the viewer. Told you it was subjective. Please feel free to comment if you think differently about this, I’d be intrigued to hear!

3) Focus and Sharpness. Again, kind of obvious.

If your photo isn’t in focus, nobody wants it – sorry! This shouldn’t be too difficult, since autofocus is usually fairly accurate. If you get this message a lot, though, it’s worth considering trying manual focus, as I discovered recently. You’ll have to use a tripod (which you should be doing anyway), but it means that there’s no doubt what’s going to be in focus and it will make sure your image is sharp. Give it a go, if you haven’t already, a new challenge is always fun!

These are the main three I envisage you having trouble with, but you’ll soon learn how to overcome them. It may take more time at first, but it can very easily become second nature.

What on earth should I take photos of?

The short answer to this is that I don’t know. Sorry about that. However, I can have a good guess for you, having trawled through endless pages of best-selling images.

The most important thing is that you shoot what you know and what you feeling comfortable taking photos of. It’s all very well wanting to take artsy images of haute cuisine, but this will be very difficult if you can’t cook or know any kind chefs, for example. Plus, the chances are that if it’s a subject you know, you’ll have all the props for taking a wide variety of images – which is always a positive.

There are some key areas that you’re advised to avoid shooting – things like flowers, landscapes, pets, for example – and I’d say this is good advise in the most part. I’ve submitted a couple of landscapes and flowers before but these have had no more than five downloads across all sites; it can’t hurt to upload them if you have them or enjoy shooting them, but there’s no great potential for big earnings here.

If I were to advise one place to concentrate your time (if it’s limited), it would be business images. If you have friends or family around who are willing to model for free, then I’d advise doing this, as businesspeople are always in demand. Failing this, it’s very easy to create conceptual images on your tabletop (see previous post) using a few printed business documents and bits of stationery that you have lying around. It’s worth trying to be creative when doing this (though I am a culprit of not being as creative as I could/should be…), since the market is full of these already. That said, there’s a few bob to be made there.

If you’re a bit of a foody, then you may want to consider combining your passions and taking photos of your creations. I’d like to say that images of raw ingredients will sell well, but my experience suggests they probably won’t. However, if you’re willing to put in the time to cook and style pleasant looking meals, then you may be on to something. You’ll see this kind of image pop up all the time in menus around the world and they all have to come from somewhere. The only problem is that making and styling food can cost time and money – taking photos of meals you’d be making anyway is probably the best way to overcome this, though it means you may have to get used to eating cold meals! Oh and don’t think you can get away with taking a nice photo of an apple, it’s not going to happen…

The two other main areas, medical and lifestyle, seem a little out of reach of those of us who are shot on time and short on cash, but if you have friends who don’t mind signing a model release or a stethoscope lying around, you may be able to make this work for you. Chances are that the best place to start is business. Try and get people involved if you can, but don’t worry if not, just get creative with your still life!

And then there was (Natural) Light

Good news – you don’t need expensive lighting equipment to get well-lit shots, as long as you’ve got a window, that is…

If you’ve already bought your new home studio and blown most of your funds for the next couple of months, don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll find plenty of ways to put it to good use and it will eventually end up paying for itself. If you don’t have the funds in the first place, however, there is an easy solution.

Another piece of obvious advice, I’m afraid, but shooting next to a window for close ups and still-lifes can often have similar effects to using professional lighting equipment. The best part is that it’s the perfect way to keep taking photos on a grey day, since the cloud covering acts as a diffuser and stops the image from looking washed out and unprofessional.

You will need a tripod, unless you have a camera that works particularly well at high ISOs, but this is a purchase that I’d recommend to any photographer, as would pretty much any other photographer I know. If you plan on taking a lot of tabletop photos (still-life, isolated objects, etc.), I would also recommend looking into getting a Gorillapod – while it may be a little fiddly at times, you can bend the legs to allow you to get as close you like to your subject, which I’ve found makes composing your images a lot easier and actually achieves a good depth-of-field. Alternatively, using a standard tripod and a zoom lens also works perfectly well.

As mentioned before, a clear day brings with it harsh sunlight and can result in over-exposed highlights in your images, a great way to irritate reviewers. To remedy this, simply sticking up paper over the window can help to diffuse the light and lets you achieve a more balanced exposure (there are plenty of guides to doing this online, despite it being quite self-explanatory – I guess there must be some optimum paper thickness or something like that).

This said, it is sometimes better to slightly over-expose when shooting. Buyers are always looking for an eye-catching image and it makes sense that they’ll notice a brighter image rather than a dark one. Evidence for this can be found in my portfolio, where the brighter images have vastly outsold the darker ones.

So before you let your inner equipment geek take over (very tempting, I know), give this a go, you should hopefully see some positive results.

Don't Do It!

That should really read "Don't Do It (Unless you're not that busy)!", but I decided that was a less punchy title.

This post is a follow up to last time, as promised, telling you which sites I have found to be a waste of time. As suggested above, if you find yourself with plenty of time, it may be worth giving them a go, but I wouldn't worry if you can't find the time to do so. So, this is my list:

Dreamstime: This one threw me a bit. I was informed by several websites that this would be a big earner, especially compared to smaller sites like 123rf and DepositPhotos, but this hasn't been the case for me so far. 

Their review team has been my biggest problem - they've been rather harsh compared to the rest! The majority of photos that have been accepted elsewhere haven't made the cut there, so my profits have been fairly laughable. As well as this, it can be quite time-consuming to keyword and categorise your images, definitely more than I am willing to put in for the income returned.

Bigstock: Now this one I feel really is a waste of your time. Upload is relatively painless, I'll give them that, but I'm still yet to have a single sale! Not that I'm bitter or anything...

Bigstock was recently acquired by Shutterstock, which may help to boost sales in the future, though I'm still yet to see any positive effects to come from the move. I'm not sure what the problem has been, my portfolio has sold on other sites, so maybe it just isn't what their customers are looking. That's what I'll tell myself at least.

CanStockPhoto: Similarly to Bigstock, the uploading here is very easy, the fastest of any of them, in fact. However, once again, this hasn't converted to any sales. I've seen CanStock rank quite highly in people's portfolios, though I'm not seeing it really - it isn't as professionally set out as others (though it has been done up recently), which I don't think helps. Yet again, it could just be me though...

I've also uploaded to Panther Media, CreStock, Cutcaster and YAYmicro, none of which I would recommend, mainly because I don't feel they promote themselves enough to compete with the others - though I could be wrong if your images are from the right niche.

So, overall, feel free to give your portfolios a go on these sites, I just wouldn't make them your first choice. Let me know if you feel otherwise, I'm always interested to hear another opinion!

A "Who's Who" of Where to Submit

You may be tempted to submit your portfolio to whoever will take it in the hope of boosting sales and, in theory, this is an excellent idea. In practice, however, this is mightily time-consuming and there are a few that aren't worth uploading to (or at least not in my experience). So, this is my opinion of where you should invest your time... (Please excuse my shameless use of referral links, I am a student after all)

Shutterstock: You have to submit to Shutterstock. Simple as that. 

The initial 10-photo review can be a little difficult to overcome, but can be done so with just 7 technically accurate images (you only need 70% of them accepted and you're in). It's worth shooting at least a couple of standard stock images with controlled lighting to try and bolster your chances here, though I applied with mostly images from my back-catalogue, so don't take too much of your time up on it. The application can take up to a month, in my experience, so I'd try and do this as soon as possible - particularly if you're a tad impatient!

Once you're in, you should see sales in the first few days; Shutterstock's search engine is very friendly to new users/newly uploaded images. This is assuming that your images are "stock-friendly" - I only had one sale in the first few days, a photo of a "No Parking"sign that I took on holiday. Safe to say my photos weren't quite what buyers were looking for...

Most downloads you get will be 25 cent subscription downloads, but these very quickly add up once you have a decent sized portfolio. Review times tend to be about a week and uploads are unlimited, so shouldn't be long before you're making money here

Go and apply here http://submit.shutterstock.com/?ref=739474 now. Quickly!

iStockphoto: This was billed as the site that should earn the most when I started and it's not done too badly, seeing as it's currently my second biggest earner. There's a lot of talk on forums saying the iStock is slowly shrivelling away (which I will discuss in future posts) and there may be some truth to that, but I still see a good few downloads each month, though a lot of these now come from their Partner Program (which I'm a big fan of).

Main problem for me here is that you're limited to 18 uploads per week (odd number, in my opinion) and review times are usually over a week, so it takes a long time to build up your portfolio, especially when you're just learning the ropes. Oh and you pretty much have to use their DeepMeta upload tool, if you don't want to waste many precious hours of your life uploading one image at a time...

Overall, iStock is definitely worth doing, it is the biggest microstock agency, after all. Give them a go here http://www.istockphoto.com/.

123rf: This one's quite underrated in my opinion. They'll accept pretty much anything you throw at them and usually do so in a couple of days, so you can build yourself a fairly hefty portfolio fairly quickly. Upload is straightforward and doesn't require you to fill in categories over and over again, so should take very little of your time up.

Sales come in slowly, I'll admit, but they're usually bigger than those from the previous two, so it almost balances out. It's definitely worth uploading here http://www.123rf.com/#alexelliott!

Fotolia: Fotolia is definitely a site to consider applying to once you've submitted to the above three, mainly because of the irritating process of transferring keywords and choosing categories for each image. It also has a fairly strict reviewing team, but you should be able to make a few sales once you have some images on there.

It's rumoured that regular uploads will increase your search rankings, which could be the reason it isn't as fruitful as the others for me, a factor worth considering. Give it a go at http://www.fotolia.com.

DepositPhotos: A fairly new site, again with a fairly tedious upload system, though not to the same extent as Fotolia. The royalties it pays are fairly good and it accepts the majority of images you upload, but it may be beneficial to upload your images at http://depositphotos.com/?ref=1486083 if you have the time to do so.

These are the sites I get the most regular sales on, so naturally I advise you do the same. You may also find success at PhotoDune, which is fairly similar to DepositPhotos in its nature. Chances are, your experiences may be different to mine and will find more success at other sites, but you should find success on at least some of these. I'll be posting about the sites that I feel aren't worth your time soon, so keep an eye out for that.

Good luck uploading!

FTP is a Life-Saver, not just a Time-Saver

If you're anything like me, the time you've got for photography is limited once you've factored in working/sleeping/eating/a social life (delete where appropriate). Therefore, any time you can save is automatically a plus, so FTP (File Transfer Protocol) upload is a very handy tool to have. This lets you batch upload your photos (time-saver), as well as ensuring that you don't have to endure the bleak, soul-destroying task of uploading your images one at a time (life-saver). Trust me, I've spent far too many hours uploading this way - make the switch as soon as you can!

I use FileZilla (a fairly popular choice, I believe - also a free one) and would thoroughly recommend downloading it from http://filezilla-project.org/ as soon as possible. If you're planning on uploading to iStockPhoto (I'll go through where I recommend uploading in my next blog), however, I recommend you instead use DeepMeta, which you can download off their website, since it let's you choose your categories in bulk before you upload your batch, so you don't have to go through and do it once everything's uploaded,

If you're really short of time, but still want to get your images in the review queue, FTP will upload your files in the background and doesn't require any more input - it shouldn't slow your computer down either, so you can just forget it's even there.

Don't make the mistake I did and wait to use FTP - you'll notice the difference as soon as you start.

Work with What You've Got

First things first, I'll talk you through my (somewhat naïve) beginnings in microstock. I first learned about the industry while looking for ways to make money online as a slightly poor Sixth Former (I decided that sitting around taking surveys about gravy adverts wasn't going to be a compelling way of creating some extra income...). I had been taking photographs at a casual level for a few years, so had some images to work with, so this was where I decided to start and I strongly recommend you do too - I admit, that probably isn't the most inspired piece of advice, but I did learn a few things to look for that would have saved me a lot of time while looking through:

1) Check that your photos are technically perfect. 

I didn't realise how important this was when I first started and hence wasted a lot of time during my initial applications. It's been said a lot before, but reviewers will check every pixel at 100% size, so make sure you do the same - don't fool yourself that it's perfect when it's not (guilty!), if the photo's even a little bit noisy, they're going to notice and there's nothing worse than waiting 10 days for a photo to be reviewed and then to be rejected because you didn't spend a couple of minutes looking over it properly

As well as this, make sure the photo is well lit and composed. This was my main reason for rejection when I started and, despite it often being a little ambiguous what's wrong, you can easily pick up the type of photos that get accepted by doing a quick search for your subject. Some would class this as copying other contributors and their styles, but you'll quickly learn that a lot of photographs are very similar in style and composition and, while creativity is important, using a successful style of lighting and composition may be a good way to start.

2) Your photos need to be good stock photos, not just good photos.

When I first started, I had a fairly large portfolio of images, some of which were quite good and I fell into the trap of thinking this would mean that I'd be making thousands in my first few months. As you may have guessed, that was not the case... It soon became apparent that people by photos of things they need, not photos that they think look nice. That said, I had no problem getting them accepted to any of the agencies - they just didn't turn out to be the kind of image that sells particularly often; I have had actually had a few sales of the 'weird' photos from my applications (namely a blurry close-up of a rug and a pelican crossing "WAIT" sign), but nothing to write home about. I have no idea who bought them, but boy was I glad when they did.

So feel free to use your technically accurate images of less popular themes in your applications, just make sure you hold off from buying your next lens for a little longer.

3) Don't bother submitting any photos of property that you don't own,

These pictures will end up in the Editorial section on most sites and, unless the row of shops you saw on holiday comes into the news, you're probably not going to sell many of these photos. This includes obvious things like buildings, shop fronts and logos, but also less obvious things like boats in a port. I got caught out by this when I first applied to 123rf. I took a few photos of Cassis, France on my summer holiday, so I decided to submit one of the waterfront and one of some small boats by the port side. The photos were accepted to the Editorial section, which I was pleased about at first, but have remained untouched ever since - I'm still waiting for a breaking news story about those boats...

There'll be other bits of advice on millions of other blogs, but these are the things I wish I'd been told before I started. Have a look through your old folders of images again before you start applying, chances are you'll have a couple of gems hidden in there somewhere - just make sure that you double check their quality and that they are 'generic' enough to be used as stock. And don't be disheartened if your files get rejected the first couple of times, they don't know what they're missing! Or so I told myself...

Hello!

Hello! Welcome to my first blog!

My name's Alex, I'm a part-time microstock photographer, maths student and first-time blogger - so go easy on me!

First, I have a confession to make - I am not the best photographer in the world. Shocking, I know. However, I have learned an awful lot in my limited time in the microstock industry and have made more than enough mistakes for people to learn from. Effectively, I plan to write the blog that I would've liked to read while I was researching microstock - an honest blog that tells people how to make a bit of pocket money by selling photos, which photos will actually sell, how I can take photos whilst managing a degree or job and with a limited (or empty) budget, not just the generic posts you can read a million times over online.

Now, I can't guarantee you that people will be paying you for your photos (I can't guarantee that for myself at times!) but hopefully, like me, you'll learn as you go along and can make that bit of money you so badly seek.

So, I'll be back soon and, hopefully, regularly - any feedback or opinions will always be appreciated, so feel free to comment!