Welcome to Stock Photography 101

This part of our web site is devoted to persons who are starting out or starting over in the field of editorial stock photography. Stock Photography 101 is a free resource provided by PhotoSource International. If you have questions, or would like to suggest future topics for Stock Photography 101, please contact Mike Karlsson <make my name a clickable e-mail link that leads to mike@photosource.com>
You’ll find this section helpful in making you aware of what you need to know to successfully break into the editorial stock photography field.

There are many benefits to setting up your own part-time or full-time business as an independent editorial stock photographer.

Live anywhere. No need to live in Manhattan or downtown Los Angeles or Chicago to be close to the markets. They’re as close as your mailbox or your computer. You can work entirely by mail or e-mail, entirely at home, and still score in the wide world of markets open to you. Whether your headquarters is a high mountaintop cabin in Wyoming or a high-rise in Hartford, the markets will actually come to you through this system.

Pick your hours. You can arrange your own schedule and enjoy the flexibility of being independent. You can work at your stock photography full-time or part-time. Since you are the boss, you decide how much you want to work.

Be your own boss. Photobuyers don’t care whether you’re an amateur or a pro, a housewife or a dentist. They’re concerned about the quality of your photo and whether the content meets their current needs. If you can deliver what they need, they will buy and publish your photos.

Take paid vacations. You can pay for your trips through assignments you initiate or by selective picture taking and picture placing. If you enjoy travel, you’ll find you will be able to pick and choose among all the trip opportunities open to you.

Earn more money. You will sell the same photos over and over again. You’ll choose from scores of good-paying markets you never knew existed, and you’ll enjoy working with them because they constantly need photos in the subject areas you like to photograph.

See your pictures in print. You’ll be seeing your photographs in national circulation, sharing insights and your views of life in all its beauty, humor, discord, poignancy, delight, tragedy, and fascination. Sometimes your picture will make a tangible social contribution; sometimes it’ll be business as usual. But it will all be deeply satisfying, with the gratification that comes from starting with a visual idea and creating something entirely your own.

There are eight elements in this photographer-proven system for success. The Stock Photography 101 section will point you in the right direction to discover how to put them into practice.

. You market your photos by mail or the Internet. No need to pound the pavements with a portfolio.

. You distinguish between service photography and stock photography (photo illustration). The service photographer markets his services – on schedules that meet the time requirements of ad agencies, businesses, wedding parties and portrait clients. The stock photographer markets his photos – on his own timetable, selling primarily to books, magazines and publishing companies of all kinds all over the country.

. You distinguish between good pictures and good marketable pictures. The former are the colorful scenics, wildflowers, sunsets, silhouettes of birds in flight, tranquil shots of the lake and pet pictures. These are A-1 pictures, but in spite of the fact we see them everywhere in the marketplace (on greeting cards, CD covers, posters, travel brochures, magazine ads), you’ll learn why they’re terribly difficult (and they can cost you money) to market yourself. You learn how to place these pictures in the right stock photo agencies for you, who can market them for you, for now-and-then supplementary income.

. For regular income, you sell your own good marketable pictures: photo illustrations. You continue to take pictures in your interest areas, but you learn how to turn a picture into a highly marketable shot, for sale to book and magazine publishers.

. You look like a pro with first-class stationery, webpage, labels, packaging, cover and query letters, and your photos.

. You determine your PS/A, your personal photographic marketing strength/areas – and specialize.
Knowing how to do this will give you invaluable insight and powerful momentum.

. You focus on only a slice of the market pie. Not the whole pie. You specialize.

. You determine your Market List, coordinated with your PS/A. You don’t try to sell your pictures before you understand how to market them. Selling happens naturally, after you do your marketing homework. Once you develop a solid Market List, you cultivate the long-term "Net Worth" of each buyer on your Market List.

. You find the market first, and then create for that market, not the reverse. You choose markets that need pictures in the subject areas you like to photograph.

Here at PhotoSource International we deal with dozens of photo editors daily. As changes in online publishing and digital photography occur, we’re the first to know. You get practical, tested information you can put to work right away.

With Stock Photography 101 you’ll discover the tools to be able to sell consistently to markets you enjoy working with.

The new markets you find will surprise you with their photography budgets of $10,000, $30,000, and $70,000 a month (a month, not a year). "Are these markets in New York, Chicago, and L.A.?" you might ask. No. Times have changed. New York, Chicago, and L.A. are still the top market areas for service photographers, but publishing markets for the stock photographer abound all over the country, and now with the Internet, abroad.

You will learn how to tap these markets, and you’ll discover the real excitement, the genuine exhilaration, of the venturesome process of producing your pictures and sharing them through publication.

Onward. With today’s dramatic increase in the use of images in the expanding number of new markets and special-interest magazines, books, CD-ROMs, New Media, and websites, the satisfactions and challenges have never been greater. You can be part of them.

The sky is the limit. Where you go with your stock photography is up to you.