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.
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