Stock photography as a career?! It is a tantalizing affair with your soul! It let’s you love life & live it to the fullest! The catch is, the axiom of a starving artist is very true!
2010 whizzes by so fast! It is already the fifth month into a tumultuous year and my new career as a stock photographer. The short span of my career is summarised as being the first month for learning the technical aspects, second & third month participating in trial & error to get into some major micro-stock agencies, fourth month trying to get approval for my photographs & finally some sales! *Ka-ching $$* which sounds more like *Ka-ting ¢¢*.
Learning & arming myself with the technical aspect is a never ending exercise and I expect the learning process or finding something new to improve in my photography to go on & on until I hang up my lens (that is if I ever will do!). But till then, I am happy that I did get my basic right within the first month! I was then able to shoot some reasonably acceptable photographs for submission to the microstock agency. Mind you too, that first month was horrendous & tiring, as I poured meticulously over heap of photography magazines & books 24/7. Looking back at that learning month, some of my first few shots is simply excruciating to the eyesight! My portfolio in flickr bears testimonial to my earlier crap shots. I am not on a pro account with flickr, so being limited to 200 photos saved me from exposure to the toxic of my earlier crap shots… Phew! Lucky me!
With sufficient basic technical ability and a fairly good camera (I am using a Canon 500D c/w 18-200mm IS lens), I thought I was good enough for the stock photography market! I submitted my first three sample to iStockphoto! And to date, my sixth submission (each submission is 3 photograph & must pass at 100%) is still not approved and my contributor’s account is still pending. I must say that iStockphoto with over 10million images in its library have within its rights to be extremely strict with their QC, I presumed that they have seen practically everything out there.
Then I came across Shutterstock! Again sad, sad news. I have sent 40 samples over 4 submissions and was rejected each time, as their qualification for a contributor’s account is a minimum acceptance ratio of 70%! I have not achieved that, so Shutterstock account is still pending 😦
In the midst of trying to get a contributors account with major microstock agencies, I decided to set up a online image store with Clustershot. It is linked to my flickr portfolio. Clustershot do not practice any QC as it is an online image store and not a microstock agency. They practically accept any crap of your pet cat or dog or even a pile of dung you fancy by the road side. Result, 260 image in store with 0 sales. I do expect that failure rate, after all, which designer would visit Clustershot to source for image?
My first big break came in March, when Bigstock approved my first photo and put it online for sale! I was ecstatic because back then after numerous rejection, an approval seems like a major milestone. Bigstock continue to approve and accept another 87 photos to date with a approval rate of 42%. Sales wise! Pathetic… after 7 weeks online, I only muster 1 sale in Bigstock! I hope Bigstock would improve its marketing activity.
After Bigstock, came Dreamstime! This is the real major league! A microstock agent that is rank 3rd in its exposure ranking list on the internet! With innovative marketing strategy, Dreamstime is a dream to a stock photographer. Though it is strict in its QC, I dare say that I have enough in me to get some photos approved for a contributors account! To date, Dreamstime have approved and put on sale 70 of my images and sales is slowly picking up with 7 in 3 weeks. Dreamstime is still my favourite and is independent of all the major image house such as Getty & Corbis.
It seems that once, I got an approval, the floodgate opened! Fotolia, 123RF & Alamy subsequently approved my contributor’s account and accepted my photos and are for sale online now! Sales wise, it is still slow. Why? Two plausible conclusion: First, my photograph is still not good enough for the designer, advertiser, end-user, etc. Second, it is highly possible that my exposure is still weak as my portfolio is still too small.
Conclusion : I am only 5 months into my stock photography career and may not qualified to give any advise! So I will just share my 5 months experience with any potential persona that intend to take stock photography as a career! My experience says NEVER GIVE UP! Rejection is not the end of the world! It is just that the QC have practically seen all and expectations are pretty high! The image market is also getting very demanding as the millions of fantastically shot images poured into the internet. Go on & on & on… love you art, live it & if you are not accepted into any agency, at least you can have a nice photograph framed in your living room!
I am with 6 agencies now (including Getty) and 1 crappy online store BUT I am still trying to get into three more! The latest being Veer (which is the microstock arm of Corbis)! *wink!* So you see, strive on, because as an artist you are already starving, what is another 6 more months… 🙂
Urbanscape! An image of the modernisation of our living sphere, where skylines are dotted with massive high-rise and the land is scarred with tarred road. Is it gloom & doom OR progress & buttress for humankind? This image is my tenth sales with Dreamstime on . 🙂
Top 100 Companies. The world capital market is dominated by the American currency. Everything related to business are measured & benchmarked in the US dollars. So, who is in the top 100 companies list? The way to compare is to see it the American way. This is my fifth sales with Fotolia on 5 June 2010. 
dSLR Photography 