crossover photography: lifestyle and events
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It’s splattered all over the various forums of microstock agents: If you want to be successful in stock, build a large portfolio. Aim for a versatile collection of images, as that ensures a wide spread interest from buyers, designers, and such, and thus realises sales and generates revenues. All very well intended opinions, shared by the big names in microstock.
Outstanding! Now that’s something to aim for, then! Pick up that camera, and go shoot everything around you. If it moves – even better, right? – Wrong.
Five tips to build a porfolio that stands out, and can potentially make you some cash:
Let’s analyse the situation, and see where that advise originates. I’m all for a large portfolio, and will be the first to acknowledge, that size, in this case, does matter. The more photos you have in your portfolio, the higher chances are, they will be noticed by prospected buyers,who will then surf on to your portfolio for that one image they need for their project. But, to put it simple, if the storefront looks great, but the interior is a mess, or you end up in a pet store whilst being allergic to animals, you’re not in the right place, and you’ll find your way out in no-time, never to return. With a stock portfolio, it’s the same. If buyers don’t see what they’re looking for, they’re gone, and before you know it, your images will be tucked far away in the darkest realms of the search pages.
The big players in (micro)stock have collections of several 10′s of thousands of high quality photos. Most of them have been around since 2004 or 2005, and have learned the tricks of the trade. They have literally spent years in perfecting those tricks, and in assessing the efficiency in terms of generated revenues, by exploring new things. Remember, as microstock is only reaching maturity, in 2004, or even 2006, a lot of things were still new. Back then, it was presumably easier to figure out which images would sell, and which images won’t. And in due course, the themes that sell became apparent to a following crowd of microstock contributors, who started copying what once was hot. The top contributors now take a professional – and full time – approach to finding and exploiting hot themes, backed up by experience and a production mentality. That’s a tough proposition to compete with.
At any time, its important to know what’s hot and what’s not. It tells you what has sold a lot – note the past tense! Therefore, it’s also important to establish how long it took to generate so many downloads. And while you’re at it, browse through the contributors portfolio, to see what more he (or she) has to offer. This is all common sense, and generates proper competition intelligence, but also will stimulate your creativity by forming an opinion about the top selling images you see. It’s important not to try to copy those best selling images, as it’s a David versus Goliath proposition, where David (your imitated file) is bound to lose, and it’ll prevent you from developing your own style, brand and the fingerprint feel of your images by which clients might eventually recognise your portfolio.
Search for “business handshake”:
Considering the above agents have a collection of 2,000,000 to 6,000,000 photos those search results may not seem like a lot, and I’m sure you can come up with queries that result in far more images, but “business handshake” is already pretty precise, narrow it down to hands of businesspeople. I’m sure you’ll get my drift. (business alone generates 541,702 hits on shutterstock, for example)
The key in such a search is to stimulate your own creativity – a trick that can be taught – Try to describe “the feel” of the images that appeal to you, and then think about how to achieve and perfect that feel in your own style. Also think about what you whould have done if it were you taking the photo,what you would’ve done differently, and try to guess the photographers motivation for his (or her) choice, resulting in the image you’re looking at. This is, as far as I’m concerned, the most important revelation of analysing top images, but a difficult one. If answering those questions result in a flow of new ideas and approaches, then there’s nothing stopping you form staging such a photo shoot. If you don’t, then pursuing other themes might be more advisable.
If you perform a similar search, as discussed above, you might notice something else: the clarity, vibrance and crispness – the general impact – of the images on the first pages makes even the thumbnail pop out from the screen. Browsing further back through the pages, images become sulkier, lacking contrast and thus also appeal. Try to describe “the feel” of the images that appeal to you, and then think about how to achieve and perfect that feel in your own style. This is, as far as I’m concerned, the most important revelation of analysing top images, and one I’m still struggling with. From experience, meticulous planning of a photo shoot plays a vital element in the quality of the final result.
By just looking at the astronomical number of sales of one of the top selling images, it might be tempting to try to achieve a similar type of image. However, I think you’ll find your chances improve by finding your niche. Although finding such a niche might be easier said than done, it is very well possible. If you apply the same types and techniques I described above to subjects and themes in your own personal sphere and surroundings, you are already half way there. Think which locations, what people, and which themes are easily accessible to you, and with which you feel at ease and confident. Explore the potential messages you could capture at such locations, and start planning a first shoot. Having knowlegde and experience in that area will definitely help to provide you with an a competitive edge. Then perform a few searches, using the prime keywords you would use to describe your idea. If you notice that those queries only result in a handful of decently selling images, then you might have found your niche.
Beautiful technology (ambiguous) as niche
As this might still sound a bit ambiguous, I’ll give you an example from my own experience. Being an industrial designer by education, I have worked for a large steel manufacturer for several years. This strengthened my passion for- and knowledge of technology, as well as sheer enormous structures. I decided to combine that competitive edge with my passion for night photography, motion, and long exposures. This resulted in what is now the top tier of my selling images, generating roughly 75% of the total revenues earned. My niche themes range from infrastructure (bridges, motorways, intersections, to logistics and construction. (off topic – Lookstat is a great tool to analyse the performance of individual images over time) The absolute sales figures are still far from impressive, but considering I’m only a small-time microstock shooter, I’d like to think those images have served me pretty well.
Good image, very little sales
The other end of the stick is also quite familiar to me. I have a huge collection of landscape and travel photos, which are lovely to look at, but with one or two exceptions, that collection stays well behind in sales, and quite frankly, most of them are still gathering digital dust on one of my hard drives.
After a first exploration of your newly discovered niche, get about 10 – 25 images online at your agents, and follow closely how they’re received. If you receive quite a few “abundant category” rejection, then it’s best to get back to the drawing board. On the other hand, if – depending on the agency – your images start selling almost immediately, are added to lightboxes or receive special recognition(initial ratings, editor’s choice), then you might be on to something.
Expanding the niche in transportation
The next step is to carefully examine the performance of individual images from that series. Try to determine what messages and concepts seem to be favoured by the prospected clients. Then start diverging to both improving the general appeal of that message, as well as to think of other potential markets with the same theme.
Friendly industry: pure steam (water)
Using my technology series as example, one could easily think of themes such as global warming, environmental damage and pollution as possible uses. Yet the reverse concept – illustrating heavy industry in a positive and more friendly concept – is also a valid – more positive – aspects to cover. Then, there are various other another angles that could covered: the current economic situation, triggering the decline of production, the hassle of commuting through heavy traffic by car in urban regions, or introducing the human element in the above mentioned examples to illustrate either the downside of automation, or the positive side of quality control. If executed properly, capturing these different themes will result in different images, thus creating a versatile collection of images, all derived from the same basic niche.
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