Stock Photography - Lessons and Progress

Last month, I researched a series of stock photography sites, and whether or not any of my work would be suitable. I started submitting pictures last week. Interestingly enough, the answer is yes - some of my pictures are suitable, but not the ones I thought, for the most part. I want to keep a constant tally of my "hits" and "misses" (according to them, anyway), and see how my work evolves over time.

Bigstock accepted these pictures:



And did not accept these:





And, interestingly enough, this one:



Why do I say "interestingly" enough? Because this is the photo that Dreamstime accepted. Bigstock ruled that it contained recognizable people. Okay, fair enough.

A few lessons:

1) Bigstock does not want even a speck of a human being (like a dot) on any of its pictures. Dreamstime is far less concerned about that.

2) Bigstock allows you to match your pictures with a theme or a vision. For this reason, my Cabo picture (taken with only a point-and-shoot) was accepted - it lined up very well with its Travel-Luxury theme.

3) Bigstock is not the least bit interested in stained glass.

4) The butterfly picture accepted by Bigstock (which I think is the more particular site) was not accepted by Dreamstime.

5) For both, I need to accept the fact that my notion of distortion, clarity, etc. doesn't always match theirs.

I have to say, I was really surprised by these findings. I'm thrilled that my great butterfly picture was accepted - but I as very surprised that the Cabo one and the mosque one made the cut.

So, what's next for me? I submitted another batch to Dreamstime, and I applied to iStockphoto. iStockphoto is very selective, so I chose the three pictures that were accepted for submission. If I'm not accepted, I'll be able to reapply in a few months. That's fine with me - I am sure my work will have evolved since then.

In the meantime, I need to make sure I do the following:

1) Not take any rejections of my favorite work personally

2) Learn from the accepted pictures, and submit other work within those themes

3) Continue to try and experiment without getting banned :) (hopefully, that won't happen)

Next time - a very interesting article from The Huffington Post - and my thoughts.