AboutSteve Meltzer Expertise I am a professional photographer and I've been shooting for newspapers, magazines, commercial clients and artists for over 30 years.
I have shot stock photography for dozens of years and in 1977 created West Stock (Seattle, WA) which was one of the first to produce stock photo CDs and later one of the first to establish an online stock photo slaes site.
I have a new book on digital photography "PHOTOGRAPHING ARTS, CRAFTS AND COLLECTIBLES (Lark Books, 2007)which is available at Amazon.com, eBay.com and in bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders. I have another book, CAPTURE THE LIGHT which will be puiblished in November, 2008.
I write 20-30 feature articles and columns for regional and national publications a year.
My education includes studying with photographers like Cornell Capa, Duane Michels and Oliver Gagliani (from the Ansel Adams Center.)
Expert: Steve Meltzer Date: 11/17/2007 Subject: Two questions about stock photos...
Question I have spent 2 years (in total) traveling around the world. I currently have
about 1000+ good photos from my travels (I have about 10,000 photos in
total- but only a thousand are good). I would like to set up a website to sell
them as stock photos. I have been looking into other sites and I am finding
out that there are a lot of legal issues to selling photos online. I realize that I
have to gauge the price of my photos for how long a company can use the
photo, what the photo is used for, how large the file is, if a company wants
exclusive rights, etc. However, I'm afraid that I don't know enough about this
industry to cover all my bases. Do you know of a book, or website where I
can learn about who buys stock photos, what types of pics they want, how the
stock photos should be sold, etc? Also, I have a lot of pictures with people in
them- almost all of these were shot in public places around the world. Can I
sell a photo of a person without their written consent if the photo was taken
in a public place?
Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated.
Darcy
Answer Darcy
Rohn Enge has several books on stock photography that might help. I think your best bet is checking out online stock sources like iStockphoto and seeing if you can join them.
A 1000 images is not a lot of pictures. Not enough to merit your own website.
And simply forget the pictures of people. Agencies and buyers will not touch even a great image if there's no release. Public places doesn't make it better. And even the third world folks are up to speed on this. Releases are simply necessary.
Also a good stock photographer relies on editors. you or i have feelings about pictures that are not related to their marketability. Memories of the places we were and how we felt at the moment. A good editor can find the really valuable images. That's why I suggest you searching out a good agency to go with.
Additionally to be honest there are two areas of work that there is little interest in. Nature and travel. There are too many extraordinary photographers who've got these areas wrapped up. Most photos that sell well in stock are released images of people in common situations. I know of a stock photographer who travels with models and sets up shoots in Florence or Nairobi or Alice Springs with them. Costs a lot but then the images are all released and saleable and the models have gotten fair value--a trip to somewhere neat--for their work.
