Sunset at Marshall Point Light, Maine.
As a travel and outdoor photographer who sells a lot of stock images, I always need to be keeping stock photography in mind when I’m making pictures - no matter where I am. Although some pictures are made purely as fine art, or for personal projects, many of the images I produce on a trip or photo outing will be sent to the stock agencies that represent my work. These agencies have specific preferences, two of which prefer commercial type images over editorial, as they feel images that fit the more commercial requirements will make everyone more money. What’s the difference between commercial and editorial? It’s a bit of a gray area, if you ask me. Most of what I do is highly editorial by its style. Does this mean that the images will not be as salable? In my experience, the answer is no. Many of my ‘editorial’ style images have been used as pictures in corporate brochures, ads and as backgrounds for ads. The image here of the lighthouse walkway has made me about $15,000 over the past 2 1/2 years, used by a financial investments corporation, over and over and over again. It’s a graphically interesting picture, and it works for their concept, but to me, it’s still mostly an editorial image, and not one that I would have expected to make so much from its commercial use!
This sale, along with many others like it, has made me much more aware of making images that will work for stock. While I still make a picture that I want to make, and crop it and compose it the way I want, I am also making variations on that composition that give art directors “wiggle room” to crop, position, etc. the way they need. That means putting a barn on the left, then on the right, vertically composing, then horizontally, etc., whenever it’s possible. It also means that I think COVERS! The cover of any magazine, or guide book, or travel brochure, is a much-coveted position. They pay more than inside uses, as they are the advertisement of what’s inside. So covers are very important.
I was deliberately thinking cover potential when I made this picture of a Gila Woodpecker - without the text overlaying the empty space, the picture is unbalanced, but with the text, it works perfectly, and it meets an art directors' needs without ruining a good picture!
This was running through my mind when I stood atop the Rialto Bridge in Venice last spring. My partner and I had just finished leading a 12 day tour of Tuscany and were taking a break in Venice for 5 days. HA - so much for the break! We discovered one morning that there was a huge regatta that would start around 9 AM, and immediately starting planning for where we wanted to be to capture some of the action. After working at water level for a while, I moved up onto the bridge, jostling into the crowds, until a space opened up at the bridge edge - and there I held my ground while I waited for just the right boats to come along in my composition. I had given this serious thought - leaving room in the sky for a title, leaving blank space for text to overlay the picture in the lower area for the inside highlights, and now all I had to do was wait for the right boat, and the right moment! Here’s what it looked like before...
and here’s what it might look like as a magazine cover, compliments of Photoshop!
So when you are out there creating photographs for stock, THINK COVERS! Think vertically, think about leaving space for text, yet still make the picture interesting!
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