Still life images are very popular on stock libraries purely because they are useful for publishers. Still life images feature in books, magazines, websites and promotional materials.
You don’t need to go out and buy lots of expensive things nor do you need any special set ups to get some useful shots. You need to research and find out what kind of images are useful and saleable.
The types of things you can shoot include:
What kind of genres and types of images should you try to take when photographing models for lifestyle shots? Here are some more ideas on areas that are tried and tested.
1. Families
Another popular genre is having the family together. You should for example show different generations - from children to grandparents doing things together. A classic one is an adult reading to a child or vice versa (good for education articles). You can also show a family playing together or eating together.
You can also show family at war – remember that any of these kinds of shots take an element of acting and you need to think how emotions can be conveyed with just one photograph – don’t make it too complex. Dissatisfaction can be expressed easily, with a frown, folded arms etc. Try and place too many elements in the shot and it will look confusing.
Have you ever noticed when reading a magazine or flicking through a brochure, how many of the images are ‘lifestyle’ images? Photographs of people doing things, talking to each other, sitting in the gardens, exercising, eating and reading together etc. These kinds of photographs may seem contrived and a bit corny, but they have an important use in stock photography because they add something to the story.
For example, if a magazine is writing about exercising, they can search the stock libraries and find an image of someone of which their demographic can relate to doing some exercise. If it’s a specific kind of exercise, say yoga, it can be an image of that to demonstrate what it looks like.
Many people wonder how a stock photograph is defined. The answer to that is that it is not. Every business needs photographs for reports, projects, publicity and so on. They place they go to get them is stock photo agencies who have a huge amount (maybe millions) of photographs in their stock. The stocks could be of nearly anything and are submitted to them by photographers. As and when the agencies sells a photo, the photographer who took it will be paid a percentage of the sale income.
To make money from selling stock photographs, the first thing to do is visit the websites of various agencies and check out the categories and sub categories of photos they carry. Have a look at the various types of pictures in each and find the categories that you are comfortable with and will have opportunities to shoot. Read the rest of this entry »