Thirty keys to stock photography

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1) A Picture is Worth One Word – if your pictures need 1,000 words to explain them, they have not worked. Some of the best stock images of any kind are those which make a single word, phrase or idea come into your head the moment you see them. Stock photographers are always looking for shots which say one thing so clearly that anyone who sees the pictures would immediately think of it.

Over the years I’ve made hundreds sitting at my desk just aiming a camera at words on screen. Almost every function needs illustrating.

2) Exclude Distractions – I’d rate that as one of the most important picture editor influences, but see my next three points as well, as they go together. No matter what you photograph for stock, every square millimetre of the frame should either be of the subject, relevant to the subject, or neutral space. Do not include things for purely compositional reasons.

3) Get Close – this is not just the old advice for movie-makers reh
ashed, ‘if it hasn’t worked you were not close enough’. It’s also a bit of visual psychology. Closer viewpoints connect to the viewer better than distant telephoto shots even if the subject has the same scale in the shot. I do not mean use an ultrawide lens and shoot from inches away, simply don’t rely on your 70-200mm for everyday shooting. Your images will lose immediacy. Henri Cartier-Bresson understood this well.

4) Don’t Crop Too Tight – Hey? You just said exclude distractions and get close? How is that not tight cropping? Easy. Your pictures must be flexible enough to allow later cropping, not necessarily for composition or to change a vertical to a horizontal, but to cope with media formats. The old US magazine size of 8.5 x 11 inches loses a stack off top and bottom of a cover shot. European A4 210 x 297mm loses more than some compositions readily allow. Bleed printing (flush, edge to edge, covering the entire page) requires at least 3mm all round on that size, but the 3mm margin also applies to small flyers, postcards and many products. TV display may call for a 16:9 panoramic crop. So, don’t put critical parts of your main subject very close to the edges of the shot and be careful when using the full height of any composition (it’s not quite so important to allow horizontal space on either vertical or horizontal shots, as this dimension is rarely cropped to fit page or screen sizes).

When you see a picture which tells a clear story, you may have a seller, like this one. I’ve never sold a shot of a haggis on its own (though I’m sure many sell) but the address to the haggis sells annually.

5) Use Juxtaposition to Tell a Story – this is where my points 1 and 2 may seem to conflict, but really don’t. By far the most effective stock shots actually convey a phrase, an idea, a term, a saying, a concept or an action. Juxtaposition of two items, or a person and an object, does mean getting them close together and not just both in shot. For example, a man in a bowler hat (visual code for a city businessman) holding a pistol to his head is a viable set-up stock image where a shot of him picking up a pistol from a desk is not (but could make a book cover done well). In the street, a stock photographer will instinctively seek a viewpoint which places required elements close in position and scale.

All these points so far are also valid for any editorial or news photography, and some would say they are important for ANY photography. But it’s amazing how many images I am sent as an editor which end up not even being considered because they can not be used in any way except as an uncropped image floating on the page. Sometimes part of the subject will be placed just 1mm or so into the imaginary 24 x 36mm film frame, just away from the image edge. Sometimes two elements which tell the story in an image are separated by dead space, or even worse, something irrelevant that confuses the message.

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