Thirty keys to stock photography

16) Let your intentions be obvious, in terms of visual or photographic technique-effects. By this I mean things such as movement blur, action panned against a blurred background, differential focus effects, extreme horizon tilts, strong convergence, narrow focus zones created using products li
ke LensBaby. Do not ‘moderate’ your effects because you think they may be too strong. If you are going to use techniques which in a minor form resemble photographic faults, make them so deliberate it is clear they are NOT faults…

17) Emphasise the conditions, situation, weather, season, time of day or other factor which you might try to ‘correct’. It is better to make a cloudy sky look dark and stormy than to brighten up the picture and add a fake blue sky. Today’s picture buyers are looking for archetypes, pictures which sum up whatever theme they are trying to illustrate with your image. Don’t try to make a rainy windy day look ‘normal’ by waiting for a weak break in the clouds. Instead, concentrate on making the best rainy, windy shots you can imagine.

18) On location or out and about, choose your colour content carefully (point no 7). Be careful to exclude distracting coloured objects or details. If you can give your shot a definite dominant colour do so. Designers looks for colour to a far greater degree than photographers and will look for shots which completely exclude some colours and emphasise others. This can mean breaking that old (flawed) bit of advice about having a figure in a contrasting coloured coat, or whatever, in your shot. Study paintings and graphics. If you can, avoid including details which will detract. If you can’t get rid of them, consider selective colour adjustment.

19) In the studio, style your shots. Make your own backdrops, buy unusual items, build miniature sets, acquire interesting props which can be used in many shots in different ways. Use colour themes (point no 7) to help you select all the things you can assemble when shooting still life. If your subjects are neutral, consider the idea of using coloured accent lighting but remember this should be what fills in the shadows, not what strikes the highlights and edges. Style your use of viewpoint and lenses and focus as well. Create a ‘look’ for your work so that if a whole page of your images is viewed, it has coherence in the scale and treatment of studio objects.

20) Use studio lighting contrast – digital images tend to have a very flat look, or to be too ‘linear’ in their rendering. They are the exact opposite of colour reversal film. From the 1970s onwards, we learned to use very soft diffuse lighting which worked well with the colour films of the time. Look back to the 1930s to 60s before studio strobe flash was standard, when theatre-style spotlights and floods were the best lighting tools. Digital can’t cope well with highlight overexposure, but it can look great with much more contrasty, direct, textural studio lighting. The problem is that many flash systems are far too powerful to do this, mine included. So I’m still working the old way with easygoing, frankly rather dull softbox lighting. I know this is lazy and I should be rethinking all my lighting styles. Classic Hollywood films can give some inspiration. Use shadows, use rim light, use backlight, use skims and accent lights.

These points are about the look of the picture and could be expanded in detail. What matters is that your pictures should HAVE a look, or a number of looks. Combined with the points earlier on, the ultimate aim would be that your work would be instantly recognisable if scattered through a search result page on Alamy. That’s harder than you think. When I set out as a freelance, my black and white prints were apparently in a class of their own because I used A4 paper when everyone still used 10 x 8, I printed a black border using masks when others did not or printed a raggy border from full frame. That distinction in presentation and size got me through many doors. Then when colour came in my studio was the first in our region to use colourful Fujichrome instead of tired old blue Ektachrome, the first to use Panodia flexible black masks to present our results, so that our images looked MILES better than the competing studios when seen by ad agencies and prospective clients. Even our lighting was better, modern UV-gold coated tubes instead of the high UV content old workhorse flash packs. Our colours were stunning and we took accounts off the ‘old guard’ studios effortlessly.

On the web, in picture library search windows, such distinctions are eliminated. Your image alone is seen alongside others. It has no special presentation, no visible hallmark of quality. Therefore by its visual look only it must stand out.