Thirty keys to stock photography

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I was there in 1972 when two men walked down a Sheffield street like this. No-one else was there with a camera – and if they had been, would they have seen the shot? I’ll never know, but I’ve seen an entire style of decor-art painting based on almost exactly this captured moment. Was the artist there when I was?

The most important lesson I ever learned in photography was the simplest – you can not take a picture without being there. The main reason for any picture being unique is because only one photographer was in one exact place at one moment, or only one photographer has ever been there. In stock photography (especially of the type mentioned above!) the great fear is that you will create a best-seller, an archetype… and then a thousand others will clone, copy, paraphrase or imitate your original idea.

‘Being there’ might be in the studio, with a particular model or models, or objects. It might be at the other end of the world. It might be at 3am, at twenty thousand feet above or below sea level, at 150°C or -40°C. It might be THAT position allocated by the authorities as the Royal wedding processes past. It might be the front row, when Bob Dylan walked on stage to duet with Jakob. It could be chance, planning, or foresight; it could be the result of great financial outlay, great physical or mental abilities, foolhardiness, endurance, or a flash of inspiration.

The first thing to do with anything new! When this lot was new, it had to be retouched to remove branding. Some shots from this set sold, but they’ve not not paid for the Mac yet… and it would have sold more in a modern office setting, not an IKEA wooden desk in an old house

What makes the best stock photographers able to live off their work is nothing more than this on an hour by hour basis. They are not sitting in front of this impressive big Mac screen for eight hours a day. What is in front of the camera, by whatever means, changes by the hour or by the minute. They either go to where the picture is, or bring the picture to where they are, or imagine the picture and then create it.

It might be one picture a day, five pictures a day, twenty a day, or a hundred a day. That depends on whether you are posing perfect horses in a studio, shooting a fake meeting in a borrowed office – or wandering through a market where they’re waiting for the first flights to arrive at the new airport next year.

Experienced stock shooters will know I have missed some key points in my 30, but those are all to do with WHAT or WHO you photograph, not how you photograph it. The critical aspects of human interest, our concerns with sex, beauty, death, money, food, shelter, health, conflict, freedom, repression, religion, art, culture, race, status, fashion, comfort, travel… these are all an entirely different topic. They are all connected with your subject-matter, the ultimate determinant of success or failure in stock sales.

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