Stock photography consists of existing photographs that can be licensed for specific uses. Publishers, advertising agencies, graphic artists, and others use stock photography to fulfill the needs of their creative assignments.
A customer who uses stock photography instead of hiring a photographer can save time and money. Stock images can be presented in searchable online databases, purchased online, and delivered via download.
In the 2000s the microstock photography industry, led by IStockPhoto and later Dreamstime, Shutterstock and BigStockPhoto, Fotolia, 123RoyaltyFree, Stockxpert, LuckyOliver emerged as a rapidly growing market. Using the Internet as their sole distribution method, and recruiting mainly amateur and hobbyist photographers from around the globe, these companies are able to offer stock libraries of good quality for very low prices.
Each microstock company uses a different pricing and payment scheme. Photographers can upload the same pictures on multiple sites or, with some agencies, become an exclusive supplier and receive an increased commission.
There is no fee to post photos on a microstock site. However, microstock companies do not accept everyone or all photographs. Each employs a team of reviewers who check every picture submitted for technical quality, as well as artistic and commercial merit. Photographers add keywords that help potential buyers filter and find pictures of interest.
The mindset of microstock supporters is that quantity will prevail and photographers will end up making as much from many small sales as they would from a few large sales on a traditional stock photography site.
Royalty-free
“Free” in this context means “free of royalties (paying each time you use an image)”. It does not mean the image is free to use without purchasing a license or that the image is in the public domain.
- Pay a one-time fee to use the image multiple times for multiple purposes (with limits).
- No time limit on when the buyer can use an image.
- No one can have exclusive rights of a Royalty-free image (the photographer can sell the image as many times as he wants).
- A Royalty-free image usually has a limit to how many times the buyer can reproduce it. For example, a license might allow the buyer to print 500,000 brochures with the purchased image.
Tags: 123royaltyfree, albumo, amateur, bigstockphoto, buy, buying, dreamstime, fotolia, image, images, industry, istockphoto, low, luckyoliver, microstock, online, photo, photographer, photography, photos, photostock, picture, pictures, prices, revenue, sell, selling, shutterstock, stock, stockphoto, stockxpert
February 21, 2008 at 2:12 am
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