by Alistair Cotton
Jacob Yuri Wackerhausen (aka Yuri Arcurs) is the microstock industry’s most downloaded photographer. You literally can’t open a magazine, browse the net or drive anywhere without spotting one of his stock images in use.
Yuri recently also became iStockphoto’s No1 photographer in terms of sales. It’s worth bearing in mind that iStock’s database is skewed in favour of exclusive iStock photographers – not independents like Yuri and the rest of us. In addition, iStock limits the number of photographs their contributors can upload in a given month. Exclusives have always been able to upload more images than independents.
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by Alistair Cotton
“Stock is not art.” Well, that’s one of the first rules of stock photography.
Shoot something on white. Business people with a bit of blue. Make em sharp. Make em saturated. Shoot the best quality you can get from the highest megapixel camera with the sharpest lenses.
So how come this guy (http://www.terryrichardson.com/) seems to be busy shooting for some pretty important brands and personalities?
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by Alistair Cotton
Bad day at the stock photo office:
Not Approved: Composition – limited commercial value due to framing, cropping and/or composition.
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by Alistair Cotton
We all hate rejection.
No matter how thick my skin gets I still hate getting images rejected by stock agencies. Sometimes though, it’s all for a good reason and something great comes out of the whole learning experience.
Yesterday was one of those days.
I’ve been trying to get a whole lot of model isolated on white images accepted at all the microstock sites this week. They were shot in studio with four lights. The background was over-exposed by enough stops to make it look white for just about anyone using the images for anything.
The trouble is that microstock inspectors must be playing the levels adjustment in Photoshop when they review images. There is almost always some residual sensor information in the “white” areas which is made visible by pulling the levels slider to the right.
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by Alistair Cotton
I like playing golf in the park with the dog.
The dog hounds about making friends with other dogs and chases ducks he will never catch.
I hit a sand wedge. Then walk across to the ball and hit it back again.
Right now, I’m a crap golfer. There was a lot of golf played the last time they let me on a course. That 104 was, believe it or not, an improvement on the previous week’s 106. At least the score is moving in the right direction.
The weird thing about golfers is that those who shoot in the high 90s or worse spend a lot of time telling other bad golfers how to swing a golf club. Those who regularly shoot in the 80s or better, tend to say nothing unless you ask.
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by Alistair Cotton
Industrial imaging is a genre of photography with high value in a stock portfolio. While shooting models has it’s own kind of, erm, attraction, industrial images can hold a different kind of fascination. There just has to be art in there somewhere and oddly enough, the ugliest most utilitarian industrial structures have a habit of revealing themselves in a variety of interesting forms.
A year or two back I did some work out in Potchefstroom, a large town about 90 minutes from Johannesburg. On the way to the appointment I could have sworn I had driven past a fantastic-looking petro-chemical plant with one of those tall “flare” chimneys and a bright fire on top. No idea why these plants need to burn their wares off to the world, but it’s a no-brainer of a photo opportunity for stock.
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by Alistair Cotton
Last night I stumbled across the blog of an exclusive iStock photographer, Joshua Hodge. IMO, Joshua, like the most downloaded stock photographer Yuri Arcurs, shoots close to “perfect” stock type images – so what he has to say carries a reasonable level of credibility.
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by Alistair Cotton
All through my time as a newspaper and magazine journalist, the respective design departments sang the same pitiful mantra when asked what size images they required for print: “Any size, so long as it’s 300dpi”.
Like any good myth, this statement is rooted in partial authenticity – a veneer of truth to make it seem plausible. However, the “300dpi myth” is a half-truth. Okay, it’s a damn lie – and one that does nothing to explain image size, resolution or quality. It could also get in the way of selecting or using a quality image in your next print project or editorial piece.
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