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
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
At last: A “one size fits all sites” model release form for all agencies . . . which actually works.
Fellow photographer,
Andrea Slatter, found what seemed to be microstock model release nirvana in the form of a “one size fits all”
model release form for all agencies made public by legendary stock shooter
Yuri Arcurs.
Yuri (who’s real name sounds way less cosmic) does all kinds of nice things for stock shooters . . . like making his awesome keywording tool available on his site for free.
The cynical may want to point out that now Yuri has access to all kinds of valuable statistical data on what his competitors may be uploading – but still, it’s an extremely valuable tool none the less!
So, no surprise then that Yuri has been kind enough to make a model release from available – apparently for all agencies.
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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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