Shutterstock Photographer Forum :: View topic

jatrax · Joined: 07 May 2011 Posts: 242 Location: Pacific Northwest

Life Stages of a Stock Photographer

1) Receive a camera (either as a gift or purchase), take photos and impress friends and relatives. Receive many admiring comments on how good a camera you have.

2) Discover photo sharing sites. Post some images and engage in mutually satisfying cross-congratulation sessions. Assume that if you are receiving compliments from total strangers then your images must be pretty good.

3) Discover stock web sites and realize you can actually make money selling your photographs. Ignore the reality that you have no talent, experience, training or equipment, and that there are literally 100's of thousands of other aspiring photographers (some of which actually have talent) trying to do the same thing.

4) Apply at SS and get rejected. Assume that SS is a bunch of snobby elitists that cannot recognize good work and probably would not know what to do with it anyway.

5) Apply at several other stock sites and get rejected at most. Finally get accepted at one or two. Become very disappointed that you did not make enough for a new camera in the first month. Assume these sites are just wannabees and do not know how to market your stuff.

6) Re-apply at SS and get rejected again. Take good advice and post a few images in the critique forum. Get destroyed by the critiquers and assume they are just cranky mean people. Post numerous times arguing with them.

7) Finally realize that your stuff may not rival Michelangelo and start to read a book on photography. Browse some stock critique forums and blogs. Take some new photos and post in the critique forum, get destroyed again.

8) Through blind luck finally improve enough to get accepted at SS. Finally finish the photography book. Take more pictures, and finally make a sale.

9) Ignore Laurin's advice that “getting accepted is easy, getting sold is hard” and assume that since you got accepted you have this figured out. Upload a bunch of images and get most of them rejected. Whine on the forum about the reviewers. Post a few in the critique forum and get destroyed. Post replies arguing with the critiquers.

10) Continue to improve; start to get regular sales, move up to an average of one sale per day. Start to post in the critique forum since you have this all figured out and want to help teach the newbies how it is done.

11) Realize that at one sale per day it will take approximately eleven years to make enough for a new camera.

12) Start to learn about composition, focus, lighting and how stock images are used. Post some new ones in the critique forum and get destroyed. Actually think about what the critiquers are saying and start to improve. Start to get consistent acceptance and assume you now have this figured out.

13) Work up to three sales per day and realize that it will now only take about four years to make enough to buy a new camera. Apply at a bunch of other sites to increase the volume of sales. Get accepted and upload your portfolio. Experience extreme disappointment when sales at all other sites combined add up to only one sale per day.

14) Start looking at other portfolios and follow the discussions in the critique forum. Finally realize that 90% of what you got accepted is pure drek and will never sell despite being accepted. Realize that getting accepted is very easy, getting images accepted regularly is easy, making sales is very hard work.

15) Read another book on photography, buy some lighting equipment. Post some more images to the critique forum and get destroyed.

16) Realize that despite now having some experience and equipment you still have no talent. Decide to make it up in quantity. Start uploading lots of images and get rejected for similars. Post some in the critique forum and get destroyed.

17) Start to wonder if this stock thing is really for you. Post in the forums wondering if the stock fad is over.

libyphoto · Joined: 08 Jun 2009 Posts: 796 Location: Oz

18) Live in the forums 24/7 and forget you ever had a life...

ruxpriencdiam · Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 2:47 pm

Actually #1 should be Read article about sell your pics online and Make Money.

Then shoot pics with your P&S or camera phone get rejected.

kellyplz · Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 2:49 pm

Lol, that's great, and pretty darn close to reality, too!

lmel900 · Joined: 13 Mar 2011 Posts: 4961

lmel900 · Joined: 13 Mar 2011 Posts: 4961

rinder99 · Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 3:21 pm

Absolutely Brilliant and should be a sticky.That scenario is something that happens weekly.Especially the one about. Not having Talent and uploading as many as possible to make up for it.

rixie · Joined: 29 Dec 2007 Posts: 3446 Location: Hampshire, UK

Between 16 and 17: decide that you can increase your income by branching out into vectors. After all, how hard can it be?!

kellyplz · Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 3:32 pm

apotterdd · Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 3:52 pm

ajancso · Joined: 18 May 2009 Posts: 1891 Location: Right Behind You

sadeq68 · Joined: 01 Jan 2009 Posts: 274 Location: Sydney, Australia

Also:

a) You start to criticise others' work and you see where you made all the mistakes, where others are making mistakes. You start to see every photo and try to figure out how that was shot, where was the main light put.

b) Try to think about macro-sites (RM) - get accepted in one or two easily with crap photos, but realize that even though they boast 80 million photos online, the buyers will never EVER find yours. Other RM sites - you don't even have the right camera equipment or they ask for five hundred images as your first upload - before they will accept you, and you have only two hundred at the most in your computer hard drive, fifty of which got ever accepted in SS and other sites.

c) The more you get destroyed and the more you get rejected, the more desperate you become. You realise that buying the 100 mm Macros plus the 300 mm prime tele plus the full frame camera could have give you the edge - the sellling potential. You do window shopping, look at eBay like a thirsty castaway, you look at online sites and you realise you are only, just only short of $500 to $1500.

d) You get angry and mad about the reviewers, you find justifications in your anger as you sometimes see "experienced" photographers whinging about thirteen of their super great photos being rejected in one single blow. You smirk inwardly.

e) You find other ways to show your creative work: your friends wedding, uncle Berry's 57th birthday - both cases you are hired as a paid photographer - suddenly you have $500 at hand. Photography does not seem so bad after all.

f) Your friends, families suddenly realise they have a photographer amongst them, but also realise their near one is missing something: hollow eyes, long hours in front of computer, always being absent minded, spending minutes in front of camera shop in the local supermarket before you are reminded that you need to continue the weekly grocery shopping and you should get going...

g) Meanwhile, you see all "experienced" photographers talking about "back in the days..." and how digital is destroying everything and how they used to make money to put their children through to college by taking only two photos every month etc. etc. You realise that they are just dinosaurs and they are just whinging and feel hat since you are the new and young, you have all the rights to win.

mavrick · Joined: 20 Dec 2005 Posts: 2821 Location: colorado

my life is very different.

whughes98144 · Joined: 26 Apr 2010 Posts: 497 Location: Seattle, WA

Um, I'm only at about stage 11. Can someone please tell me long it will take me to get to twelve? Cuz I REALLY want to get there and further so that one day I'll be able to buy that new camera with my earnings!

Thanks for posting this so I can know how I'm progressing! Happpy to have made it this far and looking forward to being a stage 12 soon!

Will

chinchoi · Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 6:59 pm

This topic is epic!! life experience story telling.

Admin, please stick this !!

....wait, put it as "MUST READ!! BEFORE YOU WASTE YOUR LIFE" at the front page of registration for future newbies applying to join SS.