I got up at a leisurely hour, just as one should do on vacation. The back yard of the property was separated from the beach by a small grove of trees and shrubbery. As I emerged from the wooded area, and stepped onto the beach, I was struck by how incredibly bright the sun was, and how blue the sky was. The brilliance and contrast were amazing!
Equally amazing was the fact that at 9 a.m. the beach was empty. With a couple of colorful props, I could be shooting great stock images!
I immediately went back to the apartment and grabbed a beach chair, a beach umbrella, and my photo gear. The beach was still largely empty so I went to work. Thus far, I had seen a) the great potential of the setting, b) the need for one or two additional elements, and c) in my mind’s eye, roughly what the shot could look like.
In fairness, I should admit that even prior to arriving, I had thought about the fact that a beach on the Gulf of Mexico held many possibilities for shooting stock. However, I had never been there, so I truly did not know exactly what the quality or direction of the light would be like at the end of March, in this particular location. In addition, the weather itself could be lousy for days on end, so all I was hoping for was a couple of days of sunshine, warm weather, and beach time.
Now, let me walk you through the process of refining the shot. First, I placed the umbrella in the sand. I stuck it in so it stood up and threw a shadow. I took a couple of shots and thought, “No, that’s not quite right.” Then I added the multi-colored beach chair. Better . . . but it was sitting to the left of the beach umbrella. It was balanced, with the shadow on the right and the chair on the left, but it didn’t make visual sense because if you’re on the beach with an umbrella, you want your chair to be in the shade. This was especially important to me because I wasn’t going to have people in the shot, so my goal was to imply the presence of someone on the beach. Here’s another way to think of it: I was trying to produce an image that would make people want to be there . . . that would make viewers imagine themselves in that place. If the image works strongly on that level, it will appeal to the photo buyer as well as the end viewer when it is used in an ad. And that means it will sell.
I put the chair in the shade of the umbrella, and voilà – now it looked right! The shot was nearly perfect. After scanning the film, the only things left to do were to increase the saturation of the colors slightly, get rid of a shadow in the lower right corner of the frame, and remove one old guy who had wandered into the frame as he looked for shells on the shore. I did a few more variations of this shot the next day, in addition to some set-ups with tropical drinks. Many of those variations and other shots have sold nicely, but the original shot with the beach umbrella and chair alone has sold over 2500 times in just over two years, paying for the entire vacation – three times over!
Seeing, Looking, Taking, and Making. Seeing a shot in your mind’s eye is the seed that gives birth to the final photograph. Many photographers like to create what they envision, and do that in the studio. That too is a marvelous way to create stock imagery, and I, too, do a small amount of studio work in the tiny informal studio I have constructed in my home. Much of that work has sold well. It is not, however, my preferred method of working, and it is not the true focus of this book. Studio shooting, I believe, is also not an easy way to break into the field. You must spend a considerable amount of money on lighting equipment, you will need at least a 15-ft. by 15-ft. dedicated space (and that would be very small), and of course you need to have a strong understanding of the qualities of light and how to control them.
On the other hand, every morning the sun comes up and provides you with the strongest light source known to man. If you leave your home, hotel room, or place of business, you are immediately availed of opportunities to see nature, people, buildings, city scenes, and life itself unfolding right in front of you. Those are the opportunities that I find most compelling and revealing, if I simply open my eyes and observe.
As you start to see your world through the filter of stock photos, you will have uneven success. It’s perfectly acceptable to look for a stock image, wherever you are, and see nothing. It happens. Frankly, it probably happens more often than actually seeing a great shot. Yet, looking is still worthwhile. It’s the key to getting great shots on a repeat basis. Think of it in baseball percentages. If a batter is hitting .325, he’s on a tear, but he’s still only connecting less than a third of the time. Your percentages as a stock shooter will be very similar. I’ve spent an entire day walking around a small town and finding very little that struck me as a good, marketable shot. I’ve done that more than once. I would guess that out of all the time you spend looking for potential stock images, if you find nothing about a third of the time, find something to shoot another third of the time, and shoot something decent the last third, you’ll be hitting the averages.
Of the images you do shoot, only a small percentage will be big hits. But remember, if you are looking and shooting all the time, you will amass a nice collection of shots that may not be blockbusters, but they will be useful to someone, somewhere. The Internet is a very big place. It only takes a few people a month looking for images of Americus, Georgia, quarter horses, or a crying baby to spell steady income for those photographs. I decided early on when I added microstock to my sales channels that my goal would be a few thousand images, each producing a couple of dozen sales per year. I don’t need blockbusters if I have hundreds or thousands of shots making a little bit of money each, all the time.
Taking it Further
I will once again use the work of Jim Brandenburg to illustrate a salient point. In 2003, Brandenburg took on a personal project to strengthen his personal ability to see great images and choose his shots carefully. The assignment he gave himself was to shoot one image per day, for 90 days.
Only one.
Though the intent was purely one of personal betterment, the resulting body of work ended up being published as a book, a National Geographic magazine spread, and a documentary film. The book was entitled, Chased by the Light, and you can see the images from the project at www.jimbrandenburg.com. Brandenburg’s approach serves as a fantastic example of how you can judge the strength of a scene if you take the time to slow down and look carefully.
Chapter 3
Simplicity
I’ve already mentioned it so often that you may be sick of hearing about simplicity! This is a great time to dig in and really define simplicity – what it is, why it’s important in stock photography, and how to achieve it.
What is it? The World Wide Web has transformed stock photography in ways that we never imagined. Only the most prescient marketing gurus could have foreseen the exodus of advertising imagery away from print media to the web. The result is that stock imagery is now different in several very significant ways, one of them being the necessity of graphic simplicity in an image. Much more than pre-World Wide Web, your photographs need to be very easy to digest when viewed at a small size.
In short, they need to be very simple shots: just a couple of main subject elements in the frame, and one of the elements should be up close and prominent so it jumps out at the viewer.
Why does it matter? Several factors contribute to the need for simple but impactful compositions.
First,
