Question for Microstock Photographers.

Talk about low expectations-

If you value yourself and your work at 20 cents a download or $2 a day you might want to think about shooting a little higher.

Honestly I find this offensive-

Ok go ahead and tell me now that everyone is free to do what they want and $2 a day is better than $0 a day and it's greedy and immoral to expect money for your work, ect.

But this is the Business Forum and this is Bad Business (for Photographers)

Sorry to offend you. I'm just a hobbyist, and I didn't even post this onto the Business forum. It got moved here.

I understand that traditional stock photography nets about $1/picture per year. So on a per photo basis, this makes sense to me. Plus, I don't have a huge portfolio, and can't break into the traditional stock photo houses.

FYI, the average annual return of a photo at Getty Images is over $500 (both RM and RF). As for microstock, it does contribute to ruin photographers, so I would ask myself if it's worth doing for the amounts of money I would be getting from it. Of course, it is a personnal question that only you can answer. Terra Galleria Stock Photography.

I figured this would be an okay subject to bring up, especially since it's listed as a featured site on Photo.net.

I don't think $500/year return is realistic for me for 98% of the photos I've put up on ShutterStock. I'm not that good a photographer.

But in case I actually am, how do I go about submitting images to GettyImages? I couldn't find a submission page on their website.

Secondly, I only have about 5-10 really good images that I can legally put up, due to lack of model releases or license issues. Could I realistically get onto a website of that caliber?

No. You also need to work on your web surfing skills :-)

So, if I'm not good enough for GettyImages (or have a robust enough portfolio), what's the beef if I go for a microstock site?

I'm obviously not taking away business from you good photographers.

As to my web surfing skills, I found no obvious submission area at http://creative.gettyimages.com/source/home/home.aspx (the US site). So perhaps they need a new web designer, or do not have or care for web based submission.

I forgot to mention something.

Concerning Microstock contributing to ruining photographers...that's a paradigm shift brought on by the Internet and prevalence of digital cameras. Designers will obviously want to pay $5 an image rather than $200. Unless you can change their minds, I doubt Microstock will dissapear.

By the same token, Digital Photography is contributing to the ruin of people who work in film factories, enlarger manufacterers, dark room suppliers, and the entire film industry.

I hope to God you don't dare shoot digital, and contribute to their ruin.

So now your getting upset. Well that's good, at least you're thinking about it.

Places like that are bad for so many reasons I don't have time to type what I think. One reason is they have so lowered standards it's horrible. Let;s be honest, I browsed around on that site and it;s full of the most mediocre to bad photography that could be passable as marketable. Now before you argue that everyone has the right to take photos and market them I totally agree with that. But as a person with any pride in what you do, wouldn't you rather go from being a bad photographer to being a better photographer? If the standards were higher wouldn't you have to try a little harder to improve your abilities to compete? Instead your told your great and $1 an image is perfectly acceptable for your work in this world. The guys at the top of that food chain are laughing their asses off, all the way to the bank. I realize this is a hobby for you and that;s great- If you're happy with $2 a day I guess that's fine but you're being played, and you're happy about it.

I have many thoughts on this but no time this morning. I love the internet, it has allowed me to market myself like I never could 10 years ago. I don't feel threatened in any way by sites like this, they cater to a market I have no interest in being a part of.

Go check out Alamy. You can get with them with just a few images, but thay have standards. Look around that site and see the difference in the quality of images. Perhaps it will motivate you to create better images, then when your first image sells for $200 instead of 20 cents you'll realize what I'm talking about,

Good Luck and always work towards improving yourself.

Thanks for the advice. I'll check out Alamy. I understand that I have to send in a CD, but if they'll take a few high quality images (instead of requiring a large portfolio), then that sounds resonable.

As for the $2 a day, these images are just collecting dust on my harddrive. From my perspective, I don't mind putting them up on a site, and letting them sit there and collect "interest" ($2 / day is alot better than my savings account is doing right now). Perhaps in a year, It'll have paid for a lens without me doing much extra work.