Archive for stock photography

Foap IOS App: Sell Stock Photos on Your iPhone

By Mike Kennamer
Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

If you are a photographer it is likely that you have at least considered signing on with a microstock agency to sell your stock photos. Some photographers make a very good living selling stock photos. But how many of us make a living selling stock photos from our iPhones? Me either. But is is possible to generate some income from photos taken on your iPhone or other smart phone?

The folks at Foap say they can make that happen. The concept is simple. Download the Foap app and sign up for an account. Then upload your photos through the app. Once your photos are approved they will be added to the Foap website where they may be purchased for $10 per download. You get $5 per purchase and Foap keeps $5. It’s pretty much that simple.

So are you ready to strike it rich by selling photos on your iPhone? My guess is that you will not. But could you generate some extra income for your iPhone photos? Perhaps. My job is not to critique the concept, but to review the application.

Read More→

Categories : iOS Apps, Mobile Devices and Apps, News and Reviews
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Guide to Keywording Images – Part 6: by Jody Apap

By Guest
Thursday, October 27th, 2011

How Should I Keyword the WHY and HOW in My Images

This is the final installment of my series on how to keyword your images to increase your stock photography sales.  All the suggestions I’ve made should be applied to your images, whether you’re a full-time stock photographer, an hobbyist who hasn’t taken the plunge into selling stock yet, or if you are managing an image library for your company, school, non-profit or group of any kind.

Today we will cover the why (concepts, emotions, actions and adjectives) and how (photographic techniques used) of your images.

If you’d like to read the whole guide to image keywording, start here: How Should I Keyword My Images.

However, if you’ve already read the first five parts and are dying to read the exciting conclusion, then let’s get to it.

WHY

The why of the images is often as important if not more important than the actual objects in the image.  These keywords are generally describing why the people or object were worth photographing and, hence, worth buying.

For my own convenience, I’ve found that dividing the why into four distinct separate categories help me find more appropriate keywords. Having more discrete categories of keywords makes it easier keyword every element of the image.

I’ve divided the why into four categories: actions, concepts, emotions and adjectives.

  • Actions:  What’s happening in the image, whether it’s people or animals doing things, such as children eating or skipping, or an actions that is being depicted by objects, such as snow falling or raindrops splashing.
  • Concepts:  What’s the story of the image?  Home security, achievement, globalization, or the roaring 20’s are just a couple examples.
  • Emotions:  What are the people feeling?  Joy, love, apathy, and pride to name a couple.
  • Adjectives:  Important adjectives to describe the subjects of the image, such as red, shiny, expensive, bent or lazy.

Skimping on these keywords may very well mean missing out on marketing the most important part of the image–the story being told by the photo. Read More→

Categories : Guest Bloggers, Make Better Photographs, Stock Photography
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Guide to Keywording Images – Part 5: by Jody Apap

By Guest
Thursday, October 20th, 2011

How Should I Keyword the Where and When of an Image?

Here I am again with another installment of my guide on how you should be keywording your images to maximize sales.

So, you think that the WHERE and the WHEN of an image should take about 5 seconds to cover. Well, the way most images are keyworded for these concepts, it’s easy to believe that most photographers think this, but there are several layers of keywords worth using to ensure your images are looked at by as many appropriate buyers as possible.

If you’re not convinced that its not worth your time coming up with as many correct keywords as possible, then you better read Image Keywording: The Best (and cheapest) Marketing You Can D0.

WHERE

The where of the image should be easy enough.

This image is of the Eiffel Tower, but don’t forget Paris, France, and Western Europe. That covers the place name, but you better also use the keywords landmark, tourist attraction and tourism. While someone might be looking for Eiffel Tower, other buyers may simply be looking for landmark Paris or tourism France. Remember, you cannot know exactly what the buyer will be searching for.

While this takes care of the proper place names, you should also use generic place keywords, such as:

  • exterior
  • interior
  • outdoors
  • studio shot

There are other aspects of WHERE the image is set that you should keyword. Read More→

Categories : Guest Bloggers, Make Better Photographs, Stock Photography
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iStockphoto Wants You to Join Team "iStache"

By Trevor Current
Thursday, October 13th, 2011

iStockphoto Logo

October 13, 2011 – PRESS SUMMARY – Next month, iStockphoto’s community of seven million members around the world are being urged to help bring awareness to men’s health concerns and prostate cancer by joining the company in support of Movember. Movember is a global initiative that includes a moustache growing charity event held during November each year to raise funds and awareness for prostate cancer.

iStockers can participate in Movember in many ways and win fun contests and free stuff while doing something good. iStock will also match up to $10,000 of the funds raised. Here are details of how to get involved:

Join the iStache Team: Visit www.Movember.com, register for your country and join Team iStache. Then watch your moustache grow and raise local funds through friends and family to support awareness of men’s health issues.

How it works: Men register with a clean-shaven face. The Movember participants, known as Mo Bros, then spend the rest of the month growing and grooming their Mos, raising money along the way. Women can still become Mo Sisters and raise funds too.

Mo Rules: (From Movember.com):

A Mo is defined according to the Movember rules:

  1. There is to be no joining of the Mo to side burns – That’s a beard.
  2. There is to be no joining of the handlebars – That’s a goatee.
  3. A small complimentary growth under the bottom lip is allowed (aka a tickler).

Read More→

Categories : News and Reviews
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Guide to Keywording Images – Part 4: by Jody Apap

By Guest
Thursday, October 13th, 2011

How Do I Keyword the Objects in My Image?

This is the fourth in a series of posts about how to keyword your images. While this guide is written primarily for stock photographers who need great keywording to ensure robust sales of their images, any photographer or image librarian would do well to think about the concepts being covered.

This post will cover the details of keywording the WHAT in your images, basically anything that is a “thing” in the image, including the subjects of the image and the background things.

The first thing you should be keywording is the number of objects, animals or servings of food shown in the image.

  • one object
  • two objects
  • three objects
  • four objects
  • many

The object keywords should be used for the main subjects of the image, a close up of three balls. Don’t try to count all the objects in the image, just the subjects. Think of a child’s counting book, it should be instantly obvious what is being counted and how many there are.

  • one animal
  • two animals
  • three animals
  • four animals
  • group of animals
  • one serving
  • two servings
  • three servings
  • four servings

The animal and serving keywords have less strict guidelines for use. Any animal in the image should be counted, and any serving of food, as long as easily seen should be counted.

While this first step in keywording objects is pretty straightforward, choosing which objects to keyword and which to ignore is a source of debate and difficult, if not impossible, to definitively define. Read More→

Categories : Guest Bloggers, Make Better Photographs, Stock Photography
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Guide to Keywording Images – Part 3: by Jody Apap

By Guest
Thursday, October 6th, 2011

How Do I Keyword the People in My Images II

In my last post I covered the major elements to keywording people:

  • Number of People that are the subject of the image.
  • “Industry standard” age/gender groups such as male adult and female senior adult.
  • Family relationship portrayed in the image.
  • Ethnicities or races of the people in the image.

This post will cover a lot of the other keywords you should be adding to your images of people.

Angle of View and Body Length

These two are much more important that you might think.  Editors often know what kind of shot they are looking for and these are two qualities that they are often looking for.

There are three basic angles of view:

  • front view
  • side view (profile is a type of side view)
  • back view

Every person has one of these angles to the viewer, so you might as well keyword it.  A few other searches at Alamy.com gave me these results:

  • woman: 2,580,483 results
  • woman front view:  282,273 results
  • woman side view:  158,651 results
  • woman back view:  54,448 results

Less than 20% of images with women in them have any angle of view keywords with them.  A rough extrapolation indicates that there are about 1,000,000 images of women that are front views that would not be shown to buyers looking for women front view.

Read More→

Categories : Guest Bloggers, Make Better Photographs, Stock Photography
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