If you learn better by watching and listening rather than reading, perhaps you should consider my hour long presentation on Stock Photography? I recently gave this to an appreciative audience at the Winchester Photographic Society and recorded the audio from the talk to create a narrated slide show that you can listen to at your leisure. Over the course of the hour, I explain what stock photography is all about, the legal issues of releases for both people and buildings, editorial and commercial work, what sort of images you should be taking and, finally, how much you can expect to earn. Illustrated throughout with my images, many with details of how much they have earned since being uploaded, the presentation allows you to go through the course at your own speed. Of course my tips and secrets are liberally sprinkled throughout the video.
While this is nowhere near as detailed as the book, it definitely gives you a very good grounding in the subject and perhaps more advanced stock photographers will gain some inspiration from the talk!
Here are a couple of reviews from early viewers:
Jason F:I found the most useful part of this presentation to be the idea of remixing photos in your own portfolio. Using your existing work to create new content is a great idea and I need to do that more! I am grateful that you are so open about your income from stock images. Your views on the industry and how you explain and breakdown the market dynamics is very useful to me. This video is a great summary of that information. Hearing this sort of stuff is what makes me feel this is a worthwhile pursuit. Thank you! I’ll add on some questions I have about stock photography in general. No need to reply to me about these questions (unless you want to). This stuff might make for some good future blog ideas. 1. What are some more examples of reworking your existing portfolio? I have seen that some people simply add fake lens flares, other light leaks, and color changes. Have you had success with quick and easy things like that? 2. Cropping is a sort of remix. Do you send in multiple cropped versions of photos? I love to make outrageously large panoramas that I can then crop 10+ compositions out of. I am about to go through my entire portfolio and make crop versions of anything I can. Does that sound like a decent strategy? 3. Keywording seems to be the vague part of my work process. The common belief is that more is better, but I watched a KelbyOne class for Adobe Stock Contributors that made me think differently. The instructor says that he changed his mind after speaking with some people at Adobe Stock and now only recommends something like 10-25 very specific keywords. For example: In the course he talks about a model photo of an African American woman. He says to keyword it as “African American” NOT: “African”, “American”. Because someone searching for “American” or “African” might want something else. I am currently working on a large batch of “cropped” images that are from old images in my portfolio. I plan on keywording them extremely minimally and making their titles and descriptions higher quality than my usual stuff. 4. My main question is still what to shoot. I think that is probably where everyone is at!
Alex R:
Having recently attentively watched Steve Heap’s Stock Photography Master Class, I was impressed with quality of the material provided. Thank you, Steve as I picked up valuable snippets of knowledge to further my stock photography business and I trust it will be equally rewarding to others.
Alex wrote more about the course on his blog.
