Premium – preparing for big news items

I’ve discussed, in the previous post, the importance of reading the news with one thing in the back of your mind – is this subject going to get more coverage, and particularly more comment articles, in the coming months? Immediate items of news – riots or a disaster – are going to get a lot of coverage but most of the time they will use real footage or imagery to illustrate those articles. Longer term subjects (and the opioid epidemic was one in the USA) will continue to have commentary articles and will need some sort of image to draw the reader into the article. It is the latter items that you need to identify and then think about how you can get some imagery and videos online to really illustrate it clearly and dramatically.

I’ve also found over time that subtlety doesn’t really sell – the ones that sell are clear, close-up and you should be able to see at a glance what the message or subject is. My top sellers in that opioid theme are all close up or even macro images:

And my videos basically show some movement around very similar close shots:

Although I have wider shots, these are the ones that draw the viewer into the article and hence have sold far more often.

So what am I working on now? I’m come onto my current shots, but I was reading an article yesterday about Snus – a moist powder smokeless tobacco product to get the nicotine without the dangerous smoking elements. I must admit I hadn’t hear of this, but there are an increasing number of products that are reaching the market that are claimed to be safer and also will deliver the nicotine punch quickly! I did well with the rise of vaping, and so I’m going to be seeing if I can get hold of some of these products and photograph them. At the moment, there are 607 Snus images on Shutterstock and many of them don’t look very attractive! So that might be a new opportunity for us to get some of your local brands online as editorial shots and also try to do some commercially acceptable versions as well.

My current efforts are still around the virus and the upcoming elections in the US. I bought myself a second roll of election stickers from Amazon, this time with a US flag to make them more specific to the election here and I have been trying to come up with approaches that are a little different. I stuck a variety of stickers on a glass sheet and have made various shapes out of them:

I got the map outline from Google images (looking for the largest file size I could) and simply used the outline of it to cut out the background of stickers. Then a bit of “emboss” in Photoshop to make the edges more defined. I created different versions for the icons of the two main political parties here (both of which been around as icons for 150 years or so) and made these sort of images:

Here I took a small icon that I found (they are all over the place as symbols) and went around it with the pen tool in Photoshop so that I could then enlarge that shape without getting degraded edges. Then turn it into a selection and I have my symbol at 6000 pixel width. This has fared less well – accepted at Bigstock and Dreamstime but rejected for intellectual property at Shutterstock and Adobe. I don’t believe these are official trademarked symbols of the parties themselves, but it is not worth the effort to try to overturn those rejections. So I’m not sure these are going to sell very well!

Back on the theme of hitting the viewer between the eyes, I took close up shots of the buttons stuck to a finger:

These are against the background of the other stickers – all done in the camera, which is unusual for me! Then to bring in the virus, I did some with a “voter” wearing a mask:

These were green screened and then the background replaced by pure white to allow them to be faded into another message by the buyer. I took a range of these including a much closer focus just on the mask and the sticker to capture the “macro” market! These have started selling a little, so hopefully they will still in the search pages. I also did a series to illustrate the different approaches taken by Republican states to mask wearing in the US with a red state/blue state concept:

Hasn’t sold yet so maybe this is too subtle! This was taken in the camera with red and blue poster boards and then the center line tidied up.

Moving on, this month marks the end of the Federal protection of home renters from eviction in the USA and it is expected that a lot of evictions will now occur. Although this is obviously a US story, it could be illustrated by anyone. I did some standard shots that are starting to be picked up:

Again, nothing very subtle (or realistic) about it, but it does drive the message home. It also allows someone to just replace my words with something else if they prefer as it is just white paper. I thought it would also be good to do different approaches and used a dolls house to get the same message across:

I submitted these as commercial and they have been accepted quite widely. The background is a bit out of focus which might have helped and I also think it doesn’t implicate the maker of the dolls house in the message as there is no indication who made it.

I plan to do more videos in the near future on my election stickers. Those have sold in previous elections. Also, I think a series on election fraud to cover discarded ballots might be a good theme – putting a ballot through a shredder is one idea that comes to mind. Not as much of a rush on those as I think that will become a story closer to the election itself (November 3rd), but worth getting a few images online (and videos!). As I have found out from other subjects – the ballot doesn’t need to be real – just something that clearly shows that it is supposed to be a ballot so that people can see at a glance what the message is. Always bear that in mind!

Well, back to the studio for me! Hope you are keeping well!