milnikphoto.com/blog

For those of you who haven’t heard of this site it’s a way for photographers to get seen and improve the standard of their work as well as make some money in the process. I signed up not  primarily to make money but to try and see how i measure up against other photographers. Oh and before you actually start getting an incoming flow of cash you have to have a large number of very good images in your portfolio, which takes a lot of time and effort. Istockphoto isn’t the only such site but it’s the one i heard most about through podcasts and blogs. Frederick Van, a photographer from the US put up a very interesting  video interview with one of the contributors to Istockphoto on his site www.frederickvan.com. This is something you should watch if you are thinking about signing up for any stock photography site.

The selection process is pretty simple, you submit 3 images and wait for the reviewers to go through them and  either let you in or give you pointers on what can be improved. Once accepted the same applies to every image you upload to your portfolio. 

One thing i can say about Istockphoto is that they have an incredibly comprehensive  tutorial section defining exactly what they’re looking for in images. As far as content is concerned you have to keep in mind that not all images are gonna be profitable for them. They are very strict about model releases so count on getting your model’s signature before you submit a photo. Any material with brand logos will also not be accepted, however logos are easily removable.  Every image needs to be keyworded and placed into categories, this is also subject to certain restrictions which are well explained in the tutorial.

So far I’ve only uploaded one image to my Istockphoto portfolio, i’ll post updates on how this little endeavor turns out.