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Posts Tagged ‘istockphoto’

My Istock portfolio currently contains 6 images, some of which I actually put a lot of effort in. My first sale though is the fruit of boredom combined with a very strong aversion to whatever I happened to be doing and about 20 minutes of free time. The coffee cup sold first after bout 30 views and about a week of sitting in my portfolio. I’m not surprised though, that’s what people use in articles. However uneventful the story of how I shot that image is it’s still a thrill to see that someone valued my work enough to purchase it.

More and more i’ve been realizing just what kind of photography Istock is looking for. It’s not gallery grade images, it’s not things that you would hang on a wall and never want to take down, it’s images used to illustrate articles, advertisements and product packaging. I’ve always photographed things that meant something to me, either for their aesthetic value or just to remember them. I’ve always edited images so that they’ll be appealing to me. Istock introduced a new way of thinking to my photography. To be successful at microstock photography you have to think primarily as a designer, then as a photographer. Browse through magazines, sunday newspapers, informational pamphlets, brochures, whatever piece of printed work you can find and analyze the images and remember the themes. Ask yourself what kind of image you’d use if you were writing a similar article. You’d probably go for a not too processed (but just enough to pop) image that can go well with your story. You wouldn’t be looking for a work of art, you’d be looking for an illustration. Now in no way do I mean to belittle the images contributors put up on Istock. I have seen stunning work there, and such a collection of knowledgeable, talented and creative people is hard to find.

It took me a while to understand the role of microstock photography, and  I think I’ve finally  done it. To be successful at it you have to broaden your way of thinking and understand it.

Istock surprised me yesterday. They actually accepted an image shot at ISO 800, not treated for noise. All I did in post was slight color correction. To me this was a test to see how far they’re willing to bend when it comes to the use of high ISO setting. Granted my Canon 50 D does not output too much noise at ISO 800, to my untrained eye this was an image where i think you’d start seeing unacceptable amounts of grain if you were to make a 30X40 (cm) print.  I guess they went for the composition rather than the technical aspects of the image. Just goes to show that the there is a little leeway in the acceptance process, something i didn’t think was the case.

Here’s the latest  accepted image:

You can view or purchase this image at www.istockphoto.com/milnikoletic

The two main reasons some of my submissions to Istockphoto got rejected are purple fringing and artifacting.

To purple fringing there is a straightforward solution, a combination of a saturation/hue adjustment layer and masking in PS will get rid of that. With time the eye learns where to look for fringing and the editing process becomes easier. There’s no real in-camera solution to purple fringing short of not shooting high contrast images or getting insanely expensive lenses…and even then it’ll creep up on you from time to time.

Artifacting is a lot harder to avoid.  For a long while now I thought I knew what artifacting was. Granted I don’t work with a calibrated screen, I can tell when there are jaggies in an image… or can I? Until I understand Istockphoto’s definition of artifacting I’ve decided to perpetually disagree with the scouts.

In the meantime here are a few thoughts on how to avoid those ”this image is not good enough for us” emails:

Get the image right, straight out of the camera.  Think it through. Try and use whatever available light (natural or strobes) to make the image pop on its own, without PS. Post processing can do a lot but Istockphoto pays you to provide an image, not to tinker with it, that’s the buyers job.

Shoot raw, you’ll have way more leeway when editing. Raw saves all the information your sensor captures. It won’t give you sharper images but it will give you peace of mind.

Turn off auto enhancements.  If for some reason you’re still shooting jpg turn off all in-camera sharpening, noise reduction and contrast and color boosts. This lets you control all of this later on when you’re processing the image.

Steady your camera. A good tripod will go a long way in making your shots sharper. Shoot with a remote (wired or wireless) and in some cases flip the mirror up before you take the shot to further reduce camera shake. When using an IS (or VR for you Nikon fans out there) lens with a tripod, shut the IS off.

Low ISO is key to getting an image past the gates. Use the lowest possible ISO for the desired combination of shutter speed and apperture to get the least noise in your image. When working with studio lighting use ISO 100 if you can’t go lower than that.

Do not overprocess. Sliders are something to be gentle with. Never introduce colors or contrasts into an image that could have not been there naturally. Overprocessing leads directly to artifacting. Check your images for  artifacting  and purple fringing at different zoom levels, all the way up to 200-300%.

Know your lenses. Good lenses produce good images. Unfortunately when it comes to lenses you get what you pay for. Invest in good lenses rather than an expensive camera body. All lenses have a sweet-spot, an aperture where they’re at their sharpest. Use that to your advantage when being creative with aperture.

After a few harsh refusals i decided to rethink what I post on Istockphoto. So I tried something different. Instead of actually bothering to find something nice to photograph, finding an interesting location or waiting for magic hour i went to my kitchen. Apparently if you look at the download stats on Istockphoto you’ll find that pictures of coffee cups  and bread are selling like hotcakes… well if you can’t beat them…join them…

Here’s the latest accepted image:

You can view or buy this image at www.istockphoto.com/milnikoletic

This unfortunately means that i’ll be getting into product photography real soon which is something i never really planned. First of all i don’t have the gear for it. Then i don’t have the space for a  studio or anything that remotely resembles one. Guess for now i’ll kill time reading the Strobist blog. They seem to have the most comprehensive set of lighting tutorials on the internet. There are also tons of DIY projects and interviews. My only concern here is how many images of coffee cups does Istockphoto need?

So after a particularly long rant (out loud… to whoever wanted to listen…) of when chromatic aberration is artistic and when not i’ve come to the conclusion that Istockphoto doesn’t like it….at all. I seem to think that if it benefits say a blurred-out background and is similar in color that it only contributes to the overall image. This image suffered from aberration but i guess that’s what you can expect with any high contrast image. The biggest problem was the chain that was most in focus.

note to self : Photoshopping on your daily commute really does save time.

That said they’ve decided to accept a second photo i’ve submitted. I prepared a few more for submission but their uploads have been turned off due to a server error.

So here’s my latest submission:

You can view or buy this image at  www.istockphoto.com/milnikoletic