Intro to Stock Photography

I have heard about stock photography and I hope that some of my pictures will be saleable that way as well as through my own website. What is Stock Photography? The simple answer is that it is a collection of photos that can be searched and sold to someone that has a need (usually commercial) for a specific image. People that use Stock Photography agencies may not have the time to surf the net looking for a photographer with the perfect image, but can find something they can use quickly by going to an agency.

So I started poking around to see what the options were. I soon realized that there are quite a few sites dedicated to versions of what is usually called Micro Stock Photography. This is used quite often for people like advertising or other graphic design folks when they need an image and are on a budget.

As a result, these sites sell the privilege to use these images for fairly low prices. The goal being to sell many, lower-priced photos to many customers. Over time, this has the potential of providing an ongoing income stream for quite some time after you stop taking pictures (will that ever happen? I sure hope not).

There is an almost endless list of places, so I am not going to try to cover all of them. I will list all that I have heard about in the next post, but for this post, I will only try to share some of the factors that I think should be considered when deciding to use a given service or not.

More importantly, I will be making a list of questions that I have about stock photography. I figure that if I have a question, then it is probable that some people have the same question and more importantly, hopefully there will be answers.

Questions
1. What Tier to use? One list (the 4th post in the thread) I saw was broken down by tiers. However, there is no explanation as to what the tier breakdown means. For this post, I will say that tier is based on reputation.
2. Do I need a lawyer to review the contract from a stock photo agency? I am sure that the lawyers reading this will say "ALWAYS". Realistically though, will a single photographer be able to negotiate a special contract if there are terms that are not acceptable or will the result of a lawyerly review simply be to work with another agency?

3. What should I watch out for with a stock agency contract? Is there a guideline of liability or a payout clause that could be problematic?

4. Can I submit an individual photo to multiple agencies? The information I have seen on several sites indicates that the photographer retains copyright on the photo, so I would hope that would mean I could submit my photos to multiple agencies to increase my chances for selling it.

5. Do I need to track which photo I have submitted to which agencies? Or is that overkill?

6. When do I need a model/property release? It is my understanding that a model release is needed if the model is identifiable, thus a photo like this violin player probably does not require a release. Again, it is my (limited) understanding that a property release is needed where either a) the item being photographed is covered by copyright or b) is identified as being on private property. Please shout if you have a different understanding on either of these.

I am sure more questions will surface, but in the meantime, I am starting the process of looking into a few stock agencies to see what I can figure out from their sites. Stay tuned for updates on this soon.

In the meantime, do you have any thoughts on stock photography or any of the questions above? I would love to hear from you. The comments below would be great, and I have relaxed the requirements so you don't need to be logged in (though if you leave a web page, I am almost certain to stop by and visit). Click the email link on my main web page profile would be fine as well. Heading over to Twitter is another option, if you follow me, you can send me a direct message and I am pretty certain to see it.