If you are a photographer and would like to sell some of your images
with a stock photography company, here is what you can expect:
All stock photography
libraries will ask you to sign a contract when you first join with
them which sets out the terms of conditions of becoming a contributor.
The level of commitment you will be expected to give varies from company
to company, however it's much stricter now than it was a decade or so
ago. Back then, it was very common for stock photographers to overshoot
everything then place the same stock photos with many different stock
photography libraries to maximize sales. Stock photography libraries
didn't like this practice, but they accepted that it went on. Things
have changed however. The stock image industry is much bigger than it
was before, and stock photography
libraries now require in written contracts that their photographers
do not put the same pictures (or even similar pictures from the same
shoot) with other stock photography libraries.
The reason for this is that stock photography libraries don't want rival
stock photography companies to end-up with the same picture, and have
stock images being used in the same way in the same year. Some bigger
stock photography libraries often demand that their photographers do
not put any work with other stock photography libraries or sell use
of their work directly to clients.
When you submit work to a stock
photography library it should be captioned accurately in a style
accepted by the stock photography company. The stock photography library
could face embarrassment if it sold a stock image containing the wrong
information on it. For landscape and travel shots, it helps to keep
notes of locations and mark maps so you know exactly where everything
was shot. When a search is being carried out for a client by the stock
photography library, or clients are doing their own search on-line,
they may use any number of keywords to try and find suitable pictures
or stock photos. For that reason, it's important that your captions
contain different potential keywords. The more keywords you put into
a caption on your stock image the greater the chance of it being sourced.
Some stock photography libraries prefer to re-mount images. If yours
does, submit the pictures in strips of un-mounted film with caption
notes on the sleeves. The library can then cut out the frames they want
and return the rest.
If the library prefers you to mount your own then do so. Use self-adhesive
card mounts, as they're cheaper than plastic, and follow any instructions
for captioning. Usually the top strip must be left for the library's
stamp, while the bottom strip can be used for the caption. Hand-written
captions are fine if you have neat writing, but a much better method
is to type out the captions with a computer and print them out on small
labels which you can then stick on the mounts.
