Selling Stock Photos: Tips for Getting Your Photos Approved at Stock Photo Agencies

Author: Chris Cascade

If you are interested in selling stock photos at agencies, one of the first hurdles you will face is getting the images you submit approved for sale by those agencies. Different agencies will have different criteria by which they judge your photos, of course, but here are a few tips to help get your photos approved with most stock photo agencies:

1) Submit photos with an image resolution of at least 5 mega pixels. Better quality photos can be used for more applications, so you should shoot the photos you plan on submitting to stock photo agencies at a high resolution.

2) Do not submit too many photos at once. Keep the total number of photographs you submit at once to less than 50. Remember, a real human will be reviewing each and every photograph, and they are more likely to reject your photos if they feel like you are spamming the submission system.

3) Attach appropriate keyword tags, but not too many. Keywords are very important for the photos being found by prospective buyers, but too many keywords will look like spam and raise the probability of their being rejected.

4) Edit the images as little as possible. Using Adobe Photoshop or other applications to "improve" the photographs actually decreases the overall quality of the photo, so use these applications as little as possible. Instead, aim to take good photos that do not need editing later.

5) Submit quality photos. Get the light right, make sure they are in focus, use a tripod if necessary. Learn the basics of digital photography to make sure your photos are as good as they can be!

About the Author:

To learn more about how to successfully sell your photographs online, checkout the Camera Dollars 2.0 System.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Selling Stock Photos: Tips for Getting Your Photos Approved at Stock Photo Agencies

Using your digital camera at Christmas

Author: Rainco

You'll no doubt be entering the festive season with a series of dates booked in your diary for office parties, school pantos along with Christmas and New Year celebrations. Your digital camera is ideal for these social times, because you can show the pictures as soon as you take them and you can send them to your friends and relatives around the world with ease. You could even turn your photos into presents or how about sending your own personalised Christmas card?

Replacement Digital Camera Battery for CANON NB-4L

All product prices are for one (1) unit.

• Brand New & Factory Fresh.
• 30-Days Money-back Guarantee.
• 12 months Warranty.
• Usually ships within 1 working day.

Product Information:

Type: Li-ion Volt: 3.7V Capacity: 700mAh Color: Grey Dimensions: 40.40x35.40x5.90mm Weight: 56.7g Special Price: AU $9.90 ( Include GST )

So with your camera in hand lets look at how you can create a great Christmas photo.
The first thing to do is capture the picture and most digital cameras make the job easy. If you're new to photography, simply select a Program mode and the camera takes all the exposure technicalities out of your hands, leaving you to concentrate on the portrait.

For indoor shots some cameras have the appropriately titled Party or portrait Mode. These ensure the camera's flash fires to make the picture bright. All you have to do then is get the person to look good in the photo. When photographing children you'll find they tend to smile unnaturally or pull a face when asked to pose, but there are ways around this to ensure you capture a more natural expression.

One tip I use is to ask them to look into the lens to find the "camera genie". This obviously only works with younger children! They'll start to stare intensely into the lens. Joke about the genie to make them smile or laugh and press the shutter. Not only will you get a better expression, but you'll also find the eye contact perfect.

Most cameras have a red-eye reduction mode that fires a pre-flash to reduce the devil-inducing effect. Make sure this is switched on and showing a small eye icon on the LCD panel.

When you become more experienced try turning the flash off and using natural light from the window or room lighting. The mode appears as a small lightning symbol with line through it. Window light will cast a shadow on the unlit side of the portrait which can be reduce effectively using tin foil, spray mounted onto a large sheet of card. Position this reflector so it points at the subject from the shadow side. As you move the card you'll see light reflect onto the person and the shadows disappear.

A question of balance
If you take pictures using room lighting you may need to switch the camera to a different white balance setting. This is usually automatic, but you can manually correct by setting the light bulb option when the pictures are coming out too yellow. You can also override auto to force a colour cast. A photo of children blowing out candles on a Christmas cake will look better with its natural orange colours.

With more experience, you'll be able to switch to manual exposure mode and set the exposure to suit the subject. The exposure from the candles will make the background dark. Using the manual exposure setting or exposure compensation will improve the lighting and you can check the result using the LCD.

If you go into manual or aperture priority and select a large aperture, you can reduce the sharpness of the background to make your subject stand out.

Try using the camera's zoom lens at the telephoto setting to magnify the subject and home in tightly on the face. Entry-level cameras have a 2x zoom while more sophisticated models have more powerful ranges often up as high as 8x.

Snow fun
The first sign of snow and children will be out sledging, building snowmen and throwing snowballs. Take this opportunity to get some great candid pictures (see our candid feature for some great ideas). But watch out for the pitfalls, snow is very bright and will fool the camera. We explained how to overcome this using your camera manually in an earlier article. The latest Nikon Coolpix cameras have a useful program scene mode called Snow that compensates automatically ensuring the snow appears lovely and white.

You could also consider using fill-flash by switching the flash on and forcing it to fire. This will ensure harsh shadows from reflective snow or bright sunlight don't appear black across the face.

With all your pictures safely captured it's time to share them. In the package that came with your camera you're likely to find a CD with a program on it that takes care of downloading pictures to your computer. Once installed it's all done automatically when you plug the camera into the computer's USB socket. Then you can enhance, print and share them. Kodak and Fuji provide a docking station that makes connectivity a one-touch operation and it even recharges the batteries while the camera's sat in the cradle.

Nikon have taken things a stage further with their Coolpix camera where you can take advantage of their Fotoshare Web site. Here you can upload photos from your computer and arrange them into albums. Select a subject such as wedding or Christmas to give the album a customised design and then email friends or relatives to invite them to take a look. You can also select pictures to be printed via the on-line print ordering service. The program lets you know what size photos you can order from your pictures and posts photo quality prints to your home.
Other Internet companies offer similar facilities - you just need to go online, register and download the necessary software to get going

You'll no doubt be entering the festive season with a series of dates booked in your diary for office parties, school pantos along with Christmas and New Year celebrations. Your digital camera is ideal for these social times, because you can show the pictures as soon as you take them and you can send them to your friends and relatives around the world with ease. You could even turn your photos into presents or how about sending your own personalised Christmas card?

So with your camera in hand lets look at how you can create a great Christmas photo.
The first thing to do is capture the picture and most digital cameras make the job easy. If you're new to photography, simply select a Program mode and the camera takes all the exposure technicalities out of your hands, leaving you to concentrate on the portrait.

For indoor shots some cameras have the appropriately titled Party or portrait Mode. These ensure the camera's flash fires to make the picture bright. All you have to do then is get the person to look good in the photo. When photographing children you'll find they tend to smile unnaturally or pull a face when asked to pose, but there are ways around this to ensure you capture a more natural expression.

One tip I use is to ask them to look into the lens to find the "camera genie". This obviously only works with younger children! They'll start to stare intensely into the lens. Joke about the genie to make them smile or laugh and press the shutter. Not only will you get a better expression, but you'll also find the eye contact perfect.

Most cameras have a red-eye reduction mode that fires a pre-flash to reduce the devil-inducing effect. Make sure this is switched on and showing a small eye icon on the LCD panel.

When you become more experienced try turning the flash off and using natural light from the window or room lighting. The mode appears as a small lightning symbol with line through it. Window light will cast a shadow on the unlit side of the portrait which can be reduce effectively using tin foil, spray mounted onto a large sheet of card. Position this reflector so it points at the subject from the shadow side. As you move the card you'll see light reflect onto the person and the shadows disappear.

A question of balance
If you take pictures using room lighting you may need to switch the camera to a different white balance setting. This is usually automatic, but you can manually correct by setting the light bulb option when the pictures are coming out too yellow. You can also override auto to force a colour cast. A photo of children blowing out candles on a Christmas cake will look better with its natural orange colours.

With more experience, you'll be able to switch to manual exposure mode and set the exposure to suit the subject. The exposure from the candles will make the background dark. Using the manual exposure setting or exposure compensation will improve the lighting and you can check the result using the LCD.

If you go into manual or aperture priority and select a large aperture, you can reduce the sharpness of the background to make your subject stand out.

Try using the camera's zoom lens at the telephoto setting to magnify the subject and home in tightly on the face. Entry-level cameras have a 2x zoom while more sophisticated models have more powerful ranges often up as high as 8x.

Snow fun
The first sign of snow and children will be out sledging, building snowmen and throwing snowballs. Take this opportunity to get some great candid pictures (see our candid feature for some great ideas). But watch out for the pitfalls, snow is very bright and will fool the camera. We explained how to overcome this using your camera manually in an earlier article. The latest Nikon Coolpix cameras have a useful program scene mode called Snow that compensates automatically ensuring the snow appears lovely and white.

You could also consider using fill-flash by switching the flash on and forcing it to fire. This will ensure harsh shadows from reflective snow or bright sunlight don't appear black across the face.

With all your pictures safely captured it's time to share them. In the package that came with your camera you're likely to find a CD with a program on it that takes care of downloading pictures to your computer. Once installed it's all done automatically when you plug the camera into the computer's USB socket. Then you can enhance, print and share them. Kodak and Fuji provide a docking station that makes connectivity a one-touch operation and it even recharges the batteries while the camera's sat in the cradle.

Nikon have taken things a stage further with their Coolpix camera where you can take advantage of their Fotoshare Web site. Here you can upload photos from your computer and arrange them into albums. Select a subject such as wedding or Christmas to give the album a customised design and then email friends or relatives to invite them to take a look. You can also select pictures to be printed via the on-line print ordering service. The program lets you know what size photos you can order from your pictures and posts photo quality prints to your home.
Other Internet companies offer similar facilities - you just need to go online, register and download the necessary software to get going

About the Author:

Laptop Batteries,Adapters,Chargers,notebook battery
Laptop battery AU is everyone's battery store for Dell laptop battery, Acer laptop battery, Toshiba laptop battery, Compaq laptop battery, Camcorder battery, Canon camcorder battery, Camera battery, Power tools battery, Laptop AC adapter and Laptop DC adapter.

http://www.b2c-battery.com.au

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Using your digital camera at Christmas

Make great Christmas gifts by using your camera

Author: Rainco

Gifts are becoming more expensive year after year. You’re constantly looking for bargains and sales on smart phones, electronic toys, jewelry, clothing and accessories. By the time the Holidays are over, you are more in debt than before and the stress is creating havoc on your health. It's great to be generous to your loved ones and friends, however don't lose sight of your health; financial and otherwise.

How about creating a portrait of a favorite pet? When you’re visiting family and friends, who have pets, try to discreetly take some photos of the little one. Then buy some canvas blocks; you can decide which sizes would be best. With the help of the internet learn how to transfer the photos onto the blocks to make them truly a unique gift. The amazement on their faces will surely prove to you that you have given them a gift they will treasure for many years to come.

Of course you don't have to stop with the family pet; you can do the same with their children. Just remember to take these photos discreetly. You don't want to have people after you wondering what you are doing.

If you want to be even more unique, try to transform the photos into a 'Warhol-like' creation. It's amazing what can be done with a little imagination.

If you are more artistically inclined, use your photos as 'models' of what you want to create, whether it is a portrait or some other unique presentation.

You can even create beautiful Christmas decorations using your camera. Photos can be made into wreaths, hung on stockings for gift identification, even table placemats so your guests know where to sit. Once you get into the 'flow' it's amazing what you will come up with.

Who knows; you might even be starting a small home business with these creations. You never know until you do it.

Digital Camera Battery

Better life with digital camera battery wharehgouse. As the development of technology and advance of society, our life get better with various digital products. So we need more and more digital batteries and accessories.
Our digital camera batteries online shop here, is your best choice to find best battery selection at the best prices. We supply various lithium ion, rechargeable, discount digital camera batteries by all top manufactures as Sony, Canon, Olympus, Panasonic and more. Also we provide chargers for these batteries. Shopping is easy and secure.

About the Author:

Laptop Batteries,Adapters,Chargers,notebook battery
Laptop battery AU is everyone's battery store for Dell laptop battery, Acer laptop battery, Toshiba laptop battery, Compaq laptop battery, Camcorder battery, Canon camcorder battery, Camera battery, Power tools battery, Laptop AC adapter and Laptop DC adapter.

http://www.b2c-battery.com.au

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Make great Christmas gifts by using your camera

2009, the Year When Everything Changed

Author: John M. Lund

At the recent UGCX conference in New York Jack Hollingsworth commented that when we look back at 2009 we will see that it was the year everything changed. That may well be the case. I am hearing that the relentless growth of earnings for top micro stock shooters is abating.

I have heard from several top photographers, and at least one industry pundit, that they are considering leaving the field of photography altogether. I have spoken with a number of my fellow stock shooters who report that their revenues are down fifty to seventy-five percent over what they were a year ago!

DSLRs, Video And The Stock Business

Yet there are also many who are excited at the prospect of what lies ahead. Video is generating a lot of excitement with the advent of DSLRs that can shoot superb quality video and the beginnings of a proliferation of accessories and developments that can make those cameras at least the rough equal of what has been previously the domain of pro level video cameras. And while there are numerous reports of trouble with the micro stock model, I personally know at least two photographers who have expanded their traditional stock picture business into micro and are doing well.

Getty, Flickr, And New Opportunities

Getty has apparently abandoned their efforts at producing wholly owned content and seems to be fixated on mining flickr for their new imagery. At Veer we are seeing the search for traditional stock and micro merging. There is, indeed, a lot going on in the stock photo industry! But this isn’t just indicative of stock photography…it is true of pretty much everything.

Change continues at a blistering pace destroying old models and offering new opportunities. Some of us are going to suffer and some of us prosper. I am both hopeful and determined to be of the latter type. That requires doing my best to keep track of all these changes, figuring out what they mean, and then adjusting my own efforts accordingly.

More Photographs At More Price Points

One thing that cannot be argued is the over supply of images. That over supply is being fed at a tremendous pace…and I don’t believe that will end. An over supply of imagery is part of the new landscape.

I believe that there will continue to be a demand for the highest-end photography and some degree of exclusivity, but that the need for such imagery will diminish somewhat as more advertising turns to internet, to motion, and to segmented marketing (targeting fewer but more specific prospects). I believe that micro prices will include more and more of what some call “mid-stock” such as with iStock’s “Vetta” collection.

The lowest of micro prices simply will not support a full range of the kind and quality of images needed. That being said, I fore see more and more free images designed to pull in more market share by various agencies. Ultimately there will be more photographs at more price points.

A More Targeted Selection And A Better Search Experience

The challenge for image buyers and sellers alike will be in efficient searching. Can buyers find the right images for their needs without spending too much time sorting through the chaff? Can sellers provide an optimum experience for the buyers by providing relevant images quickly and efficiently?

Twenty years ago Tony Stone revolutionized the stock photo business by offering a smaller number of higher quality images and making a hundred dupes of each image so that he could get the images in front of buyers more efficiently. We may well be coming right back to that premise. Collections that offer a more targeted selection and a better search experience will be able to charge a premium for that service.

The Road Ahead

I do believe that the road ahead for photography does offer some of us increased opportunities, but that overall, making a living from stock photography will never be as easy as it once was. The first step to future success in this new paradigm is letting go of the concept of whether these changes are right or wrong.

The next step is to see the market objectively, determine where your own strengths coincide with the changes in the market, and to move in the direction of those strengths.

More Quality And Less Quantity

For me, the path is one towards less quantity and more quality and towards getting my images in front of as many potential buyers as possible. To increase my quality I am doing more careful research, increasing my communication with the editors I do have, and being more discriminating in which images I undertake.

To get my pictures in front of more buyers I am expanding the number of stock agencies I work with, developing my web site and SEO, and beginning to utilize social media. Whatever the outcome of my efforts, at least one thing is for certain…this is an exciting time to be in the photography business!

About the Author:

Stock Photos and Pics: Funny Animal Photo of a Poodle

Funny Stock Photos & Images: Stock Photo of Bouncer

Concepts, Ethnic, People, and other stock photos: Stock Photo of a man pushing a huge boulder up a hill

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - 2009, the Year When Everything Changed