Stock Photography : Lessons Learned
As many of have you seen in my last few posts, I signed up for iSyndica and I reported back on the results of my submissions. Now, I would like to share some feedback and tips I learned throughout the process. Some of the lessons that I learned seem like common sense to me now, but like Steven Wright has said, “Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it”.
- Rejections : The various sites typically responded back with the reason being either that the photograph was out of focus, too noisy, or not unique enough for use as a stock image.
- Lessons Learned : While I typically shoot with the ISO as low as I can, I will be passing future submissions through Noise Ninja to be on the safe side as far as noise is concerned. Also, I will be viewing all photographs that I edit at 100% before finishing them.
- Workflow : I found that once all of the photographs were uploaded to the stock websites, I still had to go through and add Titles, Descriptions, and anywhere from 7-10 (minimum) keywords for each photograph. These dramatically slowed down the process of submitting each photograph for approval on each website.
- Lesson Learned : By editing these attributes and including them as part of the workflow, they are embedded into each file and will auto-fill into the fields on each stock website. This saves A TON of time and in most cases, all I will have to do in the future is to click the “submit for approval” button without the hassle of entering all of the information each time.
I have to say that this has been an invaluable experience. Applying what I have learned as I move forward can only increase the likelihood that my future submissions will be accpeted and hopefully purchased on these stock websites.
As for my experience with trying out iSyndica, it has been wonderful. Being able to upload a batch of photographs once rather than fourteen times is an obvious time saver. I recommend it to anyone who shoots photographs for use in stock.
