Macrostock photography, also known as “traditional stock photography” refers to agencies that sell high-priced and exclusive images. There are three types of stock photography, but most people focus on macrostock and microstock. It would be far easier and cheaper to find one on a stock photography site and pay anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars. Side note: using a service like Model Mayhem would be your best bet for finding a ‘talent’. Think of stock photography as the opposite of custom-made photographs, which are licensed directly to a client (depending on copyright status) and are original works created specifically for that client’s purpose.įor example, if I needed a high-quality image of a happy family eating dinner together, hiring a photographer to find all of the models and put together the food, props, and lighting would be quite expensive. It’s much cheaper than hiring a photographer and is generally sold through a platform that specializes in keeping a large library full of such images so that buyers have a number of different options to choose from.

Stock photography is simply a term for generic imagery that buyers use for the visual content in everything from news stories, blogs and websites, to design materials for ads or promotional materials. Getty Images is one of the most longstanding traditional macrostock companies. There’s an art to making the stock photography business work for you and the competition is fierce… but it can be done. The web is full of comments like “Don’t quit your day job!” sitting side-by-side with “I make $1000s a month in stock photography and you can too!” Which is true? Well, arguments can be made for both.Ĭan you make real money off of stock photography? Possibly.Ĭan you just upload all your photos that are just taking up space on your hard drives and make money? Probably not – unless those photos are over-the-moon fantastic and meet the current needs of today’s stock photography buyers. Not impossible, the way some blogs and long time stock photographers would make it sound, but not quite a walk in the park either (at least for most people). The first thing I have to tell you is it’s not quite so easy. …or maybe you wanted to learn more about how to sell photos online and make money. Or perhaps you’ve seen a number of stock photos and said to yourself, “ I could do better than that!” Or maybe the idea of having someone else sell your photos was appealing. Maybe you were hoping to be able to do something with the hundreds of unused photos lurking about on various hard drives.

If you’re a photographer looking to make a bit more money, you’ve probably been tempted, at least at some point, to go into stock photography.

Alamy stock photo ajop34