Just a few tips and short cuts to using stock photos.
Stock photography is great for
presenting information to your customers. Stock photography has a
number of alternate names including picture libraries, photo archives
or image banks. Typically, in order to use these pictures, although
publicly available, there is a small fee for usage rights.
You can save time by using stock
photography to enhance newsletters, blogs, advertisements and
brochures. Using stock photography is obviously less expensive than
having a full time photographer on staff.
Sometimes full rights and usage is
available for purchase. Other times, full rights are limited. In
those cases, photographers might require that they receive a certain
percentage of sales and or royalties of usage. Agencies usually hold
the images on files and negotiate fees. With technology and easy
access that the internet provides, negotiations are generally quick
and easy.
The cost of using stock photos depends
on how long the pictures will be used, what location the images will
be used, if the original photographer wants royalties and how many
people the photo will be distributed to or seen by. Of course,
prices for stock photography vary.
There are several different pricing
arrangements. Royalty free stock photography allows the buyer to use
photographs multiple times in multiple ways. When you buy royalty
free pictures, there is only a one-time charge for unlimited usage.
When the images you purchase have a royalty free section, the agency
is able to resell the image to others. If an image is rights
managed, there is a negotiated price for each time that it is used.
Sometimes a buyer of stock photography
might desire to have exclusive rights to the images. In that case,
no one else will be able to use the pictures once exclusive rights
have been purchased. It may cost thousands of dollars to purchase
exclusive rights because agencies who handle the sales have to make
sure that they are making a profitable sale. If a photograph would
make more money staying in circulation, they would lose out selling
exclusive rights.
Stock photographers sometimes work with
agencies producing images for them alone. Different subjects and
categories might need multiple varieties of images. Sometimes
contributors work for multiple agencies selling their photographs for
a fee. They work out arrangements for royalties or they sell their
shots for full rights. This has proved to be a big business for
photographers around the world.
Stock photography started in the early
1920s. It especially grew as its own specialty by the 1980s.
Galleries hold hundreds, thousands and even millions of pictures
available for purchase. Stock houses sprung up in many different
places. By 2000, online stock photography became microstock
photography, which we call photo archives online. Companies like
istock photo and bigstock photo offer you the opportunity to purchase
so many pictures and when you use them up you can add more credits
for another fee. Photos that are distributed online are typically
less expensive than those that are sold hard copy.
Though I appreciate and enjoy the arts, finances do not
allow a budget for professional photography so I use photos that I
have taken with my cell phone. These photos are mine and I do not need permissions to use them. Google's Picasa allows me to place a watermark on my photos before I share them.
As a small business owner I find using my cell phone photos and placing the watermark on them to be the easiest and most economical way to have photos readily available for use. If you happen to have the opportunity to do so, please support the many fantastic photographers that have made their photos available.
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