Best Places to Sell Photos Online
# Tip number 1- Sharpness.
I know it sounds very obvious, but this is not that easy to do. One of the first things I would buy after buying a camera is a tripod and you will be taking photographs in different light conditions. The best way to keep your photos sharp, to use a tripod. The other thing how to keep your photos sharp is to stop down your lens from something between f9 to f16.
If you are taking some portraits or some food photography and you need this beautiful creamy bokeh, that's good. You can open your aperture wide. But if you're shooting some kind of landscapes or cityscapes, please keep your F-stop between f9 and f16. I tend to keep it between f 9 and f11 and even the worst kit lens on this planet will work just fine.
# Tip number 2- Keep your ISO value low.
You want to avoid excessive noise. Noise is one of the main reasons for rejection, specifically for beginners in stock photography. So you may say: 'hey, but there are those cool cameras you can go up to, I don't know, 50 thousand ISO or something.' I rarely set my ISO to anything more than 400. Of course, if your wedding photographer that's a different story, but for stock photography, you want to keep your ISO low, so my tip is to keep it anywhere between 100 to 400.
Even if you have a great, new camera that allows you to go very high, try to avoid it. Because even if you don’t initially see the high level of noise then in post-production when you want to raise your shadows, like see what's there in shadows, like recover your shadows, you may see a lot of noise there. And your photos will be rejected, even if they are super cool.
# Tips number 3- White Balance
The white balance and generally colours. At the beginning of my career as a photographer, I got a lot of rejections because of that. But this is essential knowledge to keep your white balance right. Even if you didn't set it right in your camera, please start shooting in RAW. Even if you set your white balance really wrong or your automatic white balance did something really crazy, you can always save yourself in post-production.
# Tip number 4- Composition
Point number four is composing your photos. I advise all photographers that want to start their adventure with stock photography to use a rule of thirds. This is a basic method of composition, but it really works. It's a good method and you will not get your photos rejected because of that composition if you stick to that rule. Having said that you can always break that rule if you have great ideas, some creative ideas there, you know, that you want to break this rule and there's a reason for breaking this rule, okay, feel free to do it.
# Tip number 5- Legal Aspect
Point number five. It's a legal aspect. And probably boring for most of us, but super important. It's a model or property release. If you want to upload a picture of a person as a commercial photograph to sell you need this person to sign a model release. Even if it's your own face you will need to sign a model release. You will never get your photo that presents a recognizable face of a person accepted to stock photography website if you didn't sign a model release with the person. Of course, if it's news content like the editorial type of licensing it’s a different story. But if you want your photographs to be used for commercial purposes you need to sign the papers.
Tip number 6- What camera you need?
We all love gear, right? So in the beginning, I said that you need like an entry-level camera, any camera. I want to give you one simple tip what camera you need. The best one you can afford. Nowadays I would say anything24 megapixels and above is great for stock photography and I would stick to something that can shoot in 4k and nowadays even Canon entry-level cameras can shoot 4k and have more than 24 megapixels.
Also read: Best DSLR Camera in 2020 under 30000.
# Tip number 7- Copyspace
Not a lot of photographers will tell you about that specific thing, but this is super important to have in mind. Whenever you build a collection of photos from some city or place you're visiting remember to take some shots with copyspace in mind. What is it? It's a little bit of neutral space that nothing, you know, complicating is going on there to put somebody of text there or some title there. This is very important because it increases the commercial usability of your photos. Not all of your photos have to have it, but it is very recommended that specifically in stock photography portfolio.
# Tip number 8- Post-processing/ Photo editing
Process your photos. I know it sounds basic and foremost of photographers it's something obvious. But really shooting in JPEG and leaving it like it is ... I tried many times, you know, to do it, maybe to avoid post-processing, because it's a little bit boring, you have to sit in front of your computer, have Camera Raw or Lightroom turned on for half of a day and it's a hassle. But believe me, people want a ready beautiful-looking content there that enhances your images. Even I use post-processing through a mobile app like Lightroom or Snapseed.
# Tip number 9- Motivate yourself to start shooting
Point number nine is more like motivational point and it basically starts shooting. Whatever you love to do, maybe it's your favourite sport maybe it's your hobby may be some project at the home, maybe your own city, maybe your family. Family is a big subject, so if you know how to shoot it right it's just a great subject, but basically, you have to start shooting and you have to start uploading. And I can promise - you will get sales on stock photography websites.
# Tip number 10- Keep Patience
Finally point number 10 - super important one - is be patient. The stock photography business is not for people that want to have money out of it right now. You need to learn to wait. Is it worth it? It's a great business. But first of all, you need to keep patience.
Because of the COVID pandemic and quarantine, we lost all the jobs, all the clients they cancelled the jobs we had scheduled, but stock photography keeps bringing us money, so we can pay our bills, we can buy our food, refuel our car, do everything we want and this is a great way to have extra income, an extra source of passive income. We should try to sell our photos online which are there in hard drive or gallery with no use. Let's do Start Stock Photography in 2020.
Happy Reading.
This is Kanchan Saha. Here I am sharing photgraphy realted blog. I will be grad if you all like, comments and share to inspire