One of the best ways to advance your microstock offerings is to find a specialty - such as a theme or object that you enjoy photographing. Once you discover this interest, it's time to build a portfolio or collection of images using your speciality as the central focal point.
Six Reasons Why You Should Have a Specialty
1. By uploading 15 or more images in one particular category, you appear to be an expert on that subject matter.
2. By consistently having your name appear when a search for your speciality is performed, "brands" you with that type of image.
3. If a buyer purchases one of your speciality images, there is a higher likelihood that they will come back and purchase more images from you in order to stay with the same theme and/or style.
4. Having more images than other photographers in a particular niche raises your odds of being purchased over others who only have one or two photos in that category.
5. Creating a portfolio of images based on a single theme, allows you to explore and build upon variations of this theme. This deepens your perspective and awareness of your speciality, creating a depth to the theme.
6. At some microstock agencies, such as
Dreamstime, you can build a "collection" of images for designers to browse. Although
Dreamstime collections must include work by several photographers, you can certainly put together a collection based on your speciality portfolio and drop in just a few photos by others to round out the collection. This is another interesting way for web designers and graphic artists to discover your photography.
As you can probably guess from the image above, my specialty happens to be semi-trucks. There's a very good reason for this. I work for a manufacturer who ships products throughout the country via long-haul trucks . Many times I am asked to photograph shipments for insurance reasons. It occurred to me one day this was a great opportunity to create a speciality.
While I was waiting around for the shipments to be loaded, I took a few photos of the trucks themselves. Many were actually beautiful in a big, brawny kind of way! With their bright paint jobs and flashy chrome, the semi's had a real presence about them. Each truck had its own personality, something I found to be an exciting challenge to photograph. Plus my job presented a unique opportunity to photograph a variety of trucks while they were stationary, allowing for optimal vantage points that would be impossible with a moving vehicle. And thus - my lucrative speciality was born!
To see the collection I built at Dreamstime called "
Big Rigs" stop by:
http://www.dreamstime.com/big-rigs-rcollection5392-resi265856Labels: micro stock, microstock agency, microstock photography
One of the best ways to advance your microstock offerings is to find a specialty - such as a theme or object that you enjoy photographing. Once you discover this interest, it's time to build a portfolio or collection of images using your speciality as the central focal point.
