Guides and information for photography enthusiasts, by photography enthusiasts

I learned recently that the Minnesota Zoo has a butterfly garden. In addition to demonstrating how incredibly long it’s been since I’ve been to the zoo — a shame — this also presented what I thought was a fantastic photography opportunity! An enclosed building with hundreds and hundreds of butterflies of all kinds, just waiting to be shot. Fantastic!

Well, not so much.

I grabbed my camera and spent a good amount of time wandering from flower to flower, shooting butterflies, having butterflies land on me, whisk out of frame just before I pressed the shutter, or delightfully stay still as if posing.

1/320th at f5.6 on ISO 400 with 200mm focal length

I got home and wasn’t terribly thrilled with the shots. I grabbed a macro lens and went back, did more shooting and went home again disappointed. Then I realized the horrible truth, something I should have remembered from my Heinlein:

“Butterflies are not insects. They are self-propelled flowers.”
- R. Heinlein

I also hate flowers…

I learned a long, long time ago — back in the wee youth of my photography life — that it was frickin hard to take a good picture of a flower. And the reason it’s so hard is that it’s so easy to take a good picture of a flower. Bear with me a sec — I swear this makes sense.

Say you want to shoot a flower. You zoom in nice and close, leave everything on auto, and then you press the shutter. You now have a glorious picture with bright, vibrant colors offset by a dark, out of focus background. It’s lovely. And it’s just like every other picture every other person takes of a flower.

1/1000th at f7.1 on ISO 400 with 200mm focal length

The reason it’s so hard to take a really good shot of a flower is that it’s so easy to take a good shot of a flower.

There are a bazillion shots of flower that are all good, that all look just like your shot. Your shot doesn’t stand out, nothing makes it remarkable, special. After all “good” and “bad” are qualitative terms, not quantitative. It’s graded on a curve. Something is only good if it’s substantially better than most of the pack.

I’m passing on self-propelled flowers for now

So after two shoots I ended up with a bunch of perfectly acceptable and fairly average shots of butterflies. The best I got, I think, was a shot of a moth on some peeling bark, nicely backlit.

1/90th at f5.6 on ISO 400 with 200mm focal length

I suspect the way to get some truly stunning butterfly shots is to actually shoot them in the air — midflight, perfectly in focus and with their wings spread just so.

I do not have the patience for that. Not nearly. And I’m not sure the nice people guarding the butterfly garden and herding children away would have the patience for me to sit there that long either. So for the time being I’ve decided to take my revenge on the damned butterflies the old fashioned way: by outliving them.

I got an interesting email from iStock today in response to my application:

Thank you for taking the time to apply as a contributor with iStockphoto.com.

The iStock administrators have asked that you upload new samples based on the feedback provided below. You’re welcome to return in 3 days, upload some new samples and we’ll re-process your application.

If you’ll recall iStock Submission requirements make you send just three photos. Two of the three were accepted, including the bumblebee shot below, that was rejected by Shutterstock and Fontfolia.

1/125th at f4.2 on ISO 400 with macro lens less than an inch from a soon to be angry bee

The photo they didn’t like was this high-key shot.

They felt that the highlights were blown out (which was the point, but ah well).  However I’m very encouraged that they gave the opportunity to resubmit rather than just rejection the application out of hand.

Now I just have to figure out what to replace the high key shot with!

So I’ve gotten the first couple of responses from my first couple of stock photography submissions. Shutterstock requires you to submit 10 photos, of which 7 must be accepted. Alas I did not get enough accepted photos, for a variety of reasons that we’ll go over shortly. Thus I was not accepted; however, I can reapply in 30 days – which I will do armed with new knowledge!

Fotolia doesn’t have a requirement that a certain number be accepted, and I have several photos accepted and available online now. Yay! No response from iStock yet.

I thought it would be valuable to take a look at a few of the photos to see what was accepted and – perhaps more importantly – what was rejected and why. Let’s see what we can learn here:

Strawberry& Apples – Accepted

.4 sec at f10 on ISO 100 with 90mm focal length

White background, food, sharp focus (if in a limited area), bright saturated colors. Approved. In addition the shot of the apples lined up was approved, which was similar in concept to this – white background, sharp focus, food. Hmm…. 2 data points is not enough to make a pattern, but it’s something I’m keeping my eye on and trying more of!

BumbeBee – Rejected

1/125th at f4.2 on ISO 400 with macro lens less than an inch from a soon to be angry bee

Both Shutterstock and Fotolia rejected this on the basis of poor focus. This baffled me a bit at first and I thought perhaps they just wanted the depth of field to be deeper. But then when I really zoomed into the picture I saw that the wing is in perfect focus, but the hairs on the back and the head of the bee are in fact not in perfect focus. Click on the picture to enlarge it and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

You really have to zoom in close to really see the focus problem - which I think tells us something about how these photos are reviewed. So we know to make sure we do that before submitting – and focus is vital!

Canoe – Rejected

1.6 sec at f22 on ISO 100 with 26mm focal length

This was rejected for poor focus and overabundance of photo type. Of course I knew that this didn’t have tack sharp focus. I felt that it helped with the mood of the photo – but again we’re learning that perfect focus is an absolute necessity.

Leaves in Minnehaha Creek – Rejected and Approved

This was approved through Shutterstock and rejected from Fotolia. Fotolia’s reason – and one that I quickly got used to seeing – was Overabundance of Images of This Type. In fact, anything remotely nature related got axed by Fotolia and most of them from Shutterstock as being the kind of photo that they just have way too many of.

The Plan

Even though the sample size is small, I think a couple of things are clear. Focus must be tack sharp – no exceptions allowed. More importantly (for me) all these gigs of nature-type photography are not useful for stock. Certainly the gems I’ll go ahead and try submitting once I’m in — but they will not be a part of any initial submission!

For now I’m going to stop submitting to new stock agencies and instead shoot some new photos over the next week or so. Specifically I think I’m going to shoot some food on a white background. It’s incredibly easy and seems to be a logical route in. Now again, I firmly believe that an initial submission to a stock agency should show a variety of shot types, and on my to-do list is to get some shots of people (with model releases).

But for now it’s to the grocery store!

This is a breakdown of the submission process to sell your stock photography to iStock Photo. Like all micro-stock agencies, they won’t put up photos from just any photographer. You must go through their submission process to see if they’ll carry you.

iStock Photo accepts images as small as 1600 x 1200.

1. Go to http://www.istockphoto.com/sell-stock-photos.php
2. You must sign up to be an iStock Member and create an account.
3. You then are taken through a series of pages listing all manner of guidelines. At the end of this they have a simple online quiz that you have to take based on what you just read. Your quiz is instantly graded (pass or fail) online.
4. You then have to upload one piece of photo identification. For this I just snaped a photo of my driver’s license.
5. Finally, you have to upload just 3 sample images. With only three images by which you are judged, make sure they are good and show a good variety!

Unlike other micro stock agencies, Fotolia doesn’t technically have a submission process to see if they’ll carry you as a photographer. Instead, anyone can submit photos and they’ll just decide whether or not they will host the photos. This makes them without question the least stressful micro stock agency to submit to.

Fotolia accepts images as small as 4 MP. Fotolia has one of the simplest and easiest submission processes.

1. Go to http://us.fotolia.com/Info/HowToSell
2. Create an account. You’ll have the option to go exclusive with Fotolia, which I do not recommend.
3. Click the “Sell Files” link in the upper right corner.
4. Start uploading images!
5. Fotolia has an option that if your file is rejected by the editors, you can have it moved to the “free” section. I recommend against this — no point in giving your work away!
6. Note that while you can start uploading images right away you will get an email with a link you have to click on to validate your account — your images won’t be reviewed until you do so!

Unlike other stock agency submission processes, there is no special number of photos you need to upload. After all, they are not evaluating you as a contributor, but instead are just evaluating each photo on a case by case basis.

Once you’ve got your photos uploaded, you’ll be able to view a list with little color-coded icons showing the current status of your photos (which will be “awaiting validation” at this time).

This is a breakdown of the submission process to sell your stock photography to Shutterstock. Like all micro-stock agencies, they won’t put up photos from just any photographer. You must go through their submission process to see if they’ll carry you.

Shutterstock images must be at  least 4 MP. You are required to upload 10 images. At least 7 of them must be accepted in order to be carried by Shutterstock. But no pressure!

1. Go to Shutterstock Submission Page
2. Sign up for an account
3. You will then need to enter a credit card number and get charged $0.01 to verify that you’re a real person
4. You can now log in.
5. In the lower left under the “Make Money” header, click on “submit photos.” (see image below)
6. Click on the “via HTTP” header. This will let you upload straight from your browser.
7. Upload your 10 best photos!
8. You’ll then need to enter descriptions and keywords for them. You will need a minimum of 7 keywords for each photo (something I found surprisingly difficult to do, without keyword stuffing, which they don’t like).

Shutterstock says their photographer review could take as long as 7-10 days. Once your in photos are reviewed within 3 days.

Here is a list of the major micro-stock photography agencies. If you’re interested in selling your photography, these guys are the place to start!

Micro-Stock Agencies List

iStock Photo (http://www.istockphoto.com/sell-stock-photos.php)
One of the original innovators in micro-stock. They pay 20% of the price of downloads (more if you’re exclusive, which sounds like a bad deal). They charge $2 – $24 depending on the size of the photo downloaded. iStock accepts photos at 1600 x 1200 or larger (2 MP).

Checkout the breakdown of the iStock Submission Process

Shutterstock: (http://submit.shutterstock.com/?ref=474139)
They accept photos as small as 4 MP. Stutterstock works on a subscription model for their buyers. Buyers pay a fee for a month and can download as much as they want (great deal for buyers – and encourages them to download a lot). Photographers are paid a flat $0.25 per download, but once you make over $500 (2k downloads) you bump up to $0.30 per download. They have a nice fast review process for new photographers which makes them nice as well!

Check out the breakdown of the Shutterstock Submission Process

Fotolia (http://us.fotolia.com/Info/HowToSell)
Fotolia pays from $0.30 to $0.60 per download – the exact amount depends on how many total downloads you’ve had. The more images you sell, the more you get paid for each image you sell. They accept images as small as 4MP, and certainly have the easiest submission process.

Checkout the breakdown of the Fotolia Submission Process

Dreamstime (http://www.dreamstime.com/sell)

Stockxpert (http://www.stockxpert.com/support/help/4)

ClusterShot (https://www.clustershot.com/account/edit)
ClusterShot seems to have an unusual approach, in which they let you set your own prices for your photos. I’ll be digging into this more closely as I work down the list, but my hunch is that it’s a smaller site that won’t get nearly as many sales (bad deal for the buyers).