Hey guys it's me again, my name is Ivan,
my aliases is Dreamframer, this is my
second video from the series about
stock photography and how to sell your
photos online and today we're gonna
be talking about tools you need to
create, edit, and upload photos for sale.
Before we move to the list of things you
need to successfully sell your photos,
let me answer one question that people
often ask me. They say why do you need another
agency or website to sell your photos?
Why can't you just make your own website
and try to sell photos over there?
Well the answer is pretty simple. These
agencies that sell photos online are there
for years. They have their established
database of customers, they have their
established database of images. Some of
the agencies have more than 100 million
images online. So, can you really compete with
that? We all know that being on the first
page of Google is crucial to success.
Unless you are a very successful
photographer and well-established name,
people will not find your photos. So,
what we can do is, we can actually use
these agencies in our advantage. We can
use the whole machine they built, in our
advantage, use their search engines, and
use their customers to present our
photos, and have much higher exposure
then with our own website. Now let's move
to our list of things, or tools, that you
need to successfully sell your photos
online. The first thing you need is of
course, a camera.
What kind of a camera do we need to create
stock photography?
Back in the day when I was starting, it
was basically impossible to get your photo
accepted by any agency if it wasn't
taken with a higher quality camera, like
DSLR camera.
Nowadays however, the game changed. With
social networks like Instagram, customers
started looking for a different kind of
photography. They want photography that
looks like those photos that people post
on facebook and instagram. They want
those filters that people use all the
time.
Also, our cell phones now have much
better cameras then they had five years
ago, and because of all these many
agencies started accepting images taken
with a cell phone.
Some of the agencies even have their own
apps for android and iphone that people
use to edit, tag, and submit their photos
for sale.
That being said, if you don't have an
expensive camera don't think that you
can't sell your photos. Work with what you
have, and in time, when you start earning
money, you're gonna buy a better
equipment. You're gonna buy some lights,
you're gonna buy a better camera,
you're gonna buy tripods, you're gonna
buy everything you need to make higher
quality photos. Second tool we need is of
course a computer, or a tablet. You can
also use your cell phone to edit these
photos. As i mentioned before, there are
agencies that have their own apps for
android and iphone, and people use these
apps to upload photos for sale.
However, I don't really advise using your
phone to edit photos, just because the
screen on the phone is usually very
small. Regarding the software, there are
of course paid options, and free options.
Two of the most popular paid options are
probably Photoshop and Lightroom.
They're both products by Adobe and
widely used. I personally use Photoshop
because I got used to it.
There are many free apps for your
Android or Apple device, and of course,
there are options for your computer. One
of those programs that you can download
for free and use is called Gimp, and I
posted the link to it in the description
of this video.
The next important thing is the monitor.
The monitor needs to be calibrated. Why
is that? Well, if your monitor is not
calibrated, and you are editing your
photo, and you're super happy how it
looks like, and then you send that photo
to another person, and that person takes
a look at the photo using a different
monitor, they can be disappointed because
the white balance can be off, the colors
can be off, and you want to avoid that.
You want your photo to look nice on any
kind of monitor. Calibrating a monitor is
not complicated.
There is a website that can help you
with this, and I posted the link down there
in the description. You can use this
website to go through all the tests, and
try to match the optimal result with
your monitor. If your monitor is not a
very expensive one,
don't expect one hundred percent optimal
results.
It's usually enough to get as close as
you can.
A little piece of advice to laptop
users: please try avoiding using the
touchpad to edit photos. Touchpad is too
small, it's not precise and you're gonna
get really frustrated when you do those
little touch-ups. Find any kind of a mous
It's gonna be much easier. If you want
to invest a little bit of money, you can
buy a graphic tablet. My graphic tablet
is probably seven years old, it still
does all the job that I need. Now when we
have all these tools and we have our
talent, we can start making some nice
photos. But the work doesn't end there.
When you make a nice photo, customers
have to find it. So, how do they find it?
Well, there are tools that you can use to
easily add keywords, or tags, as some
people call them, to those photos, so when
customers search for certain term
they're gonna find your photo. After the
tagging is completed, the photo is ready
to be uploaded for sale. Creating an
account at any of the agencies that sells
photos online is really easy. There is one
little thing however. Some of the
agencies require you to submit the first
batch of photos, and then if they're
happy with it, they're going to accept you. If
they are not, you'll have to try again, and
again, and again. Eventually, i'm sure,
you're gonna do it. It took me three
times to get into Shutterstock for example.
When the photo is uploaded, it gets
processed by the website, and it shows up
on your profile page. Over there you can
do the final review, you can change some
keywords if you want to, the description,
or the title, and at some agencies, there
is an option to put the photo in certain
categories, so customers can find the
photo if they look through categories. When
you do this,
the only thing that's left is clicking the
submit button. Clicking the submit button
send the photo to a review, and then you
just have to wait. If your photo passes
the review, it's on for sale. If you liked
this video and found it helpful, please
subscribe. In my next videos I'm gonna
be explaining these steps that we talked
about in details. So again, my name is
Ivan, my alias is Dreamframer, and, bye
for now! See you in the next video!