Stock Photography
- Photovisions has a large collection of stock photographs to suit your needs. Send us your request and we will give you access to hundreds of photos on your subject . We also make stock photography CD's customized to your needs. Click here with your request .
What is Stock Photography?
Stock Photography is existing photography that is available for commercial use - as opposed to assignment photography, which is custom made to someone's specifications.
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Who Buys Stock Photography?
"Magazines, book publishers, particularly text books and encyclopedias, advertising and design agencies, calender and greeting card companies, television and film producers, CD ROM manufacturers, political campaigns, government and not-for-profit organizations." (Rosenstock, 1995)
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What advantages do photographers have in shooting Stock Images?
Photographers who shoot Stock Photography usually have more creative control
over the images they create. In addition, photographers are free to retain
full copyright and can re-sell their images many times over.
How long has Stock Photography been around?
The business of selling stock photography has been around since the American Civil War, when Matthew Brady sold images he and other photographers made of the war for use in stereo viewers (ASMP, 1984). Various stock photography libraries have been actively conducting business around the world for much of this century, but the real surge in popularity for publishing these existing photographs has only surfaced over the past fifteen years.
How has Stock Photography changed over the years?
Initially the images which ended up in stock photography libraries were usually out-takes from assignments. These images were never taken very seriously in the advertising world and usually ended up just being sold for use in textbooks (Pickerell, 1994). With the surge in popularity in using stock photography during the late-eighties, this practice changed considerably. Today stock photography frequently needs to be shot specifically for stock use (Pickerell, 1992a).
Is Stock Photography growing or decreasing in popularity?
Today, stock imagery is being used in the printing industry more than ever before (Pickerell, 1992b). In addition, desktop publishing has become one of the fastest growing sectors of the publishing industry, and computer multimedia applications have introduced an entirely new market for stock photography. This has resulted in smaller, less public uses for stock - resulting in lower fees for photographers. Requests have become more and more specific, creating more of a demand for a variety of images (Pickerell and Child, 1994).
Why would a photo buyer call an individual photographer when they can find just about anything they want from a larger Stock Photography Library?
While it may sound as though photo-buyers are better off dealing with larger established agencies, they do continue to rely on individual photographers for many of their stock photography needs. This has been true for several reasons.
Specialties: Most stock photographers need to specialise in shooting specific
subjects to be successful. Specialist photographers have a higher degree of
understanding about the subjects they photograph than the large general photographic
libraries would have, resulting in a variety of imagery that illustrates a
reflection of this knowledge. For many very specific or technical needs, individual
specialist photographers have been found to be a better source than the larger
more generalised universal coverage libraries (Pickerell, 1991).
Hard to find subjects: As the demand has grown for more and more stock imagery, requests have become more and more specific, and therefore, harder to find. Photo-buyers have often called individual photographers as a last resort once they have tried the larger agencies unsuccessfully.
A different look: Some photo-buyers have grown tired of the generic look found in stock photography catalogs and have started to call individual photographers in hopes of finding something different (Klehr and Churchill, 1993).
Cheaper Prices? There are those photography-buyers who call individual photographers expecting to find cheaper prices. Many think that individual photographers will be more lenient in negotiating lower prices and giving up exclusive usage rights, or feel they will be less likely to get caught abusing the specific reproduction rights they purchase (Pickerell, 1992a).
