You may not know it, but a lot of photographers - both amateur and professional - are on top of the income bracket when it comes to making money taking pictures of landscapes, people, animals, toys, gadgets, and even the quirkiest sceneries. Making money from photography is pretty easy once you've gotten used to the in's and out's of the industry. You can get paid hundreds or even thousands of dollars for every stunning landscape you capture on film.
When running into a snazzy, popular or well-designed website, take a good look at the banner images. If you see a banner that has people smiling and pretending to be engineers, doctors, nurses, dentists, lawyers, what you're seeing is stock photography. Photographers sell these 'generic' pictures to stock photography websites, and when a customer (who's most likely a web designer) purchases a photo, the website deducts a small commission rate from the net sale and the remaining earnings all go to the photographer. Selling stock photography is a tricky business, particularly when selecting the right people, the right costumes, ambient lighting, and the perfect background to emulate a realistic scene. Raw, unedited, stock photographs have extremely high resolutions (e.g., 4950 by 3300 pixels), making the editing process a breeze for someone who's particularly keen in using photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop, or by other software applications.
Stock photography comes in many forms: There's stock photography that captures a city's skyline view, or a bird's eye view of the metropolis; models portraying a professional for a specific industry; photos that embody a life situation, like an accident, successful promotion, childbirth or a funeral - name it and it can be found!
There two kinds of stock photography: Royalty-free (RF) and Rights-managed (RM).
Professional photographers usually cater their work to news-publishing websites and popular publications and magazines. If you've gone through a sports magazine and saw the "Getty Images" copyright at the lowermost corner of a picture of an athlete dunking at the rim, you're looking at a rights-managed photo. The one who took the photo may be a freelancer or one who's working for a magazine company. These photographers are the ones usually seated next to the post in basketball games. Rights-managed photos are visually more superior and have higher production value than royalty-free images, but there are several (and we mean a lot) of limitations on the acceptable use of these pictures - take for example the limitations on what article or part of the website you're going to place it on, or the industry you're going to use it for. The terms of the photo usage can both be stipulated by the licensing agency and the party that intends to use the photo. News and lifestyle magazines can also gain exclusive shots of a celebrity's house photos, provided the actress gets a royalty fee from each copy sold.
Royalty-free photos, on the other hand, are the ones you can use on any digital or print media (but still subject to fair usage policies), provided you purchased them legally either through the internet or via the photographer himself. As a buyer, it is your responsibility to safeguard the raw image from anyone who wishes to reproduce it without the express consent of the photographer.
As a budding stock photographer, we advise you to take some time to look at the lighting effects of a stock photo and the categories you can commit your time to shooting. If you believe that you can work wonders with your camera with minimal provision, a loyal bunch of friends who can pose as models for you, and a decent studio, then you're set to go! Just make sure you take shots at their highest possible resolution.
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