I’ll come clean straight away and admit what many of you will think after reading… I’m not ‘really’ a photographer. Not by most people’s definition of what it means to ‘be’ a photographer; the unconditional love of the art of photography doesn’t get me through the day, and I don’t feel the need to weep at a beautiful image of a single flower in a summer meadow.
I don’t need to resist the urge to take pictures when out with friends, or when strolling with my better half on a lovely sunny day. The urge just is not there.
What I am, is most certainly, a commercial photographer.
I love that photography allows me to earn a reasonable living at a comfortable pace; it lets me be free of the office 9-5 grind and allows for the creative freedom to work when, where, and how I most enjoy.
The strange thing is that the places I most enjoy are not off in sunnier climes, or trekking through the foothills of Andalusia (if they even have foothills). I love to be at home, local to my friends and family, I love the rain in Manchester, and the deep grey skies of the UK.
Unlike a lot of commercial photographers, you won’t see stunningly gorgeous, happy, smiling people in my portfolio. In fact there’s barely a single person in the whole collection (shooting people makes me rather nervous). I like shots created to meet a need, to fill a niche, to satisfy a customer. That’s where my true love lies: I love to solve problems.
I heard about microstock photography a few years ago from my girlfriend, who loves shooting portraits and candids much more than I ever could. Since I had just quit my corporate job and was looking for a good way to earn a little extra between IT contracts I thought I’d give it a go.
It turned out to be more interesting, and a lot more exciting than I expected uploading a few images would be. I started out by uploading to Fotolia and Shutterstock a few random shots of bits & pieces from around the house in a homemade lightbox, which sold quickly and gave me a bit of a encouragement.
I broadened a little, experimenting with different subjects and concepts to try and find the better sellers. I tried not only photos, but also composites, illustrations and even video. In doing so I find my own photography plain in comparison to many of the artistic images out there, but I know for a fact, if you need an image of some mobile phones isolated on white, a set of keys, safety goggles, or some cogs and wires: then I’m your man 🙂
My first few months were very difficult, the average snapshot became unacceptable in microstock a while before I started. I had quite a few ‘misses’ where I’d spend ages on a shot and post-processing, to have it fail completely once available for sale. But I learned a lot from other contributors, got a lot of great tips to speed along my workflow, choose what to shoot and most importantly, what not to waste my time on.
After getting over the initial hurdles I found producing photos for microstock easy, but it was easy for me: I’m not a photographer, I’m an analyst. I even went as far as to build picNiche.com which analyses stock photo availability by topic. This is used to help myself and others find good topics to shoot, to have a fair guess at what will (probably) sell and what will (probably) not. I also expanded on that by building a free microstock contributor toolbar for other photographers to make the whole process surrounding the business of it a little less painful.
I’m very much in favour of microstock, and I’m confident that microstock, traditional stock and so-called creative-photography will meet somewhere in the middle before too long. I look forward to seeing where the business of photography is going in the very near future.
I love photography, mainly because it means I can take part in an exciting industry whilst enjoying an activity I find not only challenging and educational, but also that helps keep me free to enjoy a relaxing, laid-back lifestyle.
About a third of my portfolio may be found at http://portfolio.bobbigmac.com, the rest is pretty liberally spread over around 10 microstock agencies 🙂 If you’d rather see what I shoot for fun, head over to my flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobbigmac/
Glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t enjoy shooting people lol. Seriously though, it was cool to see the progression through commercial photography, and to see that you don’t have to redefine the world to be a successful photographer.
Thanks for sharing.