OK the shot is in the camera, what next?

When I bought my first digital camera I used to simply save photographs on my PC. That meant thinking of a name for each file leading to file names like Dover Castle 1, Dover Castle 2 etc.
I then spent some time inventing a way to organise the files. I chose to put them into separate folders for each subject, but this rapidly became a nightmare, because many pictures didn't fit neatly into one category.
Take for example a photo taken at a wedding. This might show friends, family, the venue, a limousine, wedding cake, champagne...
OK I could just have a folder for each wedding, but which one contains the picture of the white Rolls Royce?
Fortunately I then discovered ACDSee. This piece of software combines good photo editing and a database allowing you to add tags, or keywords, to your photos. These enable you to use several different words on each image.
Unfortunately my library of images grew too big for ACDSee to cope and their upgrade policy sucks, so I looked at other options.
Read the next post for details.

More on Stock Photography

I've now had a few digital photographs accepted by Dreamstime and it's interesting to see what's acceptable and what isn't.
Public buildings and other architecture seems to be unacceptable, together with arty photographs. Though they did accept some images that I feel fell into the latter category. For example this photograph of our little pony and one of our kitten.
So far the jury's out. I know vaguely what art directors are looking for, but have not yet matched this to the photographs I've taken.
Fotolia is another stock photography site and interestingly their requirements are slightly different. They have accepted a few images that Dreamstime rejected. So it's a bit like Decca rejecting the Beatles, if at first you're rejected, try somewhere else.
That's just about it for today, if you would like to see some of my work, you can search on either of these libraries for my user name SteveF48. I also have some images on Flickr, which I don't think are suitable for stock libraries (SteveF1948).

Food for thought

Please read Frankie's blog and click on one of her links, she needs the encouragement and I need the money.

Stock Photography

The thing that I had not fully realised was that stock photography libraries are not looking for artistic photographs.
They want photographs that are interesting to their buyers. I've now submitted around 50 photographs to Dreamstime and only had 4 accepted. Some of them were frankly not up to my usual quality, but most were rejected because Dreamstime already have more than enough images of that particular subject.
It just goes to show that to make money from Digital Photography you need to know what your customers want. Equally you can save a lot of time and effort by not photographing subjects that are not going to sell.

Making money

The simplest way to make money from your photographs is to sell them via a photographic library.
Yes and no. There are several pitfalls as I've been discovering:

• Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. You may love an image that the library hates;
• There's no publicity... Some libraries will not accept images that have logos, or show trademarks;
• Model releases. If your photograph shows a recognisable person you must ask them to complete a model release. This is just a simple statement that they won't sue the shirt off your back;
• Most libraries have a minimum size limit, typically 3 megapixels.

The beauty of photo libraries is that it doesn't cost you anything to join.

The downside of this is that millions of people know this, so you have lots of competition.

I've submitted my photos to Dreamstime and Fotalia, please click on one of these links to see what they can offer. Images submitted to both Dreamstime and Fotalia have to be approved by one of their editors, which can take over a week.

It's therefore not a quick way to make your work available for sale.

Getting started with a new camera

It is usually very easy to take your first photo with a digital camera, but there are some things to beware of:

• Does the camera have a rechargeable battery? If so you will need to charge it before you can use the camera. It is best to leave it on charge overnight the first time, even if the indicator goes out or changes colour.
• Does the memory card need formatting? You did remember to buy a bigger card, didn't you? Most cameras do not require you to format their cards, but some do.

Switch the camera on, point it and press the shutter release. It's that simple, because the default settings for every camera that I've ever used make it so.

The automatic settings are designed to take a reasonable photograph of a static subject in daylight. We will discuss how to broaden the scope of your photography in a later blog, but for now go off and fill the card.

Memory cards

There are several different types of memory for cameras and if you buy the wrong one it won't work in your digital camera.
SD cards are compatible with MMC cards. The main difference between them is that SD cards can be protected and work faster than MMC. SDHC are the same, but have higher capacity and will not work in all cameras. Check the technical specifiation to see whether they will work with your choice.


CF cards (Compactflash) have been around for a while, but are still popular and the newer ones are as fast as any other type of card.

Sony cameras usually use their own type of card called Memory Stick. This comes in a variety of shapes and sizes, so check the specification carefully.

XD card is the newest. It was jointly deveoped by Olympus and Fuji and is the smallest card in common use. There are two types H & M, modern cameras can use either, but once again check carefully.

The last format is Smartmedia, this is just about obsolete. If you buy a camera that requires Smartmedia, for example on eBay!. It's almostly certainly old stock.