Understanding Stock Photography
Using stock photography can allow a small business owner or limited budget operation to have professional imagery on their printed materials, websites, ads and more. It is less expensive than traditional custom photography — sometimes only a small fraction of the cost.
Stock photography are those images that are available in libraries for you to license for use. There are many libraries available, and several licensing models for stock. The most common licensing models are Royalty-Free Stock Photography and Rights-Managed Stock Photography. Depending on your needs, you may prefer one or the other.
Royalty Free (RF) Stock Photography is generally the less expensive model. RF licensing typically allows for a high limit to the number of reproductions, and is usage-independant, meaning that you'll pay the same one-time fee whether you want to use the image in a nationally broadcast TV spot or a flyer for a local bar.
Rights Managed (RM) Stock Photography affords the buyer more protection. When you buy RM photography, you can buy exclusive rights to the usage of the image. There are limits to the exclusivity, and your fee will vary depending on your intended usage.
For royalty-free stock, you simply cannot beat iStockphoto.com. They have a library of over 2,000,000 images, and prices as low as $1 for an image. There are other libraries out there, but as a photographer and a user of stock images, I use only iStockphoto. For rights managed stock, Getty Images is a great choice. Again, a fantastic collection of images from an industry leader.
Selecting Stock Photography
Having decided whether you need RF or RM stock photography, and having chosen a library, your next step will be to select the images you want. Using iStockphoto as an example, you have several options for narrowing down the field of images from 2 million to the one you want:
- Search - Using a search is as easy as typing keywords into a search box. The engine will return relevant images, and if your search term was ambiguous ("orange", for instance), it will ask you to clarify ("Did you mean orange the color, or orange the fruit?"). After your result set comes back, you can further narrow down your options by using more search terms or advanced options like iStockphoto's "CopySpace" feature or color selector.
- Light Boxes - iStockphoto has user-maintained galleries of images, called light boxes. These represent collections of images, often organized around a central theme or style. Examples include "Young Businessmen", "The Best Purple Images", or "Children in Schools".
- Categories - Images are also grouped into over 100 broad categories. These categories include headings such as "Food and Drink" and "Senior Adults", and may represent good starting points for your image search.