dhammer4 Loc: South Carolina

I have been wanting to send some pics todifferent stock companies but am having trouble figuring how to send them
Sounds dumb and probably very simple but Need some help here .


Thanks,
Dhammer

KathyinNH Loc: Kingston, NH

Have you signed up with a stock agency yet? If not sign up and they will have information on how to upload on their site once you sign up. You will have to submit so many photos for them to decide if they are acceptable or not for their site. Good luck.

BBNC

Take a look at istock.com.

Reading their submission requirements is a sobering experience, to say the least. I would say if your work is accepted by them, it's very good work, indeed.

They also have training tips on how to do it.

jolly1

The only dumb thing about it is wanting to send your photos to Stock Agencies. Instead, contact magazine and book photo editors directly asking for copies of their "want lists." Then send photos that seem to meet their needs.
I did that for more than fifty years and made a very nice living doing it that way.
Stock Agencies will simply swallow your photos up among thousands of others of similar subject matter and, if you're lucky, they will arrange one, maybe two, sales a year for you.
If you really want to get your photos out there, in print, and make money doing it, cut out the middle man and do it yourself.

BBNC

You're right. Come to think of it, I have a magazine article with photos waiting to be published, (next spring). Publishers will post their submission standards online, which usually require an e-mail inquiry before sending. They hate blind submissions.

jolly1

And you are right too. I'd forgotten about doing all of that on-line. I'm of the old school, where one had to write it out, put it in an envelope, and send it off requesting the information. I guess it is so much easier now than in the old day.
But no matter how one does it, stay away from the Stock Agencies. They are simply the sharks waiting for a big bite of any profit you might earn from your honest efforts.
For every dollar you might earn working through Stock Agencies, you will earn fifty dollars doing it yourself.
Good Luck.

travlnman46 Loc: Yakima WA

I find this question and the answers given so far very interesting. However they raise a question in my mind. How does some one locate those magazines and book photo editors in the first place to obtain their "want list," is there a website or email address or??? to go to? I may be to critical of my own work because in over 35 years of taking pictures I have only a handful of pictures I really think caught the feeling of what I had hoped to portray. I've seen pictures on here and other places and asked myself why do others think this picture or that picture is so good when in my opinion they are just average or just above average.... Just a thought...

jolly1

To answer your first question. A very successful photographer,
away back in the very early '40's, told me that if I really wanted to be a successful freelance photographer, get a lot of paper, and envelopes, and stamps, and start writing publishers, and/or photo editors, asking what kind of photos they needed. Well, a war got in my way for several years, but when I returned home I remembered what I had been told, and began building up both my photography file, and letters to magazines, books, newspapers, companies, etc. asking them for lists of their photo needs. After about three years of this I had fat files of photos and of the first names on a whole lot of photo editors who were constantly requesting my photos.
How did I get the addresses of these editors? I haunted News
Stands, magazine racks, even, believe it or not, doctor's offices,
looking for magazines that had the type of photos in them that I had in my files, or could readily find and take. Doctor's offices?
Sure. You can always find magizines there. Simply walk in, sit down, and start looking through them. All you need is a name and an address for the magazine. Now I understand that you can do most of this right on the Internet.
So now, are you going to just hang your photos on a wall and hope others will like them as well as you do, and maybe buy one of them, or do you want to take pictures that you might think are "just average or just above average," and sell them to publishers for maybe just a hundred bucks, or even more, if they are what THE EDITOR LIKES and NEEDS! I once took a photo of my very, very, angry wife shaking her finger at me and screaming - simply because I was taking a picture of her smoking.
Sold it to a woman's magazine for three hundred and fifty dollars. They used it as an illustration with an article on female menopause. I've sold photos of children with dirty faces, eating pie, ninty year old ladies tying their shoes, using the telephone,
automobile accidents, plane crashes, a rabid skunk, a school teacher crying in frustration in a class room, funeral services of criminals, and on and on and on. Have sold all of them, over and over, many times.
Remember this, you can't take a photograph of anything, anywhere, any time, that some editor, somewhere, doesn't desperately want. Nothing here says that you shouldn't take pretty pictures, I'm just saying make sure that when you take them, you have someone in mind to buy them. Anything else is a total waste of time and effort.
'Nuff said.

K2KImages

If you want purchase The Photographers Market, this has thousands of contacts. Good Luck

jolly1

Forget the Stock Agencies, cut out the middle men. Deal directly with the publishers and photo editors of books, magazines, etc. that publish your type of photos. More money, faster sales, that way.

photogrl2 Loc: California

SO when you contact them you ask what they might be looking for? I spent the last year writing a pet column for www.patch.com in my area and submitted many photos for breaking news stories and assignments, It was nice money, now that is over and I would really like an income again ;).

K2KImages

The Photographers Market volumn is a listing of many magazines, book publishers, editors etc. with Magazine name with publishers names. Ex. Outdoor Life, National Geo etc.