Internet is full of suprises and new possibilities. Few years ago you had to have expensive technology to shoot photos at good quality. Luckily for us the time has changed these rules. With a bit of patience and good luck you may be able to take photos that you can sell on different photo stock web galleries. 

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Where to sell? Here are few links to most popular and trusted stock photo sites that are photographer friendly and up and running for you to start registering free today! Be always careful and read the “Terms and conditions” of your stock agency when signing up!

www.dreamstime.com – Free signup, over million users and thousands daily photo downloads. Sell the rights of your photos at your own price. Keep 50% when selling rights of your image. Request payments by bank check, Paypal or Moneybookers. You cantart uploading today! Good referral program. 

www.bigstockphoto.com – Free and easy signup. Start uploading soon after signup. Bigstockphoto.com has a good short review time for uploaded photos (usually 1-3 days). You can earn more with referral program.

www.shutterstock.com – Free signup, but you have to send a copy of you ID card for verification. Before you can start uploading and selling, 7 of 10 of your firstly uploaded images must be approved. Good referral program.

www.redbubble.com – Free signup. Nice positive web site with many active users. You will get a lot of feedback from this site.

What you will need? You can start with regular digital photo camera. Some photo stock agencies consider acceptable photos starting with 5-7 MP when the subject is interesting and the overall photo is looking good. A photo that is made with a 10 MP camera is better for for photo cropping and composing with available photo software.

There are few things to do before going to the shop and buying new camera. There will always be available new and fancy looking cameras that have more powerful specifications and more mega pixels. There are different companies releasing new products every year. Most of them have different products for people with different requirements.

One question that people usually ask when choosing new camera is: “Which camera is the best?” There is not one and easy answer to similar questions. I think that there is no such thing as perfect/best camera for everyone.

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Before actually buying one you should ask yourself – is this camera right for me! What is important for you? Important is to think of the subject of your photos. What kind of photos you are going to take? Have you taken mostly photos of your family, friends or would you like to take some nature photos in sometimes difficult lighting conditions? Or maybe you have deeper interest in photography and you would like to be able to use manual settings? Do you want to have the freedom to use different lens to achieve your goals better? Are you planning to sell your photos?

Do you want to be sure you have found the right camera for you? I believe that it is important to make a decision. Do not let other people tell you what is right for you. No one knows you better than you yourself! It is good if somebody can be helpful and recommend you what to buy. But this will be your camera, so you have to choose it and make a decision. If you are not sure, (if you don’t want to make the decision) then you have to take more time and think this over.

When you have found the right camera for you, before you go and buy it, you should find some sample photos made with this camera. One good web site with many sample photos is (http://www.pbase.com/cameras). You can find many useful information if you type “yourcameraname review” or “yourcameraname sample photos” in Google or any other search engine.

Digital cameras use light sensitive sensor and store image data on storage medium digitally. Analogue cameras use light sensitive medium to store image data.

What is SLR camera? – SLR is single lens reflect camera. SLR cameras use light sensitive medium to store image data.

What is DSLR camera? - DSLR camera is digital single lens reflect camera. DSLR camera stores image data digitally.

What is MP? – If a digital camera has 5 Mega pixels then it means that such camera can save image data about 5 million pixels. The more pixels your camera can record, the more little dots/pixels you have in your digital photos.

What is pixel? – Pixel is one dot in a digital photo. Every digital photo consists of many pixels. The more pixels you have the bigger picture you have. If you have more pixels, you can print bigger picture.

What is MB? – Megabytes are used to count data that is being stored digitally when taking photos. Every digital camera can save some amount of image data on a memory card or in a camera memory. One 512 MB memory card can store approximately 200 photos, made with 10MP camera.

1MB = 1024 Kilobytes

1KB = 1024 Bytes

1 Byte consists of 8 bits.

Image size – the actual image size depends on camera settings and lighting conditions too. You can set image quality to higher or lower in most cameras. I would recommend using higher image quality because it is impossible to turn back the time ;)

Photo camera - It is easier to divide photo cameras into four bigger groups.

1. Analogue cameras

2. Digital cameras

3. SLR cameras, (single lens reflect camera, uses light sensitive medium to store image data)

4. Digital SLR cameras, (digital single lens reflect camera, stores image data digitally,)

It seems that the majority of cameras that are bought every day are digital cameras.

I would divide different digital cameras into 6 groups:

Group one – entry level digital cameras with low price. These cameras usually have 4-7 MP light sensors. 4-7 MP is necessary and sufficient for family photos. These cameras usually have 3-4x optical zoom. You can use fully automatic preset or use preprogrammed scene presets (beach, snow, night, portrait …) for taking photos in different conditions. One thing that you don’t need is a digital zoom. It does not matter how much digital zoom different cameras can use. It is better not using digital zoom at all. You can always enlarge photos digitally later with your photo editing software.

Group two – medium priced, a bit more advanced digital cameras. These cameras usually have 7-8MP sensors and 3-5X optical zoom. You can use fully automatic preset or use preprogrammed scene presets (beach, snow, night, portrait …) for taking photos in different conditions. One thing that you don’t need is a digital zoom. You can always enlarge photos digitally later with your photo editing software.

Group three – digital cameras with higher price but with a specification that is valuable and unique in some way. There are waterproof cameras (Olympus mju 790 SW) and cameras with stylish and unique design. One good thing to look for is mechanical image stabilization. Some digital cameras have optical zoom up to 20X (Olympus SP 570 UZ) and this is really powerful magnification.

Group four – entry level Digital SLR. These are good to start using and learning DSLR cameras. You have the possibility to change lens plus many manual settings. At the moment entry level DSLR cameras start at 6MP, some newer cameras have 8-10MP already.

Group five – medium priced Digital SLR cameras for photo amateurs and photo enthusiasts.

New technologies that are being used in this group are mechanical image stabilization and dust removal technologies. Better camera sensors with higher light sensitivity and less noise. Less noise means better image quality when using higher ISO settings. Medium priced DSLR cameras may have live preview option.

Group six – professional Digital SLR cameras are usually for people who make living with photography. Ergonomically designed, bigger and weatherproof camera bodies. Top technology and advanced camera settings. More auto focusing points = faster focusing. Better camera sensors than in previous groups.

Selling photos for stock is an interesting and rewarding hobby. This hobby consists of three major parts:

1. pure fun – shooting photos

2. pure work – key-wording & uploading

3. success – starting with first photo sell and hopefully never ending process

Lets look at these three topics a little closer :)

Shooting photos. You can draw inspiration from different everyday situations. Some stock photos will be used as an illustration on some web page, some might be in the corner of a news article. Some business related photos might be used on some company brochure or in commercial advertisement. If you would like to sell a picture of an object then different objects isolated on white background are needed by designers for various purposes.

If there are recognizable individuals on your photo you need their written permit. Many sock sites have special model release form for this. What if you have photos of famous people or if you have other news worthy photos with recognizable people? You can then try to sell these photos with editorial license. With images sold with editorial license you should read carefully what are specific requirements written the “Terms and conditions” rules of your stock agency.

What is key-wording? If you try to sell photos then it is very important that your photos are easily findable. You can accomplish this if you add keywords (tags) to your images. You can do this either in the right way or in the wrong way.

The right way is to add keywords that describe the main topic of your photo or the objects/activities on the photo.

The wrong way is to add very many popular words that do not describe your photo. The result is that the photo buyer who looks for specific photos will find many irrelevant photos in the search outcome. If the buyer is patient then maybe he or she will look through all these photos. If the buyer has limited time to find the right photo then probably he will try to look for this photo in some other place.

Before adding new keywords take some time to look at the photo you are about to upload. Try to figure out what is the purpose of this photo? Who would find this photo to be useful? If you would like to find this exact photo among thousand other images then what words would you type into the search box in your internet browser? Many stock sites require at least ten keywords. Choose them wisely ;)

Uploading photos ...

Will we continued on next article!!!

Uploading photos. This is a time consuming process too. Choose only the best images for uploading. The best image for stock photography might be slightly different from photos that you are used to see on the walls of professional artistic photo galleries. Take a quick tour on any stock site to see what is already uploaded.

If you would like to upload images that are similar to the ones that are already up you should make your images better to stand up among other photos. You may try beat other photos in quality ;) Or you could start uploading photos that are still rare and hard to find among the photos that are already up.

NB! It is recommended to add keywords to the image metadata (properties) before uploading. Most stock sites can then receive image information and keywords automatically after upload.

Success? Few years later when you are experienced photo/image seller you might agree that this hobby has became a part of your every-day life. Even if you have not earned a lot of money you have still many good positive experiences. You may find your photos used from different parts in the World. You can improve your results when devoting yourself to photo subjects/topics that sell more often. You always can try shooting photos with better quality to build a stronger portfolio.

There are many sayings like “All good things come to an end” and “Good things will not last long”. These sayings claim that everything is changing and eventually all good and valued things will end. There is at least two exceptions – love and photography. In its unique way photography preserves the culture, history, emotions, our precious memories and many different variables in our everyday changing world. The art of photography is quite old. Today photography is getting more popular and more natural to us.

What about Us- humans? We too are changing every day and so is the environment around us. Some time ago beautiful and untouched nature scenery was easy to find, but it is getting harder every day. We can use photography to help us remember things from the past. We can make family albums and view them later. We can express our feelings through the photos. As technology is evolving, photo cameras are getting cheaper and much more affordable. Starting with simple cheap automatic cameras and ending with powerful and manually adjustable SLR and DSLR cameras for professional photographers.

Technically photography is the process of recording pictures by capturing light (reflecting from objects) on a light-sensitive film (analogue cameras) or electronic sensor(digital cameras). Photography as a usable process goes back to 1820s when the chemical photography was developed. But the discoveries that made photography possible are even older.

The first inventions that made photography possible were camera obscura and pinhole camera. The first invention (camera obscura) means dark room in Latin. This process was discovered and used first by Ibn al-Haytham (Alhasen) (965-1040). It was basically one box shape dark room with a hole in one side. The light entered the dark room through the hole and created a upside-down projection of the image that was seen from the hole. It was then possible to draw pictures of different objects more accurately. The smaller the hole was, the sharper the projection was. But with less light passing by the hole the projection is darker when the hole is smaller.

Pinhole camera uses same technology and principles as camera obscura but pinhole camera is smaller in size and usually portable. It is basically a camera without conventional glass lens.