Neil J Bradford asked:


United Independent Photographers from around the world unite to form an affordable Royalty Free and Rights Managed Stock Photography Library.

At last, a stock photos library offering the highest quality stock photography royalty free stock photos, rights managed stock photos at one flat rate, low price and the actual artist receiving all the payment… No agency commission!

Beginning with a royalty free stock photography photo library called www.Flower-Photos.co.uk back in 2002, you may guess correctly that it was focussed (no pun intended, honest!) on flowers, plants and tree with some really high quality close-ups that made me feel as though I was entering another world.

As the art director, graphic designer and website designer of a garden centre, garden center to our American cousins, which was the flag ship of our group and our group belonging to the UK’s largest chain of independent garden centres, I was in the perfect location to photograph flowers, plants, shrubs and trees at the drop of a hat.

The website really took off, paying for its self, the film and processing including scans from Fuji Labs UK and then began making a profit. Not a huge profit but enough to plough back in and expand the library.

I was contacted from a number of horticultural photographers over the first few years but declined their portfolios as I simply didn’t have the time to manage a team of photographers and their work.

Over the years however, I couldn’t ignore some of the quality of work being submitted and it wasn’t just flower photography, it was every theme imagineable.

In 2004, with many of my own photographs, all the photos from www.Flower-Photos.co.uk and the sister site www.My-Flower-images.com I launched an all subject royalty free and rights managed stock photography website and image library called: www.Photo-Image-Stock.com or www.BuyRoyaltyFreeStockPhotography.com with 6 other photographers from around the world contributing a wide spectrum of themes from food photos and cuisine to motorbikes to landscapes and seascapes… it grew and grew and now in June 2005, there are 20,000 photos up on the site and that’s only a small percentage of what I still have waiting to be sent up with more being submitted every week!

I and the library don’t take a penny or any commission from sales. The payments go directly to the photographer, I get a larger viewership as there’s more to see and hopefully broaden my chances of actually selling some of my own photos!

I was sick of paying $200 for an image from stock photo libraries and then as I went through the online form and entering where the image was to be used and how many issues were to be printed, the price soar to $1,500 or more!

I thought it was about time someone started a library offering really high quality stock photography at a flat low cost price that didn’t get higher the more editions or posters were being printed, where it didn’t matter if the photo was being used on an inside page of a magazine or the front cover, where you could use the image over and over again with no additional charges…. www.Photo-Image-Stock.com provides just that – One flat rate of $77.00 / £40.00 / €58.00 for a single image and discounts for multiple image purchases as below:

2-4 images (10% discount): $69.00 / £36.00 / €52.00 per image

5-9 images (20% discount): $61.00 / £32.00 / €47.00 pi

10-19 images (30% discount): $54.00 / £28.00 / €41.00 pi

20-40 images (40% discount): $46.00 / £24.00 / €35.00 pi

The majority of stock photos are taken using slide / positive film but where digital cameras have been used, only the highest quality digital images have been accepted.

The slide film used is either Fuji Velvia or Sensia at ASA50 or ASA100, then the film is processed at FujiLab UK and scanned to CD at 450dpi and a physical size of 20cm x 13.5cm (8″ x 5.5″)

which is higher than the industry standard requirement of 300dpi but means that these images are crystal clear if used as a front cover of a glossy magazine.

There’s also a second option for web designers or for those with low budgets so low they can’t even afford our low rates, subscibing to our service for a low monthly or annual rate and downloading almost an indefinite number of medium res’ photos high enough res’ to be used on printed material if reduced in physical size but easily high enough res’ to be used for in-house posters or on web pages.

I set out to provide excellent quality stock photography at a very low and affordable price that would enable graphic designers, web site designers, art directors, picture desks and anybody else, to stretch their budgets further and not choke every time they ordered a photograph from an stock photography library…. I hope I have accomplished this in some small way.

Anybody wishing to purchase our images can visit us at the websites above and any keen photographers with quality work wishing to submit their work can also find a submissions page with further information on our website also.

Thomas Carroll asked:


There are several stock photography websites that want your pictures. These sites will pay you a percentage for every one of your pictures that gets downloaded, each time it is downloaded. Your pictures can be downloaded an unlimited number of times.

Many individuals, businesses, organizations, websites and print publications are in constant need of a wide variety of quality photographs for their websites, sales letters, brochures, magazines, videos and newspapers. These entities regularly turn to stock photography websites to buy the photographs that they need.

You can submit your digital photographs to websites like iStock and Shutterstock. You don’t need to be a professional photographer. You just need a digital camera (with extra memory cards) and internet access. Signing up for these websites is free. Each time one of your pictures is downloaded you’ll get paid a percentage of the cost of the photograph, which generally comes to twenty-five cents to several dollars.

Just about any type of digital picture is accepted as long as it is of high quality. Your pictures need to be in JPG/JPEG and for most stock websites they should be 1600 x 1200 pixels or larger. New photographers for Shutterstock need to submit photographs that are 4.0 Megapixels or Million Pixels (MP).

You can calculate the number of pixels in a photograph by multiplying the width by the height. A picture that is 1600×1200 is 1.92 million pixels.

In photographs that depict a minor, or where an identifiable human face is visible, you will need to send a model release with the picture to the website. You need to submit original work and make sure that you do not include copyrighted material or logos in your images. Do not submit photographs that have been increased in size from their original file size. You should read the submission guidelines from each website before you start posting your pictures.

Once you have uploaded a picture to a stock photography website, it stays there for as long as you like (even for years). Every time it gets downloaded you earn money. You can upload your pictures to several different websites as long as the websites allow the submission of non-exclusive photographs.

For example: let’s say that you have accumulated 1,000 high quality photographs for stock photography websites. You upload each image to ten different websites. So each site now has 1,000 different pictures. You have a total of 10,000 images uploaded on the various sites. If each of your pictures get downloaded just twice every thirty days, and your commission is only $0.25 cents for each download, you’ll be making $5,000 a month!

You can take ten pictures a day and upload each one to ten different stock photography websites. In just three months you’ll have about 900 photographs uploaded 9,000 times.

What is really cool about this is that once your pictures are uploaded they continue to make money for you with no additional work on your part. If you continuously upload pictures to the stock websites you can earn even more. There are several people that do this full-time and make $5,000, even $8,000 a month.

Most of the stock websites pay you once a month through PayPal, MoneyBookers, paper check or direct deposit.

You can start by taking pictures in your area, or travel anywhere and make a very healthy living by taking stock photographs. The more pictures you upload, the more earning potential you have. You can make great money from this “job” from just about anywhere in the world.