finding your photos…

Anywhere in the World

Advance Notes: Because independent photographers can list descriptions of their images on the Internet, and the power of search engines such as Google can find specific-content pictures among these lists in seconds, photobuyers are realizing it’s to their advantage to deal directly with the large community of independent photographers.

More and more photobuyers are realizing the benefits the Internet affords them for photo research. As more and more photographers make their images available on the Internet and researchers utilize the Net’s search and photo-finding capabilities, the visuals in publications everywhere can do nothing but improve.

The automobile, airplane, fax and the telephone launched huge leaps in communication among peoples of the world, and so now do the capabilities of the amazing Internet delivery system.

But the Internet goes even farther. It affords photo researchers the search power that was once the domain only of the large stock photo agencies and major libraries.
As a photo researcher, now that images can be both pre-viewed and transmitted electronically, you can open the curtain on a brand new horizon of search opportunity. No longer will you sometimes have to be satisfied with images that are just “good enough.”

With high-powered electronic tools available to everyone, the top dog major stock agencies are no longer, well, top dogs. In the past, creative persons, whether songwriters, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, etc., had no way of competing against the middleman agents and the large conglomerates. Now individual photographers have access to buyers equal to the access enjoyed by the large agencies.

All thanks to The Web. For example, if you are producing a book, CD, magazine article, web review, TV special, on outdoor markets in different countries of the world, there would be no reason to turn to a large digital stock agency to seek the needed images. Using web search engine efficiency, you can, in minutes, conduct an Internet search and locate photos from independent freelancers, and save money by eliminating the middleman.

Also important, images from a corporate stock agency would usually be 'generic' in commercial style (smiling, well-dressed vendors – usually models – shiny new equipment, set-up landscapes, etc.). The type of photos from independent photographers usually communicate more immediacy, as real-life, on-the-scene images.

THE AGE FACTOR

Furthermore, many agency images would be at least 6 to 12 months old. (It takes that long for the corporate bureaucracy at most major stock photo agencies to acquire, edit, catalog, and process selections of images.)

The individual stock photographer not only has more recent photos, but can in fact, within hours, in many cases take the needed photo on the spot and deliver it to the buyer, in high resolution, from anywhere in the world, to anywhere in the world.



Rohn Engh, veteran stock photographer and best-selling author of “Sell & ReSell Your Photos” and “sellphotos.com,” has helped scores of photographers launch their careers. For access to great information on making money from pictures you like to take, and to receive this free report: “8 Steps to Becoming a Published Photographer,” visit http://www.sellphotos.com