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If shortly PHOTOSTOCKS are firms-intermediary between photographers and illustrators (very often not to their profession but vocation) and wide community of designers interested in photos and illustrations of high quality.
This site gives the information generally about micropayment photostocks selling photos on terms of royalty-free license (see glossary).
Due to this approach any photo is sold for $ 0,25-5 but more often than in traditional photo stocks. Except this some photos are sold via expanded license, which is more expensive.

Except moral satisfaction the cooperation with photo stocks can seriously enrich your budget. Moreover, this is a serious school - a fastidious inspector approves not every photo, only your mastery is improved.

Every photographer with a digital camera has a photo archive. This archive occupies definite (and very often not small) space on the hard disk (and gradually is getting powdered). Maybe you have unique photos of cities you have visited or images of nature full of lyricism, emotional portraits of dear people or macro images of insects and flowers. Everything is a potential material for photo stocks. Maybe, you send your photos to different photo sites and you are interested in other people's opinion about the level of your mastery. You can do the same at photo stocks but except comments and rating, you can also be aware of financial aspect of your popularity.

What do you need to try yourself in stock photography?

1. A computer connected to the Internet preferably through the wide communication channel (the ideal is a dedicated line or a cable modem). To download 5-10 MPx photos via dial-up modem is not efficient. In average the traffic is about 1-3 GByte a month.
2. An international passport.
3. For the beginning, the selection of your 10 high-quality photos of the stock theme (made by you personally).
4. Knowledge of nuts and bolts of English and skills in graphics processing programmes (Adobe Photoshop).

And surely - persistence, diligence and talent.

What are preferable photos and illustrations?

People. Business. Holiday. Family. Study. Professions. It is always essential.
Single things. Antiques. Everyday things. Holiday attributes.
Nature. Landscapes. Animals - wild and pets.
Conceptual images. (Photoshop, unusual processing of usual things).
Food and drinks.

Note. You need to get permission for publication from everybody who is on a photo (model's release). The forms of releases and lots of other information you can find in the Internet e.g. on Sergey Zastavkin site - www.zastavkin.com
- release for adults
- release for under ages.

Every photo has also to contain the title, short description and 5-50 key words (in English).

Photo quality requirements.

First of all, the absence of noises, the correct exposition and white balance, good focus at a main object. You can get this using a DSLR camera as an instrument (starting from the simplest ones). Big matrix size, possibility to record files in uncompressed (RAW) format and as a result lower noise level is the main trump of this camera.

Recommendations on file preparations are here.

Here is the list of some photo stocks I deal with. References to these stocks are given at the foot of the page. Short stocks descriptions are on a separate page.

I will be very grateful if your registration on them will be done via this references (my referral code is mentioned here).

Fotolia

Istockphoto.com

ShutterStock

Dreamstime

123RF

Lori.ru

Bigstock

Stockfresh

The list is made up to profitability and my experience in general coincides with my colleagues-photostockers' opinion.

Getting started.

Did you decide to become an author of microstocks?
I recommend you the following order.

1. Get familiar with the list of photo stocks. Make concept.
2. Select and prepare 15-20 photos.
3. When you feel you are ready start registration at photo stocks. I recommend you to start with the following micro stocks - Fotolia, Dreamstime, Istockphoto.com, Shutterstock. The first two stocks will allow you to get to know the process of download and check the works and the third will please you with the high level of sales. What about istockphoto.com it is the separate world with branchy community which lets you feel yourself the part of the world stock community. See peculiarities here (page with description of work with stocks).
4. Register at a forum. If you have any questions you are welcome to ask them at appropriate forum section.
5. Register on Moneybookers. This helps to simplify procedure of obtaining your earnings.

For a successfully passed exam at Istockphoto and Shutterstock optimal tactics is to contact me by means of e-mail or forum. I have some practice in this and can help to choose a ten for the entry.

I am always glad to answer your questions. My e-mail - olegmit. at. mail.i.com.ua

Glossary
RF-license (Royalty Free License) is an agreement between an author and a photo stock which lets sell one image unlimited times keeping definite restricts on its usage. This is the most popular kind of photo sales and illustrations through the Internet. The author has rights, single sale costs from some cents to some dollars. Except RF there are also Extended RF, Right Managed, and Exclusive Buyout.

The usage of materials, presented on this site, is permitted only with the terms of a referral code.