How to start in stock photography by dudau

© Photographer: Viorel Dudau | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Here's a short guide on how to start selling your images on Dreamstime:

1. Select

The first and very important step is to select the images you want to sell. It is recommended you choose only the best of your best photos. For starters, they should be crisp, well composed, appealing and easy to understand as far as the concept is concerned. Conceptual photography is the best selling stock photography, so if you have photos with a strong concept, those are the most likely to sell. Don't limit yourself to your DSLR photos, though. With the new technology, your mobile phone photos could have selling potential too.

2. Process

Another important step is the post processing of the selected photos. The less you process them, the more attractive they will be for a potential buyer. Designers (buyers) usually prefer to make their own adjustments, post-processing and apply effects to your photos, as per their needs. Of course, minimal processing may still be due as you may have to adjust lighting and contrast, brighten up the colors a little bit, remove the noise and make sure your photos are sharp enough. Save them in jpg, at maximum quality. If you have the RAW files, you will be able to attach them to your uploaded jpegs.

On Dreamstime, we have two sections: Royalty Free and Editorial.

a) Royalty Free files can be used for commercial purposes, so they must not contain any trademarks or copyrighted elements such as logos, brand names or copyrighted designs (more on copyright HERE). If there are visible people in your image, you must provide a Model Release signed by these people as a proof that they agree to your selling of their photos for commercial purposes. You can use a generic model release or our MR, available for download HERE.

3. Upload

That would be the easy part. Once you register, you’ll be able to start the upload immediately. You can also use our FTP upload option for larger batches. A few minutes after the upload process is complete, you will find the images in your Unfinished section of your Management Area.

4. Describe

The next step to describe the images. That’s a very important step in your journey to sell them. Choose the section you want to submit to, Royalty Free or Editorial, and proceed with adding the image info. You must provide your photos with title, description and keywords. Use as many relevant keywords as you can. Don't use irrelevant keywords or descriptions copied from external sources, this may get your photos refused.

You should also be aware that you need to check additional boxes for extended license agreements and also add geotagging in case your image can be geo-tagged.

When all these steps are complete, submit your images.