Those One-Dollar Photos - Are They Any Good?

If you check out the magazines on the rack at Wal-mart or the airport, or the books at Barnes & Noble, or your teen's high school textbook, you'll find they include very few "generic" pictures. (Generic, meaning general, non-specific images that can be used as layout fillers, general illustrations, or ad backgrounds.)

It's not that editorial photo editors don't like microstock generic photos (if they had a job at an ad agency they'd love them), but rather that an editor's job is to match the targeted content of the text in the magazine or book with specific photographs. Simple as that.

A customer who buys a book or magazine expects on-target information in the special-interest periodical, book, or publication -and that includes not only the text, but also the photo illustrations.

Putting a generic $1 photo in their layout opens up the possibility of a catastrophe for the photo researcher or editor. Like what? Well, the same microstock photo might appear elsewhere, in a public brochure, newspaper or magazine advertisement, or worst-case scenario, in a competitor's publication.

Persons who invest in a publication, book, magazine, textbook, coffee table book, etc. expect exclusivity. They don't expect to see the same photo used elsewhere.

Many a fledgling photo editor has been burned in the early days of microstock photography, when they jumped on this source of inexpensive photos and used a picture that a month later (or the same month!) was used elsewhere in the publishing world. There's a saying in the photo research arena, "If the photo costs a dollar, it could also cost your job." Publishers want to give their readers distinctive, relevant, well-researched text and photos. That's how they stay in business.

False Alarm

The perceived threat of competition from $1 pictures available on the Internet lessens even more when you look at what's happening when it comes to the selling of your editorial stock images.

On the photographer's side, editorial stock photographers have learned to personally keyword their photos with targeted words that guide the photo researcher to their site or a site like the PhotoSourceBANK, which has guaranteed high buyer traffic.

Photobuyers have discovered they can use the Internet to find the best, exact, exclusive photo for their publishing project. Using a text description and a popular search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN, they type a "long tail search" (using several words to describe what they need) into the search bar*. This connects the buyers to photographers' websites or sites that make the work of many photographers available.

This system, of course, is in its infancy, but is the way of the future. The time is now to carry a notepad along with you in your photographic forays - overseas, or your local region, or your backyard. Every time you snap a picture, jot down several descriptive keywords you could use to identify it. Just the word 'camel,' 'weed,' or 'airplane' is no longer viable in your descriptive database. Expect to describe each image in four or five words, because that's what the photobuyer will be using in their Google search.

*We encourage photobuyers to also add the word photosource in the search request. That lands them on the PhotoSourceBANK, where member photographers list identifying descriptions of more than 2 million specific photos. Buyers can find the photo they need in seconds, using the keyword search system. The PhotoSourceBANK is used by hundreds of photobuyers every day, to search for the source of the photos they need. To sign up for the PhotoSourceBANK, go to http://www.photosourcebank.com.

Rohn Engh is the best-selling author of "Sell & ReSell Your Photos" and "sellphotos.com." He has produced a new eBook, "How to Make the Marketable Photo." For more information and to learn how to sell photos and to receive his free eReport: "8 Steps to Becoming a Published Photographer," visit his website, PhotoSource International or call 800 624-0266.

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