Great Escape Publishing

Posted December 12th, 2012 by Bonnie Caton & filed under Travel Photography.

It’s amazing the kinds of simple photos that sell as stock. Take this photo, for example… as plain as it is, it’s had some pretty exciting action on stock photo sites — with over 2,100 sales on iStock.com. It’s a photo of canvas. Mind you, it’s very well-done (in-focus, well-lit, no wrinkles or distractions). But it’s still just a photo of canvas. From wood grain, to stone, to paper, to grass… designers need photos of simple, well-lit textures and patterns to integrate into their designs or use as backgrounds. Just think — 2,100 sales for something so simple! That’s way more than lunch money for the photographer who took this photo. (It’s more like a mortgage payment or two.) But here’s the trick: There are already a lot of texture and pattern photos up for sale on stock sites. You don’t want to take a photo of canvas just like this one and try to sell it. What you DO want to do is find out what kinds of texture photos are still missing from stock sites… so you can fill in the gap with your own shots. It’s simple tips like this that will set you apart from the rest when it comes time to put your own photos up for sale. Sure, it takes some know-how to get a “technically perfect” photo of boring canvas. But we’re going to go over that, too, at our upcoming Ultimate Money-Making Photography Workshop in Miami next spring. You’ll get all the tricks you need to sell your photos to a half dozen or more different markets. And, due to changes in technology and opportunities now open to beginners, you’ll pick up in three days what it took some of the pros years to master. Join us. And in the meantime, look around you for textures and patterns that you could photograph, then look on stock sites to see what’s selling. [Editor’s Note: Learn more about how you can turn your pictures into cash in our free online newsletter The Right Way to Travel. Sign up here today and we’ll send you a new report, Selling Photos for Cash: A Quick-Start Guide, completely FREE.]