Microstock Photography

52 What Sells and What Does Not

FIGURE 3.19 This is what a search for “objects” throws up on Fotolia. Quite a variety. Other microstock sites offer a similar extensive and diverse
choice of images.

graph them. They take shots on vacation. It is not necessary to

travel the world to fi nd suitable material for microstocks. You are

not shooting the cover for Vogue magazine or National Geographic

(not just yet, anyway).

We’ll wrap up our discussion of objects with a couple more

images (Figures 3.21 and 3.22). Neither of these is isolated;

objects photographed in a context useful to buyers can also

be successful.

Flowers

Flowers are tricky. Some of the best-selling microstock images are of

fl owers, yet most sites will tell you they have quite enough fl ower

shots to last several lifetimes.

Flower images need that special something to justify acceptance on

microstock sites. Every spring, tens of thousands of daffodil shots are

uploaded. As summer approaches, yellow turns to red and pink as