The Microstock Photography Big 6: iStock, Dreamstime, Shutterstock, fotolia, StockXpert and Bigstockphoto

The business of microstock photography is less than a decade old and is already a multi-million dollar industry. Every company needs good media, whether it is video footage, photos or graphics. When it comes to photography, smaller companies, more often than not, can't afford the price of traditional stock agencies or to hire a photographer for a custom shoot. Microstock fills that business need. Many professional photographers used to argue that microstock was demeaning the profession, dropping the value of their work by selling photos for as little as one dollar. Most traditional stock agencies will only sell a photo for as low as 50 dollars. Slowly the microstock agencies won over many of the sceptics by proving that microstock has a much larger client base than traditional stock agencies. With traditional stock agencies a photo may only sell once a year, but with a microstock agency that same photo may sell a hundred or two hundred times. The microstock model has proven it can be very lucrative.

Taking good stock photos is not as easy as you might think. In fact books have been written on nothing more than making appealing stock photography. Although I can't teach you everything about stock photography in this one article, I can give you some quick tips that can help you get started.

There are certain things that are accepted in professional photography circles that microstock agencies tend not to tolerate. Chief among these is excessive jpeg noise. Some other examples of seldom accepted practices included selective colouring, lens flair, sepia, and the use of other photoshop actions. If a photo with these techniques is exceptional then an agency may still take that photo, but your chances will be better if you avoid them.

Here are some basic concepts that tend to be successful in stock photography: photos of people, indoors and outdoors, groups of people always do well, business and technology concepts, medical concepts, silhouettes, and anything on a white background. This list can go on and on, most agencies have lists of their most desired content. Regardless of what an agency requests, good stock photography is only limited by your imagination and the capabilities of your equipment.