Usually there is catastrophically little time on a shoot, so it is important not to step on the same rake twice. There is no desire to repeat the typical mistakes many photographers make, which once also stole time that could have been used more effectively for closer work with stock photo sites and to improve professional mastery as a photographer.
For many beginners, it is often quite difficult to understand the specific vocabulary used by experienced stock contributors, which is full of slang terms and abbreviations.
For beginners uploading and attributing images on stock photography sites, one of the difficult steps is selecting keywords.
First, it is hard to decide which words will be key for a specific image; second, from the full list of possible words it is tricky to choose the most sellable keywords; third, many simply do not understand why keywords are needed.
Usually, selecting keywords for an image is the concluding step in the process of uploading an image to stock photo sites. Unfortunately, many microstock contributors push keywording to the back burner.
What wish would a microstock contributor make for the coming Christmas? Probably that all that’s needed is a plain old fortune‑teller’s crystal ball. After all, if we knew exactly what Shutterstock buyers and other microstock customers would be searching for this year, working with stock sites would be much easier, and more money would trickle in to spend on gifts for family and friends.
If working with stock photo sites has already been a long‑term routine, there is surely awareness of a Free section on stock agency websites. In these sections it is possible to download curated sets of high‑quality photos and illustrations offered by the agencies at no charge.
