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Plan Ahead to Optimize Your Stock Collection

Once we've organized our images, let's talk about then preparing that stuff to go to stock. So the way I do is I simply go through portfolio work and stuff that I've done for work. And like, if I did a photo shoot for a client, So let's let's go in and do some images that I shot for a client right here. Okay? So you can see that I've got a whole bunch of images that I shot And these air all images that I got client photo releases, model releases from the client themselves so I can use them on stock. And while I was doing that, I was also thinking So when I do a senior portrait, I never think Senior portrait, I'm just gonna take this, make some money off the senior portrait, makes imprints make some money off prints, and then I'm gonna be done with it. I always sit down with the senior and for those of you in a different country who don't do senior high school portrait talking, a lot of people think when I say senior portrait, they think I'm talking about old people. So it's high school...

seniors. So 18 year olds that are getting out of their their schooling. They want pictures taken. It's just kind of America and a couple other countries get big into it. But other countries are like, What are you doing? That's weird. So anyway, when I do a senior portrait photo shoot, I sit down with the senior and I asked them what's important to them, and I come up with an idea now in this case, this girl was the senior class president, Um, and she was really big into her school and how you know, and and football games. And she, you know, she was just really into school pride, right? And so I was like, You know, it would be funny is if we had the mascot for your school, like just a mascot. And she's like, Oh, I know the mascot. I was like, Really? Yeah. And I was like, Well, do you think he would come to the photo shoot? She's like, I don't think he will. But the the quarterback is about the same size for the team. The quarterbacks for the team is about the same size, and he would totally come and he could wear the mascot Uniforms like. Okay, bring him. I'm thinking ahead because these air funny and these air more for her, right? Just a portrait of her with the silly mascot in the background. But what I'm really thinking about is this photograph right here in my head. I'm thinking all I want is one for me. This photo shoot was just for this photograph. I wanted a sad, depressed, dejected mascot so that I could put it on adobe stock. That's what I wanted. So I I did the photo shoot and then and and I did this. So here's Here's what we were doing because their team had just lost the state championships. And so I was like, Oh, that'd be funny if he was sad and you were consoling him. So she's like, Okay. And so she consoles him. And then I was like, Oh, hey, you know, just hop out of the frame for a second Boom. That's my shop, right? So I got something for me. She got stuff for her and it worked out perfectly right. She signs them. I mascot doesn't have to sign a release. I can't I can't see him. He signed a release for other purposes. Like when we took pictures of him and he took the thing off. But he this mascot does not to sign a release. Yeah. So what happens when you've done street photography? And you know these air people You don't know he never got releases from them. So if you're on street photography duty and you're running around, say, France, taking pictures of people that is going to be documentary work and you will not be able to sell it for stock if you can recognize the people or you can go get a release from them. So if you if you're taking pictures and then you nail on amazing shot and you just know this shot is gonna be a great stock photo shot of France of to a couple dancing in the street or whatever, like you just nailed it. Then you run up to him and say, Hey, do you speak English or whatever are trying to speak French to them or whatever, And then once you've got some kind of communications, say I took this picture of you. I want to give it to you. I'll print it up. I'll send it to you or whatever, but I need a release. Would you mind if I use this image for my own purposes? But I will send you, you know? Ah, canvas of it. Or a print of it or whatever. Or I'll pay you 20 bucks or something. Sure, why not? In fact, I'll show you a photo shoot that I did here. So I was in Sweden and I ran into, uh let's see. Where is it? There we go. OK, so I was in Sweden and I ran into this guy. Now I'm telling you that this guy is not dressed up for the photo shoot. He dresses incredibly at all times. He's sitting at a cafe right there down there, and I am sitting at a cafe over here, and I'm having gelato because that's all I do when I travel is a gelato. And so I'm I'm having gelato with my brother and there's this guy with this handlebar moustache and he's wearing like some tweed like jacket with scar like he just looks like he's out of another century, and I and I look at my I've got to photograph this person, so I leave my brother and like, watch my stuff and I go over to him and and he disappeared. But the people he was with was there. And I said, Do you know the gentleman that was sit next? You in there? Yeah, he's my brother. And I was like, Is he coming back? He just went to the restroom. Okay, great. So then I come back on, I sit down, and then I wait for him, and as soon as he rise back, run back over, and I say, Hi, I'm Jared. I have to photograph you. I have to, and he goes Great. When are we going to do it? And I was like, uh, what's good for you? And he goes, What can I bring my girlfriend? I was like, Absolutely bring your girlfriend and we'll make a whole thing of it. And he's like, Okay. And I said, and I'll even pay you. He's like, all right. Sounds good. And so he says, Do you want us to bring outfits? And I was like, whatever you want to bring, you bring it cause we're gonna do amazing photographs. And I showed him a couple pictures of my work so that he could see that I was a real photographer. And he's like, Okay, we'll do it on Sunday night. Okay? Sunday night, we'll see you here. So we met right in the same square Sunday night, and these were some of the images that we got of them. So, like, for instance, this is one of my favorite ones here. I love that one. And then this one was a great one. And this one was a little creepy, but fun like this one. All right. And then Ah, this one's a guy I really like this one. Uh, it was great. I love that one. Except I just turned it to black and white on you. Nice and color, too. Um, And then finally, this one was just for fun. So anyway, but so I got stuff out. They got cool images out of it. They got a little bit of a paycheck for it. And I have model releases. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, And I'm really glad we're talking about this issue. And if you don't mind, we have a lot of questions coming in about releasing, I am sure, is now a good time. That would be fine. Okay, Fantastic. So just to clarify when you are back at the school with the client who was the high school senior back of the school? I'm going there now. Did you need Teoh get a specific release about the fact that you would be using it for stock versus a release that you might get just to use for your marketing for your portrait business? Every release that I have is a stock photo release which says that I can use it for the purpose of making money and advertising other things. And when I can, I can assign it to other people. And if you want a perfect model release for models for selling to stock, Adobe gives you one on the stock site and I'll show you where that is. When we start submitting stuff to stock, I'll show you where it is. But Adobe provides one with the perfect Burbage for you. So use that. In fact, that's what I use. I use the verb ege from their release so that I make sure that they're happy with the release that I'm giving them. Now I have a V I p portrait releases Well, that has different Burbage on it that says, I won't sell it, but I'll use it in teaching and I'll use it for my own marketing purposes. But I won't sell it to other people. I have a different release for that, and a lot of the times Wedding clients will sign that release because they're like and want, you know, stuff sold with my image. But it's fine if you use it for teaching. And if you use it for documentary purposes and stuff like that. So so it is important to be absolutely clear on what you're gonna be doing inside of your model release. Don't try and fool people. Just let him know. Hey, I use this. I am. I make money by showing people images and selling images and stuff like that. So if you're okay with that, sign this release now if they're under 18 in the United States, depends on your country and rules and stuff. But in the United States, if they're under 18 there a minor and so they can't they can't legally enter into a contract with you, which means that you have to have their parent entrance of contract with you. So the parents signs the release. The child doesn't have anything to do with the release. All right, so most seniors air under 18 so they have to have their parents sign the release. It's only a couple seniors that air just over 18 and so they sign their own like, for instance, this model here. So I did a senior portrait with this guy right here. This his name is Teddy. Teddy's awesome. He's the coolest seen Easy's. He's always been a cool kid, since he was like I knew him since he was, like five, and he was just strangest, coolest kid even when he was five. He would just leave school and go home whenever he wanted. He just crazy kids anyway, So he likes to write, and he happens to have an old typewriter, and he's like, Hey, could I bring that? And I was like, Yeah, absolutely. So then we get a whole bunch of paper on, we type out some text and then we crumple it up and I'm like, This is a great stock photograph, so I'm gonna I'm gonna make stock photography while I'm photographing. Does his senior portrait because it fits with his personality, so he's excited about doing it. He's into the idea because he's a writer, right? So now he's getting a cool image that I'm putting a lot of effort into because it's gonna be my stock image. All right, so you bought. It's a win win situation when a senior or a portrait or a client gets your time and attention and you really working hard on it because it's not just a senior portrait. It's something that you're going to use for your own mark, for your own marketing purposes and also for stock photography. So it's a win win for both people. But he was 18 so he could sign his own release. Right? Okay, now what? Since we're on releases, let me I'll answer, ask answer your question. Just a second since we're on releases. I wanted to talk to you about the idea of where you store your releases. So whenever I get a release from somebody, I'm going to store the release as a J. Peg in side of my portfolio with the image itself so you can see Here's the girl hears her release right next to it that way When I need to provide the release to someone and they say, Hey, uh, is there a release for this girl? Where is it? It's in my catalogue with the girl. So if I can find the girl I confined the catalogue. Let me show you how that's done. So the first thing that you have to do is import the J peg or you can't import of PF A pdf into light room. Unfortunately, it doesn't see it. I don't know why, but it doesn't. So you have to make it into a J peg, but make it a 300 dp I j. Peg. So it could be printed as an eight by 10 earn 8.5 by 11 piece of paper, so I import it and it has its own name, whatever the name is. So whatever name you've named it. If you go down to the metadata area inside of light room, there's a file name area right up at the top, so you just simply click on that and copy it. So once you imported your J peg into your catalog and it's sitting next to the person is sitting next to the girl. Then what you want to dio is take that file name and go toe all the pictures of her. So I'm just I'm scanning through and finding all the pictures of her shift clicking, Um, and then I'm gonna go down inside of the metadata. There's a thing called I p. T. C. Extension, so default is what you're normally on. But there's a lot more metadata that you don't know about. Just go down to the bottom. Where's his I. P T. C extension? Click on that and then you just scan down to the bottom and you'll find there is a moderately section. Where is it? There we go models, and it's going to say age. And so I can just say, Well, it's got mixed results right now, but I think she was 17 at the time. Um and then my, my ass, a really status. I would have unlimited moderately status and then release I d. I simply copy that in there, so I'm pasting the name of that release into their. So by doing that now, if I ever click on an image, so let's say I go to this image right here on. I want to find the model release for it cause someone comes to me and says, Hey, where's the model release for that? I don't know how to find it. So then I simply go down to that area and there's the model release name. It's the Whatever the name of that J Peg is, I simply hit copy, right? And then I can go right upto all photographs in my entire collection. Click on text and just paste it in there. There it is. Do you see how that works? I can always find it now. If for some reason I had dropped it out of my catalog because I accidentally hit the lead or something in it and it lost it from light room, I could also go up to the search function in my computer. Type it in there, and it would look through the whole computer for that same J peg and I find it. Just make sure that your model released names are very unique, right? It could be the models name and then the date of the shoot. That's that is perfectly unique enough. Or it could be if you're using some kind of a digital model release things like easy release or something. It will create its own name, and it's very, very specific. But if you are using a digital system, make sure that you're using the right verb ege. So go to the Adobe Stock page, download the the example model release and use that verb ege so that you know that you're doing the right thing, right? And if you use that Burbage and then you, for some reason, want to add some additional stuff for your own purposes, that's fine. Just say, plus this and this and that, you know, like you could add more to it if you wanted to, But I typically prefer something that's been really vetted by Adobe to something that I wrote. If we go through our portfolio and we're just kind of scanning through, what we're going to do is create a collection which is a virtual area to collect photos, and we're going to choose an image that we want to sell to stock that we think would be a good stock candidate. So I'm just gonna kind of scan through, and I'm like, Oh, I want to sell this one to stock. I think this would be interesting. So I'm gonna grab it, and I'm gonna drag into another collection called Prepare for Submission when I prepare for submission. Oh, already dragged it in there once, but that's all right. So I These are all the ones that I think these would be good. I should I should put them on stock. So now we need to prepare them. And when we prepare them, we need to think about a couple things. Number one, this is a square crop. Is that a good idea? Onley. If I took it as a square picture, is that a good idea? So what I'm gonna dio is an If if I want to keep this is a square crop for me, then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go here and I'm gonna right click it and I'm gonna create a virtual copy once I have a virtual copy. I could do anything I want to this one, and it will be it'll it'll remain its own photograph. Even though it's not a real copy, it's a virtual one. So now I can change it to be better for stock. So I can go into the crop on this image, and I can go and just reset the crop. So I'm just gonna go reset the crop there. That's a much better way to sell that image. So I have that. The other thing I want to do is I like toe add grain. Two photographs. Adobe doesn't like you to add grain to your photographs. If it has some grain because of the photograph because of the camera itself, Fine. That's what it is. Try and give them as best to file A you can. But they don't like it when you add green to it because they want the designer to be able to choose clean or they could gratify it if they want. So what I'm gonna do is go into the effects panel on this and I'm gonna turn the grain off. So see how it's now a nice and smooth. Now it's a smooth photographs of All right now, I'm ready to sell this for stock, all right? And instead of selling it as a black and white, you can You can put black and whites up there if you'd like, But if it looks good and color. Put it up there in color, and then if you have some cool treatment you want to do to it, then go ahead and put it up a za secondary version. And you could give three or four versions of the same image with different styles if you'd like, but always give the base image, give him the opportunity to buy the original so that the designer could do something with it.