Welcome to the Stock Photography blog of Diane Macdonald

Well folks, I have finally joined the 21st century and am an official member of the blogosphere! Most of what I publish will relate to stock photography.

"What kind of photography?" you ask! I know, I know! Many of you have been shooting stock for eons and think this question is too basic, but there are those out there (professional photographers included) who really don't have a clue what stock photography is. So, please be patient as I describe the business of stock photography in a few short paragraphs. This is not an in-depth description of the business - just enough information to make the uninformed sound informed when joining a conversation about it.

First, let me tell you what stock photography is not. Stock photography is not about SELLING images. It is about LICENSING images. With that out of the way, let me give a little more detail.

Stock photographers create images which they offer for licensing through agencies such as Getty, Corbis and Alamy, or they may choose to license the images directly to clients without using an agency. However they choose to license their work, photographers still retain the copyright to their images. Clients pay for the rights to use the images in certain ways on the web, in magazines, on greeting cards etc., but no matter which licensing model they choose, they are never free to resell the images as their own stock images or as their own art.

The two licensing models are RM (Rights Managed) and RF (Royalty Free.) RM is the oldest and traditional stock photography model. Images are licensed for a certain period of time and for a certain usage and may be used only for that time period and for that usage. There are no time limits to the usage of an RF image, and it may be used in many different projects without paying an additional fee. Note that "Royalty Free" does not mean that the image is free of royalties, only that the client does not have to pay an additional fee once the image has been licensed.

In recent years microstock has become a buzzword. I'm not involved with microstock, so cannot speak from experience there. In a nutshell, microstock is RF imagery sold at a much cheaper price and in a higher volume than traditional RF images.

So, there you have it -a very basic understanding about what stock photography is.

In addition to licensing my images at Getty, I also license some images through Alamy. You can check my work at the following links:

http://bit.ly/DianeMGetty
http://bit.ly/DianeMAlamy