Animals & Microstock
Microstock Feline
After some efforts toward going for the microstock animals photo market I have realized the challenge eludes me. Sticking to your best media in microstock would seem conservative but it also may be good advice. My strength is interiors, humor, travel, metropolitan, home & garden, and occasional still lives. Animals, not so much.
They always say, never work with animals or kids. But big markets exist in legal low cost image galleries for animal image files. Everything from kid’s websites to zoos to online stories want the pictures. I have seen darling picture books of nothing but cute animal photos with kids. Printed on glossy paper, animal pictures decorate amazingly well. They make nice gift, framed or in book form too.
Well, perhaps this is not my forte. My opinion is that if you have a pet or access to animals, and a great camera, and the patience to learn the techniques, you might be halfway there. For me, the effort has proven exhausting. I am chasing the proverbial two headed walrus and the cat keeps jumping out of the bag. Even snails move too fast for my lens setting ability. Seriously, even snails won’t hold the pose. They have better things to do.
Usually I am the on-the-spot person snapping away. But the animals fail to accommodate me. They fly away. They hold cute poses until my digital camera threatens to focus, then they start licking themselves in unmentionable places. They yawn with bad breath when I lean closer to get the non beady eye shot. They stalk off just when I’ve decided to haul out the Kodak and go into stealth mode.
The method eludes me. I am temporising between a sports action lens setting and a tulip micro shot to capture whisker and fur detail. The animal blurs out of frame if I try the museum setting, and the digital enhancement gives me a tiny emblem instead of the full resolution image I am shooting for. And getting model releases from goggling three year olds isn’t easy. Carrying model releases for pets isn’t always convenient either. Cats have trouble with the pen.
I have three wonderful nephews I would like to surprise next Christmas with a one of a kind picture book of animal photographs. The goal can happen if I apply myself. But these pesky cats don’t make very good models! Weeding through the images to choose from may take a much more brief period of time than I had allotted. For now, I will continue to carry bits of string or catnip in my pocket, and hope for the best.
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