Exclusivity
The value of exclusivity in Microstock photography cannot be overvalued. Often the first impact a photo will have on the viewer is the newness of the visual experience. Everyone has seen a rose in bloom or a new car or an ocean at sunset. But if the rose is rare, or an unusual color, or the car is heinously expensive, or the ocean is undiscovered and poetically beautiful, the experience of the viewer has an additional visual experience. The information, or value, of the thing previously unknown, has a value in images.
This is not to say that everyday or quotidian objects don’t have photographic value, in fact quite the opposite is true. But the premium value salable in stock photography will be something that is most difficult to reproduce by the customer. An exotic locale, an unseasonal weather type, a faraway or foreign land, or historic events that no longer exist have archival value. The historicity of every image is that it represents reality, a reality that existed once.
Exclusives might be celebrity sightings or fabulous real estate. The beach during unusual weather or light effects, or a political upheaval are images that have photographic exclusivity. But the intersection of two things, or elements which have a counterpoint to each other, create this reality. Still life compositions experiment with this type of impact, without too much overemphasis on the items. But image photography can effectively present a visual statement by inferred comparison.
The presentation of any group of objects shows the similarities and differences in two dimensional form. Photography is a way to convey the visual information of a certain landscape, be it a shelf of figurines or a thirty mile stretch of volcanic coastline. The eye takes in much more detail than one might think. This gives a basis for evaluation for every other image with this reference.
Exclusivity makes the viewer look closer, glance back, inquire into the image features longer. Microstock portfolio images can be measured in terms of getting the most views, and webmasters can analyze which images accompany pages if longest duration viewing. Word of mouth and email communication brings more traffic to the image resident site.
