Magic 7 Microtips
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Magic 7 MicroTips
Here are some microstock tips for successful image photography, image manipulation, and submission hints.
1.      Keep sizes intact.
Don’t upsize or enlarge your images. Resolution will diminish and quality and appeal will fall off sharply. Crop to absolute best size, edging out blurs, points, and detracting flaws. This is why a large megapixel value on a camera gives the best flexibility when cropping. With a 12 megapixel camera, two thirds of the shot can edited out without sacrificing submission potential.
2.      Keep an eye on your pixels.
You should know by much at what resolution your 8 to ten megapixel camera will render a cropped full resolution images and what approximate dimensions those might be. Know when framing a shot outdoors or capturing a landscape how much area inside the potential microstock submission will be needed clear of defects and overlap.
3.      Use audio tags.
Can’t find another tentacle to scribble a note? Use your cellphone or camera audio features to store audio tags of your subject matter. If purchasing rights or obtaining releases, you’ll need this precise information. Using these tags when submitting hundreds of images can cut down on the “finding the right word†downtime.
4.      Abstracts
Keep an eye out for conceptual images. A squiggle in a logo, a creative punch of graffiti, or a combination of objects can illustrate a formal concept or idea. Make sure anything crafted in iron, wood, or as art might have a secondary meaning to other observers. Symbols, like hearts, crosses, diamonds, or circles can have interesting impact when repeated or layered.
5.      Watch the Dotted Line
Check your image viewfinder and lens for blur. Use a cover that keeps the camera dry between ducking in and out of showers or moisture laden environments. Finding out two days later your best shots got obscured by a dot or dried moisture will be a very unhappy moment.
6.      Keep Out of the Editing Shed.
 Lot of microstock image portals don’t want digitally squared off or “improved†effects via sharpening. They want the raw stock. Try to keep the editing bay free of time expenditure and formulate the best raw photo submissions volumes you can achieve.
7.      Use Your Environments
If you are taking pictures inside a dental office, for example, don’t take one picture of the tray with surgical instruments. Take a picture of the wall chart, the dental chair, the medications, the drills, etc. Vary your distance from the subjects from very close to arms length to a few steps away.
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