Micro Rockwell
There’s a fabulous article in this month’s issue of Vanity Fair on Normal Rockwell, the celebrated American painter. A new book and a traveling Rockwell retrospective showcase some of the best in iconographic art forms in America. The Real, the Ideal, and the Interplay in between.
Microstock photographer should this tripartite rule to engage with their subjects and photographs for analysis for submission. What is in your photograph is evidently real, unless you are using some kind of trompe l’oeil photographic effect.  Rockwell took the potential of each framed pose and embellished and embroidered until the rich whole emerged.
How close to the ideal does your subject matter approach the ideal? Is the resolution, clarity, color, season, maturity and presentation all that it could be? How is it possible to recreate the circumstances of photography and improve anything else? With photo editing tools and desktop publishing filters, many effects and “fixes” are possible. Make sure you know about them and how to use them.
Look at shape, color, form, placement and relationship to background objects. Is a better composition project with a few elements sorted out worth the effort? Rockwell worked with models, start becoming familiar with the use of models and prime lighting, compisition, shadow and combinations of environment and accents to create new and unique imagery products.
 The photographs he staged to work form as models for his paintings are provided next to the finished painting images, allowing a stunning and comparison between what the artist inferred and what elements he enhanced with the paintbrush. Examine your techniques. Are you taking your photography, or just making image approximations of the work of others?
Rockwell worked from raw form and infused completely relational emotions and expressions onto his models in the finished work. In a way, modern micro stock photographers do the same thing. But micro stock photographers have infinitely more flexibility and choice in the genres to work in and the material to capture.
Exercise your options and build your own unique portfolio. That’s the freedom of microstock photography.
All in all, Rockwell carved out a signature look with a palette and style all his own. His most famous exposure was on the cover of family magazines. Today’s magazines are websites.
