Ron Shoots

You really should wonder about me… seriously. I hang out with colorful winged faeries, cover people in mud, wrap others in string, and make ordinary strangers jump in the air. And Gray Mitchell, who also shoots for our studio, has a passion for taking pictures of strange-looking pets like this SnapVillage ad on the inside cover of HOW magazine.

One of my “Faery” images used by Photos.com on the back cover of the April 2008 issue of HOW magazine. (Yes, 2 full-page ads in one issue from our studio!)

We call these the “marketing” images, the photos that make people look twice, and if we’re lucky, three times. Will these images sell? Not necessarily, but what they do is to create a feeling for our studio, a sense of our creativity and if we’re really lucky, an interest in buying our images.

Plus shooting crazy photos is fun! There’s really too much seriousness in all of this stock business. Yes, its a business, but didn’t we all start taking pictures because we liked the process? If you have an idea for an image, just shoot it. Don’t filter every production with a “Will it Sell? question. The best images might be the ones you haven’t shot yet.

All About Balance

Shooting pictures that may not sell doesn’t sound like a good business model, but there’s room in every collection for a few fun photos. Our content strategy plan is to have about 10% of our image collection push the edge of acceptable (read sellable) stock photography.

Do they have to be edgy off-the-wall crazy fun images? Absolutely not, but what your “marketing” images need to have is a sense of passion, a reason for an art director to stop for just a few seconds… just long enough to look at the image, twice.