tl;dr summary: now you can buy my images on Stocksy.com!
When I left my job to pursue professional photography, I told myself I’d try it for 6 months, and if it didn’t work out, I’d find another desk job or maybe go back to school. I didn’t even call myself a “photographer” for the first year or so. My first business card said:
Jen Grantham
Photography!
I was scared of the title “photographer”, so I went around telling everyone I “do photography”, with a little exclamation point at the end to make it sound more casual. I was also terrified the first time I charged someone money for my services. Pretty funny to think about now.
I started selling stock photography around that time, in January 2009. And by “selling” stock photography, I mean that I made 84 cents in my first 3 months by uploading (let’s be honest: terrible) images like this:
I realized that if I wanted to make a decent income selling stock photography, I needed to do a better job. iStockPhoto was incredibly motivating. I posted in the Critique Forums, and other photographers gave me their – very honest – opinions about my files. iStock is fairly strict about the files they accept, but over time I was able to bring my acceptance rate up from 35% to 80%, and I actually started to see steady sales. It made me a better photographer. In September 2010, I qualified for exclusivity with iStockPhoto.
I’m happy to say that I did NOT have to quit photography after 6 months! Today I am doing photography full-time, and I have a beautiful studio and amazing clients.
But, on the stock front, things changed. Things are still changing. And although I still appreciate iStock dearly, it is time for me to make a change as well.
In February, Bruce Livingstone invited me to submit an application to his new agency, Stocksy. I did, and to my complete shock, (and even though I accidentally uploaded one of my application images twice) I was accepted. Browsing through the work of the roughly 100 accepted members (at the time), I was completely blown away by the quality of the images, and how different the work was from traditional microstock photography. I fell in love with not only the site, but the payment structure – artists get 50% of sales, 100% of extended license sales, and the company also pays 90% of their profits back to the artists at the end of the year. Awesome! I’m so excited to work with this amazing group of talented people.
Stocksy officially opened on March 25th, and I went to Australia a few days later. The day after I returned from my trip, I decided to end my exclusivity agreement with iStockPhoto. As of today, I’m officially an independent stock photographer! You can still find some of my older files, editorial files, and everything taken at an iStockPhoto event, here. You can find my newer files, and more creative work, here at Stocksy.
Right now, my portfolio on Stocksy is fairly small. One of the series I have up is my ballerina series, including some new edits:
There’s also a shoot I did on Valentine’s Day with this adorable couple, Erica & Jessica:
As well as a new series of studio portraits with this lovely model, Kaitlin:
I’m very excited for my Stocksy portfolio to finally go live, and for developing my photography with this wonderful company. If you buy stock photos, or just enjoy looking at awesome photos, consider checking out the Stocksy library.
