I finally hit 100 licensed downloads of my stock images! So today seemed like a good time to talk about stock photography and my route to 100 downloads.

It’s not as exciting as you’d think. 100 is just a number after all, no more special than the one before or (I’d imagine) the one after. So why mark this milestone at all?

I had intended to review my stock image portfolio after 12 months, rather than an arbitrary number of downloads. But October 2024 came and went without note, and now we are in March.

The 100th download seemed like a prompt to get it done.

What is stock photography

Stock photography is simply a curated portfolio of images, usually held online, available for license by individuals or companies.

Buyers purchase the rights to use an image for commercial or editorial use and include a full range of subjects including: food, travel, wildlife, business, news and events. Buyers typically choose stock photography because it offers them cheap, quick and easy access to a catalogue of images without having to employ a photographer.

I started with stock photography whilst recovering from an injury. I used the time to move my catalogues of images from multiple hard drives and disks to a new SSD drive and back-up system. During this process I realised that there were thousands of images that were just sitting there with no audience or purpose. So without any real aim or goal I began to upload them to a stock image site.

I shall admit that many of the images are not of the best quality, and quite a few should have been culled by me or by the team tasked with accepting or discarding them. However, I was realistic about the prices paid and determined this should me a minimal reward so minimal effort task.

If someone wanted an image of a street in Peru taken 15 years with no real purpose other than to document the location, then great! Let them use it. It has been buried on my hard drive and I’m happy for it to be seen again.

The top three licensed images

These are my top three licensed images, in order of number of downloads.

The first was taken in 2024, purposefully for my stock image portfolio, and is also one of my more recent images (so has had the least amount of time in my portfolio).

The second was taken in 2009 and was one of the first images I uploaded to my portfolio. This was from a series of images I took as a freelancer for a press agency, but wasn’t used at that time.

The third image was taken in 2023 as part of a series of images capturing flooding in Durham City centre. A similar image proved popular with news agencies a decade before. This up-to-date version has now featured in print thanks to stock licensing.

As you can see, my images are very much editorial and certainly not artistic or creative in any way. However they are functional, purposeful and provide relevant content for buyers.

Is it worth pursuing stock photography as a photographer?

Stock photography prices (per download) have plummeted in recent years with subscription models meaning buyers often pay pennies rather than ££’s for an image as part of a monthly package. Such small percentages have left many photographers feeling that their images, or stock photography, is undervalued and not worth the time or effort required.

Financially, stock photography makes little sense when you consider the effort required to upload and catalogue images and the low earnings. Images would have to be downloaded hundreds or thousands of times to provide a return. However once the image is uploaded, it does provide a passive income as is licensed. That doesn’t mean stock photography is a completely passive income though.

To maintain a portfolio of appealing images and generate the number of downloads per image that may be required to produce an income from stock photography is anything but passive!

I have noticed that my images seem to be licensed more after I have made a recent upload of new images. There should be no reason for this, other than the algorithm perhaps promotes work from photographers who regularly, or recently, upload new images.

Also consider who is licensing the stock images, and why. Stock images follow trends and become dated, so it is important to consider what buyers may be looking for now and in the future. If you are serious about stock photography then producing high quality images that are both timeless and relevant would seem to provide the most likely route to success. But this requires a significant time investment, and remember there is competition from the many millions of stock images already available.

However stock photography does provide other benefits. If those benefits are worth it, only you can decide!

Stock photography is a good way to fill in gaps during slower seasons or to maintain your photographic skills. I implement stock photography as part of my photographic day. Whilst heading to, or from a landscape shoot consider what other editorial images may be available and capture those.

In the end, whether stock photography is worth it depends on your goals and what you’re hoping to achieve as a photographer. It is unlikely to provide a main source of income, but if you were to find the right agency and provide high quality, regular work that fits their clients needs then the exposure and learning experience could certainly provide a boost.  

Will I continue with stock photography?

Personally I enjoy editorial photography and I can fit it in alongside a creative day or my other projects. My 100 licensed downloads has provided an insight into the strengths and weaknesses of my stock photography portfolio. My portfolio is not of the highest quality or most relevant images. Many were uploaded from old hard rives more for historical reference than photographic prowess.

Shall I continue with stock photography? Yes. I have enhanced my workflow to the point where it takes me far less time to cull, keyword and upload images. I am also entering a new phase in my life, where creativity and photography shall be taking a pause for several months. But stock photography shall provide the purposefulness I require to keep my camera in hand even through this time. In fact documenting it will hopefully provide some profitable images.

Watch this space for news on my next move, and keep and sign up for my next update a 200 licensed images!