| Joined: | Wed Apr 18th, 2012 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 4186 |
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I wonder if any forum members still do this?
Recently I was given a project to superimpose studio shot (white background) garden furniture into 'lifestyle' ie nice outdoor settings.
We couldn't reshoot as it is winter here ....and a £150k project relied on getting images in settings, quick.
I am unable to show you some of these finished results as they are only now going live. But suffice to say it took a lot of time selecting suitably compatible images.
The shooting angle of the two images had to match to get realistic vanishing points. The diffused studio lighting had to be matched by acceptable exterior light...with appropriate shadow addition where sunlight was directional.
It was an interesting, profitable (when they pay me!) and challenging exercise...but it was also depressing....
To find a variety of suitable background images (I soon ran out of my own shots!) I had to trawl through stock libraries. One library in particular offers a ridiculously good deal...but one that saddens me as a photographer.
For the princely sum of £149, you can download 25 high resolution (eg 40mb files) images, per day ....for a month (actually 28 days).
viz. 25x28 = 700 images for £149 or 21p an image! And that's the selling price!
Yes, some of the shots are a bit naff, others are 25 different angles of the same swimming pool etc. And I realise it's a global market place.
But I was restricting my viewing to the first 10-15 pages on each search category I input (eg pools, pathways, gardens, conservatories, terraces, lawns etc etc etc) Often there were 400, 500 or more pages covering that search wording, potentially hiding better images that I was soon too bored and tired to continue hunting down.
10 years ago my client bought an image for some packaging I was designing. It cost £1200. (frankly I thought he was mad because it was absolute rubbish!!!!!)
But today we talk in pence.
Where will it end? Will people eventually stop taking stock photos?
Last edited on Tue Feb 26th, 2013 06:02 by Eric
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Eric