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What is Stock Photography

Stock photography is a collection of pre-existing photographs that are licensed for specific uses.

These photographs are taken by professional photographers, amateurs or even created by artificial intelligence. Stock photography is an essential resource for designers, marketers, and advertisers to create eye-catching visuals for various media.

Stock photos are sold through stock photo agencies, which license the photographs for a fee to the users.

The fees depend on the usage rights, the size of the photograph, the quality, and the distribution of the photo. The usage rights determine how the photo can be used, whether it’s for a website, print publication, or other media.

Stock photography covers a wide range of subjects, including people, landscapes, animals, objects, and more. The photos can be categorized into different themes, such as business, travel, lifestyle, and technology.

Stock photography offers several advantages.

It saves time and money for designers and marketers, who can quickly find the right image for their project without having to hire a photographer or take the photo themselves. It also provides a consistent level of quality and professionalism, which is crucial for creating a strong brand identity.

However, stock photography also has some drawbacks.

The images can sometimes look generic and overused, making it challenging to stand out from the crowd. Additionally, the cost of licensing the images can be high, especially for exclusive usage rights or high-quality photographs.

Types of stock images that tend to be popular in the Stock Photography Industry:

Business and Finance:

Images related to business and finance such as people in business attire, office settings, and financial charts are often in high demand as they are used in various business-related materials such as reports, presentations, and websites.

Technology and Innovation:

Images that showcase technology and innovation, such as computer hardware, software, and futuristic gadgets, are also in high demand. These images are often used in marketing materials and technology-focused publications.

Lifestyle and Travel:

Images that showcase lifestyle and travel, such as scenic landscapes, people traveling, and outdoor activities, are always in demand. These images are often used in marketing materials for travel agencies, tourism boards, and lifestyle brands.

Health and Wellness:

Images that showcase health and wellness, such as people exercising, healthy food, and nature scenes, are also popular. These images are often used in health-related publications and marketing materials for wellness brands.

Diversity and Inclusivity:

Images that showcase diversity and inclusivity, such as people of different ethnicities, ages, and gender identities, are becoming increasingly popular. These images are often used in marketing materials for brands that want to promote diversity and inclusivity.

It’s important to note that stock photography trends can change quickly, and what sells the most on one day might not be the same on another day.

Additionally, there are many factors that can influence the popularity of a particular image, such as the quality of the photo, the subject matter, and the overall theme of the page or website.

In Conclusion:

* Stock photography is a valuable resource for designers, marketers, and advertisers to create visually compelling content. It offers convenience, quality, and a wide range of options to choose from, making it an essential tool in today’s digital landscape. *


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Things We Bought on Amazon and Just Love

Things We Bought on Amazon and Just Love

Here’s our Things We Bought on Amazon and Just Love.

As everybody, we bought a lot of stuff from Amazon. As you know, some stuff are good, and some are just not worth it. We are referencing Only good products, that we bought Mostly for our photography business.

amazon

We are in Canada, so most of the products come from Amazon.ca. These products should be available in other countries, but the links we provide is for the canadian store only.

 If you go and buy them via our links, we will receive a small percentage of the sale.


1- Ink Cartridge Replacements

These are Ink Replacements for our Canon printer. For $30.99 you get 10 pre-filed Cartridges, two of each colors. What’s impressive about this? Well, if you compare to Canon replacements (around 200$), there a huge saving in price. Manutacturers sell printer at low prices and basically don’t make any money on them. They know it’s on the ink, that you will have to buy, that cash will flows in.

Furthermore, they don’t clog your printer like some other replacements might do. We will buy these cartridges again.

Ink


2- USB 3.0 Hard Drive Casing

This unit is a Casing for a 2.5 inch USB 3.0 Hard Drive. It has good transfert speed and it doesn’t cost much. One of our laptop computer fails us, and we were able to save our informations using one of these unit.

Now we use it as an external backup drive.

orico


3- Tripod Bag

A tripod bag is very useful when shooting outside. It’s very useful when you have to shoot at sunset or at night. You can strap it around your shoulder and neck, so you don’t have to worry about carrying your tripod. It’s important to have one long enough for a tripod and it’s head. This one is long enough and pretty cheap at $14.50.

tripod bag


4- Logitech Mouse

We bought this mouse on July 2018 and never had any problem with it. The battery last quite a bit, and it’s very confortable. We don’t play games with it though, since it’s not a game specialized mouse.

mouse


5- 360 Degree Theta S Camera from Ricoh

This camera make amazing 360 degree seamless imagery. Images from this camera can be seen on many websites we know: chaletslacstjean.com, tonytremblay.com/photographies-360-degres et sur cette Page Facebook. Bought in 2016 and still working perfectly in dec 2019. You have to be careful not to drop this camera, since the two lenses are easy to scratch. Ours is still unscratched..

360degree camera


6- Compact Manfrotto Tripod with Integrated Head

You might ask yourself why buy a tripod at this price? Well, the answer is simple, this tripod is small and very lightweight. If you do a lot of sunset or night shoottings, you want a tripod that doesn’t give your neck or back pains. This tripod also fold more than regular ones. It only measure 40 cm (1foot and 6 inches) when fully fold, and weight only 1.1kg (about 5 pounds) since it is made from carbon fibers. It also come with its own shoulder bag, so you don’t have to buy it afterward. It also fit easily in any travelling bag, which most tripods don’t. Very useful when travelling a lot. It’s also very quick to unfold and install. The clips on each legs make it very easy. All and all, Very Good.

manfrotto tripod


We will add more products in the future as we buy them, so come back later for more amazing products.


Things We Bought on Amazon and Just Love


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How to find Who Use Your Pictures Online

How to find Who Use Your Pictures Online - Our blog pages is where we put important informations on Photography, social media and blogging in general. If you're a blogger looking for inspiration and ideas to improve your website, take a look at our original articles. #photography #photographytips #photographyinspiration #blogger #blog #blogging #tricks #stockphotodesign

Ever wonder who use your pictures, when you publish them on a social media?

If you’re like us, you probably want to know who use your photos on the Internet. So, we will show you the easiest way they can be found, using only Google. You will see, it’s pretty simple..

First, you need to have the picture on your computer. If it’s on the internet, just download it to your computer. If you don’t know how to do it, just find you image on Internet, put the cursor of the computer (your mouse) over the image and push the right button on your mouse. Select “Save image as” and save it . You must look where your computer save the image, so you can access it easily.

Once you have your image, things become very simple. Now, go toGoogle.com with your Internet Explorer, or what ever browser you use. On the Google site, at the top left, you see a menu. Click on “Images“.

google image search image

This will bring you to the selection of an image. You have the option to put an Internet link to the online image, or select to upload and image from the computer. I will only show you how to upload the image, since you already have it on your computer. Now, Click on the Small Camera Icone.

search by image icon

Select on “Upload an Image“. Then on “Browse” and find your image on your computer, and “Open

As an exemple, I did it on this popular Internet Image:

sample Image

Now look at the results below:

google search results image

As you can see, there’s a lot of results for this image, and there’s at least 10 more pages linking to it. You can click on every links and see who use your photos and more importantly: how they use them.

If there’s no link, it means Google can’t find anything. It’s probably not available on the Internet, and you are probably the only person using them.

For photographers, this simple Google Image thing is very useful to find unwanted use of our images.

We also use this technique to find false account on Facebook with great success.

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Should You buy an SLR camera?

Should You buy an SLR Camera - Our blog pages is where we put important informations on Photography, social media and blogging in general. If you're a blogger looking for inspiration and ideas to improve your website, take a look at our original articles. #photography #photographytips #photographyinspiration #blogger #blog #blogging #tricks #stockphotodesign

Why should you buy an SLR Camera?

If you ask yourself “Should I buy an SLR Camera?” then you should read this..

Before you buy an SLR Camera, first of all, you should know the two main differences between a basic camera and an SLR:

  • Image quality when viewed at full size (100% zoom)
  • Possibility to change lens.

Well, not quite, “Price is also a big factor”. SLR are very affordables in most cases, but to reach their full potential, they requires good and “generally expensives” lenses. And sometimes, a lot of them…
If you buy an SLR Camera and only use the basic lens that comes with it, you will probably get results similar to ordinary cameras. So it’s a bit a waste of money.

Good lenses usually cost at least $500 each, so you have to be willing to pay more if you want to have acceptable results. When you’re not a professional, you don’t always have the budget or confidence, to invest in them. Basically, you will need to spend between $1500 and $2000, to buy the camera, a good lens, a second battery, a memory card and a camera bag to put everything in.

What about the image Quality then?

Good image quality permit you to do Large Printout, like wall size. Because of this size, image defects also become much more apparent. To prevent those image defects, you have to know your lenses limitations. Contrarily as what you might think, lenses are not perfect, and you have to know how to be able to find their limits. They all have defects, even the most expensive ones. By now, you must be asking yourself, what the heck is he talking about? Well, I will make it simple. Here’s a list of lens defects and their visual descriptions:


1- Softness:

What we call “Softness” is when an image is blurred when viewed at full size (zoom: 100%). On the image below, I have tested my own 50mm F1.4 lens on a piece of newspaper. To do this, you put your camera on a tripod and take the same picture with different lens aperture.

The Number on each image represent the Aperture of the lens. (1.4 being the largest aperture and 22 being the smallest). As you can see on this image, the image is a bit blurred at aperture 1.4 and 2.0. The image quality start to be sharper from 3.2 and up until 22.Lens Optimum Range test sample imageSoftness is the most important lens defect. On this lens, I only changed the aperture since it was a fixed lens. If you buy a zoom, you also have to test it at different zoom lenghts. Ex: for a 24-105mm like mine, I would test it at 24mm, 50mm and 105mm and do aperture verification every time.


2- Chromatic Aberration – aka Purple Fringing (Purple color appearing on high contrast area, more specificaly on border area)

You probably already saw this defect on tv image, and if you didn’t, you will now. LOL. The problem appear more likely on image external border, and is more evident when you use a larger aperture. On the image below, the first one on the left is the worse case at maximum aperture. You can see the blue-purple lines along the black outlines. Things improve as you go for smaller apertures.purple fringing sample image


3- Vignetting (Darkening area around the hedge of the photo)

As you can see in the image below, it is the darkening effect on the four corner of the image. Again, this problem is more apparent on large aperture.lens vignetting sample image


4- Visual Distorsion:

Ideally, you want image with no distortion. The barrel distortion below appear on wide angle lens (10-20mm) and the pincushion distortion appear on long zoom (200mm and more). This problem is not as critical as the first three, since most people don’t even notice it, or are aware of its existence. Only remember that people with look fatter on wide angle and skinnier on ZOOM.lens image distortion sample


What are the SLR camera advantages?

1- Being able to change lenses is one of the best advantage of the SLRs. You can use:

  • Wide angle Lens: perfect for architectural shooting.
  • Fix lens: for uptimum image quality.
  • Big Zoom lenses: When you are far from your subject, like in the nature wilderness
  • Special Effect lenses:
    • Fisheye Lens
    • Soft-focus lens for wedding
    • Super Wide Angle
    • Distortion Lenses

2- Sport Photography: It requires a camera that can shoot a lot of image per second, around 8-12 images/sec. Only SLRs can do that.
3- Aperture Selection: Being able to select the camera aperture let you choose between a blurred or a clean background. The image below show the difference between different aperture settings:dof vs aperture imageSee as the background is blurred on the first one, and gradually get sharper as you go toward the left. It is the effect of the aperture. I always use the Aperture Priority Setting on my camera, so i’m able to ajust this on every images.

4- Bracketing: Bracketing is the possibility to let the camera shoot three pictures instead of one. Each one having a different exposition. Very useful when the lighting is unpredictable. Most of the time, one of the three images will be good and you won’t have to re-shoot.
There are others useful functions in your SLR, but you will have to read the camera manual to know them.


Conclusion:

We saw some people buy an SLR Camera thinking they would shoot better pictures, only to be deceived that their images still look the same. Most of them didn’t read the manual and don’t know how to use their camera. If you use the all-automatic setting on an SLR, as well buy a regular camera or phone. If you buy an SLR Camera, you have to know exactly how to use it, and the only way to achieve this is by reading the camera manual. It is basically essential, it will make the difference between using it as an amateur, or as a Professional.
We hope reading this post will help you make an clearer decision on your next camera.


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How to get the best from your camera

How to get the best from your camera - Our blog pages is where we put important informations on Photography, social media and blogging in general. If you're a blogger looking for inspiration and ideas to improve your website, take a look at our original articles. #photography #photographytips #photographyinspiration #blogger #blog #blogging #tricks #stockphotodesign

Make perfect pictures, what every photographers aspire..

We have been Professional Photographers for many years, we can help you with this.

There are a few tricks you need to know if you really want to get perfect pictures.

Let us show you the most important ones:


Depth of field ajustment:

What’s in front and at the back of the object get blurred at larger aperture (F1.4), and get sharper as you lower the aperture toward (F22). People portrait image look better with large apertures, but nature landscape are better at smaller apertures. To change Aperture, you have to set your camera on “Aperture Priority”. See the effects below:dof vs aperture image


Rule of Thirds:

Subject should not be right in the middle, if you really want a well composed image. It’s a well known rule, that every Professional Photographers knows and applies. You have to split your image in three horizontally and vertically sections, and compose your image so your subject is on the intersecting lines. It makes the image more interesting. Just like this:

rule of thirds image sample


Focusing at the right place:

Most of the time the main subject should be in focus. When shooting people, focus should almost always be on the eyes. On the image below, the focus point was at the wrong place:

wrong focus selection problem


Don’t Cut Off Limbs:

Nobody look good with only one arm or leg, and your cat or dog won’t either with theirs tails or pawns cut off.

badly cropped image sample


Watch your background:

Don’t have things in the background that distract people attention from your main subject. On this image, the stairs and car in the back are distracting and should be removed:

Distracting backgound problem Exemple


Use Lines and repetitive shapes or pattern.

Like this:

repetitive pattern image sample


Consider Adding Movement:

This image was created with the camera following the moto.

movement sample image


Look For Symmetry.

symetry sample image


Compose with colors:

Colorful images are always pleasing to the eyes.

Colorful Image


Use your camera Macro to get close-up:

Macro on most camera is represent by a small “tulip” flower.

macro logo image

Macro is when you want to take close-up of small subjects, like flowers, insect,etc.

colorful hdmi cable image


Turn off the in-camera flash:

flashoff symbol image

Camera flash rarely permit to get perfect pictures, they make flat dull and washed-up images. On most camera, the flash is represent by a small lightning icon that permit you do disable it.


Use the twilights:

What we call twilight are the 40 minutes before sunrise and the 40 minutes after the Sunset. At those times, you can balance the light from the sky to city lightings. You just get perfect pictures compared to what you can get during day time or in complete night time.

backgroundBoston

Here’s also some exemples from Google Images


Shoot Photogenic People:

What look nice in reality also look nice on photo. Most of the photographies we sold online, were from people that also look good in person. They might cost a little bit more to hire, but the rewards are really worth the effort. It is simply more profitable to photographers.

Photogenic woman in woods image - Get the best from your camera


– These are the basic skills you have to master to get really perfect images. We also strongly suggest adding some Photoshop Skills too.


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For more great photography tips, read our Photography Tips 101 blog.


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