How Do I Become a Corbis Photographer?

Video Transcript

"This is Anthony. I'm going to talk about becoming a Corbis photographer. Corbis is, essentially, a stock agency, and it's an agency where you could get hired on for assignments and you could essentially almost freelance. And you can make a living at doing this, but it is not an easy way to make a living at being a photographer. But you can do it, and there are other agencies out there other than Corbis, and they're all upstanding, and the harder you work, the more money you will make. But this is a book that I like to use that's called the Photographer's Market. Every year, they come out with one. This is a great resource to just start with to look at ways that you can make money with your photography. Now, doing stock photography, again, I keep repeating myself, I will repeat it again and again: it's not easy. When people buy a stock photo...buy stock photography, they're buying an image that you made so that they can sell something, and they're going to use your image to market it. So one of the first things that you really want to think about is: "Well, is someone going to steal my image, or how are they going to use my image?" I used to joke around with some of my colleagues that you almost needed a law degree in order to really understand the legalese behind an image. And it can get quite complicated. First thing I always try to do is get a model release or make sure the location that I'm shooting in is okay for me to shoot in, thus, to sell my image. If all those requirements aren't met, there's really nothing I can do. And not that those requirements are extremely hard to get met, but they're something that I want to think about. The other thing that happens when you decide you want to work for an agency like Corbis is: "How do I approach them? Are they going to look at my work and decide, 'Oh, yeah, we want to hire Anthony or we would like to hire you.'?" So I have to get together a portfolio, and I have to professionally approach these people because they're a corporation -- they're huge -- and try to entice them to want to look at my work, or what makes my work different? And that is probably one of the easiest things to get right through to your head right away is that if I have a look or I have subject matter that no other photographer has, chances of you selling your images and paying the bills are pretty good. But to do that, it's pretty hard. So those are the factors that I always add in. There are lots of other stock agencies out there. There are some really easy...there's iPhoto. A lot of friends that I have love doing iPhoto, where if they have a spare day in their week, they'll shoot, literally, thousands of images a day. And it could be anything from a baby rattle to a bottle of milk, and they'll just sit in their studios and they'll think of ways to light and to shoot these items. Now, that's not really for me, but for other people, they do it, and they make some money at it. And it's really a great way to learn about photography as well."