That’s right, with the code “AMAYZING2013″, you’ll get 20% off any purchase of stock photos from now until the end of the Month.  My collection hosted at Photoshelter compliments the collection at Stocksy, giving you access to many of my popular backgrounds, design elements, and isolated subjects, like the series below.  Check those out, and then head over to SeanLockePhotography at Photoshelter to spice up your designs!

How about a series to promote your storage unit rental business?  This extensive series features a couple unloading the truck and loading up the unit with boxes and other “stuff”.

This set of images featuring a multi-ethnic group of graduating teenagers is perfect for editorial or advertising use this time of year.

A patriotic family enjoying the July 4th holiday is great to illustrate summer fun and cooking out.

This couple having a romantic dinner at home can be used for all kinds of advertisements where togetherness or romance is a factor.

Bring attention to your program for children’s fitness or dance with this series of a young girl in various dance costumes.

It’s so simple to use.  Go to Stocksy, and choose the emotive, or exciting or eye-catching images you want for your project or campaign.  The interface is a breeze to use, and you’re not going to get bogged trying to figure out the interface.  Once you’ve finished your selection, head to your shopping cart and enter in the promotional discount code “SLOCKE2013″ .  The discount you see next will bring a smile to your face.

Now, this coupon code isn’t just for my portfolio.  You can select work from the over 300 photographers that are already contributing to Stocksy.  I’m highlighting a few below.  So check them out, and then use the code for your first purchase at Stocksy!

The portfolio of Jill Chen features some great food photography.  It’s making me hungry.

Gavin Hellier travels around the world to bring you both iconic landmark images and people of different lands.

Kristin Rogers’ images have a great ethereal and natural feel, as they capture adults and children alike.

Find some great photos of Washington D.C. and its landmarks in the portfolio of Cameron Whitman.

For a fresh look at travel photography as well as all kinds of lifestyle, check out the work of Kevin Russ.

Stocksy is full of great royalty free content that is ready to drop into your advertising, editorial or web-based layout.  Give us a try with promo code “SLOCKE2013″.  Thanks

p.s.  The graphics in my coupon above were sourced from the great design collection at GL Stock Images.

First up is this popular series of a multi-ethnic group of doctors and nurses.  The Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic and Asian-American models are dressed in lab coats, scrubs and casual wear, and are in a variety of poses.  This isolated on white series is great to lay text over, or in an ad where you need to depict trustworthiness or responsibility.  Especially the images with the senior model.

The next set is of a young girl having snacks in the kitchen, at the counter.  Good for anything to do with healthy eating, responsible snacking, or kids’ independence.  There’s strawberries, grilled cheese and cookies, and even some with Mom helping out.

I’m sure you can guess who the woman in the next set is supposed to be.  Anonymous, in most shots, but reminiscent of the hockey mom, Sarah Palin.  It was created to go along with my other Politician series, and actually stand in for any female United States politician.  In a pinch, she could also represent a patriotic business woman.  There are lots of concepts, from gun control to taking or spending money.  Still relevant today and into the future.

Last, is a set of images that I shot on the same day that I did my “Breast Cancer Charity Walk” series, which you can find over on Stocksy .  Here, two of the Caucasian women are in the park, exercising, walking, and playing with their dog.  Nice, spring time colors of green go well with the pink outfits.  And the dog is cute too!

Thanks for visiting, have a good weekend, and check out all of my available work from the links on this page, including Stocksy !

First, just in time for a margarita, we have my series of Cinco De Mayo backgrounds.  There’s a variety of setups, some with tacos and chips, others with a sombrero, and a few incorporating a colorful serape as well.

Isolated on white, this set with an attractive cheerleader, will be great for bringing life to any sports advertisement, whether it’s for a sports league, a restaurant, or a store.  She poses with poms, yells with a megaphone, and offers beer and food.

Always useful is this gallery of auto shop mechanic and customer images.  There’s humor as the mechanic gets greedy, over-billing the woman, anonymous pictures with just a hand and wrench or other tools, and some that can be used as an illustration of confidence and hard work.

Back to the backgrounds, this set is perfect for summertime fun and events.  Especially holidays and patriotic times, like Independence Day or Memorial Day.  Hot dogs, baseball, bunting and fireworks.  What could be more iconic?

Here’s a nice series of a mature couple, set both in an interior room, and isolated on white.  They are worrying about medical costs, dancing, walking with grocery bags, and lots, lots more.  Take some time to step through this slideshow to see this useful set.

Thanks again for stopping by to read my blog, and for licensing my stock photo content.

When the news of my leaving my previous distributor hit, I got a ton of email from various businesses all offering to help me find new ways to distribute my content.  One of them was from Photoshelter, a company that allows you to host, market and sell your photographic work, while staying mostly out of the way, concentrating on the back end and software.  This gives me an new outlet to market my photos from, with a minimum of risk, and maximum control.  I’m happy to say that I have more than a thousand images up at Photoshelter now, with more on the way every day.

As a buyer, I think you’ll appreciate the simplicity of the interface.  It’s clean, quick and uncluttered.  The search works, and the buying process is easy.  Here’s a few of my more popular series that you’ll find there.

For the largest selection of my non-exclusive stock work, please head over to my site at Photoshelter and spend some time looking around.  If you don’t find what you need, use my contact form to get in touch.  Thanks!

There’s several different series in this set.  The first is a young girl decorating homemade cupcakes with the letters M-O-M, as a surprise.  In the images are a handmade card and some flowers as well.  She’s good with a frying pan too, as there are also some images of her taking a tray of breakfast (eggs and toast) to wake up Mom.

The next images are of a young Caucasian couple with a new baby.  There are Mom and baby pictures, as well as Dad and baby and all three.  They are playing on the rug, taking photos on a cell phone to send to friends and resting on the couch, tired from all the baby work.  The baby laughs, the baby cries.  Real emotions.

There’s also some in there from my “Baby Shower” series with a Mom-To-Be (you may recognize her from the baby shots!).  Friends host a party where they play games like “what baby food is that?” and “how big is the belly”, give gifts of clothing and toys, and have cake.  The room is decorated, and the images would work for boy or girl babies.

So, click here to check out this gallery of images over on Stocksy, and don’t forget M-O-M!

When I was thinking up new ideas for subjects for my exclusive stock portfolio for Stocksy, I realized I don’t have a restaurant series, and what says fun and good times in a restaurant then people gathered around for ribs and cornbread and the rest?  We’ve got a great new place in town that includes treats like a maple bacon crunch milkshake, if you can believe it (it’s awesome!).

So, I gathered up a multi-ethnic group of Caucasian, African-American and Indian-American models, ordered up a few tables full of food and drinks, and spent a few hours creating a new series.  There’s a friendly server in the group, helping to choose from the menu, kids chewing on baby back ribs, and a group of friends celebrating the occasion with mixed drinks and a variety of beers.  This series is light on the processing (except for one image), with clean colors and lots of copyspace.  Lighting is natural and not overly bright or fake.

Take a look at some of the images below, and then click here to see the entire series at Stocksy!

Google Drive

Biggest case-in-point, of course, is the “licensing” of content from Getty Images to Google Drive, so that Google Drive can give the content away free to its millions and millions of users, for the princely sum of $60 an image, of which the photographer gets $12.  Never mind that iStockphoto contributors had no “agreement” or “contract” with Getty Images directly.  Among the thousands of images sold this way were many that were part of an iStockphoto collection also distributed on Getty.  This story erupted back in January and was detailed here on my site.  iStockphoto eventually responded with some surprise, and “details” on the deal, as well as a promise to work to solve contributor concerns.  After two months, the solution to contributor concerns was to change a bit of wording at the Google Drive site.  Never mind properly compensating the artists or divulging a bit more about the actual deal.  Enough time goes by, and people forget.

Connect

Next, we have the innovative Getty Connect deal.  Businesses outside of Getty gain access to the database through an API, and are able to incorporate content into their websites without actually going through the normal channels of licensing work.  Right from the start, we knew this implementation was going to be a one sided benefit, with Getty claiming the good side.  Again, we were given no real details on the agreement or money to be paid for this “innovation”.   How much does the partner pay?  How much does the contributor get?  That’s all top secret, and there’s no reason you need to know.  Well, the payments for the first deal started coming in, and no one was surprised.  I had four images viewed in connection with the program. On the statement, the royalty rate is listed as “varies”.  My payments for my four images viewed were as follows (first number is “license fee”, next is my cut)

• .16, .01
• .01, 0
• .01, 0
• .23, .01

So, my image views netted me two cents.   My royalties are less than %10 of the fee!  Since then, they’ve acknowledged their rounding issue, netting me zero cents, and will now report up to five decimal places – $.00001 !  Don’t plan on paying your mortgage any time soon.  Again, who knows how much Getty is getting out of the deal.  Probably more than our pretty penny.

Cafepress

Most recently though, we have the Getty-Cafepress “lending” arrangement.  I’m pretty sure I knew about this before Remi Thornton put up an article that went viral (maybe I’m thinking of BigStock who did the same thing).  It looks like Cafepress can pick and choose any Getty Content they like to put onto their products without paying a nickel until that product sells.  However, again, no notice to contributors of this innovative arrangement.  No opt out.  No details.  Cafepress is taking Getty content, using it to greatly expand their library of products, which is, in itself, something they can advertise with and gain eyeballs, and not compensating the contributor at all.  When a product sells, then the photographer is suppose to get a cut of the profit.  How much?  Nobody knows.  But, check this out…

Here’s one of my Getty images, a wheelchair on white, on an iPhone case.  Obviously, it was selected for this specific product for it’s great composition.  Or something.  The Cafepress base price is $19.99.  The Getty list price here is $29.50, a mark up of about $10.  So, if this ever sells, Cafepress gets $20, Getty gets $8 and I get $2, and that’s assuming a contributor gets their normal %20 of the royalty for an RF sale.  Don’t know that here.   It could be a sweet 10% like with Getty Connect above.  I’m not particularly sure I trust the sale to be reported either – these re-distribution schemes always scare me.  If I wanted to sell stuff on Cafepress, I’d be doing it myself and keeping all the mark-up.

Traditionally, if a retailer wants to use content on something, like a mousepad, a t-shirt, a phone case, they must license the content, and most times, buy an extended license for items for resale.  Here, Cafepress gets their content for free, until it sells.  There is no difference between the two scenarios, except here, Cafepress got a great deal.  BTW, if you check out the Getty storefront, you’ll find more quality image and product selections like this:

Conclusion

Is it any wonder, with all these “innovations” and surprises, that photographers are actually leaving Getty, the current industry powerhouse, for smaller photographer friendly agencies like Stocksy or GL Stock Images, or even starting their own distribution portals?  Please, keep all of this in mind when you are out licensing content for your next project.