The Illusion of Stock Photography?

Myself @ Dreamtime (search by user: rapier84)

For many of us, we take photos for the pleasure. At some point we may harbour the thought that our photos may be of value to someone out there. And of course the easiest measure of that worth will be monetary. Photographers would have at some point heard of stock or microstock photography. Basically they act as agents for thousands of photographers whom are able to sell their photos to a worldwide audience without knocking on doors and getting rejected left right and center, in the process validating their creative vision and hopefully go towards funding that shiny new lens/tripod/flash (delete where applicable).

So how true is this. Illusion is all I can say. The lucky few that manage to sell their photos and actually make a living as a stock photographer will of course dispute this. But the saturation of the marketplace by DSLR wielding amatuers means that the internet is flooded with images. At best you get perhaps a dollar or so for every download . Now what is the process the buyer goes through before he even buys your photo that earns you that paltry sum?

First he/she goes to a stock site (shutterstock, i shutter stock, dreamtime etc) and keys in a few words on the search bar on the theme needed. Then thousands of thousands of shots appear. Then the buyer runs through the images and usually buys the first one that he/she sees that suits his/her need (without ever running through the rest, I know because I had the chance to ask the editor of a local magazine). What this means for most photographers on microstock sites is that they usually don't sell anything for a long time if at all, and when they do the stiff competition means that the prices are....well not equal to the effort taken to produce those images in the first place.

So where does that leave photographers? No where, with a dream of selling our work that remains a dream