What is Stock Photography?

Stock photography is just copyrighted photographs that have been taken by a photographer without being hired to capture a specific subject or event. The images are maintained in a library by the photographer or an agency. A potential customer can check with the photographer, or query the inventory of previously taken images on-line, to see if an image desired is already in "stock". As a result, the customer is able to choose from a variety of ready-made images with no waiting, or worries about a special photo shoot.

Stock images may be licensed as "royalty free", meaning they can used used by the buyer for multiple projects for as long he chooses.

"Rights managed" stock images, however, are licensed only for specific usage , such as to illustrate a brochure, book, or article. Prices for this use are based on the amount of exposure that the photo will receive.

The image license costs for the customer are generally low. For example, at The Photo Lane, the one-time use of an online image in an internal newsletter with a print run of under 5,000 may be licensed for as little as $30. More prominent and widespread uses will command higher fees, but these use fees are still often much less than the amount of money expended by the photographer in producing the image.