What makes an image sell?

The question we get asked more than any other by photographers, is what images sell – or to paraphrase, what shall I shoot? There are, of course, a number of relevant answers to this including shoot what’s topical, shoot for a genre or speciality, shoot for emerging trends and so on. The stock industry today feeds a media hydra containing multiple platforms and routes to market, defined by territories with their own cultural and political micro-climates. To compound this, we have a proliferation of pricing models at point of sale. Confusing eh?

So, what does sell? The universal truth is that pretty much anything can sell, but what sells again and again and again is great imagery. And great imagery sells for a higher price. Not always, but mostly.

From the Loop perspective, a great image re-represents Britain in a fresh and original way, or conversely, subverts stereotypes we have of the UK. We engage with a dynamic view of Parliament, early evening opera at the Minack on the Cornish coast, Fringe mayhem in Edinburgh, an astounding Wiltshire landscape, or simply children playing in a rock pool at Dunraven Bay in Wales. If we engage with it, so will our clients, but only if it is done well.

The notion of craft in stock photography has become a dying concept in the rush towards coverage and critical mass. That someone should research their market, get to know their target audience and then bring all of their artistic and critical faculties to bear on a select group of themes, locations and ideas seems almost forgotten. But that is where the gold lies.

Our simple advice to any Loop contributor who asks the ‘what sells’ question, is to pour their energies and resource into making a modest number of images special, rather than making a larger number average. Small and brilliant is best.

Oh, and one more thing – no nuclear sunsets!

Ricky don't lose that camera!

For the last 10 years, Ricky Leaver, one of Loop's newest contributors has been shooting London. And how! From rain-washed street tableaus to snatched grabs of Londoners on the Tube; sublime, graphical photographs of people on Hampstead Heath to shots of the metropolis, such as the one above, that display an accomplished technical mastery. All this from a guy who lives outside London in the neighbouring county of Essex!

Why London? In Ricky's words: 'because it is a uniquely inspirational city, timeless yet always evolving. You can never get bored photographing London.'

We, of course, would have to agree. For sheer quality, depth, breadth and quirk factor, Ricky has a body of work that defines London on many levels, providing a superb visual accompaniment to a city that stands shoulder to shoulder with many of the great world capitals.

Rick's work is available exclusively through the Loop network. To see a sample of his fantastic London imagery, try here, and for a more extensive selection, click here.

World Class Loop Shooter

Loop photographer, David Osborn, is pretty much in a field of one. He shoots with the worlds only digital panoramic camera, a Seitz 6x17. Traditional digital cameras expose the whole image in one go with the resolution of the image limited to the small size of the capture chip recording the image. With the Seitz 6x17, the image is scanned from left to right, building up the image as it goes, creating file sizes unimaginable in standard digital cameras - a whopping 21,250 pixels wide x 7,500 pixels high creating a monster 922 megabyte 16 bit tiff file. In fact, the worlds largest digital capture file. To put this in perspective, it creates an image 1,229% larger than the newest professional Nikon camera on the market today.

The resolution is made possible due to a sensor produced by Dalsa, a company with vast experience in creating high resolution imaging sensors for satellites and the space industry, with an imaging sensor currently on Mars with the Mars Rover. The benefit of this innovative technology is that it creates a printed image, razor sharp and without enlargement at 7 feet 5 inches x 2 feet 7 inches. The only camera in the world to do so.

However, technology alone will not produce a great photograph, it requires a combination of art and technology. David's image above of Westminster Bridge required over 150 hours of work to print in order to realize his vision for the scene; working like a painter, setting the mood and bringing up the finest detail. The image, however, is not a composite or fake, every detail in the image is as recorded on the day.

Seitz have been so impressed with David's work that they have given him an open brief to shoot what he wants, with selected images to be used for their global marketing campaigns. David brought over some prints to the Loop offices recently and we were totally blown away. Seeing is believing, and if this is the way technology is going, grain, artifacts and softness will be something added in post-production, not the spectre that haunts the capture process for many current photographers.

To learn more about David and his work go here, or to see some of David's work that Loop represent exclusively, go here.

Loop's very own Moustache Man!

Loop shooter, Rick Senley, has just had a novel published called 'Moustache Man and the Deadly Whiskers.' Billed as a tragic tale of one man’s descent from a dishy fellow about town to the wretched underbelly of Victorian London, it features some of Rick's anarchic wit and his leftfield view of the modern world. His bio hints at the wry humour you can expect in his formal writing. In his own words..

Rick Senley is a 36-year-old photographer and journalist who has been arrested late at night in several countries and was last year shortlisted for the Travel Photographer of the Year. He writes about prostitutes, cooking and the underworld for FHM and Loaded as well as less classy publications such as the Observer – his subjects are all-inclusive apart from landscape gardening and cars and he will take pictures of anything that will not bite him. Rick is making his film debut in this year's British gangster flick Killer Bitch for which he has written soundtrack music and has recently begun to meditate but finds it too tiring. He once tried to stop drinking by cycling to the South of Spain, has been shot at while drinking in Georgia, molested in a Turkish bath and wounded by an insect in Australia. Rick went to university in Italy, Leicester and Hungary and unsuccessfully tried to escape from a police station when working as a teacher in Greece. He can swear in Norwegian and nearly appeared on a flower-arranging programme in Brazil. He plays squash and the zither, has made two albums of ‘music’ occasionally works at the Old Bailey and resents living in London.

To see some of Rick's work on the Loop network you can go here where among other gems you will find some contemporary Ireland imagery Loop commissioned from Rick last year. To buy a copy of the book, go here.

Happy Holidays from Loop

We would like to take this opportunity to wish you a very merry holiday season and a happy, peaceful and prosperous 2010. Thanks also for your custom and support throughout 2009 and we pledge to continue bringing you the most original, innovative imagery of Britain in the coming year..

Loop Photographer takes his time..

South-African born Eric Nathan has been a Loop contributor for several years and is certainly one of our more well-traveled shooters visiting over 60 countries with his cameras.

As a creative tangent he recently began creating scenic time-lapse videos, which he photographs on a 12-megapixel digital stills camera in RAW format allowing precise control of every frame, and offering a capture resolution six times better than HD video. Eric then post-processes the images and outputs them as full HD video. This sequence of the sun setting over the River Thames amply demonstates how lovely the rendered images can look..


The method highlighted above allows for output of identical high-resolution stills ensuring continuity across media in any campaign. Here's two more featuring the Palace of Westminster and the Royal Albert Hall..





Eric has so far created 5 of these little movies of London, but another 30 of Cape Town and with the advent of more movie-rich web content, these atmospheric cameos could be a great way to get a message out into the ether.

To view more of Eric's work on Loop go here, or he can be contacted directly via his site at www.ericnathan.com.

World Class Runners Up

Well, it would appear the warmer weather is with us and thoughts naturally turn to some of the big sporting events happening here in the next few months.

In June we have Royal Ascot, the British Grand Prix and Wimbledon starts. July brings Henley Royal Regatta, The Ashes begin and The Open Championship Golf. August brings Cowes Week, Rugby League Challenge Cup and The Community Shield, which heralds the start of the football season and the onset of autumn.

What will underpin much of the sporting endeavour throughout the summer, will be the sheer weight of hyperbole and eulogising from the press focused on individuals with even the most passing links to this fair isle. Maybe their great-grandfather once used the facilities at Heathrow on a stop-over from Paris to Moscow, or they are the third cousin twice removed of Princess Anne. Whichever it is, they will be built up in the early summer as the future, only to be the overnight sandwich left on the radiator by September.

The British will not let slip easily the mantle of World Class Runners Up. The Aussies will probably tonk the English at cricket, we will struggle to have a representative in the second week of the tennis at Wimbledon, and the Open will probably be won by a Papua New Guinean who had first picked up a club three weeks before.

Whatever the outcomes this summer, hope springs eternal and maybe, just maybe 2009 will be different..

To clock some great British Summer Sports imagery, go here.