Shoot & Sell – December 2019

Wondering what to shoot next to keep flowing your passive income through stock footage/photography? 

Here are 5 ideas coming from actual requests from stock agencies Pond5 and Shutterstock. .

I’ll go quickly through the ones coming from Shutterstock, cause today I want to put more focus on a very specific list written by Pond5, so be sure to stick til the end.

 

Shutterstock

1. Creating a Home

For the third time in the year, home decor content is being requested. Customers are looking for images and footage depicting interiors and people enjoying them or working on them. Things like spring decor, spring cleaning, home staging, and lawn care, should soon get popular again, so it is a good idea to upload content like this to stock agencies. 

2. Women in power

The next request is called Women in Power and means visual content that honors the power of women. Examples are the celebration of International Women’s Day, Women’s rights activism, feminism, and the fight for gender equality. 

3. Black History Month

Then we have a next request celebrating February – the Black History Month. Customers will soon start working on content like this so it is a good idea to upload related images & videos as soon as possible. 

4. Magic & Occultism

Finally, there’s Magic & Occultism. According to Shutterstock, there are not enough visual options to depict magic and mystical things like astrology, fortune tellers and alchemy. 

5. Pond5: Lifestyle

Now let’s head to Pond5’s request. According to the agency, this shot list is a compilation of requests made by real clients and they’re all in the lifestyle genre. 

 

Lifestyle is an evergreen topic. Working on these topics means your files will be in demand right now but should also thrive in the long run.

 

The whole trending vs. evergreen is a topic that we cover in our online course for stock creators. A complete online course that will get you from ZERO to SERIOUS passive income through the sale of stock footage & stock photography. There will soon be some new updates to the course and the price will be raised as well. So do consider enrolling in the course while that doesn’t happen. 

 

Back to the shot list, I strongly advise you do all you can to keep your shoots as authentic and realistic as possible. Stock agencies are saturated with exaggerated content. Putting that into practice means that you don’t need your actors to be smiling all the time. It also means you can capture a wider range of emotions and expressions such as sad, concerned, focused, etc. 

 

Pond5 also says there’s an increase of customers requesting lifestyle shots that are captured in specific countries or regions. So be sure you also add the location in your keywords and title. 

 

Shotlist

• A diverse group or a couple driving in a car wearing clothing for cold weather.
• Shots focused on a particular movement that don’t show the human that generated it. Like tire tracks in the dirt, tossing snow up, kicking up dust while running, stepping in the water to generate waves, etc.
• Lifestyle shots of people in military uniform. By lifestyle, they mean the routine of these people, not combat shots. Some ideas are people tidying up their uniform, lacing up their boots and even video portraits.
• Also, engineers interacting with equipment like machinery, cell towers or data labs.
• Groups of people watching a movie together

Then there’s a list of ideas with people using electronic devices. Once again, put your effort in producing natural and authentic clips.

• Like businesspeople using their devices while traveling
• Small business owners using their devices in their work environment
• Families of 3 to 4 people with children in ages between 9-15 using their devices

 

Happy 2020!

And this closes the last shoot & sell episode of this year. If you haven’t watched the previous episodes, I prepared a whole playlist with the last episodes so you can get more ideas of what to shoot next