What do freelance photographers do all day? They take photos, right?

Well, the truth is that freelance photographers do a lot more than taking photos and microstock photographers in particular have their work cut out with plenty of other tasks that need to be completed.

If you want to work as a freelance photographer, especially if you are planning to work in microstock photography, then you will need to allocate time these activities:

1. Researching the Market

This is always the first and most critical stage in the process of selling any freelance photography. Whether selling stock photography or assignment photography you need to research what is selling, and what buyers need, in order to know what types of images to shoot.

2. Preparing for Photo Shoots

You need to spend time researching the destinations and shooting locations, planning out your preferred shots in advance, checking your photography equipment, and anticipating lighting and weather conditions.

3. Shooting Photographs

This activity is central, of course, to a photographer’s job. Everything else is for nothing if they don’t spend time behind the lens taking photographs. A good photographer is always learning as he or she takes photos, discovering which techniques produce better effects and images.

4. Editing Photographs

You do not need a darkroom to develop your digital photography but you will still need to spend time touching up your images.  Usually these are minor edits such as adjusting the brightness, cropping your picture and reducing unwanted noise. 

5. Organizing Your Photos

As your collection of photographs grows into the thousands and tens of thousands, you need to spend some time keeping your images organized, stored securely and backed up.

6. Uploading Your Best Shots

It takes time to uploading your photos to microstock sites, along with any applicable model releases.

7. Providing Titles, Descriptions and Keywords

The titles, descriptions and keywords which you provide with your images will help prospective clients to find your photos when they are searching at microstock web sites and stock agencies.

As you can see there is plenty for a freelance photographer to do. This is only a brief overview. You can find out more about these tasks on this web site and in our freelance photography guide.

Michael Kryzer is the editor of Camera Career and co-author of ‘Sell Your Digital Photos’, a 216-page guide to freelance photography.