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Buyng Stock Photography Online

Sometimes too much choice could be a bad thing and stock photography is a prime example. For years plenty of the household-name stock photography libraries would promote themselves as being the biggest and having the biggest collections. If you've been paying attention though, you might have spotted that is not such a favourite selling proposition any more and lots of the larger libraries are now busy attempting to find alternative ways to distinguish themselves in an overcrowded marketplace.

The reality is, many photo purchasers find enormous stock photo collections time-consuming and tedious to search, despite the improvements in image search engine technology. The problem is, the size of these collections has increased at a faster rate than the search technology has improved ... So in plenty of cases, searching has actually gotten slower and more difficult. It's no surprise then that an increasing number of photo-researchers are opting for smaller 'niche' stock libraries, when they have to buy stock pictures on the internet.

These boutique stock libraries don't even try and compete on volume and most of the time they can not compete on price either ... But more photo buyers are flocking to these photo stock sites regardless, with a totally new set of reasons-to-buy.

Private customer service, close contact with the photographers, fresh original photography unique styles and content. OK, maybe these aren't totally new reasons after all , but they're reasons-to-buy that have been pushed to the back for far to long.

A lot of it goes back to the way the photography buyer values their time, and what kind of worth they put on finding the right photograph fast. The best news for photographers is, more are prepared to pay a bit more to avoid the tedium of a mass-distribution library and hone in on quality new photographs faster.

So the next time you need to buy stock photography, take a pass on the huge stock photography supermarkets, and check out a few of the boutique collections instead ... You might be amazed at the difference.

Matt Brading is a photographer and writer with the Global Eye co-operative stock photo agency, where buyers can deal direct and buy stock photos directly from the photographer

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