If you want to enter the fashion photography field, but don’t want the competition, stress and hassle associated with high-fashion photography, the lucrative world of high fashion stock photography or stock fashion photography may be right for you. With fashion stock photography education and training, you can learn to be a professional who takes fashion stock images for publications, media companies, web sites and others in the fashion industry. These images are royalty-free and used repeatedly on an as needed basis.

Fashion stock photography education and training is very similar to the education and training required for any professional fashion photography career. You need to master photography techniques, equipment, supplies and fashion images. You also will want to take digital imaging courses since many fashion stock photos are digitized. There is no certification required for a career in fashion model photography, but you may want to consider the following:

1. Take photography school courses and or earn a degree to learn the basics.
2. Pursue fashion photography workshops to further your education.
3. Learn about digital fashion photography to create images online.
   

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Apply to a photography school offering a fashion specialization for a career in fashion stock photos

No schools offer specialization in free fashion stock images specifically, but any good photography school with a focus or program in fashion will teach you the basics you need to know to freelance or work at a fashion stock agency. These courses will teach you about photo techniques, equipment, editing and other subjects important for a career in the industry.

I recommend: The New England Institute of Art offers an undergraduate fashion and retail management degree that prepares students for retail and fashion careers. The New England School of Photography offers a minor in fashion photography.

Attend hands-on professional fashion photography workshops to hone your skills

Even if you have a degree in fashion photography, it is a good idea to take additional training in the form of workshops or classes. This form of training often will help you attain hands-on experience and allow you to hone your photography skills.

I recommend: Photographic Commerce offers focused workshop programs in fashion photography. Most workshops last a few weeks and include creating fashion assignments for the Photographic Commerce magazine. ImageFactoryWest offers one-on-one workshops that adapt to each photographer's level of learning.

Pursue digital photography training to learn how to create and edit digital fashion stock images

As a stock fashion photographer, many of your images may be created specifically for databases or websites of royalty free fashion stock photos. Therefore, it is important to learn how to take digital images and how to edit digital fashion photos with software programs. Most classes about digital photography can teach you the basics.

I recommend: The School of Photography.com offers an online digital photo course that covers not only taking, but also editing photos. The Academy of Art University offers classes in digital fashion photography.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  While pursuing your career, you may wish to gather a fashion stock photo portfolio, either online or in traditional portfolio format. Many potential employers will want to see samples of your work, so consider pursuing training that will allow you to create samples of your work.

Digital fashion photography incorporates images devoted to clothing, jewelry, and other fashion items. The work of professional fashion photographers is prevalent in magazines such as Vanity Fair and Vogue and many images are available for download for personal and business use.

Finding royalty-free fashion images or free fashion stock photos will be easy. The vast amount of photos available may become overwhelming, so knowing exactly what you require, including whether you want images from a top named fashion photographer or if you will accept any stock fashion photography images is a place to start.

1. Resolution of images varies, so know the size and contrast requirements of the fashion stock images you desire.

2. You can narrow your search time if you have a focus such as fashion model photography, clothing, accessories, shoes, make-up or hair.

3. Consider the tone of the images you want, such as muted, colorful, black and white, glamorous, casual, or modern.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Snap up the best fashion stock images

If your business, or website, needs to have the most current fashion images, register with the stock photo agencies that keep up with the latest trends around the globe.

I recommend: You can view more than 50,000 Masterfile stock photos for free, but you will have to register with their agency to purchase and download any image you want for advertising or website use. Comstock Images offers royalty-free fashion stock images. If you're seeking the most current fashion images, check out the fashion stock photos of fashion shows from around the world at Wireimage's partner PunchStock.com.

Beautify your office or website with professional fashion photography

You are not limited to a fashion stock agency for your fashion photo needs. Repositories are certainly a great way to view numerous high fashion stock photography images, but there are also fashion photographers willing to license their photos to you directly.

I recommend: Fotosearch has thousands of royalty-free and rights-managed fashion stock images available. Ditto is a repository of images that connect you to the originating photographer's website. If you want to use an image, you must obtain permission from the photographer.

Glam it up with free fashion stock photos

Online fashion photography stock agencies give you almost instant access to downloadable fashion images; most photo stock agencies will require you to register before you can download images, and then you'll be able to purchase and access the image fitting your needs.

I recommend: Hoover Stock Photography offers a small number of fashion stock photographs for free. More free quality fashion photos are searchable by image categories at stock.xchng.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Digital stock photography has come a long way from its inception as limited use for books. Fashion stock photo availability continues to grow as more people enter the field and want their images to sell.

You may discover a business need for fashion photograph images for any number of reasons; possibly for advertisement, promotion or even office decoration. Depending on the specific business goals, hiring a professional photographer for custom fashion photography may be out of the question.

Fashion stock photography makes high-quality fashion photography accessible for anyone, from highly priced photos by internationally renowned photographers to basic, free images. By learning the fashion stock photography key terms, finding the right image might be a quick Internet search away.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Fashion photography

Fashion photography is used to display and promote apparel, accessories and shoes, most often in magazines and advertisements, and leaves much room for creativity, artistic representation and unique style for photographers.

I recommend: Discover everything that goes into fashion photography and how it is often used in an article on USNews.com.

Stock photography

Stock photography is a group of existing photographs (often used by advertisers, graphic artists and publishers) for which a license can be purchased for a specific purpose.

I recommend: Read about stock photography in detail at PhotoShelter.

Royalty-free stock photography

Royalty-free stock photography means that a royalty does not need to be paid each time the image is used, only a one-time fee that allows use of the image multiple times. There is usually no time limit, and no rights owned by anyone, meaning photos can be resold many times by the photographer.

I recommend: Check out the royalty-free policy at KeyImagery Community to get a better understanding of the term. Some policies may differ among photo stock companies.

Rights-managed stock photography

Rights-managed photography is much like renting the image; the buyer and seller agree upon a price that depends on factors such as the intended use of the photo, the length of time it will be used and what size it will be.

I recommend: Consider the benefits of working with rights-managed stock photography after reading the article published by the American Society of Media Photographers.

Stock photo agency

Stock photo agencies either buy photos outright from photographers, or represent photographers by advertising their photos and negotiating with customers for a percentage of the license fee.

I recommend: Learn more about how stock photo agencies and microstock agencies work at PhotoSecrets.

Stock photo repository

A stock photo repository is a digital storage of photos, searchable database or image library of fashion photographs, but is different from an agency in that the images do not always require a fee or licensing.

I recommend: Understand what a repository is by searching the Flickr repository, where you can use or contribute images.