I have no gone through all of the photos on my hard drive, and made a folder of the ones that I think might be viable for submission to stock photography agencies. It is a depressingly small folder. I have no been working to narrow those down to the ones that I will use as part of the initial submission process.

You see, micro-stock agencies don’t accept everyone. There is an initial submission process that they use to decide if they’ll sell your stuff at all. Some sites like Fotolia want to see 10 sample photos. Other sites are more dedicated to increasing your level of stress, like iStock, who wants to see just 3 photos.

How do you sum up all your photographic offerings with just three photos?

Well, I say think like the person doing the reviewing. Someone who has a full-time job of digging through people’s photos and deciding who’s stuff is going to sell and who’s will not. Here is my shortlist of how to select the photos for your submission:

• No pictures that stock agencies generally don’t want/are overstocked on. This means no pics of flowers, dogs, cats, clouds, sunsets, etc. Try to find in-demand photos.
• All pictures should be tack sharp. You have very few photos to show that you’re capable of taking good shots. Only the A-list goes here.
• Radically different photos. You want to show that you have a range - no variations on the same subject or theme. Also it might end up that that the reviewer has seen hundreds of photos of a person jumping or food that day – you don’t want several photos that make the reviewer think that’s all you’re going to do.
• At least one photo of a person. I think this is key – in general photos with people in them sell better. Show them that you’re capable of shooting people. And make sure you have a Model Release for your subject.

I’m still working on my short list — in particular the people shots. But once I have them finalized, I’ll let you know what they are, and we can see how they work out!